We'll Leave For You This Life we Wrote, A Gift of Ones and Ohs

Hi, my name is Ben and all of my internal organs are back-to-front.

Well, that's it. Not to get all in media res on your ass, but the album's recorded, mixed, mastered - it's finished. The last two days of studio work for it have been the most fitting ending to what is going to be the last album I record at the Big Green Door Studio (in its current incarnation); what with Luke moving away, it'll be a while before we can get together to do any sort of recording and as he put it, this album feels like the end of an era.

Over the last few weeks' recording process with Luke, Joe and Frank, there've been several 'we've had some good times, eh boys?' moments when we've thought about exactly what we've accomplished over the last few years' recording music in Woolsery. Although Luke obviously has the most memories out of all of us, and as Severezerø the rest of the guys have their collective own, personally I've spent some of my most fun times in that little green-doored outbuilding. I remember the very first time meeting Luke and recording Hollowpoint songs with Joe and Frank; how many times we went back for one-song-in-one-day sessions, recording as we wrote them. I remember settling in for a week at a time to record the two full Hollowpoint albums with Toby drumming and starting to feel like we were getting good at recording, like we'd found our rhythm. One of my favourite memories of all is the week we spent recording Halley's Apparition - Joe, Luke and I have often talked about how much that time can't be described fully to people who weren't there (although I'd like to think that some of the joy and friendship that was borne of that album made it onto the recording); I think that was probably the week where Luke finally made the transition from 'friend in the studio' to being one of my best friends, full stop.

Then, Luke stole my drummer and took my bassist, which brings us to the Benji One Lung solo period. It seems strange to describe it as 'solo', though, when one of the biggest, most important pleasures of making music is the amount of people that can be brought together by it. Joe, Frank, Luke, Toby, Kez Symes, Sam Ratcliffe, Pete Buffery, Sam Brown, Stuart Brewer, Tom Hitchins, Jackie Gibbins, Ellie Campbell, Stuart Hossack, Ronnie Reynolds... these people are my family and friends and have all laid down their immense talents in various forms. Our friendship (and on certain projects, simply trust) has let us transcend recording music just because that's 'what you're supposed to do' and revel in being able to record a passable white-boy rap track, in writing and producing a Christmas song that we went on to place as a jewel in Barnstaple's Christmas lights switch-on performance, even in writing, producing and recording an entire eight-track EP from scratch in one day.

A good chunk of who I am today is as a result of the time I've spent recording at the Big Green Door Studio. The more I write this, the more I realise I could pen an entire book about our experiences there and I'd still be no closer to putting across exactly how I feel about it - the time we got super-drunk of crates of cider, the time Luke got so tired he started throwing juice cartons around the control room for no reason, the Mr. Driller conspiracy and Stanley the cow... I cannot do it justice.

If a picture is worth 1000 words, we're going to need a lot more pictures.

As well as all of the non-musical memories, we actually got pretty good at making music too - we've learned and relearned so much about our art over the last few years; not least how to work well under pressure from time. In the spirit of 'you are the sum of everything that you've been before', this weekend definitely drew on this and more. After having spent countess hours over the years learning how to lay down perfect and emotional choral harmonies, Luke and I knew that this album didn't need many at all; after finding out how to work five or six synths into a song with perfect effect, we could hear these songs insisting they didn't want them; after working to do the impossible in terms of fitting twenty hours of work into eight, we now weren't even conscious that our work rate let us comfortably take time out in the middle of the most hectic day to go and see Luke's folks (Bill and Sue are lovely people, by the way).

There isn't really a lot to tell about the musical aspects of finishing the album that would either make sense in writing or add any insight into the finished album - we got our snacks in, we loaded up on Emerge! and we got to work. I played some guitar, sang some harmonies, Luke programmed in some synths. I think a 'compressor' was involved somewhere along the line, but ask Luke if you want the technical details - actually do, he'll love that. Whoever I make music with, a recording very often ends up with me and Luke sitting at the desk on the final straight, checking mixes and mastering. We talk a lot of shit, a lot of the time, but this is exactly how our friendship has been formed - I don't think either of us realised exactly how much we're going to miss it until it came down to the wire. In how we chatted and the things we talked about, there was definitely an air of 'fuckfuckfuck this is our last time here', that this album was our own full stop on the Big Green Door days, but as I said to Luke, it's kind of the same as moving house when you're a small child. Moving away from everything you've known and loved is the absolute end of the world, until you settle in to your new home.

With this new album, I feel triumphant, proud and just generally happy. It's the music I'm most excited about ever having recorded and I can't wait for you to hear it. It's the perfect way to end these chapters of my musical life, but, in my own ego-filled words, 'like I said before, please don't mistake this for the end'. Luke will find a way to record in Bristol; I will record with him there some time in the future. We'll still have as fun times making music (if not better) and one day we'll look back on this bit of life not as 'remember how that all ended', but as 'remember how this all started'.

YOU ARE UPDATE!

- Ben

It Even Includes The Cold-Gel Feeling On The Stomach

Hi, my name is Ben and I dispense blueberries from my nose.

We're going to need more than one page for this.

It's the night before the weekend where we finish the album. This post shouldn't be too long, but I thought you might like an insight into what's going through my head right now:

We've got a lot to do over the next couple of days - Luke and I have chatted about the best way to approach the work we've got to get through before the album's done and we feel like it's the time in the recording process to switch from part-by-part to track-by-track. Basically we're going to sit at each song until it's done (done at least before, next week, spotting all of the things that we've missed), mixed and ready to be mastered. 

We've got extra guitar parts, vocal harmonies, synths and a whole bucketload of other little tricks to finish off before the songs are even fully recorded and that's what I've been working on over the last couple of weeks. At least, I'm supposed to have been. As far as vocal harmonies and synth parts go, those are fine; it's fairly straightforward to start hearing those as I've been listening through the songs as they stand. On the other hand, additional guitar parts need actual figuring out and practicing - which is no problem for me normally, until life slaps a hand on my shoulder and says "you have to do it now". What is normally, as you can imagine, one of the happiest and most satisfying facets of my life soon becomes a whole lot like work when I put a deadline and actual aim to it.

I'm actually in a bit of a quandry over these extra guitar parts - when I'm noodling through the tracks, there are several parts that work (and some that work so well as for it to be criminal to leave them out), but I can't decide whether my general feeling that 'less is more' is a symptom of unfortunate laziness on my part or a sign that the songs genuinely don't need any more. I don't know, but I'm kind of hoping I'll figure the answer out at some point over the next two days (although tonight would be nice).

Having possibly made this blog entry sound like I'm dreading the next two days; possibly having made them sound like a horrific ordeal of work and effort that I might not even reach the other side of, you have to believe I'm really more excited than I've been in a long time. It's been a long process writing and recording this album - in fact I was recently looking back to the blog entry from early on last year when I'd first starting writing the songs for it, which now feels like a long time ago - but it's nearly done. Not to draw too strangled a metaphor, but I've been looking at the ultrasound scans of this album, watching it develop eyes and ears for weeks, but now it's time to get the hell in with the caesarean and drag this sucker kicking and screaming into the world.

YOU ARE UPDATE!

- Ben x

Why The Hell Would You Want To Drink Bull's Blood Anyway?

Hi, my name is Ben and I'm an expert in Krav Maga.

The end of the recording process is pretty firmly in sight now. In a spectacular display of bullet-dodging, my throat managed to sort its shit out in time to record the last three main vocals yesterday, including two of the hardest songs to sing on the album. I'd like to go on record and say that Luke's invention of a cocktail, the Swiss Tony, probably had a lot to do with the last-minute recovery (you should ask him about it here), as well as a few cans of Emerge. Don't ever ask what goes into Emerge, because you probably don't want to know. Just know that it was chemical-ridden enough to get Luke and I through a very long day of recording.

I would say 'unscathed', but it did get weird.

Long days in the studio always have the potential to become a bit soul-destroying if you're not careful and to be honest, I don't know who to say has it worse: after the first hour-and-a-half's worth of recording vocals, Luke had to wade his way through a lot of technical mixing (so things like chopping up toms and making drums sound right before they can sound good) - on the other hand, I had to watch Luke do it with very little ability to have any useful input through this stage. Don't get me wrong, I am totally dedicated to my album recording, with every second spent in rapt attention to what's going on with it at every stage, but it's still pretty tough when you get to hour six of 'the back of Bondy's head'.

I should probably point out that we still have a great time together in these duller, more grinding recording days. Not only do we get chance to talk a lot of shit, but these are also the days when song 'set pieces' tend to come together. At the risk of this being an infuriatingly vague point to make, I don't really want to tell you much about the specifics of what I mean, but a few of the songs on the album have sections or ideas that in themselves are taking a lot of work to get right. I'm incredibly lucky that I can come to Luke with ideas like these and have him know, almost instinctively now, what I'm talking about doing - as well as have him suck up my woolly, unhelpful descriptions of what I'm thinking and exude more than enough patience to stay sane when an idea for a ten-second section of music ends up taking two hours to get right.

For once, I'm not referring to the time taken to record my vocals.

Where we stand so far, then, is with all of the main vocals recorded, most of the album's synths laid down and most of the boring legwork of mixing done. We're next back in the studio in a couple of weeks to lay down vocal harmonies, some secondary guitar lines and the rest of the synths; I should have a pretty much finished album after that coming weekend. Scary.

With that in mind, I've continued laying out the initial thoughts for the album release schedule and the launch party. Once a couple of the dates and venues are set in stone, I'll announce plans - I can say, though, that I do mean 'party' and not just 'gig' for the launch. This album's shaping up to be my favourite thing that I've recorded, with a writing and recording process that so far has been as fun as the end result is going to be good - the launch party is going to be the end to this process that it deserves, not just a celebration of some pretty good new music being born.

Ok, so the really interesting stuff will start happening soon - for now, I need to get back to going over these songs and figuring out what they're trying to tell me they need. With the stage they're all at, they're finished enough that my subconscious is starting to judge them as finished products - unfortunately, they're really not finished yet, so it's all too easy to start fretting about how a vocal doesn't sound right, or an instrumental section sounds empty. In this uncanny valley of recording, where the album is just close enough to being finished (without being finished) to be off-putting like an almost-human robut, it'd be easy for confidence in the recording to begin ebbing away with every listen. It's absolutely the time to keep the faith and know that it's going to be refined into a pretty cool album very soon.

YOU ARE UPDATE!

- Ben

That's one big green door