Now, we attempted simple hand claps, as, y’know, that’s what they are! But, that sounds crap. So, like all budding self-producing artists, we referred to the endless resource that is The Internet, and found some excellent anecdotes of some old Motown techniques for producing the perfect hand clap. Apparantly banging two planks of wood together creates a nice percussive tone, as does hitting a phone book with a stick. So, if it was good enough for the Godfathers of Clap, it was good enough for us. Will and I then proceeded to follow this advice and I must admit the tones were fantastic. I did have a bizarre moment where I realised that, in the absence of a phone book at my disposal, I was actually hitting the face of a poor unsuspecting model on the front of one of mother’s clothing catalogues. Nonetheless, the whacked book creates quite the percussive tone.

As mentioned in my last post, we are planning to doff our caps to The Stills – Snakecharming the Masses for the climactic outro of Invisible Lives. So, not content with the sounds created by wood banging and catalogue bashing, we then tickled a tea cup, thumped a drum stool, rattled a radiator and pounded a carpet covered bass trap. These created an array of sounds that we will come back to in another session to arrange appropriately. If we can get anywhere near the intense poly-rhythms of the aforementioned Stills song, we’ll be happy.

We also filled our time with imbibing some curry, adding some pianock to Reels of Light, as well as having honorary listens to Heartmachines, Spider Days and Lotus. We are quietly confident that the songs we have begun to record are now at the fine tuning stage, so we now need to turn our attention to writing… ahem, I mean recording the middle of the album.

I ended the evening with a fascinating chat with Nick (the 6th Hour) about the lack of anything exciting and enjoyable in the current music scene, and a realisation that the new music of 2004 and 2005 was of such a staggering prolificity and quality that the subsequent years have not come close to matching it. Seriously, take a look at your music collection and I’m sure plenty of it will be 04/05 vintage. Incidentally, if you know of anything out at the minute that is particularly inventive or enjoyable, please tell, as we are all complaining of a new music enjoyment deficiency.

Until next time, stay cool won’t you.

Luke

Your loyalty and patience is the kindling to the fire in our bellies.

I guess we’re back, but so is the silence (for a while at least). We’ve had babies, haircuts, showers and new ventures since last we spoke and now, as we enter the dark period of the year, we are pleased to speak to you, our good friends, again. After all, Golden Hours look and feel much better at this time of year.

Fatherhood takes its toll on time and creative energy, so it is probably for the best that we have been working hard on committing our existing music to record, rather than focussing on any new creations other than our progeny. The recording has been quite the task considering the premium of time at our disposal, but we are quietly confident that we are taking the first tentative steps towards finishing this thing.

Last night three quarters of us had a chance to review Reels of Light and Invisible Lives, before enjoying the sonic qualities of The Stills – Snakecharming The Masses, from which we took inspiration for the potentially glorious climax  of Invisible Lives. There was a moment listening to Reels, when fantastic simplicity helped clear the quagmire of whethertos and whyfors, and Alex simply stated, “let’s remove the harmonies”. So we did that, down to one, low, sultry lead vocal in the midst of the bizarre crashing of the slow-mo digital wave of Will’s creation, and by jove, it worked. In that moment, the song that looked like it needed to be torn up, set alight and buried, had found its identity and we realised that the song was closer to completion than ever before. Its quite amazing how the removal of layers can help give a song focus. Buoyed by this apparent break-through we moved onto Invisible Lives, which, in contrast, needed some harmonies added. That was quite the roller-coaster with a lead singer who’s voice was worn out from criminal under-use, and a backing vocalist who, when not fog-horning, was coughing into the microphone. Still, I think we managed to get some useable takes recorded, so on another day we will go through those with a fine tooth-comb. That took us to about 10.30pm, which was way past we Daddys’s bedtimes. So, a line was drawn under our modest, yet truly essential, return to the studio. We’ll be back next week, and relentlessly until our opus primum is complete.

Until next time, I leave you with two great songs with ‘Babies’ in the title:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=58X68rQ4GJE

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=38by00DGid0&ob=av2n

All the best,

Luke