I should really do the ‘Hide the Decline’ story-behind-the-song entries too.
But anyway, this entry is keep you updated on what’s going on with this new stuff I’m working on - the ‘Deus Ex Robotica’ album. Well, it’s going pretty frakkin’ well. I know I told myself it would take two years, and a part of me still thinks that’ll happen, but I’ve had such fast, excellent progress to date, it could very well be done by the end of the year. It’s that kind of thinking that will ensure it will actually take two years.
I’ve worked on a bunch of songs - mostly ones that were on the old luna spark version of the album, but a few new ones, since it’s gonna be a double album and all. The new ones include Basically Slaves, which if you follow me on Twitter is the one I was saying sounds like a cross between Weezer, Gary Numan, Nine Inch Nails and Led Zeppelin; and The Saviour, which wasn’t coming together till I took out its bass and guitars, and made it sound like Devo.
I’m thinking I’ll release the album one song a month too - that way, my impatient side is satisfied, and I can spend more time on the later stuff. And I can write a serial novella or something. I know that’s a good idea - well, maybe not if I wrote it myself - but whether it’ll happen, who knows.
I guess releasing the album a song at a time means I’ll be able to justify emailing my mailing list 25 times instead of once, haha! It’s a no-brainer this stuff is by far and away the best-produced stuff I’ve ever done. ‘Battletech’ was me jumping up a level, ‘Hide the Decline’ was experimenting at that level a bit, and now this is the real deal. Remains to be seen what happens when the vocals - always the hardest part - are in.
Anyway… if you haven’t already, check out the Circle Jerk 2010 EP of covers. Free download!
Posted 1 month, 1 week ago at 4:28 am. Add a comment
So last month I played the annual Htown Circle Jerk gig, where Hamilton musicians past and present get together and play covers of each others’ songs (hence the title). Since I perform live with a laptop loaded with pre-recorded samples, it was a logical step to releasing studio versions of the songs - so here they are!
You can download the three-song EP for free using the widget below, or clicking here.
The songs were originally by Love and Violence, Tweeter and Amy Racecar. All three are now defunct (I believe so anyway… though I could be wrong), but were great bands in their time.
Posted 2 months, 1 week ago at 11:27 pm. Add a comment
You might have noticed I haven’t finished the Circle Jerk EP. Yeah, I’ve been on relatively human hours at work this past week, so don’t get the house to myself any time.
Maybe in another couple of weeks I’ll get the chance to finish it of…
Started work on ‘Deus Ex Robotica’. Spent about two nights working on the drum patterns for the opening song, only for a completely new arrangement land in my head almost fully-formed last night whilst walking home from the local supermarket. I’m banking on this album taking a long time, so have to learn to let go of what I’ve spent time on and go with what works best…
Yes, I’m thinking it’ll be called ‘Deus Ex Robotica’.
Posted 2 months, 3 weeks ago at 3:02 pm. Add a comment
So I’m recording ’studio’ versions of the tracks I played at last weekend’s Circle Jerk gig. Hoped to have them all done by today, but the weather and noise outside kinda prevented me doing vocals, as did some good ol’ procrastination…
But here’s the first song - ‘Satan’, originally by Amy Racecar. If you’re keen to hear the original, it’s on their album ‘Conclusions’, which you can buy it from Amplifier.co.nz by clicking on the album cover to the right. It’s a great album, highly recommended.
This is pretty nerdy, and I dunno how long I’ll keep it up, but I’ve decided (on a whim) to keep a record of what I’m recording/writing each day, ’cause it’s the kind of thing I’m bound to find interesting in future times. How interesting it is to anyone in the present, fuck knows! I’m always finding old recordings and songs and am often disappointed to not remember the context they were recorded or written in.
I’m still going to do the Behind the Scenes entries for the Hide the Decline songs, since they’re still fresh in the memory for the most part, but consider this pre-done entries for the next EP or album or whatever I end up doing. Might even post rough MP3s… we’ll see.
Anyway. Today I worked on a recording for a proposed interim, ‘rock’ sounding EP I wanna get out of my system before I venture down the rabbit hole of recording my double album, provisionally titled ‘Deus Ex Robotica’. Okay, that might change.
So, this song is either called ‘Flashes Before Your Eyes’ or ‘Collider Stop’. The second title is perhaps more original, but there’s a chance a song called ‘Stop’ could also make the EP, so we’ll go with ‘Flashes…’ for now.
It was one of the first songs written in my current burst, which is proving rather fruitful. Haven’t had one of these bursts in a couple of years!
Anyway, it’s a stop-start kind of thing, with a simple two-chord riff in the verses, a big chunky riff heading into the chorus, which has a simple chord progression punctuated by distorted guitars on minor seventh chords, ending with a powerchord run down the fretboard, back to where it began.
I spent ages trying to get the instrument arrangement right - tried acoustic guitar for the basic riff, ditched it for a synthbass, back to acoustic guitar, switched to electric guitar like the demo, then eventually settled on acoustic guitar, because it kept the song pinned to the ground where it needed to be in the verses, and also it felt funkier locking in with the quiet drum machine parts than the other options.
The electric guitars were much easier - I’ve got this nice fuzz sound I’ve programmed into my Boss digital studio, it works well with both ‘live’ and synthetic drums, which I’ve always found difficult to pull off. It also has the advantage of covering up my limited technique, which is even more limited these days with my bung wrist.
My wife works for a magazine distributor, and sometimes brings home goodies - last week it was a MusicTech magazine DVD with all these synth string samples, a lot of which sound like they’re straight off the soundtrack to A Clockwork Orange. Grabbed a couple of those to fill out the middle 8. Speaking of the middle 8, it wasn’t a part of the song that came naturally - when I wrote the song in March, I needed something that started on D, and went through all these old unfinished songs I’d scanned into my computer. Came across this simple, catchy piece from circa 2001 that was in a slightly different feel, but it slotted in nicely once the melodic bassline was added. It’s not often my middle 8 sections are where the song breathes and coasts along nicely - normally I use them to amp things up, or go off on a tangent - but ‘Flashes…’ has intense bursts on a regular basis, so yeah.
The main synth lines were recorded in two parts, in completely different ways - some of it was pre-programmed so I could use it as a sonic guide while recording the guitars and bass, and the rest played live. Ironically enough, the easy parts were programmed and the harder parts played live. I do things backwards more often than I should, really.
I’m going for a less electronic sound with these recordings, more live and rocking - so getting a good, punchy and dynamic drum sound is key. I’ve got a few settings I’ve discovered work well with the kit I’m using, a bit of convolution reverb here and tube-modelled compressor there, not being afraid to radically tweak the EQ or the amplitude. Of course, I’m still chucking in little electro beats in the quiet parts, booming snares on the second beats, as I do. Part of my sound and all, I guess.
Lyrically, not really sure what it’s about. A bit of Lost there, techno-paranoia there, we’ll see when it’s done, eh? It’s not going to be the deepest song in the world - just a quick, unpredictable and unpretentious (despite the blog entry…) indie rock song to ease my way into recording this EP. I’ve got better songs lined up, but wanted to start with one I wasn’t too sure about, kind of like a practise. I still wasn’t sure about it right up until I had everything loaded up and started mixing - and it all fell into place pretty quickly. At least to my ears after seven hours of recording it!
And all this before work! Couldn’t get back to sleep once Parker was in bed, and I didn’t start work till 4pm… Energy drinks are my friends, but in an hour or so when I’m trying to sleep, they won’t be. Flashes before my eyes’ indeed…
Enough. Here’s a demo of the song, which was recorded back in March.
The new Radio Over Moscow album, ‘Hide The Decline’, is done and dusted, and available to download as of this weekend!
It’s a free download, as always, but if you’re willing to throw at least NZ$5 my way, there’s a Deluxe Edition that includes a less compressed, more dynamic mix and other bonus goodies.
In comparison to last year’s album, ‘Battletech’, ‘Hide The Decline’ is a more electronic, polished, punchier album. It’s more focused, less sprawling and could probably be fairly described as poppier. Less guitars and more synths, since for the past year I’ve been dealing with a busted wrist that’s resisted all efforts at diagnosis.
The songs, pulled from different periods of my writing over the last 12 years, cover the usual topics - you know, girls, politics and err, ‘Lost’.
So ah, if that sounds like your thing, download it today!
PS. When I started recording the album last October, I weighed 15kg more than I do now. That’s not really relevant, but hey. It’s my blog, I’ll write what I want, etc.
Posted 4 months, 1 week ago at 11:24 pm. Add a comment
*Obligatory I hardly ever blog anymore introductory paragraph*
I played my first solo show on Saturday night at the Live Bar, Yep, the Live Bar, apparently. Was first on the bill with God Bows to Math, Cat Venom, Wilberforces and Sherpa. Almost didn’t happen though.
There was some kind of problem getting my sound to come out of the PA properly - was all mushed up and distorted, and we had to do some lead juggling and gear switching to get it to work. Not sure why really - it’s just a stereo signal out of a laptop… but the sound guy got it going in the end.
It was a real learning experience - I’d told everyone I had no idea if it was going to ‘work’ beforehand, and was as surprised as anyone when it kind of did. I was nervous as hell, completely screwed up a couple of the songs by pressing the wrong buttons. Didn’t help that my fingers were shaking like Polaroid pictures, and the colour-coded stickers on my keyboard had faded so much, I could barely see which was which in the dim light on stage.
I spent far too much time looking at the computer screen, which is silly since 99% of what I need to look at is on my keyboard and in my instruction book. Also, it was hard to regain pitch once I’d lost it, since I have no way of making the vocal louder independent of the overall sound it’s all linked through the laptop so I can apply effects (ie Auto-Tune). Next time I’ll wear headphones, since I had no such troubles at home!
People said nice things though, and asked when I was playing next, so that was cool. I played ‘Fiction’, ‘Anti-Human Nous’, ‘Images of Bliss’, ‘Killer on the Island’, and ‘Purpose Of Man’. It’s been about 12 years since ‘Purpose of Man’ was played live with Sequester, haha! Oddly enough, ‘Killer’, the newest track, went down the best. At least in my view.
Anyway… been making progress on the new album front. When I was recording Battletech, one of the songs was proving so difficult to sing, I took what I had, sat down with some fancy software and rearranged my off-key warblings into a coherent melody, loaded that back into the hardware studio thingee I use to record, and sang along with it - and I had a satisfactory take within 10 minutes.
So this time around I spent a couple of days recording guide vocals, which I then processed into the exact melodies I wanted, regardless of what I’d sung, and am singing to it as a guide - and it’s proving to be a massive time-saver. Who knows if what I recorded today will suffice, but if so, I managed to get through six songs in under four hours, which is lightning fast by my standards.
No doubt it’ll all turn to custard in the mixing process though! Always does.
Posted 5 months, 2 weeks ago at 3:59 am. Add a comment
I know it has a silly title, like it’s a redux of some stupid dance craze. Believe you me, if I could write a dance craze song, for the money, I would.
Its genesis is far more mundane and familiar - though I guess it’s a little odd writing its behind the scenes entry at the stroke of midnight as Valentine’s Day begins!
Tariqa and I met a long time ago. Without her approval this perhaps isn’t the best place to expand on it too much, but simply put after an initial Ross and Rachel will they/won’t they, it never happened. Except we got through it in the same number of months the Friends cast took years to pull off.
I then wrote a shitload of songs about it. Twist It included. I guess Ross would have done the same, with results worse than mine.
Queue a Lost-style FlashForward (woah, meta), it’s 2008 and we’ve been together for a few years. Twist It is one of the 30 songs I recorded for Battletech, and was always meant to go on the mythical ’second disc’ of acoustic-style songs, but got bumped up to main-disc status, ’cause it’s a good song. With the epic treatment I gave it, it had to go at the end, but I always planned a quiet acoustic number to follow it a la Abbey Road, otherwise yes, it would have been the album’s end.
But why? Well, from the reviews I’ve read, no matter how kind, I have a suspicion none of them heard the song to its end - the big electro-bass, heavy dance thingamajig. At the time I felt the second Radio Over Moscow album would kick off where Twist It left off, heading further in that direction. In some ways, due to my wrist injury, it has - the new record is far more electronic and computer based, thought still throws in enough guitar - but in others, I’ve ditched the “live” sound it had and adopted something a bit more direct.
Alright, this entry is turning into custard. I’m avoiding the point. The point is, I was pissed off and young. What I was ranting about in the song, came right enough for the subject to marry me. Though at one point, I remember considering changing the lyric ‘August 11′ to ‘September 11′ - did I mention the song’s plot (and reality) is set in late 2001?
I’d recorded a few demos of Twist It over the years, and the outro sequence is based on one I estimate - from the shitty gear I’m guessing was being used, from the sound quality - was done in 2002. The coda synth melody was present on a delay-heavy guitar, probably before I was able to program a keyboard melody (to be honest, and to lamely brag, I actually played the Battletech version’skeyboard live).
The bassline melody was there from the beginning, being the first thing added after the basic track. On the recording there’s a an octave-higher clone to make it stand out when it does the run towards the end of each verse.
The heavy guitars and extra garnishing never really worked on the choruses, so I kept it out and just layered up the vocal for balance.
The bridge between the two halves of the song, I never really figured out what to put in there - different demos and mixes of early versions had a mix of spoken word, shit taken from movies, loud guitars, shitty piano, palm-muted metal riffs… I tried it all.
I gave up and went with what you hear on the record. I managed to get a synth to fill in the gaps.
‘Oh, didn’t you know?’ is, in context, either the most naive or facetious/sarcastic lyric on the whole album.
That burst of songwriting I mentioned in the previous entry? Yeah, this song is from a similar time. Officially, it’s from the burst I had just before I left Hamilton - I think - and not the one just after we got up here in Auckland, but it all blurs. It’s one of them vaguely psychedelic, moody acoustic songs with ominous synths and tinkly keyboards reverbing all over the show. It’s like a mini-genre-within-a-genre in my songwriting.
To emphasise the dark, foreboding feeling the chorus melody has, which might not be apparent at its full speed, I decided to open and close the song with a slowed down, drum-free overture of sorts, aping it at a funereal pace. It served as a welcome breather after the intense, cluttered ending to ‘Where Are You?’ in any circumstances.
Being a rather melodic song - I think it’s up there with my best, tune-wise - don’t be surprised if you can there’s a bit of Auto-Tune on it. Okay, more than a bit - but what you’re likely hearing there is a pitch-shifted, octave-up backing vocal. Even John Lennon tried every trick in the 1960s book to hide his true voice, so can you blame me?
On any other album of mine, the song’s sheer quality (relatively speaking) would have seen it placed higher up the tracklisting - but as Battletech was originally meant to be split into two records, one loud and aggressive, one pensive and moody, but stripped back to one - it couldn’t really fit in the first half, amongst tracks like ‘Pakistan’ and ‘Anti-Human Nous’. It would have killed the record’s momentum dead! Unfortunately, its placement at the end, along with ‘Twist It’ and ‘The Sum…’ which are largely in a similar vein, drew some criticism of its own. Ah well. I think the song stands up, but yeah, it is might strike some as an odd shift in tone, 12 tracks in…
Lyrically it’s a very positive song for the most part, with a dark twist in the chorus. It’s not exactly cryptic. But the coda? Fuck knows what that’s about.
Now, back to waiting for the season 6 premiere of Lost to download… cannot go to bed without watching it, ’cause that will mean an entire day off the internet tomorrow to avoid spoilers. Grrr.
I had a burst of songwriting in mid-2005 after we’d moved up to Auckland, and this song largely was a product of those ’sessions’. The exact circumstances escape me, but from memory - some of these ‘facts’ will be more verifiable than others - I had most Mondays and Tuesdays pretty much to myself, and composed a few pieces that would/will surface in various forms over the years.
My favourite of those times, ‘Mondays Are The Best Days’, is still unfinished. Probably until I get another job where Monday justifies its awesomeness. The ball is in your court, Monday.
This one, I think had its origins pre-the move from Hamilton to Auckland earlier that year, but wracking my brain, I can’t work it out. Musically, it slots into that era… but by the time recording came around, sure, it was one of 30 songs laid down, and it almost didn’t make the cut. I thought, probably wrongly, I dunno, it should go on. Thing is, there were about three distinct production style/sounds put down in the making of this album - being a potential double, and all - and as much as I love this track as a song, there’s a reason it’s sequenced nearer the end than the start.
Its sound fit in, just. There.
Sometimes, it’s that simple. Thank fuck for Auto-Tune. I removed a lot of the ‘backing vocals’, because the melody I was hoping to invoke was already there, ethereally. Maybe it’s just me, but sometimes in the noise and chaos, you can hear… good stuff. You know, that might not be there initially anyway. I read that’s how Morrissey used to compose melodies whilst in the Smiths - by listening to shit way too loud, then inferring tunes from the harmonics and chaos. Anyway…
There is a small autobiographical part to this song. But it’s an old song, lyrically. Which is kind of why I’m pleased the new album I’m working on, out soon, is not.
In other words, being track #11 on an obscure, nothing album from the middle of nowhere, there you go.
