Right then...I've begun the 3rd album (the follow-up to 'Speak For Yourself'). I'm going to write a more frequent blog as I did with the last one so you can keep an eye on me and make sure I'm not slacking! I wonder how it's gonna turn out? How exciting! You're very welcome to comment but please don't ask me questions on here or i'll never get any work done. You can email me with any questions you have and every month we'll pick 20 from the virtual 'hat' and post them. Send your questions to: [email protected]
Much much more to come! Love, fluv x i x Wheeeeee!!!
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Click here and here to see 360s of my cosy studio in London where I wrote and recorded the last album "Speak for Yourself" xxx
Wednesday, August 25, 2004
Contact note
Went to see Soulwax play last night at the Scala. Such a great band. Lot of people know the brothers more from their "Too Many Dj's" guise. Had a wee chat with Steven the singer after the show so I was well chuffed. I loved their "Much Against everyone's advice" album. Haven't heard the new album yet but from what I heard last night...I'll have it my bag by the end of the week.
Been eating a lot of Okonomiyaki lately. I can hear all those of you who saw my photo of it a while back gulping hard. That photo didn't do it justice but It's so TASTY. I just can't keep away from that stuff! It's such comfort food.
Yawn, snore...Still on that darned song. Sometimes everything pours out and a song is written, sung, played, mixed and produced in a week...sometimes it takes a year! (well not all at once but this idea did come to me about last November!) Also coz it's the last one i guess i'm trying to cram in all the things i feel i haven't said or done on the record yet. Of course you can't fit everything on one record, but that's what it's like for me right now. I am going up the wall here trying to wrap it up though.
Just got an email from my friend Jon Hopkins (aka Mr Roque). He's been working on an album "Contact Note" to follow up his debut “Opalescent". I sang on one of the songs. You can hear it at here. The one i'm on is "Second Sense" .It's out now, you can get it on Amazon here. A bit of trivia for you. Jon played Keyboards in my band back in the imegaphone days. When we were 18! ahh...The main keyboard he uses is the one we bought for the live shows. Amazing what he does with it. Actually the keyboard i used for those shows is still tinkered with every now and then.
Good luck John! He's also playing at the Ocean in hackney/ London 17th Sept if you're up for it.
Garden State is doing great! I can't WAIT to see it...Over here in November. People who've seen the film are going mad for Let Go. Great reaction on itunes and the frou frou album is picking up as a result. WE LIKE! It's funny how things happen when you least expect it.
Love to you all. I'm off to prod Daylight Robbery again. Hope he comes to life this time x
Unfortunately for me I don't have a full string orchestra tucked behind the sofa in my studio when i'm not using them...which means I have to make do with the virtual kind. I spent most of the day trying to get the string part for the chorus of daylight robbery sounding as real as i can. I wanted to get three glissandos (sliding between notes) in the melody. It never sounds good just using the pitch bend. If I had a mullet, we were 20 years back and I had a red strap on keyboard (well actually i do..erm) that was acceptable but I want this to sound like a real orchestra backing me up in the chorus. It's quite eastern sounding. I'm into it and i think it's pretty convincing too. It's a great contrast to the playful beats underneath and super chopped up, spliced and blended wall of amps guitar riff. It also totally (even though it was a good safe distance already) takes the song away from any shoe gazing memories.
Thank you so much to those of you who took part in the poll! Tomorrow I'm going to have a day of stringing words together on paper...(wha? no computer?). Haven't checked the weather but if it's nice i'll be perching somewhere by the Thames watching and listening praying for "the flow"....eek.
I may be some time! Get back to you with progress on that front hopefully within a few days.
well yesterday i wrapped up Hide and seek...very happy about that. That means just one more nut to crack but boy is it a toughie! Daylight Robbery....i'm coming for you. You will not escape me this time. I have you in my sights. There is nowhere to run. No unwritten songs to get in our way. It's time for BED!
I have attempted to fit a top line over this great backing track i've had for sooooo long now time and time again. Every time i think it's it, it's not dammit. There is no choice now. No more time. It MUST be this idea. If I don't go with the one i had at the end of tonight this song will defeat me..forever!
Tonight It's taken me somewhere i never thought to go. It has a really angular feel to it. Choppy, bouncy. Instead of trying like i have been to bring a melody in a similar vein to it i've gone the opposite with a really w - i - d - e melody. Stretched right across the chorus. Sining along with a counter melody to the main riff. I didn't think it needed any other music but when i came up with this string/ piano/ harp melody for the chorus it all fell into place! ahhhh. I do hope i feel the same way in tomorrow when i get back to it.
Now i just need to decide on the lyrical direction. Out of all the different versions the two lyrics I've liked most have been these...the best night of your life kinda idea...an actual Robbery where I fall in love with the guy who robs a bank and spend the rest of the song trying to track him down...or the last which i haven't tried yet...a night cycling back from the studio... all in very broad terms you understand!
All very up. I need a very up song on this record. Not that it's all slit your wrists stuff...far from it! Just a good old knees up kinda song...oh balls, i'm just digging myself a huge hole here aren't I?
So if any of you have a preference I would appreciate perhaps your vote?
hello there...just to let you know again that I haven't been doing anything that would translate into exciting iblog material so rather than just "fill" i've opted on the silence...But rest assured my head is firmly down in what i love doing and this Hide and seek song will officially be finished tomorrow! I've never been so anal about a vocal effect before! Seen as there is nothing else on this track but vocals I'm allowed... Have also been seen wondering around playing the song back in various locations recording the natural effect the music has on spaces. Also getting some nice little background ambience, from cutlery to cats.
Garden state is looking good! Can't wait to see it. A few friends in the states have heard the song "let go" in the movie. I didn't realize quite how much of a great spot the song got in the movie. Very much in favor of that! It's a really good movie too apparently which is a bit of a bonus too...
and i've been singing quietly into my little laptop...new ideas...have to store these guys up now for the rainy season.
xx
love love love
will get back to you when i have something a bit more exciting to tell you! xxx
Deep in the depths of Hide and seek. Nothing much to report really except that I wish i'd finished the lyrics before I'd sung it into a mic the first time. It's getting there though. It's like nothing i've ever done before. So exposed. Just me and the harmonizer. I love it coz the harmonizer patch i've made has been limited to four note polyphony (only four notes played at a time)> So when i play a chord on the keyboard I'm using to trigger the box, which has more than four notes, the chord surprises me every time coz the notes are fighting for one of the four musical chairs. Decided to opt out of the blippy bits...even though they were rather cute, i've always wanted to do a weird take on an acapella idea. So vocals only on this one...
Had a great weekend in the country which set me up for this week nicely.
It was sooo hot in my little vocal booth, specially because of all that extra gear in there to do the harmonizer effect live, bought the keyboard in there also now. Plus the fact it is soooo humid in London, feels like enough rain to double the pacific needs to fall on us tonight.
I did a rough vocal the other day of "Hide and seek", just to hear if I was going down the right way with the melody and such. I didn't have all the lyrics finished when i sang it and the recording was not very good quality coz it was just for me to get a feel and play it out in a different environment. I have spent all day trying to get the "feel" of that version now i've got the lyrics. Darn....it's so tricky. It was just so wonderfully spontaneous and it feels buoyant. I'll have another go tomorrow.
On my way in today i decided to walk. It was so nice and warm and it's good to get on my two feet every now and then. There is a small fun-fair on the south bank of the Thames by Tower Bridge. All the other rides were being used except no-one was having a go on the merry go round...so I did..It was great! I was waving my legs around and smiling from ear to ear! ha ha...was slightly nervous as the chair was squeaking quite a bit on its hinges.
Took a little clip of me on there...click here to see it...just for a bit of fun x
I love singing through the harmonizer. Makes me sound like an army of heaps. Instant four part robo harmony. I love the effect. If you have no idea what i'm talking about, the sound of the m8 flicks vocals is the same kind of thing.
Again, lyrics...ra. They really don't come easy to me I'm sad to report. If i had no lyrics to write i could have finished this record MONTHS ago!
Because it's the last full lyric I have to write it's tricky. Shh was the last song on the frou frou album we wrote. Spent so much time sweating over the words...then literally out of the blue..sky..on an aeroplane they came to me. All in a flood.
I've been hearing nice things back from you guys about the movie. Cheers! Sorry some of you are finding it a pain in the ass to load up.
Also did a load of those igrill Q's today. Took me ages! Stgill got a few to go...should have them in your inbox by the end of the week!
So i stuck together a load of little video clips i made on my mobile phone while i was on that cycling trip following the River Thames with the original version of "lonely little petunia" i did. Some of you saw it lst night on the "Six feet under episode "the dare" last night. I had a few emails to hear it again. This is the version i did that I like the most xx if some of you prefer the one you heard i'll get round to sticking that one up too...
I went to an amazing Prom tonight at the Royal Albert Hall. Evelyn Glennnie was the percussionist for this amazing piece by a composer called Tan Dun (also wrote the soundtrack for "crouching tiger hidden dragon")
They were playing his Water Concerto: for water percussion and orchestra. They were playing these amazing instruments called waterphones. I'll try and see if i can find a photo for tomorrow of one. We had one on the Frou Frou record. Amazing sound. Evelyn entered the albert hall into the "pit" where we were, playing the waterphone in amongst the crowd. Quite an entrance! Such an incredible piece of music.
A bit wobbly! off to sleepybyes...hope you like the movie! xxx
that make words that occasionally make nice sentences if you're lucky! Most of this gets written when i'm out of the studio. The red one's mostly from Switzerland while i was touring with Mich Gerber, the one with the river thames is from when I was in-between houses living in a cheap hotel in London to tie me over while we finished the Frou Frou record, the beige one is the one I took on my little cycling trip...and so on...
Wish i was in the States so I could watch Six feet Under tonight! Make sure you guys stay right 'til the end and you'll hear me singing a little nursery rhyme! I didn't write it, it was a song the guys at the show asked me to do a version of. It relates to the theme of the program...you'll see! I wonder which version they used? I did three variations. One with lyrics, one with half lyrics that faded into ahhs and one just ahhs...this one was my favourite.
Putting together my video phone footage of the trip i went on through the countryside along with the music. Should be done by Tuesday...
Love to y'all....today i just put together some instrumentals of the songs i've done so far. Good for trying to get stuff in adverts and film... x Got a meeting tomorrow about a possibility... keep you posted x
