Woke up and put on John Lennon’s Imagine album. Haven’t listened to the whole thing for ages and must confess I skipped the title track, familiarity having bred cynicism in that specific case. But what a truly great record. “Give me some truth” sounded incredible, what a vocal! Had forgotten that we did a version of it ages ago.
Well, it seems that London has finally realised it isn’t New York, and the crystal blue skies of the last few days have been replaced by a thick blanket of clouds that positively screams the word “turbulence”. Glad I don’t have to fly anywhere.
Despite the drab weather I decided to walk in. Got into the studio and we started working on a new song. This is one of Franny’s that we had a go at when we were rehearsing for the Isle of Wight show during the summer, but is new to the studio. Andy Mac from Independiente came in and we played him what we had, he is always quite low key but seemed pretty happy. After he left we got back to work.
The drums on this song are ludicrously complicated and relentless (giving the song a looped feeling) so as we were still working on the arrangement we got Neil to play the whole thing to a click instead of exhausting his patience with a million run throughs while we messed around with where the middle 8 should go.
He is a very funky young man and the drums sounded great on their own! However we felt a four minute drum solo would be slightly indulgent, so Franny and I went in and sorted out the arrangement and put bass, electric guitar and a guide vocal on top.
The whole thing works around this cyclical riff that feels very motoric. Perhaps even a bit krautrock, although I hate it when bands say things like that. Adopts annoying pseud voice “oh yah we were really influenced by Can and Neu on this record blah blah blah”.
Andy was next and added some lovely guitar parts after which it was sounding quite promising. Franny started rummaging through his comp looking for something that sounded like a submarine while I rummaged through Nigel’s cupboards and dug out one of his cracking old analogue synths. I put it through an old tremolo vox amp and it sounded great so popped that on.
Overdubbing is great fun sometimes. When we’re all tinkering away with something or other and throwing things at the track to see what sticks it feels like a little laboratory.
Franny put some good stuff over the top and I worked out a little off beat piano thing that was added to the mix. Started to sound really interesting. Don’t quite know where it’s going to go but it’s definitely showing promise. Suddenly it was 2 in the morning and felt like home time. Nice creative day.
Re: some of your questions :
1) Favourite member of take that: Mark Owen, the only one to admit to actually shitting himself on stage.
2) Franny did write a song in hospital about a conversation with a doctor but we haven’t recorded it. I can’t remember the exact content of the lyric though.
3) We’ll be touring next year, but can’t say when until the album’s finished. You will be the first to know.
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