I thought it was time to share a wee update with you all, and for the sake of my own sanity I thought I'd write it in blog form. Making silly wee videos is very time consuming, and all of my spare time is taken up with writing music at the moment.
We are currently somewhere in the middle of writing album number 3. We've got a big backlog of tunes and song ideas to flesh out. Some of these existed before Part Machine, which ought to give you an idea of how long it's taken us. To be honest, this isn't ideal - as ever a combination of life events, personal circumstances and the practicalities of existing as a band have made it impossible
to do anything until now. However, since we wrapped up our summer with a show supporting The Chair at the Liquid Room back in August, it's been all systems go, and we're making good progress.
I thought it might be interesting for some of you if I shared how we're going about this - after all, writing collaboratively with 7 people isn't easy.
Our ‘process’ has been a bit different with each iteration of the band.
For our first album I wrote backing tracks, then other people added melodies and tune parts on top of that.
For our second album, Helen and Gary contributed tunes which we then wrote accompaniments for, but Lissa, Lewis and myself were still using the 'computer first' method we'd employed on our first album. There were also some preexisting tracks which we had to repurpose for the new lineup of the band. Also it was the middle of the pandemic, and we couldn't spend time face to face for much of it. Credit for pulling it all together must go to Iain Copeland, who did a great job of producing a cohesive album out of the straggly mess of material we presented him with.
Of course, once the world opened up and we headed into the rehearsal room, the act of playing them live meant that they changed once again.
This time round we have decided to produce the album ourselves, with myself playing the role of recording + mix engineer and general herder-of-cats.
This can mean different things when working with different people. Mostly it seems to work like this - Gary and Helen will typically go away, thoroughly and thoughtfully compose an entire tune, and then share a finished melody. Lissa and Lewis seem to be hit by inspiration when they're working with others. Of the two newer members, Sam (drums) seems to fall into the first camp, but that might just be because writing drum parts is a loud (and thus solitary) pursuit. Dan (keys) is pretty comfortable either working alone or bouncing ideas off of other people. For my own part, I definitely prefer working on ideas on my own.
Say Gary sends me a recording of a tune. If something doesn't occur straight away I might look at the tempo and the feel, then go away and hunt for inspiration. To be honest, I don't really understand how this works. It seems that if I spent enough time doing menial tasks (eg cooking, dishes, or walking to work) my mind will wander and I'll come up with something. Lately I've been having good ideas just before I drift off to sleep, writing them down, then trying to make sense of them in the morning.
I'll then produce a rough demo which contains drums, bass and other bits - either, depending on what style I feel is appropriate. Assuming this is met with approval (it isn't always), then the next step is usually to try and arrange it into a full length track, with at least two distinct melodic sections/ideas, and some kind of dynamics/progression somewhere else which keeps things from getting stale.
Once we've done this (usually I push the buttons, and everyone who has ideas that day chips in), we then have to make it into a Yoko Pwno track. This is a mysterious process involving luck, serendipity and lots of fun arguments - often between myself and Lewis. By the time everyone has worked out how to replace the synths with folk instruments, or visa versa, we usually have something that sounds like us (whatever that means).
As I'm in charge of making the thing, this time I have to try to take my musician's hat off and focus on helping other people realise their own ideas, even if they're completely different to mine. I feel more like a facilitator than a producer sometimes, but I suppose that's what it takes to get to work with all of these great musicians and their amazing ideas! Anyway, based on what we've come up with so far, it's definitely worth it.
I enjoy the feeling of being in the midst of a project. Having a goal to focus on is really good for my mental health - it certainly provides a welcome distraction from the background noise of life, and fills me with a sense of purpose. I hope the other guys get as much from it as I do.
You have heard some of the fruits of this process already, with both the live version of You Got This and the single Brittlestar Galactica coming from sessions earlier in the year. We don't have any gigs booked at the moment, but when we do, expect to hear more of them.
I hope that's been of some interest to you! If you've any questions please feel free to ask.
Calum