Time.
It’s a funny thing isn’t it?
I’ve always found it incredible how I can listen to a piece of music one day and like it, and then not like it….. only to “rediscover” it some time later and think “Oh WOW! This is amazing!”.
I’m like that with songs that I have written. Hypercritical of pretty much every aspect of the song that I’ve had any input into and don’t even start me on my own playing on these tracks….. I always think that I should’ve played something differently, been a little more “showy”, or something…. without ever knowing what that elusive something is.
Last week as I was teaching I needed a play along for a student and as per usual, searched my phone (which I have to use as my iPod died a couple of years ago) and found the old demo tracks for an album I helped write some years ago.
For a giggle, I thought I’d put them on and was struck by the fact that I quite liked them still. Granted, I’d not listened to them for a while but even so, I still enjoyed listening to them again.
The album (which you can download for free – link at the bottom of this blog post) was conceived by a wonderful guy called Phil and myself many years ago. The songs were written over the course of a couple of years and we gigged them, recorded them, changed them, rerecorded them, some of them across three albums until we were happy we had the “definitive” version.
The final recording that we did was engineered, mastered and generally made pretty by Spencer, our lead guitarist and sonic master. In his own words Spencer said:
“….I found myself returning home after finishing my degree eager to start a new project and felt then was as good as time as any to see if I could do some justice to the music and get it recorded. Whilst we had managed to get a few tracks recorded at earlier points they were “live” sounding albums put together over a day or so and I really wanted to spend some time recording the tracks properly and as professionally as I could manage from my project studio at home.
Progress was good at first but then we started running into problems – the biggest being my motivation to actually continue the recording. I found I really had to force myself at times to continue with the project and this led to long periods of nothing happening between recording sessions. On top of that we started to have technical problems including having to re-record a bunch of tracks, twice, thanks to my inability to record the tracks at a correct setting and then having the hard disk melt down without my suitably backing it up. Afterwards there were various other PC failures/crashes that seemed determined to stop me making any progress.
Eventually I got a bit more momentum and motivation back and we made some real progress over the last 2 years with recording. I was then diagnosed with cancer last year and it ended up being a real kick up the butt to get it finished. My recent terminal diagnosis proved the final this must be finished and finished now and so 5 years, 8 months and 27 days from when I started, I held the final mastered CD in my hand ready to share with the world.”
The drum parts were all recorded over a weekend on a Roland TD-8 Kit via midi and then put through Superior Drummer for the sounds. All of the other parts were recorded in various locations over the five years, and the songs were written & gigged in some even more interesting locations! Front rooms, pubs, rehearsal spaces that have since been demolished, stages that no longer exist, relationships that have come and gone, relationships that never were, friendships that have ended, friendships that have begun. All of these elements are present in these songs, because these songs are a snapshot of our lives.
To find out a little more about the albums recording and to download it for free please go to https://thelosteskimos.wordpress.com
And if you like it, feel free to tell me what your favourite track is! I’d really like to know……