Abubilla Music

This Week in the Studio: 10.09.18

Written by Jimmy

Women and Guitars.  Monkeys and Origami.  And turning Andy’s song from James Taylor to White Snake…We are now in the over dub stage of the third album – lots of songs, structures worked out, but still have to sort out vocals and guitars.  While you’re reading, having a listen to this Monkees song – seems appropriate…

Briefly:

Our Music:

• Ed arrives early to put down guitars for Depth Perception and 500 Letters from New York.     His first time in a long time to be all alone in the studio (besides button boy), he settled next to the Line 6 amp (with lots of buttons) and searched for noises.  Then he put down some great guitar solos.  Supped his tea.  Then put down more guitar solos.  Then supped his tea.  Very rock & roll.  Except for the tea bit.
  

  Our wicked rock-and-roll guitarists, Ed, wrote screaming guitar solo's while sipping on his little cuppa-tea. The Rock and Roll World shivers in fear.

• Imp arrived with Chris later to put down vocals for Cold Light of Day (Andy’s sad song re drug addiction and abandonment).  She loved the song after hearing his version and wanted to take a cut at vocals.  You might remember that Imp is the world’s best ‘double tracker,’ putting down five near identical tracks one over another for Invading London.    She did a beautiful job on vocals and we will assume that Andy will be happy.
  

  Imp is the Queen of Multi-tracking! She also can't say the word 'Shopping' which normally is okay, unless singing a song about a young girl shopping at Midnite.

• That is, until Rob and Martyn arrived and we decided to move Andy’s lovely folk song into a White Snake, Scorpion, Spinal Tap rock number, giving the boys a chance to jump around the stage in tight ski pants.    We are very certain that Andy will like Imp’s new vocal.  We are slightly concerned about his views of our White Snake version of his song.   Suitable punishment for choosing a charity run over a day in the studio.

With Andy Away, the Boys Turned His Folks Song into A White Snake Guitar Explosion - Martyn will be wearing White on Stage.

• Lara arrived and we continued her vocals on Tuesday in May.  We tried soft and lovely.   We tried really loud Rock and Roll chick.  We choose soft and lovely.  Ed then took over with the band and converted this little folk number into Cold Play.  Lots of crunchy guitars.  Did I mention lots of guitars?
  

  Ed attacks another folk song head on, rising to the top of Crunch Guitar Mountain on the skulls of folk guitarists everywhere (Cuppa Tea not visible)

Everything Else

I’ll keep this short because Hannah has blogged on this already.  But a few things:

• We welcome Vicki to the group – she will help Andy, Rob and Sophie with the Singing Wells project and met with Rob earlier in the week to finish off a draft brochure for Andy to take to Nairobi.    Meanwhile, Wes has been working during the week (poor guy gets no credit for working with us as a Monday-Friday day job) to get the first ‘look and feel’ proposal for Ketebul’s website.
  

  Watch for news on the re-launch of Ketebul's website (Dec 2010)

• We reviewed the latest video of Immovable Thing and sorted thru our video Schedule with Greg – watch for Monkey Space Camp, No Bells, and 500 Letters from New York.
• Hannah and Morgan had a great time creating little origami birds for the third album!  Richard Reed from Innocent told us our ‘packaging’ of our CD’s demonstrated the imagination of a dead fly (well, not exactly his words, but he wasn’t impressed.  So, we’re now going try to be a bit more interesting… or at least we’ll let Hannah and Morgan have fun making little birds.
  

  We need to be more creative on our packaging - but given massive CD demands for the third album we will not be able to provide free dead flies. We'll focus on origami birds

• Then Hannah got to search for video clips for the video to Monkey Space Camp, a song based both on the NASA Space Monkey programme and on the Spanish lives of Mike and Gus (prone to late nights, body pong – which is surely better than a potty bong – and no shows in the studio).    She spent hours sorting out the right sequence of clips to fit the rather ridiculous lyrics.
  

  We will be completing our song Monkey Space Camp, featuring footage of the real monkeys during the space programme AND interviews with the survivors.

That’s it.

Jimmy

(From San Fran)