The Halley's Touch

Hi, my name is Ben and I once punched a tiger square in the face.

Last night, I joined forces with Joe and showed him some of the song ideas for the new album. Working with Joe on music has become second nature now, like how walking or breathing stops being novel after the first thousand-or-so repetitions, but in the same way that running or the occasional gasp can feel liberating and exciting, these collaborations never stop being fresh and satisfying.

One song (I should start giving these songs names, to avoid being so necessarily vague with them) in particular twisted and thrashed its way into a new shape, one that I feel is probably fairly close to where it's going to set. Plugging in the Les Paul and strapping Joe to a small bass combo (which has two settings - 'dirt' and 'slut') transformed what was a light-hearted, bouncing song into something closer to an old-school punk monstrosity, complete with a range of mid-90s Rancid walking bass. To be fair, the only proper way to describe it currently is that it's definitely a Benji One Lung track, just pulled around a bit by Halley's Apparition (yes, yes, the astute among you will notice that that's precisely what it is).

I also had a lyrical breakthrough for the same song, which stands at this point at the 'one verse down' stage - the new-fangled chorus is going to need something pretty special, lyrics-wise, to make the most of a song I'm growing to really like; it might take a bit of time to get perfect, but for this album, I have that time.

Also, this happened:

 

Yeah, that's me and Luke sitting in the back of an articulated lorry, singing Theme From Chicken On The Run to a bunch of about ten people, sitting in the rain. We were soundchecking my set (which was eventually to even heavier rain and even fewer people) ... (It was the rain that made them leave and go inside) and needed a song that we could both bust out at short, unpraticed notice. Let me get this straight - I have a lot of love and pride for what we did for One Day Down. I just don't know why that song is sticking around to haunt me.

Oh, wait - because it's awesome.

YOU ARE UPDATE!

- Ben