It's taken an age, but finally we have a completed album. It's been a long process, and hastaken nearly a year, but today the very final touches will be made to the album by John Davis, mastering engineer at Metropolis studios in London. His touch will be the last in a list of genius touches made during the making of the record. No, really.
The first touch of genius was that of whichever band member it was that suggested that solitary confinement might be a productive idea. Not much more than a month after the suggestion, we were cooped up in Hoarstone cottage on the side of a sea-facing hill in the middle of nowhere on the Gower peninsula in November. For 3 weeks the weather did nothing much but chuck down rain and blast it at the 18th century farmhouse with gusts of sea air. The only escape was the local shop with its limited stock of piss-poor wine, and a collection of DVDs, the most played being The Inbetweeners. Bus wankers we were not. Cabin fevered wankers we were. We wrote about 8 songs in a little under 2 weeks, and about 1 song in the final week and a bit. But it was nonetheless a productive week, and probably the healthiest we've been, physically, if not mentally.
A week or two before going to Hoarstone we went into the studio to record As Darkness Calls, Plasticine and The City. All I remember from this is having much fun and not really wanting to leave. Part of the memory loss was due to insomnia, the cure to which came from a bottle of gin. A day after Hoarstone we went back into the studio for about 9 days. We recorded all the new tunes, ate many a pub meal, drank several bottles of Sailor Jerry's, and I nearly won £18 on the horses. During this period, the wizardry fountain of production knowledge and phone sex came from Tom Manning. He's only young, and he looks like the pre-pubescent lovechild of Arnold Schwarzenegger and Dragon Den's Peter Jones, but damn! he's got a soothing voice and gets the best from us. This was possibly one of the unhealthiest weeks we've ever had, physically speaking.
Come the end of January we were back in the studio. I cannot for the life of me remember what we recorded. It was all filmed, as were the sessions mentioned so far, but my harddrive has sinc crashed, and I neet to wait until the album has sold a couple of hundred thousand copies before I can afford to get the data recovered.
The rest of the year has seen the build up for the release. The album has been mixed by 3 different producers, namely Andrew Scheps, Chris Sheldon (Who also produced CCTV, When Fools Rush in and Let's Make Bombs), and finally - just yesterday in fact - Dan Austin. The artwork has been done by Tom Clements, a good friend of ours. It ties in with the theme of the album. Each song has it's own visual piece. It has good to be seen to be believed. Seriously.
Once I've recovered the data from my harddrive I'll post some videos up here. It's just a shame data cannot be recovered from my head. I'm sure there's some good stuff in there somewhere.
Aron
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