Star date 36-24-36, if I’m lucky. Chief Science officer’s log. Captain of the USS Layers – her five year mission to boldly explore new ways to cock up perfectly good songs – is absent from the bridge and not, for a change, because he’s nipped out for a piss.
In front of us is a baffling array of knobs. No, we’re not in the viewers gallery in Parliament, we’re back at DB studios and, instead of Checkov pushing buttons at the controls, our old friend and producer Andy is back at the helm.
It’s a chilly Saturday morning in Stroud and we’re a month into the slow process of recording a second studio album. DB is a cosy little studio, the wood paneling in the control room giving the vague impression that Caleb’s currently recording a rhythm part in a sauna. The naked Swedish man thrashing him with a birch twig is entirely incidental.
Allusions to Mr Spock’s scanner are entirely appropriate; I’d forgotten since the scene of our last crimes against music quite how forensic the degree of scrutiny to which the songs are subjected. It’s a painstaking progress, listening intently to parts in isolation, then against the drums, then in other combinations, ironing out errant beats and fluffed phrasings. I can see how recording a subsequent album can be the breaking point for a lot of bands; it takes a certain amount of patient camaraderie to survive the level of criticism vital to this process. Once the novelty of initial sessions has worn off, it must be easy to start falling out during these grueling iterations. Fortunately, it’s always been friendship before musicianship in The Layers and, as usual, it’s all smiles, laughter and joking.
Vocal recording is imminent and this is the part we look forward to and dread in equal measure. The lyrics and music come alive when our ever-richer vocal harmonies work together but it’s an area that requires more discipline than most.
It’s been five years since our last album, the same amount of time it has taken us to get our music onto iTunes, Spotify and the other plethora of online music stores. Coincidentally it’s also the same amount of time it has taken for [insert funny thing about Rupert here*]…
We urge loyal fans and regular perusers of the blog (hello Dave!) to slip their restraints, cheek their medication and get online to serve us up some rave reviews – and we know that many of you are, if nothing else, raving. Fame, fortune and glory beckon.
The management consultants**have been busy producing Gant charts, Excel spreadsheets, key performance indicators and one pie chart, which Caleb ate. We have no idea what any of it means but we’re aiming to get a beautiful, vintage style CD mixed, mastered and ready for Christmas stockings with a simultaneous release (oo-er, missus) via the aforementioned colossi of e-commerce. Watch this space for news of a star-studded launch event.
For now, we should probably get our noses back to the grindstone.
Layers out
*Let’s have an online poll. Vote for: a) Roo to admit he wrote for Jim to Fix it for him; b) Roo to master the drum parts from ‘Belly full of Sunshine’; c) Random penis enlarger based joke; d) For us to get Roo to sleep through the night.
**We have no idea who they are; presumably, what with the state of the economy, there’s a surplus of useless middle management nob-heads looking for work…
I should point out, should have done some time ago, in fact, that this was a somewhat revolutionary blog entry as it was the first to be cooperatively written; we were tapping away in the studio between takes. can you tell who wrote what?