Names Beginning With B

Hi, my name's Ben and my two index fingers have never touched each other.

There is, as I'm sure you're all aware, an interesting correlation between names and destiny. There are disproportionately more butchers called Butcher, as well as statistically significant alliteration linking people's names with not only their jobs (more dentists called David), but where they choose to live (like Brewers who move to Barnstaple). Hell, even my choice to give Butcher as the first example is probably because I particularly like the letter B, for some reason.

Names, like it or not, dictate a good chunk of who we are and what we become. Something with a name has an intrinsic quality and purpose, which is exactly how I feel about the album now that I've named it. A few days after first thinking I should start deciding on a title for it and starting to wrestle with a few ideas, it came very suddenly (as the best ideas do) and on a completely different path from where I'd been heading.

With such a clear and definite title in mind, the album artwork was almost obvious, really. Since there is, as they say, no time like the present, we're shooting the cover photos next week. My ability to contort my already-funny-looking face into an even more nightmarish version of itself finally paid off when it won me first prize in Andy Casey Photography's Funny Faces Competition (raising money for Children in Need along the way); part of the prize is a shoot with Andy (who I now enjoy a good friendship with, forged in the fires of the Christmas Crew), so that kind of neatly ties up with the album's needs.

This is right before I started pulling the funny face.

I'll probably start 'theming' my online presences with photos from the shoot fairly soon after they're done, so I don't want to describe the ideas too much yet; suffice to say they involve me, Joe and Frank again in a similar vein to the 'Ben Dies at The End' cover. A thought actually occurred to me a while after putting together that artwork, which I really hope no-one else has had and which I'll pre-emptively address here, hopefully not in a 'the lady doth protest too much, methinks' way. A nicely wide variety of my musical friends have contributed to what I've recorded in the past, but they're not pictured in any artwork up to now. The reason for having Joe and Frank in the cover for the last, and this, recording is pretty straightforward - the ideas for the photos need me and two other people; Joe is my brother, my best friend and always plays a large part in not only recording, but writing and producing the albums, Frank is one of my oldest friends and invariable plays on most of what I do. I hope that all kind of makes sense and it doesn't seem weird that I want to explain it; I just have this nagging awareness that people on the outside of the musical process sometimes have different interpretations of what we all do and if there's one thing I can't bear, it's misunderstandings.

As far as the actually important part of the album goes (you know, the music) I'm now done with preliminary writing for ten of the final eleven songs. One, I've written specifically for Joe to sing lead vocals on; it's a song about what we've done together and deals with his imminent departure for more Bristolian climbs. The other is a bit more lighthearted and tells a couple of stories about situations that I've found myself in that have been super fucking awkward; you're going to love it. I've also started putting together the musical foundations for the eleventh song, so it's all coming together in good time.

Over the Christmas break, along with shooting for the album artwork Joe, Frank and I are rehearsing for our (rare-as-a-group) gig on the 30th, which you should be able to find out about by clicking here. It's been literally years since we played a full-length gig together and I can't wait; we're going to be busting out a few old tunes, as well as a couple of covers (one of which is erection-inducingly good). While we're together to practice for that, we're also hoping to spend some time talking over the new album before starting recording in the couple of weeks following.

Just so you know, this jumper is not coming off over Christmas

.

The rest of my Christmas week is going to be taken up with shooting a video for the acoustic song I recorded last week. The very talented Sam Brown, fresh from shooting the new SevereZerø video, is coming down for the shoot, which should fit into a couple of days - I've got a couple of loose ideas for the video, but I should kind of get those finalised before the camera starts recording, I guess.

All in all, it's going to be a pretty busy festive season - in the best way. I hope all of you lovely people have a great time and spend it doing something that makes you smile for a bit.

YOU ARE UPDATE!

- Ben

We Don't Just Get Drunk, Sometimes We Write Music

Hi, my name's Ben and I live in a small network of burrows underground.

This is totally more of a 'keeping you up to date' post, rather than a 'groundbreaking news' post (and so should be mercifully short). I spent the early part of this week testing both Joe's laissez-faire relationship with my writing process, as well as the eternal patience of his girlfriend, by putting together the demos for what songs are written for the new album.

Laying down even these rough guides for the songs moves them on to the next stage of songwriting - now that I can actually listen to them without having to just remember them, it frees up a little bit of brain space to start hearing harmonies or extra guitar lines. It also helps to hopefully pick out any sections of song that just aren't working; maybe a break's too long or a particular section doesn't have enough prominence.

The other obvious benefit to having demos for these songs is that I've got something to actually give to the other people who are going to be playing one part or another in the album's recording. Frank, Joe and I will be working on them live to start with, but then the demos give both of my cohorts something to mull over when they're going about their day. Of course, I've now got a version of Go Team to show to Jackie and Ellie, too - and that demo is probably one of my favourites so far. Not because the song itself is particularly a favourite (I'm still in the happily ignorant stage of having all of the songs holding on to an equal chunk of my heart), but because this is the only song that I couldn't really play by myself in anything resembling its final form. I seem to have a masochistic love for writing interweaving vocal lines - in the songs where I've done it before, those songs are all amongst the ones that still elicit a wave of pride when I listen to them now, but dear lord they can be a challenge to put together. Hearing the lines sit together and work on the demo (although admittedly with a rather manly-and-Bennish sound to the girls' voices) is almost a gift and although the three of us will more than likely tweak and rewrite it beyond current recognition, I can let out the first big breath of relief in this project.

Pictured: very talented musicians. And me.

With eight songs written and demoed, I've just started moving on to developing a couple more musical ideas to fill out the album. One has lyrics for a couple of sections already, the other is, I think, going to be a song for Joe to sing. A small part of me was worried that the kind of natural break that came in what has been a very smooth songwriting process so far meant that the creative sponge had been squozen dry for the time being. Luckily, though, these two ideas are so far shaping up just as quickly and smoothly as their brethren - and the feeling I'm writing a pretty good album is only growing with them.

YOU ARE UPDATE!

- Ben

One Easy Song, Three Elusive Ones

Hi, my name is Ben and I have the power to regenerate severed limbs.

A few little bits and pieces to tell you about for the new album - firstly, this is how the tracklist is shaping up so far (this is so open to change in practically every way):

The song subjects, in red, appear to be stuck in my college days.

In fact, the evening that this was drawn up, I went on to write and finish an eighth song. It came together really quickly once I started writing, partly because of how clear and crystalised the inspiration was. Maybe one day I'll tell you all about that, but for now (or at least when you get to hear it), it can just live as a song that I suppose can be interpretted by everyone in that magically ambiguous way that songs are.

Whenever a song is easy to write, or I have such a well-defined subject to write about, or an extensive and apt metaphor lands itself in my lap, I feel like I've almost been gifted the song. I've written before about how I see songwriting as more 'finding out how the song goes' and this song is a textbook example. Unfortunately, the song is also destined to be the eleventh song on the album. While I would love for the product of such an unlaboured, organic writing process to be able to fill one of the three spaces in the list above, it will only ever fit as an epilogue to what is shaping up to be a collection of songs that I'm very proud of. Trying to put the reason for this into words is kind of difficult, but it's partly to do with the nature of Nothing Wasted, Nothing Gained, partly to do with the style and subject of this new song, and on an even greater, meta-level, partly to do with the relationship between these two songs. It's a decision that ultimately fits into that greatest of artistic reasons - it just feels right.

The reason why it's an unfortunate eleventh song and why I'm bothering with struggling to justify the new song's avoidance of one of the empty three slots is mostly to justify to myself the fact that this leaves three songs still left to be written; the reason why I even need to justify that is that I need to get this album written - I have a start date for recording.

Black and white is WAY more arty.

My good friend and long-time collaborator, Frank, is stepping up once again to play drums on the album and we're going to start tracking in early January. We're going to spend time with Joe doing some live rehearsals/tweaking sessions over the next month (especially since we're playing a rare collaborative gig on the 30th) to hopefully keep the final recording process as slick and natural as possible, as well as uninterrupted too much by on-the-fly re-writes or uncertainties. 

For this album, the recording process is going to be drawn out over a much longer period than before - the plan is that once the drums are tracked, we can spend a few days (or even weeks) wrangling the written bass line so that it doesn't miss any musical opportunities that present themselves in what Frank's played. That's the plan, anyway - I refer you to the golden rule of studio recording, which is that although preparation can make the process easier on the day, everything changes once you're in the studio.

However, one thing that is (nearly) always a given is that you'll probably only record songs that you've, you know, written. Hence why I'm kind of keen to fill those three gaps. I'll let you know how that goes.

YOU ARE UPDATE!

- Ben

Believe it or Not, That's Not Barry Chuckle.

Hi, my name is Ben and I've eaten fifteen pens at one sitting before.

I am very much feeling the Christmas love right now. Don't get me wrong, it's still very early to be actually celebrating Christmas, but it's never too early to start singing Christmas songs in front of around 10,000 people. That's what I was doing at the weekend - being part of the entertainment for Barnstaple's Christmas lights switch-on. I was part of a group of some very talented local musicians, who first got together last year to play for the 2010 switch-on, and had the best time doing it.

I want to be right here for Christmas

I'm lucky enough that not only is everyone involved in the group a very talented artist, but as a collection we get on so well; we've gone from being thrust together in the name of Yuletide to being friends, collaborators and, at times, emotional support groups to each other through the rest of the year. Being a part of this Christmas Crew represents everything I love about playing music - everything from taking a shitty Christmas song that I scribbled on a napkin a few years ago to the heady heights of being sung by a town-full of people, to mixing creative juices with other humans and seeing what comes out, to the near-psychic communication of performing live with long-time collaborators on stage.

Sure, the amount of time it takes to practice fifteen or so songs that aren't exactly ingrained in your memory (for eleven months of the year, at least) and the effort to stay afloat in the maelstrom of different artists' rehearsal times can get a busy boy down at times, but there's no question that it's worth it for that very short hour on stage.

Jackie and Ellie, two of the girls from our Christmas supergroup, are hopefully going to be collaborating on a song for the album, too - the song's currently called Go Team and it's loosely about a night we spent drinking and talking a lot of shit. I guess their input and eternally talented performances will mean that at least one song on the album is worth listening to :)

With the lights switch-on done, I can not only devote more time to finishing writing the album (six-and-a-half songs done so far), but also to road-testing the new songs at open mic nights and late-night shopping performances coming up (I'll probably be posting a load of guff as each one comes up so you won't miss it, don't worry).

It's nice that the stars seem to have aligned between not having to worry about too many serious things for a while (other than, of course, the everyday, mundane dramas) and feeling the creative urge off the back of being so festive.

It's also nice not to have to remember G Em A7 D7 for at least another few months. EDIT: Thanks a lot, Ellie. OK, starting from... now.

- Ben x

How Many Songs Make Five?

Hi, my name is Ben and I shoot lasers from my left eye (but not the right one).

Just to keep you posted, progress on the new album is going very well indeed - five songs have kind of coalesced into being ready to perform live, so with those five the real work starts now. Playing them over and over again in different ways - with a guitar and singing, playing them to an audience and singing (which is absolutely different), singing them out loud to a recorded guitar demo at home, singing them in my head with an MP3 player on the bus - helps me to figure out where the vocal melody eventually needs to end up. Playing songs so much before eventually going into the studio to record also starts to highlight where there's room for ad lib improvisation in guitar parts or vocal melodies, or even lyrics; it's much better to start to hear that stuff before recording and let some of it make it onto the record, rather than kicking yourself a week after mastering for only just noticing how a final chorus could have worked much better.

I think I promised you in an earlier post that I'd start naming the songs I'd written for ease of reference, so here goes: Big Enough & Ugly Enough is the song that Joe and I worked on before; Those Aren't Ants, Those Are Elephants is a kind of more subdued song at the moment (but who knows how it'll end up); In Remembrance of Fun is the result of a couple of different musical and lyrical ideas that I had floating around that work well when kind of mashed together; Nothing Wasted, Nothing Gained is going to be the album-closer, I think - it's a bit nostalgic, but in a totally awesome way; I'm Uneasy, Eleanor came together in about two days and is the newest of the songs - one of those tunes that practically wrote itself and I think it did a good job (you can see a very rough video of it here, if you like).

All of those titles are subject to change, I guess - and I might get a bit more secretive about album details now that I'm starting to move into the second half of the songwriting process, but who knows - I might get drunk and post naked performances of all of them one night - you can never be sure.

Anyhows, I'm looking forward to taking these five new songs for a test drive live - let's see how they go down.

YOU ARE UPDATE!

- Ben

In an Interesting Twist, Ben Talks About Himself on Video!

Hi, my name is Ben and I can recite all the words to Boom! Shake The Room.

The last few days have been fairly productive in Benji One Lung Land (although it's not great that that kind of contracts to 'Bland'). Firstly, I did an interview for Arts and Entertainment North Devon, a great website that's kind of a central gathering place for everything (as the name would suggest) arty or entertaining in North Devon. Talli Black wrote a very kind review of Ben Dies At The End for the website a little while back and I was asked to be the inaugural interviewee for a new video series they're going to host on the site.

No photo set is complete without me with my eyes closed.

I think the slot has the working title 'Three Minutes With...' and I look forward to seeing it take off with musicians who have much more interesting things to say (and much better hair) than me. If you like me talking a lot about me and a little bit about time travel, you can watch the interview here.

As well as being dashingly handsome on camera, I've broken the back of a couple of the songs for the album over the last couple of days. One, which I think will probably be the album closer, came together with lyrics really quickly and naturally - I sense it's going to be an effort to record, but hey - what hasn't; another is a more mellow track, about not feeling you have to be ordinary - the only problem with it so far is that it's a bastard to play and sing at the same time. That's not the end of the world, but it does slow down the writing process a little bit... when I can make the transition from 'writing' the song to just 'practicing' it, that won't be a problem any more. I hope. There're also a few lyrics floating around for a song that I've pretty much finished the music for; I feel like I'm finding my pace with the writing process, so things should hopefully move on quite consistently from here.

I'm off to lock myself away in Kent for a couple of weeks from this weekend, doing real-non-musical-life stuff. Supposed to be doing non-musical stuff, but in actual fact I should be able to spend a fair amount of time writing - I guess we'll see how that works out when I get back.

YOU ARE UPDATE!

- Ben

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