I was in DERBY on Wednesday, back in the pleasant surroundings of Snug Recording Co to do a whole HEAP of overdubs on the ever-approaching new Validators album.
Myself and Mr R Collins had a VERY productive day. Here's what we did, in LIST format:
Added UKULELE to the middle section of That Guy and then put some LEAD GTR in the instrumental breaks to go along with the violin.
Added ukulele to History's Rewritten, got Rich to add some keyboards, and double-tracked the vocals. Here's a picture of Rich trying to cope with me going "Make it go da da DA! da DA da!"
Made it sound like Tom was duetting with HIMSELF on The Future Is Amazing on PICCOLO!! This sounded INCREDIBLE and may be the most BRILLIANT thing Rich has achieved with his technology EVER. I was impressed! Also I added the phrase "In the future" to the start of the song (VITAL) and put down a guide vocal for when Emma does her vocals, for LO! it is a DUET!
Double-tracked some vocals and added a GTR SOLO to Burn It Down And Start Again. Both of these took a while due to my RIGHTEOUS IRE and definitely not because vocals and gtr soloes are things I'm not very good at.
Did the vocals for In The North Stand. This song OFTEN gets to me, emotionally speaking, and this time was no exception as I suddenly remembered that one of my oldest PALS has a LAD whose Grandad was also a Posh fan and I managed to WELL UP a bit. Curse you, Emotional Song!
Luckily Mr FA Machine had arrived by this time so was able to lighten the mood somewhat with a) COMEDY WHISTLES and b) taking over recording duties. He was there primarily to play a bit of trumpet, but I'd realised that I could also get HIM to record some parts that were too difficult for me, so this is what he did:
Recorded the trumpet solo for In The North Stand. "It's got a musical joke in it!" he declared proudly. He spoke truth!
Added guitar to Can We Be Friends? "Make it sound more indie!" I said, and he did exactly that. It's so much easier doing overdubs when you can get people in who can actually PLAY their instruments, rather than spend an hour failing to do it yourself. I am basically a 21st Century BRIAN WILSON in this regard.
Did a similar guitar overdub on (You Make Me Feel) Soft Rock. The three of us spent a while debating what STYLE he should go for - Bon Jovi? Status Quo? Or Queen? In the end it was None Of The Above.
With all THAT finished we had a quick check to see if he needed to add something to We Did It Anyway (he didn't) or if I needed to add something to Get Over It (I didn't) and then that was THAT. An extraordinarily succesful day's recording DONE!
We said our farewells to the ever patient and delightful Mr Collins then headed out for a gentle stroll through some of the many many delightful pubs on the way to Derby Station, during which Frankie told me some EXCITING and REVOLUTIONARY news about HIS new album and we agreed on MANY issues, musical AND political. After finishing up at The Brunswick (it would be rude not to) we hugged our goodbyes and I set off back for London, happy in the knowledge that, though there's still a couple of things still to do, the new album is a) well on track and b) sounding GRATE!
