1.
lessons in the importance of reloading and making
headshots (5.03)
2. obviously not the good kind (10.27)
3. ghost band theme (5.54)
4. blank faces (12.44)
5. the scenester's lament (8.27)
|
(You
can check out Tina's artwork in full technicolour here
(front inlay) and over here
(back). Mp3s are at the bottom of the page)
This is a little bit of a departure from the sound
of the last three records. For 'You Need This To Live'
I decided to sort of pull out all the promotional stops.
Instead of dripping out mp3s one-by-one, I decided
to do a big launch with the finished CD. Nine mp3s
went up in my two journals, and across three forums.
I set up a myspace page and got myself a bunch of friends
and promoted that on the internet. For a week or maybe
ten days the mp3s were fairly prominent. Despite all
that, of the nine mp3s uploaded to shitloads of places,
places consisting of friends and passersby, the music
got one comment, about one song. At first I was a little
bitter that a record I was really happy with got fuck-all
reception, but then I remembered that, like, I'm not
in this for the praise or the glory! I'm mainly in
this to do records I want to hear. So the thought I
had in my mind for this album was 'fuck everyone'.
I decided to make a record like 'Monsters On My Lawn',
one that probably only I would bother to listen to.
Partly because I liked the idea of doing something
free of that need to include hooks and things I think
other people will love, and maybe subconsciously because
if you make a record you don't expect anyone to like,
you won't be upset when it gets no response. It's my
'coming to terms with the overwhelmingness of my obscurity'
record; formed from the realisation that I'm one of
the most obscure musicians in the world with an audience
of like 50 potential listeners per album.
So, fairly soon after YNTTL, I decided this would be
called 'Ghost Band', which I liked because it works
as a) a reference to the ephemerality and relative
invisibility of my profile, b) as a sort of sly nod
to the fact that I have no band except the one in my
head and c) an attempt to capture the mood of the music,
which I'd pictured as being rather slight, ambient,
weird and hard to pin down. I decided this would be
hard to listen to; impenetrable and filled with the
spirit of improv, atonality and general disregard for
my usual form and structure. The opening track was
the first I recorded, and it achieved some of those
aims. It's a stretched chord shape played at a varying
speed, as many times as I felt like before shifting
up or down. It doesn't really have a tune or a pattern
or a fixed tempo. It's like free jazz! The intention
was to make something that's really just in love with
the way it sounds rather than something that wants
to go somewhere or be something.
Next is 'obviously not the good kind', whose title
came from a thread I found on the internet when googling
for the text of Dr Octagon's 'moosebumps' speech, fact
fans! I love this. I think it has some odd tuning,
in any case it's a real kitchen-sink tune, I attacked
the guitar with glasses, batteries, my mouse, a remote
control, the pick, my fingers and tiny screwdrivers.
Over ten minutes it goes through maybe four hooks and
a couple of passages of freeform noise. There's a bit
from like 7 and a half minutes toward the end which
is like some kind of wonky psych thing, sliding notes
going in and out of tune in a disorientating and cool
way. Hear it. It ends with a little unnecessary snippet
of me playing Miles Davis' 'So What' on guitar for
40 seconds. I have no idea why, I guess the whole jazzy
spirit of the thing. 'ghost band them' was the last
track I did, it uses the same tricks as 'the sleeping
eight' off the last record, while also being a little
reminiscent of 'i left my skeleton around here somewhere...'
off 'schemes' and 'Pink Maggit' by the Deftones. Yeah,
that's right! It's a very melancholy thing. The end
of this is really old, it's a sample of Tina's voice
fucked beyond all recognition into a scary loop.
'blank faces' is the big one. It starts with three
minutes of patternless jazz chords, builds to a little
crescendo and then settles down for a while. It doesn't
get going again until about 10 minutes, where there's
a big old rock-out. Now, I know, it's limited. I can't
really rock that hard here. But if that was done by
a band, it'd be fucking beautiful. And I totally stand
by the whole track. Any of you motherfuckers got a
problem with that? Let's
fight. 'the scenester's lament' was the second
track I made, and it was the moment where I realised
this record wasn't gonna be quite as impenetrable as
I'd planned. I tried, I tried, but heck, the melody
got the better of me in the end, It has a beautiful
sad kind of Mono melody, climbing and shimmering. I
like it.
A little way into making this I realised that making
a record out of spite might not be the best reason.
But then I thought, fuck, what better reason can there
possibly be? |
© Enough
Rope