Friday 29th
I've been working pretty much non-stop all day, until about an hour and a half ago. I've got a big long list of Things To Do. I planned it out last night, and my life is booked up until mid-April. At least. I find that both intimidating and extremely pleasing. I have a lot of thoughts buzzing around in my head. Some new ideas.
I also have to do something that I really really don't want to do. And sometimes I'm an enormous coward. So I'm sitting here watching Nirvana videos and pretending it's not necessary.
I really have gotten a fair bit done today though. Been coding a lot. Done a lot of thinking. Been on the phone sorting out a trip for next week, which I'm both very excited about and scared shitless of. Which is absolutely the right way to feel about it.
Sampler cards arrived this morning, and they look just the way I'd imagined they would. Which is awesome. Also through the door this morning was a package from Mother - a magazine with a big picture of Noel Fielding on the front and a column by Danny Wallace inside. Sometimes it's the little things.
The flowers the label bought me after we finished the mixing are still pretty much as perfect as they were the day they arrived. Which is weird. Shouldn't they be dead by now? I think they might be zombie Germini. But I love them all the same. Once the mastering's done, I'm going to get a bunch of red ones to go with these orange ones. I never could decide which colour Germini was my favourite, but I love their big centres.
Tuesday 26th
Today was almost an extremely good day. I went out into the world and, as sometimes happens when I take the time to actually look around at the world rather than just hurrying through it constantly, I was amazed by the sheer volume of awesome shit all around me. I took a bunch of photos, got some vitamin D, generally had a jolly good time.
And then it all fell apart, quite quite thoroughly. And, for now, I'm not going to tell you why.
Tuesday 26th
I slept a lot last night. I may well have fallen asleep in the pub last night actually - jury's still out on that one. Boyfriend says I did, I say I was just resting my eyes.
It is a beautiful day outside, so my first order of business is to take some of the lovely new black and white film that just arrived in the post out into the world and make some new beautiful images for you guys. I shall also be taking with me the listening copy of the finished mastering, for to check it for level and gaps and general niceness. Got to play it through a bijillion systems and decide if I like the way it sounds, or if it still needs tweaking. And then, if it's all OK, it goes to the printing plant and comes back a couple of weeks later all shiny and real and in many many boxes. I have turned the other side of my guest room/darkroom/photography studio (women even have rooms that multitask) into a warehouse. There's a big pile of boxes waiting to be stuffed with cds and charms and prints and art cards and sent out into the world, and a pile of posters and poster tubes and elaastic bands. Soon to be joined by 10 boxes of beautifully wrapped cds. Whoop.
I shall not bore you with the thrills that is inland revenue registration and courses on business management. Suffice it to say, I am suffering for my art.
The preorders are continuing to mount up nicely. I have decided that a child's tow truck doesn't have enough pizazz and am looking into acquiring a small yellow plastic dumper truck and a 5 year old with an LGV license. Got to do everything in style.
Sunday 24th
Your paranoia is justified.
Hey folks. If you think I've been avoiding you, you'd be absolutely correct. I don't know why I have, but I have. I'm rollercoastering from joy to misery to nervousness and back again about 8 times a day. I'm spending all my days inside reading industry books and reasearching things on the internet, whilst also talking to the various reproduction companies who are making all the bits for this release, which I (along with some unexpected but gratefully received help from Boyfriend - he's quite good really) will be spending a few days putting together for you people. I spent a few hours the other day making the little card mailing boxes up from their flat packs, and another few making and labeling more charm envelopes. I hope you guys like it.
I'm not eating or sleeping properly again, and I am so concurrently negative and positive about the chance of this working out that my head is spinning, but I am being bolstered by wide ranging support, often from unexpected quarters. Preorders are mounting up nicely - I can see myself taking one of those little red toy tow trucks down to the Post Office the day that the albums arrive. The folks there will be deeply unimpressed, I feel. And I'm already shunned when I go in there for being underage. Can't have stamps until you're 45. For all Americans and other foreign entities: Brits, whilst being fairly lenient in their age of consent and legal smoking/drinking/gay marriage laws, are extremely protective of their stamps. It's understandable. It's got the Queen's
head on. Can't let just anyone touch them. We even have to take special training courses.
I've got Proper Business Things to do tomorrow. There's a consultant involved and everything. I quite like stepping out of the creative bohemian type and into the evil CEO role. I've always thought I'd look hot in a suit. I shall try to keep you updated better from now on. I just dont want to inflict my ranting/moroseness/overwhelming excitedness on the lot of you.
PS I think the line "Let's do what Mary and Joseph did [pause] Without the kid" is one of the greatest lyrics I've ever heard. I actually laughed out loud. It has knocked "I'll give back your pogo stick if you'll give back my wasted time" from pole position on the leaderboard. And it's been up there for 5 years. I am really getting into the album though - if you ignore some of the more ADHD production, some of the songwriting is really really interesting. < / review >
Monday 18th
Yesterday was a really great day. Really really great. Only had 5 hours' sleep but got up feeling light and happy. Beautiful bright sunshine. I got in the car, bought a Morrison's salad (my ultimate happy food - it's my equivalent of summer in a box), drove out into the peaks and climbed up one of the big rock formations that are scattered everywhere around this landscape. It was interesting - the sun was incredibly bright, so the rock surface was almost warm, but in the fissures in the rock there was white, solidly packed frost. It was like snow in the height of summer.
I went up to the top of the cliff - it's up pretty high, you can see a long way from up there - sat on the top in the sun and listened through to the whole album. Worked out the track listing. Felt kind of serene. Kind of. Except when the clumsy fat woman climbing across the rocks nearly fell on me. That wasn't so fun.
Drove home around sunset, finalised the tracklisting and shut myself in the dark room until I was so tired I could barely stand. Pretty good day.
Posters arrived this morning and they are gorgeous! Very excited for you to see them. Going to fix the tracklisting on all the artwork hopefully today and send the art cards off for printing.
Engineer is coming over later (probably for the last time) to finish off the last two mixes. And here, for your delectation, is the final tracklisting. Surprisingly, it tells my story is much better order than the tracklisting I tried to enforce upon it. Weird how things work out:
Mary
Burn
Can't Be Won't Be
Not Up To It
Blank Space
My Heart
Power Cut 84
Heroism
The Wall
Catechisms
Suburban Paranoia
I still don't know what tracks to put on the samplers. I'd be grateful for your suggestions.
Sunday 17th
I'm having trouble making a decision, and I need to talk it out with someone. Boyfriend is at work, Mother is asleep & would not take kindly to being woken in the middle of the night and no one is online. Well, no one who could help. So I am going to talk to you about it. You're very good listeners.
Here is the dilemma. The album is about two inches away from being finished. It feels complete. I feel like it's complete. I feel done. However, there are a couple of issues:
1. If it's complete now, it means Schrodinger's Cat isn't on it, because even though I now know what the arrangement is, I still don't have a decent recording of it. That's not a problem. It wouldn't take long to put it together, and it wouldnt need much mixing, so this isn't a time issue. The problem is this: I don't think it belongs on this album. I love it, I sing it a lot, but it doesn't fit. There's nowhere to put it. So the options are: put it on anyway and risk disrupting the whole thing; putting it on the next record; making it a B side; only ever playing it live.
2. If I don't put it on the album, that makes the album 10 tracks long (plus the hidden track). I am concerned that this is too short. I've been wading through amazon tonight looking up tracklistings for my favourite (and not-so-favourite-but-very-successful/critically-praised) albums to see how many of them have ten tracks. See if it's not just a bit weak. So far the fall is about even: most albums are 11 tracks, followed by 10 as the next most common, and then 12. The Eraser is only 9, as is The Disconnection. So I've been trying to convince myself that 10 + a hidden track is really 11 tracks. Not entirely successfully, but not failing either.
3. If I accept that 10 tracks (plus blah blah) is OK, is the album too short? I /think/ I've added it up correctly (you know how columns of numbers start to blur?), the album is 38:54 with the tracks totally back to back, 40:12 taking into account the 2 second gap between songs on a Proper Album and the 1 minute gap before the hidden track. Is that too short?
4. Where is my cable for my digital camera? I can't get my records of the EQ settings for My Heart and Burn if I can't find the cable. Grr.
I have just been given some very good advice from a friend. He's a good friend. He came with my on the mad dash from Derby to Nottingham for the "I must do this now, spur of the moment" nose piercing on ten minutes notice, despite not being dressed at the time. He once came over at 11pm to take the spider out of my bath so I could run one. And he's been very supportive about the whole album, even though I have quite regularly been a right grumpy cow at him. He thinks I should just fuck off out of here for a few days and clear my head. Somewhere away from the studio. I mean, this is the problem - when I'm at home (and I'm here pretty much 90% of the time, I reckon, working, eating, sleeping, watching tv, surfing teh web, spending time with Boyfriend, etc etc) I can't really get away from work ever. As I write this, my feet are up on my mixing desk and I'm trying to stop leaning back so far that I knock the master keyboard for the fiftieth time today. He said "go stay in a B&B in the peak district for a few days, clear your head". I might yet take his advice, on a limited level.
I really do think this album, as a project, or a being, or a journey, or an experience, whatever metaphor you want, is done. It feels whole. I guess I should just stop stressing and accept it.
What's really odd is, listening back to it, these songs don't feel like "songs what I have written and what are mine" any more. They feel sort of detached from me, but in a positive way. I guess they're yours now.
Saturday 16th
I'm in that slightly nauseous, slightly dizzy, i-really-need-some-sleep phase. But the body wont sleep. It's been staying up til 3 and getting up at 9 every day this week. Sigh.
I didn't rerecord Schrodinger's Cat today either. But I am determined to do it tomorrow. I have done a bunch of other stuff today though. lots of envelope gluing and research and stuff. I now have a list of 102 places I need to send out copies of the album once they're done, plus the preorders I already have. At least I know I'm going to move quite a few of them before they even get in the door, really.
I was very very excited this morning because a bunch of stuff I wasn't expecting til mid-way through next week turned up all at once. Plus I had a couple of nice phone calls this morning. And, best of all, the sampler issue is solved once and for all! And for a fraction of the cost I was being quoted. Which means I can give more stuff away to you guys. Whoop. Posters didn't arrive though.
I really want to get the art cards sent off for printing but I can't do that til I finish the tracklisting. Which is proving super difficult. As the artist and the producer I already have two very different sets of ideas about how the music fits together. Once you take into account bpm and keys and the fact that in my head every song is a different colour and I dont want to put blue and green next to each other, it proves difficult. I'm going to have a proper run at it once the Cat is in the bag. Hopefully tomorrow. And then I might make some more photo prints.
Oh, oh! Before I forget (don't get excited, this is not interesting), my bags that I ordered to put the big ltd edition promo packages in at gigs so that people dont have to juggle cds and art cards and the free poster whilst trying to drink booze, watch other bands and have fun. They are glossy red. Super glossy. I like them. I like red things. I'm worried they might be a bit girly for boys though. Perhaps there will be the nice bagged up version for girls who buy and a boy version where everything's just wrapped up in newspaper.
Friday 15th
I'm in that slightly nauseous, slightly dizzy, i-really-need-some-sleep phase. But the body wont sleep. It's been staying up til 3 and getting up at 9 every day this week. Sigh.
I didn't rerecord Schrodinger's Cat today either. But I am determined to do it tomorrow. I have done a bunch of other stuff today though. lots of envelope gluing and research and stuff. I now have a list of 102 places I need to send out copies of the album once they're done, plus the preorders I already have. At least I know I'm going to move quite a few of them before they even get in the door, really.
I was very very excited this morning because a bunch of stuff I wasn't expecting til mid-way through next week turned up all at once. Plus I had a couple of nice phone calls this morning. And, best of all, the sampler issue is solved once and for all! And for a fraction of the cost I was being quoted. Which means I can give more stuff away to you guys. Whoop. Posters didn't arrive though.
I really want to get the art cards sent off for printing but I can't do that til I finish the tracklisting. Which is proving super difficult. As the artist and the producer I already have two very different sets of ideas about how the music fits together. Once you take into account bpm and keys and the fact that in my head every song is a different colour and I dont want to put blue and green next to each other, it proves difficult. I'm going to have a proper run at it once the Cat is in the bag. Hopefully tomorrow. And then I might make some more photo prints.
Oh, oh! Before I forget (don't get excited, this is not interesting), my bags that I ordered to put the big ltd edition promo packages in at gigs so that people dont have to juggle cds and art cards and the free poster whilst trying to drink booze, watch other bands and have fun. They are glossy red. Super glossy. I like them. I like red things. I'm worried they might be a bit girly for boys though. Perhaps there will be the nice bagged up version for girls who buy and a boy version where everything's just wrapped up in newspaper.
Thursday 14th
Engineer has begun work on mixing The Wall, which he knows is the track that I'm really precious about. So I have been banished from the control room until he's done with what he thinks it should sound like. I'm only allowed back when he says. So I am tidying some loose ends and blogging, very very quietly.
This is the last track we need to mix from scratch, Schrodinger's Cat aside. I think I /might/ have an idea for fixing The Cat Problem without having to Import A Man. I think it may require being very bare. I really really am going to have a run at it tomorrow/Saturday/Sunday. I think I might even be able to mix it myself this way. We'll see.
Anyhow, hopefully, the album'll be totally done by this time next week. Eep.
Wednesday 13th
Eight movies in two days. But don't think I've been slacking - they've really only been on in the background whilst I sorted out a bunch of other problems. A pile more artwork has been finished & various logistical problems have been sorted. Finally. It's been a bit of an uphill struggle with some of them. I am currently writing a to do list for the next months. We're currently up to 26 main points. I'm sure it'll increase. & most of them arent small jobs.
I had really weird dreams last night. I dreamed the fish in my shoes had died. I had a very stressful time trying to organise 4 guys I'd never met before for a 5 song performance on live TV. And we only had one keyboard. And they wouldnt stop surfing the net. It was set in one of my stock scenes. I have a few. There's a big house with lots of rooms where people disappear easily and there are secret tunnels inside each fireplace. There's my old high school. And there's last night's choice - a weird old building which is now a college somewhere in Manchester. It's not somewhere I've been, I just know what and where it is. I'm sure you know what I mean.
Got to post office a lot today, but after that I'm going to take another run at schrodinger's cat before Engineer comes over to do some more mixing. Might try to work out the tracklisting if I have time, otherwise that's a big job for tomorrow.
Tuesday 12th
I know there's been a bit of a gap, but I've been regrouping. I had a bit of a meltdown last week. Now that I can see what this album is, and it has its own little identity in the artwork, I lost the ability to just write my little songs and decide whether they're good or not. It became "I don't know if this is good enough for "Body" - is this what "Body" is?". There came a point where I had to sit myself down and say "Yes, if you spent another 6 months writing, you'd end up with more and different tracks, the album would be different. But if you spent another 6 months after that, the same would be true. When is enough enough for you?" There's also this sense that, because I only have enough money to support myself writing this full time for this one album, that I can never write anything again. That this is my only shot. I've had to talk myself down from that ledge.
So Bold is done and is now called "Heroism". Almost everything is mixed. The mastering has been set up, quotes have been obtained for reproduction (and rethought and reobtained and rethought). I have to rerecord Schrodinger's Cat, which has hit a pretty big problem. It really should be a male-female duet, but I don't know a man with exactly the singing voice I'm looking for. I need something soft and deep and powerful, and he needs to really feel the track. I tried faking it with my voice mangler, but it turns out that me dropped down to a single male vocal sounds INCREDIBLY camp. And that just wont do. I want Trent Reznor. I think he might be busy.
Engineer is coming over for a mixing session on Thursday (and how else is one expected to spend Valentine's Day?). We're going to make a rush at The Wall and Heroism. In the meantime I'm going to have a rerun at some of the mixes I want to tweak a bit. Engineer doesn't enjoy redoing everything for tiny changes. Especially from my extremely inadequate notes.
I'm also going to rerecord Schrodinger's Cat. Hopefully it'll be done by the time he gets here. And that's it. I'm closing the book. Boyfriend and I relistened to everything on the album so far in one go and it didn't match the picture of it I had in my head. It was far far better. I have, as has been pointed out to be by a good blunt friend, a problem with not letting anything I do be good enough. So I think the time has come to let it be. And let it out into the world. And suddenly, I feel lighter.
Wednesday 6th
I think the album might be done.
Monday 4th
A couple of early nights later & I feel a lot better. Progress is being made on So Bold. Have spent a significant amount of time this afternoon trying to track down a very specific synth sound in my head. So far, I've narrowed it down to a tri shape with fairly heavy portmento, but I'm having difficulty actually finding it. I'll work it out. I still have two software and one hardware synth I haven't even fired up.
I think it's going pretty well. It's all still quite liquid, but it'll sort itself out. Feels so much better now that the studio's super tidy. `Cleaning it up felt like a rinse out for my brain. Anyway, back to it.
Saturday 2nd
Myspace is still denying me access to my blog update centre, so here I am again in the high tech world of html and plain text.
Today I feel really rough. Can't shake this tiredness. Might well go to bed real soon, though it's still pretty early considering. Was supposed to go to a gig tonight (clearly, not one I was playing) but I thought me driving was probably a bad idea. Was really really cold all day too. Maybe I'm coming down with something.
I'm panicking a bit, album-wise. I think I've just really lost confidence in myself, now that I know I'm down to the last phase. I refuse to put out something which is sub-standard, but I can't tell what's good or bad any more. I'm sorry, I don't mean to complain. It's just been a long day.
Schrodinger's Cat may or may not be complete now - I added some more vocal parts this afternoon to smooth out the transitions. Can't tell if it's any good. Can't really concentrate. Listening to the riff for "Stand Up" makes my head hurt (it are distortiony to the max), so I dug out So Bold again, and had a listen to my aborted rewrite which I'd forgotten I'd started. It had some interesting ideas. I /think/ I like the post-chorus vocal riff (can vocals have riffs? It's not really a melody, it's a bunch of harmonies). But maybe I don't like it, it's just that everyone else does, you know? Cos they do. I don't particularly like the song as it stands, but I can see the merit in that riff. So I'm going to attempt to write a new song around it. I'm going to try to change the colour from corn yellow to ice blue and white. I just have to work out the subject matter before I can do that. I think i'm going to try to do the whole thing using Proper Instruments (assuming drum machines count - you can't take my ER1 Mk II away from me!). So far I'm thinking mbira, guitar, perhaps some harp, [piano and/or CP70B] and very light th-ck noises on the drum machine. Like Mary, it may be a case of scrapping all the /music/ I wrote (as in instrumentation) and starting again. I didn't want to do that with Mary, but it was far far better with the new arrangement, so I may well have to just suck it. Most importantly, I need to clear up the studio first. Too much clutter makes it difficult for me to think.
I've been thinking a lot about Great Albums. Not necessarily the ones that make all the lists in NME or Q or whatever. The ones I consider to be the best albums I've heard. Boys For Pele, Homogenic, Give Up. Alongside your typicals: Jagged Little Pill, OK Computer, yadda yadda yadda. I'm relistening to some of them. I always remember them as these perfect boxes full of consistently great music. So far, that's just not the case. Each of them has dead weight (I forget how much I hate Pluto, Not The Red Baron with its ridiculously protracted intro, Clark Gable's lyrical faux pas which derails the whole thing for me from the beginning). But when I stop listening, I forget and the resonance is just this amazing piece of work. Maybe I'm being too hard on myself. Not that I'm comparing.
The right speaker is on top of the piano and the cabinet buzzes whenever the bass kicks in. It's driving me nuts.
Mum's coming to visit in a week. The plan is to have So Bold rescored by then. Yes. There is a plan. And if I accidentally write something else instead in the meantime, fine. All the better. Two tracks to go, sugar. It'll be ok.
Friday 1st
Myspaz has decided that It Doesn't Do Blogs today, so I'm posting this directly to the website.
Summary time! January has gotten a lot done professionally, though very little has been recorded. Obviously, We're up one track, which I've been fiddling with again today. Ideally, I think it should be a duet with a man. The male voice is like the one instrument I don't think I can do on my own. :/ We'll see. I edited The Wall today too - it's dropped down to 5:10 now, instead of 5:50, and is much much tighter. I think it's better. It's a hard one for me to be objective on.
Sorry, supposed to be summarising. Two sets of artwork have been shot, and a winner chosen, which I adore. Charms have been bought, paired with lyrics and pasted into tiny handmade envelopes. Badges and posters have been designed and printed. The art cards are done (though obviously there will be two or three more once the album has gained the rest of its tracks). The album is starting to feel very solid. Like it's becoming its own entity. I took my own promo shots using very basic editing software, a self timer, some black crepe paper and some concentration. Which basically means I learned to pose. In pretty dresses. Fun! I also discovered that digital collages can be a total pain in the arse. Especially if you forget to save.
I've researched and applied to a bunch of festivals. I'm hanging off from applying to venues on the basis that the unmastered tracks are quiet, but festivals have a deadline, so quiet samplers it is. I hope people are forgiving of that.
Website has been rewritten (TWICE!) and the myspace redesigned.
I have two gigs booked so far, and a few more look likely, and I've pre-booked my mastering. All I need to do now is finish the album and get the mixing done.
I feel very much that I'm on the home run. Peak of the rollercoaster. Currently looking expectantly up at the next climb ahead of me.
