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

Oh, I Thought You Said 'Goat Team'

Hi, my name is Ben and I'm completely immune to sore throats and illness.

In actual fact, it would be more accurate to say I feel like shit today - I don't know whether it's just a coincidence that my throat feels like I swallowed a sharp, mucousy cheesegrater overnight after spending the day recording vocals, but if the two are related, I have to admit it seems totally worth it.

I really like recording vocals. Even though, like with playing any instrument, you kind of get good and bad days in the studio, the nice thing is that I'm pretty sure the good are starting to outnumber the bad. Coming from a person who would probably describe his singing as pretty much a 'competent vehicle for well-written songs', it's nice to think that over the last couple of years especially, I've been able to start worrying less about being able to execute what I've written without having to battle with my own voice.

Having said all that, and having now laid down most of my vocals for the album, I would humbly submit that the best part of yesterday was getting to hear Joe, Ellie and Jackie record their vocals. Joe's singing the main vocal on one song for the album, which I wrote specifically for him - there's not much I can describe properly in words about it (you'll get to hear it soon enough), but I can at least say that I'm glad that another song I've written specifically for Joe to sing is turning out exactly as I imagined it would.

On that note, we come to Go Team. This song is going to be great. Again, there's not really much that there would be any point in talking about, except to say that Joe and the girls killed it. The song kind of loosely tells the story of a great night out that we had at the end of last year and I'm very excited about it - it's going to be a bastard to mix properly (especially considering there's more to add to it yet), but when it's right, it'll be very right. Jackie and Ellie are both jaw-droppingly effortless vocalists and to hear them do what they do with words that I wrote made be feel something that I can't really describe properly, but that I think sits next to happiness - a completely different kind of satisfaction and friendship that's born of the moments in the studio where things just work with talented musicians.

I have the feeling I'm going to spend the days before we finish the vocals (assuming I can even talk by then) carved up into four-minute chunks while I listen through the rough mix of Go Team on repeat. Once I've finished the vocals, I'll sit back, take stock and make a proper blog post (with pictures and everything). Until then, I need to go and get some more Lemsip.

YOU ARE UPDATE!

- Ben

Feels Kind Of Like I'm Back Home.

Hi, my name is Ben and I have a USB port where my belly button should be.

Yesterday I actually had to do some real work on this album and do what, out of a limited range of musical skills, I do best. It was electric guitar time!

After primarily playing acoustic guitar for a while, it's all too easy to forget a little bit of where my roots lie - especially when my amp's been sitting at Joe's for a few months and the Les Paul's been suffering some input-related-illness. However, with the amp back at home and the Les Paul sporting a brand new lead-hole, I've been rediscovering some of the reasons why I started playing guitar in the first place. Not that I can tell you exactly what they are, but I can say it always just feels very right. Within a few minutes of playing around the new songs with a properly-powered guitar, all of the parts and noises that I knew I could hear when I was originally writing them are totally there; the intricate, instinctive finger-movements that don't do anything for an acoustic reveal their power on an electric - I guess it's what it must feel like to go from living in a foreign country and having to constantly translate English thoughts into an alien tongue, back to at least being able to think and talk in the same language (even if that's still an imperfect way to express what's going on).

I've been away from home for a couple of weeks doing proper, real-life stuff, which has given me plenty of time to sit and figure out the different guitar parts for all of the songs and if you happen to be keeping score, that's like, score one million for this gradual, extended recording process. Who needs to learn about eyes when you can concentrate on working on your lovely fingertip calluses?

More efficient guitar recording = more arty photos!

By the time I got back, I was raring to go and so yesterday's recording process felt like a very nice release indeed - working through a mercifully-mild hangover (that was totally Joe, Ellie and Kez' fault, not the tequila's), Luke and I loaded up on snacks and got to work. There isn't really much to say about the actual recording bit itself, since it went relatively smoothly. The result, on the other hand, is more worth a mention - we've definitely broken the back of the recording process now and with the majority of the electric parts laid down, the more subtle ideas have started to raise their head. The actual faces of the songs are in place now and when I describe how they're going to end up to people, I don't have to ask them to take quite so much of a leap of faith any more. Synth ideas have started to come out of the woodwork and secondary guitar parts are beginning to take shape. The plan is to record vocals next, then to sit back and work out any complementary guitar parts, then on to synths and the big M&M.

It feels weird, but so good to actually be able to talk about the end of the recording process like it's some time soon. I almost want the recording to not end as much as I want the finished album, just because of how much fun everyone involved is having - as I've bollocked on about a load before, music is a world that's where I've both found and forged some of my best friends and the recording process is one of the largest, most intensely fun countries in it.

OK, so next up: vocals with Joe, Ellie and Jackie. Let's do it!

YOU ARE UPDATE!

- Ben

Beep boop boop beep

See This Is Why I Can Say 'Guitars', Plural

Hi, my name's Ben and I'm currently directing the new Fresh Prince of Bel-Air movie.

Sometimes the sweetest things happen over the shortest time. It's sort of like when you know there's only a short time for something to last, or a short time in which to get a job done, everything becomes a lot more vital and focused. Luke and I had this experience the other day when we recorded the acoustic guitar tracks for the album.

The optician in me abhors this picture. Or should that be aberrates? OPTICS!

It only took about four hours to record all of the parts for eleven songs, which is - even for someone who normally records pretty quickly, if I say so myself - pretty quick. Luke is a master of setting up to record a great sound within a short space of time and as always creates a more-than-conducive environment for people to record in. Aside from being a talented engineer (as well as every other studio role he fills), Luke's one of my best friends - we always talk a load of shit when we hang out (and the thought's crossed my mind that a load of our talks about everything from delay times to astronomy somehow work their way into the music we record) and the sessions always start to feel more like the music happens while we aren't looking. This happened with the acoustic guitars and before we knew it, some bugger had come in and finished all of the recording for us... I like to think this was also partly a result of having intentionally extended the writing and recording process over a much longer time so far than I have done previously. It means that the songs feel a lot more natural and almost habitual at this point, like either I've been playing them for years, or they're simply playing themselves. That can happen, right?

I've been throwing down acoustic guitar parts on my solo recordings for a fair old while, even just to add a bit of depth to the guitar sounds. A lot of the time, there's an extra presence to acoustic rhythm parts that fills out the electric guitar sections and, I think, gives everything a bit more vibrance.

The other nice part of laying down the acoustic parts means that not only is that one great big box we can tick off on the recording process, but I can also use the fledgling drums-bass-acoustic recordings to work on the other final guitar parts while I'm away from home over the next couple of weeks. When I come home, we'll be diving straight into recording those, then it's onwards and upwards to the heady heights of vocal tracking.

Until then, though - I love you all, leave me some comments to read, ask me some questions to answer, spread the blog around... as I get closer to finishing recording  the album, it's going to get even more interesting, intense and action-packed!

YOU ARE UPDATE!

- Ben

Any More Than Four Strings and He'd Be Lost

Hi, my name is Ben and I'm banned in the state of Utah.

I often talk about how I'm so lucky to be surrounded by friends who are either more-than-adept musicians, or avid afficionados of music in general. I never used to consider an appreciation of music to be an unusual quality in a person, until I started growing up a little bit and meeting a much wider variety of people. Now, in the same way that I've grown to be the only person in certain groups of friends who (thanks to a healthy time spent living in the countryside) considers two miles to be well within walking distance, I've come to realise that living surrounded by musician friends is more of a rare gift than I'd previously imagined.

If it's rare to find enough of these people around to figure out an at least semi-functioning social group, I can't even find the probabilities or metaphors to say how fortunate it is that I've got the best of them all for a brother. Yesterday, Joe and I went to Luke's studio to carry on recording the new album by spending the day tracking bass. Building on Frank's still-steaming drum parts, the recording process went very smoothly - Joe's managed to write and learn bass parts for nine songs on the album whilst juggling changing jobs and planning moving away within the next couple of weeks, so to be honest I'm amazed he even managed to wound the tracks, let alone kill them completely.

Joe and bass playing, sitting in a tree

Joe describes his bass playing as being popular through being unconventional and if I can offer any unnecessary analysis of his contribution to my solo recordings, this is exactly what makes his parts so perfect. He's not playing restrained by any (and I mean any) knowledge of silly things like 'musical theory' at the best of times, so when my solo projects push his playing style further away from the music we've made together in the past, it doesn't faze him in the slightest - possibly because these different styles all just twist and meld into the maelstrom of musical misapprehension that is his bass playing anyway. I think the best way to sum it up is that he's able to communicate his musical ideas without having to translate through scales or time signatures - and I figure that's not a bad way to be.

K-I-S-S-I-N-G

As far as the state of the album goes now, with the rhythm section at least recorded (if not mixed or treated at all yet), the songs are really starting to take shape. The drums have given each of the songs their general 'feel' and now, the bass lines have filled out these suggestions and started to colour them in a little - where before there was a simple, mellow break, now there's an ominous musical landscape; what used to be thrashed out power chords for a chorus has now become a running, melodic sing-along. All of this is going to help me over the next few weeks in figuring out final guitar parts and vocal arrangements.

I hate to announce timescales like this, because nothing is ever as simple as you first think, but at this rate (and with Luke and I both away for a couple of weeks coming up) we should have a finished album by the end of March, ready for release around late spring. This is, of course, open to a lot of change, but that's the plan at any rate.

Look at Luke's positive mental attitude!

I'll try and keep you posted if anything interesting happens over the next few weeks - it'll be a bit of a wait before I record guitars, but who knows what may happen before then?

YOU ARE UPDATE!

- Ben

Imagine If We'd Actually Toured The Songs.

Hi, my name is Ben and I came runner-up in Mr. Universe 2007.

I've just realised that I never told you all about the day we had recording drums the other weekend, so here goes:

Luke, Frank and I hit the studio pretty early (for us) and started by importing the demo for each track into its new home as the guide we'd use to then lay down all of the final instruments. These demos are shall we say 'not of the best quality', but like ugly kids, I have to try and see past the acne and overbites to their potential within. These little babies are the caterpillars, now become chrysalids, that will give rise to things that are hopefully a little bit more beautiful over the course of the next couple of months.

A day's recording wouldn't be complete without a little creativity in the face of adversity - in this case this came when Luke cast his eye over the live room and said "Hang on guys, I'm missing... three microphones. And stands. And where are the XLR leads?". The actual answer to this is 'they're in the back of my Dad's car, from that gig what we played at the end of last year', but I insisted that we didn't dwell on details (particularly which lanky, bespectacled musician's 'fault' it was) and instead Luke got down to Bear Grylls-ing together a decent drum mic setup with whatever gear hadn't been scavenged. Luckily, necessity is still the mother of invention and we ended up with a very, very nice naked drum sound indeed.

Once this was done, Frank, as always, was an absolute machine when it came to playing - this time round, we'd broken our previous recording tradition of having his first listen to the songs on the actual day of recording. With chance to mull over the songs for a while before we went into the studio came so many of the lovely rhythmic motifs that generally come from gigging a song for a few months before recording. The best way I can describe it is that Frank went from, at worst, laying down exactly the right beat for each section of each song - at best, he was hearing ideas that I hadn't even considered within those ugly little demos.

We finished recording all of the drums and bounced rough mixes of each song to take away and listen to before recording bass. Even with the drum tracks in the roughest of rough states, it's difficult to describe what they've added to not only the demos, but the very ideas of the songs in my head. The general style of the album is coming together now - since I started writing the songs for it, I've felt like I've been keeping the best parts of the previous two recordings; now that the drums are down, I realise I might have laid the groundwork to not only let those best bits creep in, but also to reintroduce the best elements of what Joe, Frank and I wrote together back in the mists of time. We'll see, I guess, but as I say - I'm very excited so far.

Next week we'll be spending a day laying all of the bass down; then, Luke and I plan to try and spend some time getting all of the leg-work of mixing and giving sounds to the drums and bass done before I'm going away for a couple of weeks. What this'll hopefully mean is that when we come back fresh to recording to get the guitars and vocals done, it'll almost feel like the Editing Pixies have visited and taken care of all of the time-consuming tom-chopping and compressing for us. With a near-finished rhythm section at our fingertips, it'll free up a big chunk of brain-space to be creative, rather than to worry about all of the slightly-less-pleasant grinding work involved.

That's the plan, anyway - I'll let you know how I get on!

YOU ARE UPDATE!

- Ben

P.S. I'm sorry for the lack of pictures that are relevant to this post; here's an alpaca:

It's a camelid.

I Still Think This May Just Be The Start.

Hi, my name is Ben and my middle name is Reginald.

The last couple of weeks have been pretty busy in all aspects of life.I got together with Joe and Frank to play our first full-length gig as a band in around six years and it went spectacularly. We pulled a few old Hollowpoint songs out of the bag, as well as a mix of Halley's, mine and Joe's solo work and a couple of covers (including a version of Man In The Mirror that we were all very proud of). For an intimate (but busy) crowd, it was probably one of my favourite live performances to date; this might have been due to a small part of me enjoying what it represented, or maybe because Joe and Frank are moving away in the next few weeks (making this, realistically, probably the last time the three of us will play live together). Either way, it was a great night and one that I'll remember for a long time.

You can identify me as the artist by the anatomical accuracy.

Meanwhile, the album photo shoot with Andy Casey went really well and the artwork is coming together very nicely - there's one more photo that I need to take, but it needs a specific person to make it work (I'll be taking it the first chance I get) and after that it's finished. With everything non-musical for the album pretty much in place, I've also been finishing off writing the songs themselves. The last song of the eleven to be written is still in need of some more lyrics, but is musically all there - this is kind of handy as we start recording tomorrow!

Tomorrow is going to be spent creating and populating all of the songs' project files (probably using the existing demos as bases), before tracking all of the drum parts. It's going to be a long day and probably the most work-intensive of the whole recording process, but with Frank moving away next weekend it's more of a 'get it done while he's still around' situation. Luckily, working hard in the studio is something that we do fairly well, so it shouldn't be too much of a problem; everyone involved always has the best time recording, but at the same time we all know how to work hard when it counts. Add to this the fact that Frank is an absolute machine when it comes to recording drums and we should be alright - as long as we remember to bring a can of WD40 to maintain the guns.

Once the drums are down, we're going to do something we haven't done before and bounce very rough mixes of each track to take away and listen to. The idea behind this is that then Joe can use these to lock his bass lines in with what Frank's playing on each one and make the most out of any musical ideas that might emerge as we go along (we'll then go on to do the same for guitars once the bass is recorded, etc.). It also gives me the ultimate in exclusive so-indie-you-probably-have-never-heard-it iTunes playlists for a little while, as I trundle along analysing snare patterns and off-beat paradiddles in my free moments.

I'm so, so excited to be recording again, but it's coming along at a pretty busy, weird time for me. I've probably worn out the metaphor of life being a Rubik's Cube, but it's the most apt description I've ever been given (by Bob Penny, a good friend and very wise man who'd never admit it). Music, love, work, money, family, friends all have their own colours - with probably more to add to that (I know that stops it being a cube, this is a metaphor!). For most people, we can only hope to complete maybe one or two sides at a time before either we have to re-jumble the whole thing in search of another colour, or someone else does a bit of well-meaning jumbling of their own. My cube is always a mess, always. At the moment, though, I've got to go for completing that 'music' side and see if maybe the others fall into place along the way.

YOU ARE UPDATE!

- Ben