We had a good session on Thursday at our Kings Cross rehearsal studios when the guys from Paul Bates Studios came down to film us playing a couple of tracks, which we’ll post online once all is ready.
Thanks guys for your efforts, we don’t think we’re going to need to rehearse The Promise again for a while. We can’t wait to see the results. And thanks Mallory for the pics!
ianx
The last of the ‘watch out for 2012′ lists are out, give or take a dozen. Let’s face it, they’re usually as much of a guide to the next big thing as a butterfly flapping its wings on Hampstead Heath. I have a recurring dream about writers of ‘what to watch out for’ predictions pointing enthusiatically forwards, microseconds before being run over by a lorry coming up behind. OK I don’t, but that doesn’t stop me dreaming about it.
Anyway, to focus briefly on what has actually happened, we’ve been listening to Fluxblog’s downloadable review of the best of 2011. It’s eclectic and extensive to say the least, but we’ve picked out a few gems from the gravel. It’s not that all the artists are new, but we defy anyone not to fall for at least one track they haven’t come across before.
Here’s our own selection on this Spotify playlist – remember to go private in case those bastards behind SOPA throw you in jail because those gits at Spotify have decided to publish your earthly music pleasures on to Facebook. OK, they probably won’t but I’ve never been much cop at this predictions business.
ianx
We stumbled across this animation for ‘Yes I Am’ someone out there on the interweb has put together. We love it and want morpheme100 to get in touch – check it out in the video gallery.
ianx
Finally, finally. The mastering for the album is done and dusted. We must be unusually keen: “This is the first time I’ve ever had the whole band turn up for mastering”, said the patient Mr Masterer with the politest grimace he could, er, master. We tried to behave and keep our hands off the temptingly dangerous looking lathe in the corner, and the bloke done good. Big thanks to Barry at Alchemy to turning up on what should have been a day off for him. All we need to do now is find some nice people to distribute the record for us!
ianx
Had our first pop up gig last night at a clothes store in Carnaby Street. It was properly different, we loved it! We played three sets at the Miss Sixty store and it turns out that designer clothing provides perfect sound damping for band acoustics. But mannequins can’t dance. Time for the Cellophane Flowers retail tour of 2012? Thanks to Billy the Sound Man, who is also a very sound man for sorting it all out.
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That’s two hours of my life I’ll never get back trying to embed video, Youtube definitely has its uses. You’ll have to make do with an old-skool link to this clipograph of vanity and unprovoked attacks while rehearsing Lucky Day – someone’s got to keep Fra away from a camera, even if it means violence at about 45 seconds in…
Just giving the new My Morning Jacket album a first listen. Loving it, and not just because it’s got great songs. There’s something that’s really very rare about an album that sounds utterly effortless. Maybe it’s the gin, or maybe it’s the fact I’ve just struggled through David Lynch’s look-at-me effort.
Or maybe it’s just that touch of envy. They say you choose your friends on the strength of the weaknesses of your own personality, filling in the gaps and all that. Then when you’ve got the full set you spontaneously combust or something. Maybe it’s like that when choosing bands you like? We’re in the middle of trying to sort the album out and all we’re aware of is the 99% perspiration bit, with no idea if that magical extra 1% will be there at the end of it all. So we’ll take some of that My Morning Jacket effortlessness thank you very much, no matter how much they complain about the effort they put into it.
Ianx
Great gig last night at the Wheelbarrow. It was a lazy Sunday evening, so there was no choice choice but to slip the soundman a fiver to turn the volume up to eleven and dust off the rock setlist. We had a second airing for new track Pokerhead, this time with the sequencer up and running and Nick playing to a loop. All went well apart from Nick almost strangling himself with the headphones during the outro.
You never know what you’re going to get at a gig and it was the first time we’d played the Wheelbarrow since it used to be Tommy Flynn’s. It still has the old boy in the corner sitting on the same chair and snarling at any and all encroachers. We turned up thinking it would be one of those quiet Sunday night gigs, but we should have trusted the good people at Bloody Awful Poetry to put on a good night and the place started filling up. A combination of a cold outdoors, Camden lopers in search of something new, free entry and us playing loud enticed people out of the cold and the place was heaving up before we were halfway through the set.
I love it when people can actually hear what the band sounds like without paying to find out what lies behind closed doors. The room starts filling…it’s not rocket science venue people, come on!
Ianx
Friday night was spent doing a radio show with the good folks down at Recharged Radio. As a strategy for avoidiing leaving drinks in one pub, birthday drinks in another and a gig in Camden, it worked to perfection. But for anyone with a phobia about Furbyys, the scarily furry microphonse left a lot to be desired. Luckily me and Fra are both Furbyphiliacs, which made up for not being in the pub.
We were expecting a brief interview to talk about Belinda, which Recharged have taken a bit of a shining to, threatening their listeners with it until we promised to come in and talk to them. What actually happened is that we found ourselves asked along for two entire hours, as a whole half of a panel of four, with regular panelists and two of the three regular DJs absent.
Aaargh!!! Musicians are musicians because, er, they’re crap at the talking thing…
So…the start was bumpy. Fra kicked off by talking about wanting to play Glastonbury next year. Sadly, we’d be playing to cows as it won’t be on thanks to the Great Olympian London Portaloo Shortage. I’m up for it anyway – anything to get away from the drug-fuelled performers, over-blown hype, congested thoroughfares and the Cab Sav-sipping crowds at Glastonbury the Olympics). She then plugged a festival we’re playing next week in Cheshire. It’s in Kent. I went one better by answering a perfectly good question about social networking by talking about psychedelic plasticine (Myspace), accusing Fra of prostitution (for the second interview in a row) and popping nurofen like Judi Dench on crack while the tracks were playing.
We eventually settled down and sensibly took a back seat while the incredibly YoungButCool-arch-uber-blog-wizzard-whizz-kid Tom (Hey Man Check My Band) and the incredibly ChattyandSassyandDownrightdowntoearth Jade (The Playground) took over. DJ Jordan at the helm held it all together like a pro – radio sounds easy, it ain’t. He kindly assured us at the end that all went well – we’re told you can always spot a crap guest because they only get a couple of questions. So we take the five odd questions we got as something of a compliment.
At the end of it all, the pub wasn’t exactly avoided, Twitter was explained to me yet again and Fra made me honour my on-air promise to stop being a lazy git and blog more often.
Ianx
Pleased to see we got another play on Tom Robinson Introducing on BBC6 on the 25th – we’re about 17 mins in on the iPlayer.
tcf x
The plates are flung, the tea is spilt, the broken bones are mending. Yes, we’ve finally settled on how many verses before the first chorus of new track ‘Tears of a Clown’. I still think it should be two, mind…
We’re getting close to finishing pre-production (otherwise known as flinging tea cups, bad jokes, frequent fag breaks and the occasional re-arranging of a track to make it more poppy/proggy/rocky/soppy) on three more tracks for the album. The break from recording the last set of tracks was worthwhile, giving us the chance to see which tracks to rip out of the songbook to give the album a more rounded feel (“write another single, you gits”). We’ve got three on the go right now, which we’ll start playing at upcoming gigs. I suspect we’ll stick with two of them, so your boos and cheers will help us decide, or at least help us be contrary.
The promo for the ‘Freeze Me’ reissue is going well, with plays by Frank Skinner on Absolute Radio (sadly the podcast has cut out all the music, bloody licencing agreements…), but good to see we’re one of the few tracks played among all the chat and keeping adult company along with the Foo Fighters and co. Tom Robinson’s lot have been in touch threatening to play us on 6Music, and we’ve had a fair few regional plays and online reviews (I’ve just added a couple to the press reviews page on this site). That’s three Sonic Youth references now, we must be doing something right. Anyways, off to detune my guitar…
Ianx
Count Me In from the ‘If I Was A Girl’ EP is available for the time being as a free download on Soundcloud. And it’s not goth, right! Hope you enjoy…
tcf x
Really nice interview with the good folk at Feevah. Delighted to get asked some decent questions with, you know, a bit of research behind it. Thanks guys!
tcf x
Well, I’m back from my royal wedding escape pod (otherwise known as Cuba – surely a totalitarian socialist country is the place to be at times like these, right?) and while perusing the magazine racks in limbo (otherwise known as Madrid airport transit lounge) find out from the cover of Ola magazine that Prince Wilhem III has been caught galavanting around in an Adam & The Ants costume at a fancy dress party (oddly enough, said Adam and assorted remaining ants were rehearsing next door to us last night. Synchronicity, huh). I get back to Blighty and find out that the country is in the grip of a new dance craze. How does this Pippabum thing go, anyways?
No matter, upon getting home the first thing I did was download the finished mixes for the 5 completed album tracks which had been cluttering up my inbox for the previous 2 weeks, having left the remaining Flowers alone in a room with a certain Mr David M Allen and an assortment of knobs and buttons with which to turn down my guitar parts during the final mix. (My twin assumptions that a) it would not be possible to view the royal wedding in Cuba, and b) that the country’s nascent and newly “liberated” internet infrastructure would allow access to, if not autobiographies of JFK, certainly mp3 files from an indie band from London squirting out some guitar-based pop songs, were both sadly mistaken).
Thankfully, the beer appears to have been flowing on Mixing Day and someone forgot to turn the knobs downwards. Loving the mixes, although I’m sure some of my harmony parts have been replaced by a robot. Can’t wait until Saturday, when we’ll finish off the album mix for Belinda.
See you soon.
Ianx
Gone are the days when being in a band was all about the music. Oh, and the sex and drugs and all that. Well, everything is falling into place for the release of Freeze Me – the photoshoot is now completed, the STDs have cleared up, this website is now live (we’re loving it, but let us know what you think), the sticky tape and blue tack has been bought for the production line of sampler CDs and we’re ready to go with the press release and all related gubbins.
We can now get back to being about the music, or at least being about the people who are being about the music, to misquote Tap. So we’re back in the studio this week to put the finishing touches to another couple of tracks for the album. With a following wind we’ll have seven in the bag by the end of next week and we’re properly excited about progress so far. More on that shortly but the sun is out and I’m off to be about the people who are being about the beer.
Ianx
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