Sunday 23nd September 2007

Aaron and I grabbed the opportunity of a spare afternoon to track some new songs of his. It was exciting to be back behind the desk, being the first to hear him spit definitive takes of Sun Dogs and The Azure Tongues of Summer. We also mopped up the songs from the catalogue that weren’t recorded properly for Yonder! but were too good to waste as EP tracks. The Ballad of Him & Her & Me will never be sung better in my opinion, than the take Aaron delivered in my room. It had been sharp all the way through on the September 2006 take, but not now. Instead he sang with a steady, assured flow to his voice that ensured all notes were ticked and checked perfectly. Another label favourite I Do Believe You Are The Devil, which appears as a live track on The Whiplash Tongues EP (yet to be released) received an airing, along with Vagrants and Heat Split (both working titles). A sterling afternoon’s work.

Friday 21th September 2007

Aaron McMullan has been up visiting this weekend. He played a fragile, affecting set at a Portions For Foxes gig at The Dog & Parrot on Friday night. All the usual suspects were out in force: Bec & Adam, Greg from Narc., our distributor Lisa, John from FIL, our soon-to-be session sax player Becca, Alt.Vinyl’s Richard Dawson and A Woman of No Importance’s Matt. Matt’s new band Sunday School were rough around the edges, but showed real promise for the future in that the songs were strong, and the pedigree of college class mate John Tweddle on bass with Becca on cello should bode well for their studio work. Richard’s set was fantastic, and it was even better to receive a CD copy of his album for free. It made me feel sheepish about having Yonder! on sale for £6. Emmy The Great stole it for me, though: her beauty, her voice, and the delicately constructed craft of her writing made me slightly woozy (in that order, mind).

Wednesday 19th September 2007

Less productive over these last few days. Stuck on the Fields & Mountains glitch. Luke laughed when I played him my attempt at fixing it: I think I’ve just made it worse. Maybe I should mask it with my harpsichord opera idea. Bands that we’ve seen over the last few days have included Preslav Literary School (one man, ten pedals, two earplugs and a racing heart), Future of the Left (Fugazi on an off day, which is still pretty impressive), This Aint Vegas (the shouty noisy ones were the best) and Ever Since The Lake Caught Fire (completely upstaged both their touring companions who were so dire they don’t deserve a mention, despite creative use of a GameBoy). We need to refocus. Realign. Maintain.

Monday 17th September 2007

The fatigue from the weekend was shaken off by tackling the Fields & Mountains problem: a half-second glitch about two minutes in where the Firewire cable had caused a nasty spurt of static on all the audio tracks. By using audio from a different take (which was at a slightly faster tempo, but in this instance the fragment used was so small one would barely notice) I think the sound can be masked. Some pitch bending might be required since the elastoplast take is 14 cents sharp compared to the original. Confirmed a gig at The Cumberland Arms for Friday 23rd November 2007, and also tidied up the studio black line wiring (a fancy way of saying that I sorted out all the spaghetti plugged into my multiple four-way adaptors).

Sunday 16th September 2007

Sarah Gill’s cello piece for December’s Burning completely blew me away. It’s both sympathetic to the fragility of the song, but at the same time accentuates the melody with real finesse. I sound like a Pseuds Corner applicant, but it’s true. She also did some work on My Attorney’s Tetris, a Danny Elfman piano lick that doesn’t sound a million miles away from Batman or Nightmare at Christmas. At first she just layered different scales over the top, but then as my mind got into gear and I became acutely aware that it’s not every day you have an extremely talented cellist in front of your microphone, I suggested more she try making more radical sounds. Sarah seemed to turn the whole instrument into a giant wooden effects pedal. My favourite was a harmonic slide that I’ll definitely use in something. I thought: if I could sample every player in an orchestra experimenting with their instrument in the same way, I would never need the use of a digital effects unit again.

Thursday 13th September 2007

Bec came over this morning, and we reviewed the takes. The ones from the other night are definitive, barring a couple from last year’s session that upon reflection are superior. Baseball Bat and The Optimist’s Song especially. The old takes have ebb and flow. She was closer to them at the time of those sessions. Then picking out a harpsichord. And an entire afternoon of backing vocals on Of You, Somewhere and St. James’ Infirmary Blues Revisited. The latter of which received spectral whispers that I think will be tricky to mix right. Found the definitive take of Fields & Mountains but it has a glitch: I’m determined to fix it. Sarah arrives tomorrow with her cello to work on December’s Burning. I also think Baseball Bat might need her attention too. Strangely exhausted from a day of saying “once more, for the sake of double tracking.”

Wednesday 12th September 2007

A tough day by all accounts: both of us losing hope after recent efforts to plug Aaron McMullan’s record have seemingly fallen on deaf ears, and our distributor being completely uncontactable. Left some strange, surreal messages on the NME’s answer phone. Had a coffee and a meeting in the kitchen where we discussed touring, having bands on the roster, knowing where to play in other UK cities, how selling records at gigs would make us finally feel like a proper, real entity. Breakthrough finally came when we rang John from Fake Indie Label, from a contact provided by Katie (keyboardist in New Vinyls). He was very helpful, and promised to email us all his info on other cities’ scenes. Worked on Chino, cutting up a drum beat from The Girlfriend Experience’s Circumcision demo. It’s a great take from Ed Boucher, but I’ll need to clear the sample with them before getting too involved. Gig at the Head of Steam: the highlight of which was The Pattern Theory, and their incredible glockenspiel-playing drummer. Confirmed a visit by Girls! Girls! Girls! in November – Luke and I are now busy planning a gig for them in town for the 3rd/4th. We therefore ended the day in much higher spirits than we began.

Tuesday 11th September 2007

Luke and I work on his new Death of a Salesman song Six. It’s got to be the most spontaneous thing I’ve recorded in months, and already it sounds brilliant. Spacey and Liars-esque. Luke adds bass. The beat is made up of mic scrapes, which I especially like, along with Luke’s haunting vocal that is winding its way through stereo delay. Do some work on Someday’s backing vocals. I try putting them through the bass amp but it doesn’t work quite as well as it did for the keys. Strike the back of an acoustic guitar with the glockenspiel mallets as percussion. Nice sound, but doesn’t fit the song. Then drive to Washington to do more recordings with Bec, including a new French Piaf cover, and the definitive version of Monty. Adam lets me hear Shin Jin Rui’s new material, and it sounds tremendous. Impromptu photo shoot with Bec and her amazing makeup. Quote: “Andrew, you’re taking a picture of my knee.” Back home by 3am.

Monday 10th September 2007

All day on Someday. It’s getting there. The Hammond part starts off sounding dire: repetitive and cheesy. Then I revert back to the chords and let Bec’s melody do the leg work. Finally I put the thing through a bass amp, through radio distortion on the Kaoss Pad, and capture the whole thing back into Logic using a RVD-1 kick mic. The result? A grittier, less 24-bit processed sound which I’m very happy with.

Saturday 8th September 2007

Adrian from Girls! Girls! Girls! arrived last night to do some bass work. He nailed the My Attorney stuff in record time. Such a talented, intuitive musician – all I had to do was press record and he did his stuff. It was a pleasure working with him from start to finish. He’s added bass to In One Hit, Cash Mason, Capital City and John, You Saved My Life. The last one proved to be particularly interesting. “I don’t do reggae,” said Adrian, but in the end we got some really mad stuff down that I’ll cut into a start-stop-makes-no-sense-whatsoever part that could either sink or swim. He also added to Magic Roads by Bec. It’s starting to sound like a proper song now. A chat about how Ex Libris could help Gx3 with their most recent assault on the industry. We’d love to take them on for real, but would only hamper their chances in our current fledgling state. Instead we’ll share knowledge and bandwidth and help them sell their mighty sounding album online. We resolved to have another session in November, when Adrian could also track his country murder songs. Then a long lunch, and dancing at Pop Klubb.

Friday 7th September 2007

Spent the whole day getting obsessed with Ne Me Quitte Pas. I think I can get my head around it: it could be brilliant. But may need to have the distorted guitar done again through a better amp setting. The second verse needs to have seagull sounds on it. I tried to do this with Luke’s broken down Ibanez, and a pair of spectacles as a slide. With the right application of delay, then I think I’ll be able to get the spectral texture I’m after.

Thursday 6th September 2007

hanging out with no doubt
bec is gwen stefani
the rats are the size of cats
the cats are hunting the rats
becs legs stretch across the room
shin jin rui are there
we watch their jools holland show
adam’s talking about his space effects pedal
they’ve turned it into a feature
there is a kraftwerk-sounding track
sjr’s music accompanies footage of a racing video game
big jumps and stock car racing
which turns to netball stilt walking, with scouts
I win
we have to shake left hands with the girls
and line up according to number
all the teachers are dogs in suits standing on their hind legs.

After I had the above dream, I welcomed Bec over to Wallerabbey Studios. Sandwiches in the sunshine. Percussion on Someday as well as picking out a suitable Hammond organ for it, backing vocals on Dragon Fly, electric guitar version of Ne Me Quitte Pas. How I’m going to sort that one out, I don’t know. Problems with the angle grinder man next door, but after we knocked on his garage door and looked at his bio fuel machine, he was happy to oblige us a break in the din.

Wednesday 5th September 2007

Did clart chart on Bec’s material. Planned her session, which has been postponed until tomorrow. Otherwise the day was spent attending to things outside the label. Houghton was great live, a real presence. Much more graft required before the end of this week if I’m to remain on track.

Tuesday 4th September 2007

Piano won’t bend to pitch on Chino. Frustration at the general lack of progress today: how will I get Someday to sound like the doo-wop ballad in my head? What if that destroys it completely? Losing critical faculties. Impediments. Spilled coffee after mouse mat flagellation. We cheered ourselves up by betting on the Mercury’s. Luke’s horse came home. We’re going to fund the label through professional gambling techniques. Luke’s running the numbers and scribbling formulas, I’m nodding while saying “hmm” and waving my Visa Debit card around in a vague fashion. Recording Bec again tomorrow, then seeing Beth Jeans Houghton at Head of Steam.