Abubilla Music

This Week in the Studio: 10.09.04

Written by Jimmy

We’re back in the studio en masse for the first time since Spain – new vocalists check us out, we put down ‘Colours of My I-Pod’, Mike proves he can play a real drum, Rob goes Blondie, and Gus gives bed sores a new name…

So, as usual, a bit about our music and then a lot about everything else.   Full studio day, with most of the regulars in attendance sans young Ed, who was married to beautiful Helen 2 weekends ago and is enjoying a honeymoon some where 4 hours + 5 hours from London (how Ed described it to Helen).   So, first the Music:

Our Music

• Lara and Depth Perception:  Andy and Jimmy opened the studio at 9AM inviting Lara to take a shot at Depth Perception, a song about a slightly deranged and tipsy bar girl, lamenting about a life of broken relationships.  Lou had sung a great vesion in Spain but we wanted to try another take.  Jimmy had heard Lara sing  at her own Xxth birthday party (up to her to reveal) and thought she had a great voice for the song (and, no, she’s not a bar girl lamenting about broken relationships).  Lara also works out in the mornings with Kathy in Richmond Park, so he figured he might have finally found a ‘morning band member’, which would fill out the studio day.  So Lara arrived for her first ever studio session, promptly at 9am (although she gigs about every 4 weeks), hid behind ‘the shield’ and belted out Depth Perception.  Great fun.  So much fun, we gave her a shot on 500 Letters from New York, which she actually likes far more.  Although she can’t pronounce Geyser in American.

• Mike, the Snare Drum and No Bells:   Lara was followed by the arrival of Mike with his snare drum, the first accoustic drum to enter the studio (if you ignore the bongos and congas).    Mike even brought brushes and his GHD.   He did a little track of straight brushes/snare and thereby finished all input to No Bells — it now moves on to final mixing and mastering to be the first song to be finished for our third album, If I Were a Litle Birdie.

• Hannah, her Accordian, Mike and Eggs and Pretty Bad Agents.   We recognise that this must all sound a bit weird.  But another song on If I Were a Little Birdie (you have to click on this link), will be Pretty Bad Agents, a song that must go the direction of ‘For the Benefit of Mr Kite.’    This required Hannah, fresh from her GCSE results (all good) and Reading (all, not so good), to bring her German accordian (cheaper than Italian and a button button accordian – don’t ask, but if you need to know she can go on for about two hours on this topic) and play chords and oom pahs for the song.     Mike followed with ‘eggs’, about which he had the nerve to say, ‘Eggs are a lot harder to play the people think because it is hard to keep track of where the shaky stuff is.’   Hmmm.   The shaky stuff is in the egg Mike.  In the egg.

• The Band Arrives and We Jump into Angel of/in the Dark:    So, by this time, Blondie Rob had arrived, followed by Soph and Cecily (a bit late because, ahem, Sophie, the cello player forgot to bring a cello to a studio session), followed by Martyn (held up by his wife who is working hard to get ‘Dorie the Guitarist’ kicked out of the band).    And we’re joined by Charlotte, who like Lara, is checking us out for the day to see if we’re worth ‘six months of saturdays.’    And we jump into Angel of/in the Dark, a little Gus, the wonderkind, song, started during our Summer Spanish Jam.    We’ll come back to Gus in a moment.     After lots of studio gufaffling (nothing worked, missing headphones, no cables, Martyn), we put down a base track before Pizza and finished the song after.    We had Charlotte, Hannah, Lou and Sophie on bvox, now the Girls Are Loud (Sophie’s joke.  She was asked to leave.)  Mike used a click track but we’ll keep that secret because he had gone through a pretty exhausting time with an egg shaker.    We were just happy to have him behind the drums again…

Mike sits behinds his drums, enjoying himself, and all is right again…

• The band, together again, takes a shot at Gus’s ‘Colours of Her I Pod’, aka, ‘Your Weathered Skin and Wrinkled Eyes’, aka ‘My Favourite Toys are Transformers’, or aka ‘Transform’.  Take your pick.  Really just a nice chance for Gus to play a nice little acoustic intro on guitar and then hit his guitar occassionaly during the chorus.  You’ll hear more about this at some point.

Everything Else

Well, as most of you know, our music is really an excuse to talk about everything else.  So a couple more things to know:

• Gus had a very bad night, and after much band debate, we have decided to accept his ‘story‘.   Gus arrives with a massively beat up face – broken nose, ripped ear, bruises everywhere, cuts, etc… He had clearly been beaten up and told this very tall tale about falling down his bed.  No one believed him.   But, he persevered and we concluded that indeed Gus had: a) had a nightmare, b) woke up, sort of, c) got in a fight with his duvet, d) won, e) in doing so, flew from his very high bed, head first, f) dove ‘down the ladder’ of his bed, g) through three rungs, each banging a different part of his face, h) down to a floor three meters away, i) to be discovered by his mother and j) to be taken to A&E.  Ouch.  The fact that a slightly different story of Gus a) singing little birdie in a crowded pub and b) being carried out and smashed in the face, seemed far more likely – we decided to believe him.

•  Rob Arrives Blonde.  Not sure if i need to say more really.   Still plays a good bass.

•  We debate all things branding…as we munch on pizza As we consider the launch of album three and the Singing Wells Project, we also debate all things branding.  See our conversation with Richard Reed of Innocent.    Andy kept notes but be prepared for some form of ‘relaunch’ when we give you website 4.0 at the end of the year.
• Lara/Charlotte are Welcome:   So, finally just to say, it was great to have a few new additions to the tribe, who may or may not stay around:  Lara, with a wicked revisit of Depth Perception and Charlotte with some great bvox on Angel of/in/by/thru the Dark.    Hopefully, they’ll see the light and join us for another Saturday.  But Gus was a bit scary so we’ll need to see what happens.

That’s it for now.  Studio will be open on the 11th as well so more news to follow.