Hello again, everyone (all nine of you.) I know it has been some time since I posted here, and you have missed my impersonal musings terribly. You feel neglected. But I swear I will not let it happen again. There are simply too many thrills and wacky misadventures in my life at the moment, and I would be remiss were I to spare you any of the gory details. So here it goes:
hypefactor: part deux
I spent a fair amount of time working on the new hypefactor record during the past month, although I was distracted in recent weeks by school, real life shite and some other musical projects. Most of the guitars are tracked on nine songs, however, and I plan to wrap up writing, production and rough mixing on most of the material by the end of this week. There are also two new songs waiting in the wings - "Bitter Party Of One" and "Down To Brass Tacks" - that, for the most part, have yet to be tackled by the team. Both originated from guitar parts I wrote while messing about on other songs, and while they are shamelessly poppy and breezy, I am hoping they make the record. The plan now is to tackle them once we are well underway with tracking live drums, which everyone wants to see happen this month. My fingers are crossed.
We took a bit of a hiatus from work at the Birdcage in late October because F.J. was compelled to make one of his usual pilgrimages to Los Angeles. I gathered Ash and Robin for a session last Tuesday, however, where we reviewed some old parts (such as new guitars for the chaotic "Solar") and listened to some works in progress. But the bulk of our brief session was dedicated to "Two Basses Thin," which had become a thorn in my side as of late.
The song started during one of the June or July sessions with a basic acoustic/bass guitar motif jammed to inifinity, and was later expanded radically when Ash developed a slew of loops for a chorus. The result was somewhat messy in that we were left with two distinct sections that seemed incompatible, the tension between the two exacerbated by F's dense, seven-minute arrangement. The complexity of the thing had me both concerned and flummoxed for some time, and I found myself unable to write anything resembling a workable guitar structure, despite some excellent contributions from Robin and F.J. in the choruses.
The writer's block concerned me enough that I called in Robin and Ash to help me jam around the parts some more and see if the two sections could indeed be linked. At first, Ash also seemed put off by the arrangement, describing it as a "mess." I am not certain that he left the studio any less skeptical. But after an hour of playing, we tracked some lovely new E-Bow parts of Robin's and a new bass part of Ash's that seemed to make the transition more seamless. Having those two playing with me also gave me a much better handle on the chord structure, and I have now tracked a bunch of parts (on top of the 40 or so already there) that attempt to blend the verses and choruses melodically. I hope everything else thinks it works, because I still am not certain. We shall see at the end of this week after I have fleshed things out a bit more, assembled a working mix and circulated MP3s amongst the gang.
While I must leave now to write a paper about stress - in Portugese, no less - I will post again tomorrow in greater detail about some other recent work, including the hypefactor and Chemlab remixes, recent gigs (Spiritualized, Echo and The Bunnymen), record purchases (John Cale, Twilight Singers, Suede) and the continuing saga that is the hypefactor sessions. Until then, cheers.
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