Tiny Ghosts Are Breaking Language Barriers and Hearts In New Song "AmorAmor"

We got to chat with Eric Morgan and Dayan Marquina also known as Tiny Ghosts about their latest, all Spanish, single "AmorAmor" and here's what they had to say.

Photo: Graham Morrison

D: Dayan Marquina

E: Eric Morgan

What inspired you guys to record a song in all Spanish? How did the writing/record process differ from making a song in English?

D: Eric suggested it, and I’ve always loved the idea of singing in my first language so it was perfect.

E: For recording, since we had the instrumentation already for LoveLove, we really only had to focus on vocals. Actually, it was a last-minute session we added to our April tracking before Dayan had to head back to Brooklyn. We had finished tracking "Grasp of Me" and another upcoming song with our vocal producer Alyssa Wilkens that had gone really well, and we had been talking about doing this song in Spanish so spur of the moment, she squeezed Dayan in and knocked out the vocals in a couple of hours before she flew back. I did just a small amount of post-production on the instruments to make it slightly different and then sent it off to our friend Jesse Clasen to mix — which in the end I prefer to the original ‘LoveLove’ mix.

Dayana you had said about the song, “Heartbreak sometimes happens in slow motion with a back-and-forth trying to put the other at serve. This gave me the idea to turn to a tennis metaphor and both being at zero - LoveLove”. Do you guys often find that a lot of your song ideas come from metaphors?

D: I would say yes and no. "LoveLove" just happened to magically work out the way it did, as for our other songs I would say "Grasp of Me" would fall under that category and perhaps a "Different Light" and "Ado." Usually the ideas for the subjects of the songs are discovered in my process of writing the lyrics to Eric’s songs, I start thinking of something I’ve been wanting to get off my chest and either write them very direct or sometimes write them very diluted with hidden meanings and full of metaphors, depends how discrete I want to be.

Photo: Graham Morrison

What made you guys decide to go with a more dancey beat considering that the lyrically it is about a relationship that didn't work out? You had used an all guitar build for the main textures in the song and a long chain of downshifting delay pedals, was this something you knew you wanted to do going into the song or did it just work out naturally that way?

E: Dayan had been wanting to do something more upbeat and dancey for a while. Pretty sure had she mentioned this to me a few times before I got the hint. I got the idea for the pitched guitar tail from a podcast (shoutout Song Exploder!) where they had some pop artist on — maybe Girl In Red or The 1975, and they mentioned how they automated a reverb tail on vocals to fall in pitch to get this haunting type sound. I thought that might be cool on guitar so I messed around and created this lush, ambient chain with an octave crystal delay and long spacey reverb. Actually, the pitched part for my setup ended up being the crystal delay that falls down a few cents each period. I really liked how it grounded itself with the sadder lyrics against that uptempo dancey beat.

What can you tell us about any upcoming projects you have for the new year? Do you see yourselves releasing any more all Spanish songs or maybe even an all Spanish album?

E: I’m 100% into doing an all Spanish EP! Though I think Dayan wants to do a song in Japanese next.

D: I would love to someday do all Spanish record for sure, this means I have to sharpen my Spanish skills (written) because I struggle finding some good words here and there but I can definitely do it. Like Eric mentioned, I am really pushing for a Japanese version of "LoveLove" or just a new Japanese song in general, I’m hoping this becomes a reality in 2023.

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