Aqueous Transmission

In an interview to promote the Morning View album, lead singer Brandon Boyd said "Aqueous Transmission" was "perhaps our most ambitious work to date." "It was first conceived with an instrument quite alien to Incubus and all of rock music to be precise," added. "A 'Ko-kyu' is what was used here and it was donated by a very generous and talented man by the name of Steve Vai. One late evening we began conjuring and experimenting with this track and it quickly brought to mind the image and analogy of floating freely down a river; hence the content of the song. Our friend Suzi Katayama, who has in the past worked string arrangements with the likes of Björk, Madonna and even Yours Truly for an acoustic performance in LA, lent her classical finesse to this story. And in doing so helped it become exactly what we envisioned; a song so atmospheric and vibratory, it would make those who listened to it doze off into a land of rivers, kung fu and unicorns, eventually making the listener pee in her/his pants. (Attainable goals I think, but please don't operate any heavy machinery while listening to this one.)"

The noises at the end are thousands of frogs that were recorded outside the Malibu mansion where Incubus recorded Morning View. It wasn't easy to get the sound - every time they'd come out to record, the frogs would shut up.

The slow and mellow track was not anything like the band had ever done before. Mike Einziger played the pipa, which is a traditional Chinese instrument and a Japanese orchestra accompanied the band. Boyd told NME he and Einziger grew up mutually obsessed with Björk's music. "There was so much we loved about it: the weirdness of it, the instrumentation, the arrangements, the choices that she was making and that the producers were making," he explained. "So we were like, let's make a super Björky sounding breakbeat that's really cool and eerie and mellow." The two made a beat together, then Einziger started playing the pipa. "I don't even think it was tuned properly," Boyd said. "I think he tuned it to just a D. And it sounded awesome." He continued: "From there, I started messing around with the lyrics, and I remember when he started playing that little riff over that kind of trip-hop sounding beat, I just started singing: 'I'm floating down a river.' That's what it sounded like. To me, it sounded like we were on this psychedelic river cruise somewhere. It was heavily leafed and wooded with the sound of nature around us."