STUDIO
When I signed my first publishing deal with Peer Music, Stuart
Ongley the boss at the time, gave me £5,000 to put an 8track
together. I got a Fostex R8 a Studio Master 16 channel desk,
a Quadraverb, an amp, speakers, everything. But the most important
purchase I made, was an unassuming little box called a Micro
Limiter. Harmless you might think, think again. Once you become
addicted to it's crude and extreme compression, it is all over.
After spending a good few years working on the same equipment
in the same room, a sound started to develop. What it is, I don't
know, but it has proved impossible to reproduce anywhere else,
so we might as well just get on with it. We have recorded many
songs here, some which featured on the 'LATE
DEVELOPER' album,
originally released on Org Records and virtually everything we
have recorded since. Some of these songs were compiled on a mini
album 'BIG
STICK' and the 'DIY' EP, which
we've been selling at gigs and mail order. Now we are moving
with technology and have started integrating the computer, which
will hopefully enable us to realise some bigger arrangements
we've not been able to do so far. |
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SONGS
At first I thought I was a singer and some one else wrote songs.
I tried to do it but I just coundn't, so it was some time later
that I realised my dream and knuckled down to write. After many
attempts and collaborations, I got a result and started to amass
a good selection of not too embarrassing tunes. But it wasn't
really till I met John Morrison
that it all fell into place. I enjoy writing on my own, but there
is something quite magical about a song writing partnership that
works. From the moment Mark Bandola introduced us the chemistry
was there. Usually John sits in 'his place' on the sofa playing
his bass or guitar. He has probably put together a series of
chords or bass lines and while I am pottering about perhaps working
on the web site or overdubbing another tune, one of them will
catch my ear. In that event a melody and perhaps a lyric that
I had been kicking about will connect and away we go. It is seldom
we get together that this doesn't happen. That's the easy part,
then comes the graft. From there we etch an arrangement from
the original elements, playing sections over till the pieces
merge. Hopefully the lyrics simultaneously come together but
some times It's just a case of hammering ideas out while John
obligingly plays a given part repeatedly till there's a result.
We have to put the songs down quickly cos there's always another
on the way. The buzz of writing is addictive, nothing makes me
feel better. Sad isn't it. |
