it didn’t take me too long. Here’s the MARCH track, again - FINALLY. It’s been a pretty busy month in more ways than one or two so sorry - to myself more than anyone.

This is by far the most love/hate of them. there are parts i adore and parts that grate but such is life.

Here’s the sound listing for your leisurely perusal -

I have to mention one sound that i love but couldn’t use because it was too quiet. I found it in the kitchen at work whilst preparing umpteen cups of stimulant for my obviously hard working colleagues and the strip light kept buzzing and ‘tinging’ on and off - it’s was quite rhythmic in an irksome way but dammit, it was too quiet and sounded awful whatever i did with it. bah.

the next one is a massive CHEAT. I did some recording in March with the band, Mr. Heart, with whom I’ve the great pleasure of playing bass. I very cheekily recorded Helen hitting a snare on the initial sound check. If it’s any consolation (to me it’ll do), it distorted really badly and only just resembles the actual sound.

The next one, and the most obvious in the track is the intricate church bells. I picked them up on tour in a Holland with my live band having just filled myself with what was described as a ‘super-burger’. It was actually one of tastiest burgers I’ve had the privilege to encounter. The architecture in Holland is incredible - new and old - I’ll stick a picture of the church in question on here in a bit. The bell chorus on the hour in most towns is really pretty but without being sinister - which is always encouraging. 

The next bit formed a few of the really biting samples. Like the trance style stabs that come in about a minute through. This is a recording of a band in Amsterdam. We had a show there and arrived at the venue having already dropped off gear and had a welcome  shower and a horrible burger. Apparently hardly anyone there was expecting us. We were supposed to be cancelled as out the back of the venue a fun-fair had been erected and was in full flashing/pinging/slot-machine/puking swing - in the midst of which an album launch show was going on for Kiki - the venue owner’s girlfriend. We had little idea what was going on, or if we’d be playing a show at all, so we checked out this Kiki. Hmmm - not my thing - but i took a recording of it and on the bright side, we got to play. Yeah, we definitely played. 

A funny thing - and I’ve just realised this - I found a recording that I’d made that stretches on for well over 2 hours and it confused me when I initially tried to record it in but I’ve only now figured out what it was. We played another show in a town called Pijnacker near to Rotterdam - it was the best show of the tour and so, naturally we got stupidly drunk. The night I staid with a very generous man from the one of the other bands that had played that night. We arrived at his house at stupid time in the morning to find a little villiage of guneapigs in his living room. About 7 of them were rolling around making that squeaking clicking noise - so I tried to record them which scared them all away but I left the recorder running - so I’ve a recording of me and my drummer slipping ourselves into sleeping back and sleeping for 2 and half hours. Fascinating I know.

The next one provided the majority of noises. It’s literally a last ditch attempt to pick up SOMETHING so i could make this track. So, on our way to catch a train to catch a plane from Amsterdam airport, I just recorded the walk. Bycicles - my favourite - come in about 30 second in or so. The sound of cars passing, a horn being hit and everything you might expect of a city - but it was Amsterdam. It definitely WAS NOT Manchester.

And the final one - there isn’t much here at all really - is a sampling of a fun game that my bassist devised while we sat, back in Manchester, in the pub, having just got home. The game comprised of sitting a beer mat on top of a close-to-empty-pint glass (which terrified us to the gut after the just-over-half-pints we’d enjoyed in Holland - just enough, like a finger of fudge - we are greedy English people) - and then simply flicking the beer mat off. The suction makes a noise as you flick the mat so I recorded it. What a great game that was.

So yeah - an eventful month but not much has gone into the track purely because it was SUCH an eventful month. sod it

x