Abubilla Music

This Week in the Studio: 10.02.27

Written by Jimmy

An appalling silence, bitter fights about B’s and V’s,  Lou and Sat Out, a crash course in Abubilla, Assistants galore!, soggy puppies and then there was music – A Tribute to Caspar and another revisit of Mah Knees.  An unusual Saturday.

So fast and furious with these points:

•  After bigging up the chaos that is Abubilla (that’s music talk, see our glossary), we introduced a second studio assistant (after Hunter); her name is Hannah and she’s a great singer keen to help us and to steal some studio time!  She read all the blogs of noise and confusion and arrives to ‘appalling silence.’  St Kathy was out with the dogs, the angry cat was off yelling at the neighbors, the smelly teenagers were all asleep, Andy/Ed were blowing us off for the weekend, and the other ‘boys’ were caught for hours in Twickenham traffic.  So Hannah rings the doorbell, enters a world of absolute silence and watches as Lou works on her computer and Jimmy is in other room mixing Invading London (and the four billion tracks of Imo).  Not a sound.   She was not impressed.
• The only noise had occurred earlier when Jimmy and Lou returned to the endless debate on how to pronounce our name.  Jimmy has talked to multiple Spanish speakers who all say that the first ‘b’ is pronounced more or less as a ‘b’ and the second is pronounced more or less as a ‘v’, even though both are more b/v then the English ‘b’ or ‘v’.  But for all intents and purposes (for years I thought that was ‘intensive purposes’), we should pronounce it ‘ABU-Viya’.  I was telling Lou that I had just had a breakfast meeting with a Spanish friend who confirmed this, without me even asking, and then called his Mum to re-confirm.  Bada boom. The debate ended.  Ah, but one forgets, this is Lou.  She pointed out again that technically, all ‘B’s’ in Spanish are the same and while subtleties do exist between the relative merits of a ‘b’ or a ‘v’ emphasis, a b is a b is a b.  And Jimmy was an idiot (see point on party blaster).  And it didn’t matter what Jimmy’s friend thought because at end of day Jimmy is an idiot.  In April, we will launch a little voting feature and ultimately ask you to sort this out.
• So after bitter fighting, we then launched Hannah on her first assignment.  To read EVERY blog and come up with a Top 5 for the Newsletter.  Poor thing.  Had to read all our blogs from beginning to end.  We watched.  She mostly read in silence, never smiling, just a frown of well…despair at the ‘group’ she joined… this chaos of silence, this crowd of …no one.  We could see her texting her friends arranging various avenues of escape.    But then the dogs arrived back with St Kathy, Hunter returned from detention at school (he’ll write a blog), Mike arrived with both arms (but he slept most of the day) and Martyn and Rob came in with little Daisy (Martyn’s daughter) who joined the assistants and Lou in the conservatory all staring at computers and cursing technology.  Little Lewie arrived quite soggy from his walk and looked lie a soggy rat.

• While Hannah worked, we dragged Lou into Studio for some bvox on Sat out the 15th, a song re-discovered by Andy.   We decided to let you see a work in progress on this one.   We also even forced Hannah into the studio to do some Bvox as well — we think it is a ritual for all female singers — to get dragged into studio and have to do Bvox on Sat out.  She did very well and survived!
• So finally everyone is around and we break for lunch.  Never has so much pizza been bought with so little music actually been played (Lou who actually sang eats potato wedges and Hannah who actually sang, accidently was sent BBQ Chicken Wings).  We’re in afternoon now and the lights are still off in the studio and Hannah is convinced this is all a sham — at least the ‘boys contribution’.  Over lunch, Lou then tells everyone her big news, which is she got a role in The Real Thing by Tom Stoppard at The Old Vic, from 10th April until the 5th June.  She’ll write a blog but as you can imagine she’s seriously in to it and you all can expect a massive deterioration in our Newsletter.  That’s where Hannah and Hunter come in – they are here to save the label, as mad actress loses head with fame and fortune.   In all seriousness, we’re very proud of our little Lou and really chuffed that Tom is writing about Coca Cola.
• So, then, we finally went into the studio.  We did two full songs.  One was a new take on Big Old Knees at 122 bpm to try to speed it up.  All worked well and we think we’ve got something for vocals next week.    We’re up to revisit 12 on this ‘simple’ song.  Then we shifted to give the boys  time to jam.   We called a song ‘A Tribute to Casper’ which Martyin can explain, and got a nice little riff going.   Martyn asked me to ask Lou to come in and do that ‘Melody’ thing on top of his ‘structure.’  I did and was met with some … choice words.  Poor Hannah covered her ears and I informed Martyn that Lou does not do ‘Melody for Order.’    Actually, she didn’t yell but we didn’t put on a melody line.   So nice little groove, missing a middle 8 but watch the progress here and see if that turns into anything.

That’s it from Abubilla Music.  Off to do a little mix of ‘Sat Out’ (after the Carling Cup).  Oh, and speaking of football, we all took a break from pizza yesterday  to watch Wayne Bridge not shake Terry’s hand.  Classic.