I’ve decided that writing about writing an album is more difficult than writing an album. Especially when essentially nothing has happened surrounding it. All I’ve done is say ‘Yes’ a couple of times and sit around in my flat trying to type my way out of poverty. It doesn’t work.
We record (mostly) in a little room in Brighton. We go here, there, and everywhere if a particular instrument or type of sound demands it but for the most part it’s all done in a, forgive me, crummy little front bedroom-cum-recording studio. I mean, it’s served us well so far.
That’s where cups of tea are taken and cigarettes are smoked. Different brands of beer are greedily imbibed, and sometimes spicy food of all different types, but that’s always where it’s done. That’s where we sit and figure stuff out; where five guys (not always all at once) nod and shake and laugh at something we thought was good fifteen hours ago and chop and change and wonder why we thought this whole thing was worth it, anyway? Why didn’t we just become economists? Boss of music, I hereby tender my resignation, and…wait – what was that? That was cool. What you just skipped the snare forward a quarter-beat? That’s awesome. Does that first bassline fit with it?
And so the cycle continues.
And things get in the way, because we’re whiny bitches. Gah, do we have to play that show? I thought we were having time off! A meeting? Who with? Ugh. Another interview? OK. Another thing to do? I thought we were in our burrows? I thought we were hibernating? What if the badgers came out of their sets having had not enough sleep to get them through the summer that looked so rosy when they first lay their heads down in their tic ridden beds?
Pretend it’s dreadful and you’ll get me. Pretend the result is the end of your existence, rather than a tired badger.
You see – there’s nowhere to go. We’ve done three EPs. It ain’t enough. We need to do more. The world has such poverty of imagination that it demands adhering to a dying format to prove that we’re still alive, like propping the ‘soon-to-be’ up on morphine, until they finally pop it. ‘Yes, they have no quality of life, now. They’re definitely still with us – I can see their miserable heartbeat.’
But then, there are no truly new formats to explore, just yet. The whole bloody world is in a state of transition right now, so why should the music industry be any different?
We might do a single, soon. Ooooh.
And maybe we’ll do a special edition with a knitted jumper, or something.
Who knows?
Who knows what we’ll do next?
A single and an album, I think.
Good. I’ve always wanted to do that.
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This post was written by Tim Douglas of Phoria, as part of their Takeover of Indie Music Filter. Follow them on twitter here.