Title: 6th December 2005
Date: Tuesday, Dec 06, 2005 1:34:30 PM
Blog Post By: Second Thought |
Listening To: Sigur Rós - Gong
Tonight's recording session was cancelled while Claire made progress on writing. This is a good thing, probably, saves us running out of ideas too soon. Busy schedules lead to little free time, so I suppose it has to be shared this way.
That said, I could do with a bit of a break, really, so I'm looking forward to recording again at the weekend. Meantime, the new Sigur Rós album is acting as some pretty nice escapism.
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Title: 3rd December 2005
Date: Saturday, Dec 03, 2005 2:01:37 PM
Blog Post By: Second Thought |
Listening To: Claire Taylor/Ross Baker - Postal Service Song demo
Another day of recording with Claire. After some initial setbacks, we got going and, in usual fashion, sat around listening to CDs instead of actually recording. But we worked on a few ideas for songs, she's happy with how Yorkshire Bank is coming along, so that's all good. We need to make that more structured and do the final vocals still, so it's not near-finished, but we're getting there.
We started another song, which is the Postal Service-sounding one. Drums are sounding jaunty, we got a fucking lovely synth recorded and then the guitars. Claire is looking forward to dancing around stage to it. This makes me happy.
She's working on some stuff, lyrics and things, tomorrow. Next session is probably Tuesday evening. Maybe get some more recorded then. Weshallsee.
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Title: 1st December 2005
Date: Thursday, Dec 01, 2005 4:49:22 PM
Blog Post By: Second Thought |
Listening To: Institute For Psychic Reform - Starting Fire
On Tuesday I picked up my camera and became band photographer for a day. Andy, Dave, Andrew, Alex and Thom asked me to do some shots for them, so we all bundled into two cars and headed over to Kirkstall Abbey. One of my backup career ideas for the future is music journalism, and you don't know how much I love to get into photography mode. Lying on the floor in the dirt to get a good shot, making sure people are doing just the right thing. Sure, I'm no fucking professional, but boy was it fun. I might upload some shots soon. That's something to do in the future.
Yesterday Joe and I spent hours producing and mixing Consent To Content. It's finished. And I'm very happy to say, it's the most controversial thing I've made yet. When I say I, I of course mean my group, but still. The song is so 60s you can smell it, although the lyrics aren't. Either way, we mixed it as much in that way as possible, becoming minor Phil Spectors for an afternoon. We also listened to a lot of Beatles and Dusty Springfield for comparison points and did a lot of research. Everything was bounced down to four tracks, panned to give separation, with the dry track in one channel and the wet in the other channel. This hard-panning, along with the over-reverbed (not natural, of course. How I'd love to record in a studio with a good natural reverb) slightly cluttered mix and the artificial tape hiss we added to it pretty much shocked the entire group when we played it. Everyone else did fucking dull, plain, clean, 00s sounding mixes with no character or identifying features, so we played this muddy, hissy thing and everyone looked stunned (Woody even suggested removing the hiss for some reason, even though it's entirely intentional, which we made clear). Equally, the reaction online has been similar. I hate to sound patronising, but I don't think everyone "got" it.
Gregg's reaction was the best. He said the song was great, but particularly enjoyed the hard-panned sound. And Alex asked if we got Spector in to do it. These comments made me happy. These people understood what was going on.
That said, it's really been far more interesting than if we'd just made a standard production job on it. Everyone would've gone "yeah, sounds professional" and that's it. I think the fact that it's caused so much controversy is character in its own right. When was the last time you heard someone lay into Starsailor? I've made something that's made people listen and think and react, and that alone makes me very happy.
That, and I know, catagorically, it's better than anything The Killers will ever make.
In other news, Saturday is an "all-dayer" with Claire. Fingers crossed we'll get some stuff finished. That's pretty darn exciting.
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Title: 27th November 2005
Date: Sunday, Nov 27, 2005 2:59:34 PM
Blog Post By: Second Thought |
Listening To: Brian Eno - An Ending (Ascent)
Some exciting updates here. First up, the band is on hold, if not over. Some stuff happening with Stephen and myself, which need not be discussed here, have put it on the back burner. The lack of drummer and long-term singer (Claire may well be leaving Leeds in June), a year after we started searching, were signalling an all together pessimistic tone for the project anyway, so maybe it's for the best.
Talking of the amicable Ms. Taylor, our EP is coming along quite well. No exact titles floating around yet, other than a working title of "Yorkshire Bank" for one song. We've got a few little tracks, though. One is sounding quite Postal Service-esque, which normally I'd refuse to do, only I wrote it, so heh. Jaunty beats, bubbling synths and a sickeningly jolly guitar part. There's something vaguely trip-hoppish about another track, which is pretty moody, and the aforementioned Yorkshire Bank is all skittering clicks, folk guitars and organs. The current plan is to get a six track EP together before the year's out (probably a bit hasty, given our rather full schedules at the moment), and then start gigging. The gigs should be a lark. We're thinking costumes and instruments and stuff. I'm also fond of the idea of her standing very still and shy - as she is - and me leaping around with a guitar like a moron as I often do.
Which leaves Second Thought a bit redundant at the moment. The Second Thought stuff is always an idea which I'm compelled to create, something which needs doing, and at times it can be a bit of a slog. And with all the shit that's happened this year, the whole thing was getting me down a bit. The concepts I'm working on in that department are pretty morbid, so I'm giving it a break. The stuff I'm doing with Claire is so joyous and celebratory and music for the love of it that I don't need much else at the moment. So that's darn happy.
I'm playing bass for my mate Liam at an open mic night. Hopefully be getting a bass for Christmas, as it's a darn sight more fun to
mess around with than a normal guitar (unless I have a hundred FX pedals).
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p.s. An Ending (Ascent) by Brian Eno is probably the greatest piece of pure electronic music ever recorded.
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Title: 5th November 2005
Date: Saturday, Nov 05, 2005 6:57:54 AM
Blog Post By: Second Thought |
Listening To: The Amorphous Androgynous - The Galaxial Pharmaceutical
Updates, updates. What's going on with me?
Well, I'm still looking for a record label to release Vacuum Road Songs. May take a long time. I have lots of other little things in the works too, though. First off is the band, which is still going mostly nowhere, but Stephen and I have written a number of songs, largely 60s inspired things. Somewhere between The Coral, (early) Pink Floyd, Mansun and Oasis, I suppose. It's all rather interesting, but we haven't even played anything with Liam and Claire yet, so anything even remotely approaching completion is a long way off. I have been doing some music with them both, though. I'm going to be playing bass for a few acoustic songs Liam's written to do at some open mic stuff at some point in the near or far future, as long as I can convince him to get it all on the road. Claire and I have been working on some "poppy electro folk", as she calls it. Acoustic guitars, glitchy beats, a few synths and so on. You know the score. Pitchfork'll love it. For my course we're doing Consent To Content (see a couple of entries below) in a very 60s style... hard panned drums, tons of reverb, not enough microphones, tambourines and hand claps. We've even convinced Joe to stop noodling and play some Hank Marvin guitar for a while. Hopefully we'll have some clips of that rather soon.
I've also been working in Reaktor as part of the course, and to be frank, I fucking hate it. Too much control, way too sciency and alltogether thoroughly annoying. I've never been that much of a techie, but this just takes the piss. As soon as one of the tutorials started talking about algorithms I realised I was wasting my time.
Emotions have been all over the place lately, been rather insane. Highs and lows and all sorts. I've taken to carrying a little pen and book around with me and writing lyrics, poems, stories, thoughts, whatever down in it. Most of it's pointless ranting, but I've come up with a few nice ideas.
It's November 5th, and everyone's celebrating the death of my great great great great (x a lot) uncle's death. Being related to Guy Fawkes adds a rather odd shine to the day. I don't think I'll be doing much tonight.
Anyway, with all this going on, I'm sure we'll have some audio clips for you all very soon.
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