Je ne parlez Francaise.
Sunday 8th March 2009
Spent the night piecing together a redux version of Hal, using Casio tone keys on Amubulance setting, and some additional tom percussion added earlier in the week.
Sunday 1st March 2009
Somebody won a raffle at the Star & Shadow Cinema the other week, and their prize was an exclusive song recorded by Death of a Salesman. The gentleman was called Hal, a word which fast became the basis of much of the lyrical content of the piece.
It was shaping up nicely last night, until the Mac froze and I lost almost two hours' worth of editing. Attempts today to recapture these details have proved fruitless. It's extremely difficult to chase a lost take; better to leave it a while and then come at it with a different approach. Often the end result is better than the original would have been, though to be honest in this case I would have preferred the machine not to have crashed.
It was shaping up nicely last night, until the Mac froze and I lost almost two hours' worth of editing. Attempts today to recapture these details have proved fruitless. It's extremely difficult to chase a lost take; better to leave it a while and then come at it with a different approach. Often the end result is better than the original would have been, though to be honest in this case I would have preferred the machine not to have crashed.
Tuesday 4th March 2009
The demo of This Broken Machine is next to flawless, being the first time we ever played the song and tracking it onto tape cassette.There has been much gnashing of teeth here at Attorney Towers about whether to stick with the old recordings: they capture something fresh and special, but often contain a lot of mistakes and nasty bits too. I know now that John, You Saved My Life and Cash Mason will use the original mp3s, with other parts added to that, so as to preserve the initial take.
This Broken Machine would probably join these two in that category, were it not for a later version containing inspired Shille bass and some very odd Kaoss guitar. Upon playback tonight, it was decided to go with the more recent take. We'll see how it goes; the harmonica section will decide it for certain.
Tuesday 4th March 2009
First aired as a Steve: From Fragment song, Chino Necker was a frenetic gallop of a thing, lurching about with Brian Magee's depraved guitar lines fighting with The OC-inspired lyrics and Fleming's "about the beat" drumming.
I maintained it was too good a song to leave with S:FF, and pursuaded Andy to commit to tape his much more muted bass version. Again, this was first tracked several years ago as part of a college project, resulting in a very stiff and overly-edited take. The tempo has since come down a few notches, with a single coherent bass line recorded with vocals at the same time.
The idea here is to make it as different as possible to the S:FF version; less a little sister and more of a incestuous cousin, if you will. There is loose talk of beats, "depraved, expensive sounding" synth and "techno influences". I intend the vocal to be very hushed and croaky, with mathematical beats that are all wrong, but still make the cut anyway. The rest is very much up in the air... tonight we tracked a good click version, but Andy wants another swipe at it using Shin Jin Rui's bass amp instead of the DI. Personally, I think the clinical, percussive tone of the bass going straight into the desk may well be the exact sound we're looking for. We'll see.
I still hold out hope that S:FF will regroup for an afternoon sometime in the future and throw down a proper version of this song, in all its spittle-soaked, breathless glory. In the meantime, the upstart continues to take shape.
I maintained it was too good a song to leave with S:FF, and pursuaded Andy to commit to tape his much more muted bass version. Again, this was first tracked several years ago as part of a college project, resulting in a very stiff and overly-edited take. The tempo has since come down a few notches, with a single coherent bass line recorded with vocals at the same time.
The idea here is to make it as different as possible to the S:FF version; less a little sister and more of a incestuous cousin, if you will. There is loose talk of beats, "depraved, expensive sounding" synth and "techno influences". I intend the vocal to be very hushed and croaky, with mathematical beats that are all wrong, but still make the cut anyway. The rest is very much up in the air... tonight we tracked a good click version, but Andy wants another swipe at it using Shin Jin Rui's bass amp instead of the DI. Personally, I think the clinical, percussive tone of the bass going straight into the desk may well be the exact sound we're looking for. We'll see.
I still hold out hope that S:FF will regroup for an afternoon sometime in the future and throw down a proper version of this song, in all its spittle-soaked, breathless glory. In the meantime, the upstart continues to take shape.
Sunday 22nd February 2009
Lawrence of Myattornia continues his trek into the sand-locked wastes of Bulimic Monster. It's the third time we've attempted the song despite being the first thing Andy and I wrote after the completion of Silver Bullet. I remember everyone we played it to being distinctly underwhelmed by it. I don't blame them: the bits that made it great were parts to the song that were always playing in our heads, rather than in the basic acoustic/vox rendition. Finally, those sections are beginning to fall into place: bass, synth, lead guitar and backing vocals. We hope to track drums and percussion in the rehearsal space soon, with some of the beats then being spooled through the Volkswagen Polo's knackered sound system to achieve the desired hip hop heaviness.
Friday 30th January 2009
The stairway in 12 Whitby is good for acoustics. Plenty of slap-back. Set up the mics, don't move a muscle: they might fall back on you. Check the latest My Attorney shizzle. We only use My Space for purely ironic purposes, while at the same time worshipping at the altar of three gee.
Thursday 29th January 2009
Jack's Back is a Future Loss song that began life as a two minute sprint to the finish line, but then quickly ate itself in favour of becoming something more progressive. The rhythm guitar is now virtually absent, Brian has added lots of feedback and stickle-brick beats make an appearance during the ambient mid-section.
Using the close mic feeds from certain drums on the live kit, Logic was able to map a MIDI sequence that mirrored Stuart's playing exactly. I then used this information to trigger a series of Ultrabeat drum samplers, keeping the original timing while at the same time introducing electronic sounds to the mix.
Using the close mic feeds from certain drums on the live kit, Logic was able to map a MIDI sequence that mirrored Stuart's playing exactly. I then used this information to trigger a series of Ultrabeat drum samplers, keeping the original timing while at the same time introducing electronic sounds to the mix.
Wednesday28th January 2008
A vocal extract from Bruised Pilgrim's Kinky Freidman Crime Club recording. The roaring backing vocal was perfected using a little-known studio technique called "hitting the singer in the head with glockenspiel mallets while the guitarist leaps on his back".
Thursday 15th January 2009
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Andy,
Well, here we are at the apex of the day. And here is the first part of Grey Riff, completely denuded and untreated. But there is a gasping cough of a structure now, where there once lay only a CPR failure. Already you can hear the impact of your improvised parts... and there are moments when they carry the song more than the Nameless sample does. Thus underlining my evangelically crazed maxim of this. being. a. guitar. based. album.
Perhaps such formatting of text suggests that it's time to go to bed.
Much to do on this still, but you can at least get the idea. There are three more sections: the Fugazi sample build up, the screaming noise bit, and the 70s experimental synth sample outro. It's my intention to take the existing sounds that are on the arrange page from two years ago, weave your guitar in around it all, then slowly pick apart the whole piece so you can't tell where the magpied bits end and our contributions begin.
Thoughts and comments encouraged as always,
Andrew.
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