I Don't Want to Hear it

Long Time Coming - sorry no action for a while, please enjoy a short instrumental burst which came out of me wanting to write and record something completely new (i.e. not one the ideas I have been trying to scrape a song out of for the last 12 months).

Unwelcome Visitors (or 3-Step Dream) - A new demo, I probably spent about 2 weeks trying to get the arrangement/feel/structure right, at one point it was in 5/4, it had a 4/4 chorus. In the end I decided to go for a piano ballad. The guitar section is more than a little inspired by Neil Young (I saw him in January - it was incredible), my current technical limitations mean I can really only get a really nasty electric guitar sound like that. The end section is less Baroque-y than I had originally envisioned (the right ear is Bach, the left ear is more like Filmore Jive by Pavement). The lyrics are supposed to be a bit more abstract - the song being about recurring dreams and such. If you listen to this with headphones quit loudly you can hear the birds singing outside. 

Red Road - Another song for Endless Country. This was one of the main songs I had in mind when I was thinking about what the album should sound like. The lyrics are inspired by the kind of galloping western feel of the chorus and after I wrote the final set of lyrics two days ago (14.12.08) I realised there was more than a little of Cormac McCarthy’s ‘The Crossing’ in there too (which by the way is so far my favourite of his books, i highly reccommend it and the whole Border Trilogy). The title comes from driving around in Australia - all the dirt roads are this bright red clay colour, which mutated into another aspect of the ‘Endless Country’ image. I just googled the name and not only is it the name of a film, but its also the name of big skyscrapers in Glasgow, which is I suppose why the name popped into my head, maybe-maybenot. Enjoy the song

Artemis (Take 1) - This song started out in my head as a melody for strings, after a while the melody for the words came too. Initially I wanted a really big cinematic production, but it never really came together. Then I figured out a guitar version, but wasn’t that bothered about that either. Today I just decided to make a completely new guide track to work from (which would be recorded over later), I used a new keyboard interface that I got for Xmas and did it live. For some reason this version just seemed to do what I wanted for the song. The strings part isnt there, the melody is pretty free-form and some of the lines are ad-libbed. The song itself is even about how things turn out different from how they were meant. While this couldnt be considered a final version, I think its kind of cool. 

Big Dream - This is a song that has been floating about all year which I just put the finishing touches on. I started with this latin riff - dangerous territory, latin can very easily become cheese (see most of Josh Rouse’s Subtitulo ), hopefully I avoided that. The aim for vocal performances for Endless Country has been to sound as feminine as possible. At the same time I had to try and make sure I didnt completely rip off Radiohead. Hopefully you will agree I have arrived somewhere which is satisfyingly in the middle - I was really pleased with the way it turned out.

Note - all the sounds on this song are either guitar or my voice (albeit with loadsa effects)

Life on Water - A demo for Endless Country. I did it this morning (24.11.08) having finally written the words on the plane over to Adelaide this weekend. I was feeling very limited by technology this morning, in my head there were a lot of warm noises going on, which isnt easy to do with an incredibly noisy computer. Still, as a demo, the job has been done.