My last blog entry was almost 6 months ago. I’d feel more contrite about that if I hadn’t been busy doing. It’s the old blogger’s cliché – when you’re doing stuff worth writing about you’re too busy drowning in it to acually write about it. This has probably been the busiest 6 months of my life, a perfect storm of preproduction and recording sessions, and fighting to get the tracking done before we resumed gigging earlier this year. We didn’t quite make it, but hey. We’re not saving lives here. In the meantime me and Hannah bought our first house, which some say is stressful. I wouldn’t know, I was too stressed to notice.
Where are we then, 6 months after my blog? It saw us hammering out the coarse slabs of my demos into something more detailed that the whole band could be proud of. Have we managed? Are we deranged? Today Whitty recorded vocals for two songs; “Patch” and “Bottom of Your Heart”. This pair are the 14th and 15th songs we’ve laid vocals down for, and now there’s one more to go; “Torn Up My World”. It’s being held up because midway through our last performance of it I realised my verse guitar part, the product of hours of searching, inspiration, practice and recording, is totally shit. It brings the song down, clouds the verses and confuses our intention. My ego tells me that it’s good because it’s fun to play, and until now has blinded me to the fact that it doesn’t serve the song. I think I spoke about losing perspective in a blog entry last year. In the studio, when you’re on your own throwing aural paint onto the blank canvass of drums and bass it’s very easy to lose perspective. I’d add something to that here. Playing songs live is where you regain that perspective. Playing your songs in front of people is simultaneously the greatest joy, the most powerful high and the most sobering cold shower you’ll ever experience in your life.
And so it has been a very interesting experience to start playing the album songs live, while still working on them in the studio. I think it’s benefitted Whitty the most. There’s a part of his soul that only lives in performance and that’s the part that guides his delivery and teaches him what the song means. It’s been immensely rewarding watching him develop his performance before recording it and I think Whitty’s vocal is going to be a massive highlight of this set of recordings. He’s growling, he’s shouting, he’s giving himself a prolapsed larynx. But he’s also doing something else, something beautiful, and something I don’t think he’s had a chance to do properly for years. He’s singing. Stripping back the affectations of being a rock vocalist and delivering melodies and emotions in a way I’ve never seen from such close quarters before. I know he finds recording a challenge since he’s such a social beast and it’s hard to be turned on in an empty room, but I think he’s really pulled a blinder this time.
It’s been a great ride for me. We spent four long weekends in the months leading up to Christmas recording drums and bass, a process I always enjoy. We learned from what we’ve done in the past, not only in terms of capturing sounds onto tape but also in how to allow ourselves to perform well. Alex and Mez recorded together, grooving and interacting with each other like the human beings I think they are (Mez might still be a spam-bot). I played producer, trying to coax the best out of them, eschewing my guitar and instead opting to wave my arms around and talk about the music at hand in terrible baffling metaphors that left my rhythm section flummoxed. Somehow despite my meddling they still managed to put down killer takes. We took risks, we made decisions on the fly. We cut sections that might drag, tried new beats and special effects on the bass, experimented with new mic techniques and playing styles. In a number of cases we’d completely re-work a whole section of a song while recording it, with no idea what guitars or vocals would even fit over the top. We were bold, because inspiration lives in that moment. Indecision is the antidote to Inspiration, playing it safe is how to kill that special kind of chaos that lets new ideas sneak into the universe. I’m proud that one thing Captain Horizon can never be accused of is playing it safe.
And I’m so excited by the results. I know they’re killer takes, because they sound brilliant even before I’ve mixed them. I can’t wait to take all the credit for that. Literally all I did was sit in a chair and watch. But then, it’s like God said in Futurama. When you do things right, people won’t be sure you’ve done anything at all.
I’m just hoping some of you fuckers like it.
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