About the song
The song is about a guy that is having the worst relationship ever. And he tells his friend about it, and then his friend tells it to the world. So in a way this song is told by a narrator within a narrator. There are 2 characters in this song. The first is about the guy that experiences the falling out with his significant other. The other one is the guy’s friend that he shares with the agony of his doomed relationship.


The Making of Conversation
As I mentioned earlier, this particular song is THE turning point of our band. And here is how it happened. Before making this song, we decided that as a band we should try our luck with the local radio stations. Because at the time (2005) I was hearing some of the songs by local bands and thought that we had a chance to be in it and believed we could do better. I shared this with Luffy and he agrees, the others also have the same point of view. So, with that in mind we started on a new song, ‘Conversation’.

Believe it or not…but we did this song in just (count it with me now..1..2..3..4) 4 days!! I guess it was the hype @ the moment that made us so into it. All of us were busy finding out what to put where and what sounded better. Luffy was finding the right beats, Adul & Deal were dealing with guitar issues, G5 (whom at the time was already a bit steady with bass) was as cool as possible with the bass chords (so as not to incur the wrath of his demonic sifus, Adul & Deal). I myself was busy fitting in lyrics and also trying to make sure I didn’t screw up the song.


The Recording (Part I)
After the song was done we decided to find a studio that could record our song. In this moment, we weren’t experienced about recording and its processes, so we decided to just try our luck at the place that we had been jamming for a while now (sorry I cant tell the name of the place). The experiences during recording were part hilarious part catastrophic. As I remembered it, we were recording during the night. We had discussed earlier with the recording technician about our plans and he agreed to help to with our recording. But as we went through with our recording, some other band came into the studio. We later found out that it was the recording technician’s band, and they had come for a jamming session (I believe they were practicing for some event). So, in a way our schedules were conflicted and this technician fellow decided to go with his band and rushed with our recording process. I was really..really..over the top annoyed with this, cause earlier we had high hopes about the recording process and now it seems that it was fading away. But we stayed cool and finished it, alas the end product was not what we had expected. The track that we had recorded was ‘ugly’ and the quality was really poor. But we decided to stay positive and go on with releasing it on air with the help of me & Luffy’s friend and former ‘mentor’ who happens to work at Kristal FM.


The Recording (Part II)
Weeks after we released ‘Conversation’ on air (Kristal FM), we received numerous comments from our family & friends. Most of it was good comments and positive. But I still can’t deal with the quality of it, Luffy and the others were also dissatisfied. But at the time we didn’t know how to fix the problem that we faced. Then one day, as I was strolling around in Gadong, I saw a poster. It was a poster of a local band named ‘Not Famous’. I heard of their songs before and really loved it. Then after seeing the poster, I had an idea on how to solve our problem. So I went into the shop and purchase the ‘Not Famous’ CD (it was for $15, which coincidentally the only amount of money I had left for the entire month). The next day I listened to it and was astonished by the quality of their tracks. So I decided to check out the albums leaflet to find out any contact information, and there it was, their email. I decided to try my luck and contact them about where they had done their recording. I think I received their reply right that afternoon. Their answer was somewhat disappointing because their tracks were done in Malaysia. Eventually we replied each others email and talked about some music related stuff. Then one of them (Adam of Not Famous) offered some help with the recording. He told me that he was currently working in a recording studio. So we decided to set up a meeting with Adam. A few days after that we went to Adam’s workplace and talked about our problems. I gave him our track, and he listened to it and said it wasn’t that bad (I believed he was just saying that as not to offend our feelings). He then said the recording quality can be improved, but the song itself has potential. So not wasting time we scheduled for a recording session and tried our best on improving the songs with a bit change to the arrangement and tempo. The outcome was not as crystal clear as we had imagined but it improved significantly than the previous. All of us got together and hear the track for ourselves. We were very pleased to hear the change in quality, though the quality wasn’t as best it could be, we were still satisfied.


The turning point
After the track was done, Adam told me of another contact for releasing our song. He told me that the person was really helpful in promoting local bands. So I wrote down the number and talked to Luffy about it. We gave it a careful thought and decided to go on with it. So I contacted the person Adam mentioned, this person’s name is called Aliff..and he is widely known as DJ Aliff of Pelangi FM. Subsequently we sent the song to Pelangi Fm and released it there officially (we even have to sign a release form). So ladies & gentleman, that was the beginning of our relationship with Pelangi FM. For months to come ‘Conversation’ was played regularly on air and we even started to gain fans and requests for our song (what a wonderful feeling it was..still remember it to this day!!).
So…that’s the story behind this song. It is the most important song that we had composed. I believe that without ‘Conversation’ there won’t be De Epitome it is today. To this day I still like this song and hear it occasionally just for the sake of reminiscing as not to forget where I was 3 years ago, with whom I was 3 years ago, and what we had achieved 3 years after CONVERSATION.