This collection charts my first steps as a producer using a laptop - rather than a digital 8 track - to record music. Many of the pieces began life as demos and experiments for other projects, but somehow never saw the light of day. Pitch shifting, soft-synths, programmed drum beats and other forms of audio processing feature heavily.
Below is a song-by-song breakdown on how the track came into existence.
Holding Keys
This was inspired by Timbaland’s use of vocal samples as drum beats, added to many popular albums of the time (such as Bjork’s Medulla). This was originally intended to be a backing for something on the My Attorney LP2 project, but in the end was never used.
Units Two & A Half
I had recorded Luke explaining how to time-stretch a beat I was working on for My Attorney's ‘Chino Necker (Bass)’, which was set to an Ultrabeat pattern I had been experimenting with on Logic 7. This formed the beginning of the track.
Not Going To London
Another embarrassing track - but if one is going to release so much, then why hold back? I was testing out a newly-purchased melodica and percussive instruments. The song was tracked on the pivotal day when Luke and I decided not to move the record label to the capital, and remain in Newcastle. This was key to me being able to maintain a further six years of creative output through one project or another.
Dn’t Thnk ‘ll Slp Tnght
This one is rather meta. I had produced a song by the folk singer Aaron McMullan called ‘Don’t Think I’ll Sleep Tonight’. It was released on my label’s first album release Yonder! Calliope? in 2006.
My friend Grilly remixed this track, and was later released on his The Page You Made compilation under his moniker DJ Gallow_Slutt. Grilly was kind enough to share the stems from his bonkers and brilliant remix, which I then did some stuff with.
My efforts were an abysmal failure, and tossed into hard drive obscurity. However, in revisiting the track in 2017, I saw that it was possible to ‘extract’ the components I had added to the song, while leaving all of the other parts muted. Thus this ghostly version was born. The ambience that forms the outro is cut short by some automation settings in Logic. Lyrics are by Aaron McMullan.
Fstr, Mr Ntns
This is a remix of an unreleased Steve: From Fragment recording called ‘Faster, More Intense’, originally tracked at the same time as our only released work, ‘Chino Necker’. From a very ragged take, I was able to sample my vocal, Andy’s guitar and Brian’s guitar, which were cut up and layered in such a way as to create a rhythm. Various soft synths from Logic were then layered over the top to create the finished piece.
Eraser-esque (MOGADON Mix)
Originally this had some outtakes of Andy’s trumpet squealing over the top, with me doing my best impression to rip off ‘The Eraser’ from Thom Yorke’s solo debut album. It was a product of its age (2006): being able to chop up random piano chords seemed very novel at the time. It didn’t sound good at all.
Upon returning to it several years ago, I stripped back the arrangement and then time stretched it heavily. This created something very different, and unexpected… that nonetheless carries the same rhythm, synth overdub and hard edits of the original demo.
Wrong Chords Dischord (CHIPTUNE Mix)
A very similar story with this track as with ‘Eraser-esque’. A multi tracked piano part recorded to click was less than fit for purpose in its original incarnation. When I was compiling this record, I went back to the original stems, sped up the piano and bit crushed the resolution of the beat to make it sound better. Eventually, the whole track was put through a low pass filter to give it its muted, ‘worn’ sound.
A Night On The Tiles (Intro) [Studio Version]
Originally designed for Luke’s Death Of A Salesman solo project, but was never used. The first half of this song contains some horrible chiming chords, with some very disturbing lyrics. Thankfully, that has been omitted here in favour of the outro, which highlights the pedal effect on the studio piano, and the sound of passing traffic on the Coleraine Road. The creaks of the wooden frame, and multi-timbral resonance of the instrument when the pedal is depressed are proof that a piano can sound beautiful, even when one isn’t pressing the keys.
Life & Limb
This was a soundcheck for my new laptop and mixing desk - the mighty Mac PowerBook G4 and the MultiMix 16. The melody is lifted from the ondes martenot part of Radiohead’s ‘The National Anthem’, specifically the performance given in Berlin during their summer 2000 theatre tour. It was recorded onto my MiniDisc player from an .mp3 download on dial up.
Windswept
This was demoed in preparation for Luke’s solo project, and left unused. It uses a recording made on Luke’s phone, of a conversation between us both about our musings on the night out we’d just had.
This was evidence of me getting to grips with fairly simple basics of operating a DAW circa 2006: manipulating MIDI information, pitching vocals and using soft Rhodes piano plugins. At the time, it all felt so new and clean - compared to the scruffy material made on my Yamaha MD8 recorder. It was for a long time considered for My Attorney’s LP2 project, and still features some brief glimpses of Andy’s guitar overdubs that made the cut.