Just Back From Land Where The Sun Don’t Go Down

Thursday, June 18th, 2009

Hello just back from Sweden and must blog or incur the wrath of Ivor (not a pretty sight, similar to Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan but with more amps). I was there to record The (incredibly talented and lovely people) Stockholm Strings again for the other 11 tracks that we’ve been working on for the last six weeks.The results were phenomenal. That makes a massive 16 whole tunes up for album selection. We’re all pretty firm that it should be a concise piece of work so that we’ll have the difficult task of dropping some great songs. Last time it was a case of “oh we can’t leave that one off” but this time it’s a case of trimming off all the fat to leave a lean, mean soul machine. I will say this now: (although it’s probably not my call) I firmly believe we’ve got a classic on our hands. Sitting in Mandarine Studios and listening to the strings’ magic go down only reaffirmed my belief. I had a typical dash to the studio. My day started at 7am, (I tried to get up earlier but found I was seeing double from to much screen staring and had to go back to bed) I immediately leaped onto the computer, frantically trying to finish writing the dancing strings for ‘Our Heart’. Then a dash to Mr Atkins’ house for him to notate the scores (did you know Mr. Atkins doesn’t just hit things but is an all round musical genius who can play anything?) After a few back and forth trips of this nature it was to the Ruffa Lane office to print out an un-environmentally tree’s worth of scores and back to mine to finish prepping the files. I hit save at 2:30am ripped the hard drive out and pedalled as fast as possible to the coach station on ‘Lady’ my trusty bike, then it was a run, a coach ride, plane, another coach, underground, bus, car and finally collapsed sweating, into Mandarine studios at about 1:30pm Swedish time and was recording within 15 minutes. Wow. As I think I’ve said previously, Mandarine is a beautiful world-class studio in the countryside about an hour from Stockholm. It is the most tranquil studio I’ve been to. Last time the river was frozen, but of course in June it’s beautiful sunlight and a powerful river, very little traffic and much bird song. The difference between this place and when we did Ivor’s guitars down in Brixton is polar. Much as I love London, I know where I’d rather record. So a little about the music, which I suppose is why you’re reading this and some songs I think we haven’t told you about. There’s ‘Warm Water’ which would probably die if it ached anymore, I would say it’s something close to Carole King sing Neil Young’s ‘Birds’ with lush tremolo guitars and Scott Walker Death strings. When Ali did the vocals, the tears were streaming down my face – always a good sign. ‘Could Be I Don’t Belong Anywhere’ I may have mentioned last time with it’s weird Sam Cooke vs. Edif Piaf thing has now evolved an intense outro which has hints of ‘Mrs O’ Leary’s Cow’ from the Beach Boys/Brian Wilson. That’s the song where Brian made the orchestra wear fire helmets in the session, then a building burnt down nearby and he became convinced that he’d started it and canned the album His mental breakdown after that is well documented. Now I’m not saying I’m going crazy but listening to that outro, over and over again gave me the heebie-jeebies some much that I tore the headphones off and threw them out the door. It’s pretty menacing. You will enjoy it but my advice is to try not to listen to it for a solid eight hours. Ivor’s delay pedal frenzy was great fun to record though. It’s not all dark and brooding though because ‘Ain’t Nothin’ Like A Shame (To Bring It All Back Home) is so much fun. Stax and shades of The Clash in there and probably the grooviest number we’ve ever done. I think the jewel in the crown though is ‘A Coming Of Age’. Much more will be written on this but it’s the biggest baddest epic we’ve done whilst still coming in at 3mins. We’ve got Stephen ‘Lord’ Large playing the Hammond on it. It’s immense but I still haven’t finished the lyrics. It deserves brilliance. Well I better get back to my thousands of hours of editing ahead, I didn’t have time to tell you about the Soul Bunker, or Robyn, or a few of the other songs but we’ll leave that till another, hopefully sooner time. Andrew x