damp n drizzle august photos at TH

Wet grey drizzly damp greeted us yesterday when we paid our respects back at TH (treehouse) and ran our fingers along the dusty keybaords looking distinctly untouched and unloved since our decamping to brighton to finish the Wonderland ep. Anyhow here are some shots Paul took with his supacool digi camera whilst attempting a hyper-realistic ep cover :)

Gd evening y’all..

Its Friday night and the end of a long hard week (sigh sob sympathy..!) Been in the Brighton studio which is called 12A all hours working on and trying to finish our EP which has now 5 tracks on it. Seems to have a lighter more silvery feel than the album stuff we’ve been working on.. have a listen – this is a clip from the newest one ‘Teardropsfall’ .. it’s a bit messy but we got this amazing flautist called Charlotte Glasson (she sounds like her name!) in for a day and just piled tons of flute everywhere all over.. to be sorted out later! Anyway this song is really just a bundle of knotted threads..made up of glocks, old Kemble piano, rhodes, cymbals, pizz strings and double bass.. and .. flutes!

mp3: 'Teardropsfall clip'

We’re nearly finished so I can reveal the order:

Wonderland
Teardropsfall
35 Degrees
Nightbirds
Let it Roll

More later! Off to pick up the remains of my friday night…..

Welcome to Wonderland

We’re in our other studio in Brighton which we use to ‘finish’ stuff,
putting our EP together which is like a mini-album and is coming out soon..
Wonderland will be the lead track..
This was one of the first songs we wrote together at treehouse.. and it all started with a melody and acoustic guitar chords that Paul and I had and loved but didn’t know what to do with.. the chord structure is a circle of 5ths where the bassline goes down a 5th each time and ends up at the beginning. My first idea for it was a slinky bond-type theme tune or something but when I got to the treehouse I knew it had to be about me growing up and dreaming but being a bit scared cos that’s what the place made me think of..and well Alice in Wonderland was one of my favourite books.. so we put it down bare bones n all with a sketchy lyric whilst Mark jammed about on the Rhodes. This gorgeous thing has such a lovely magical sound – its soo big and old but has soul! We do loads of stuff with Rhodes – and now - well the other night - I found a totally rare 54 key rhodes which is smaller and more portable so we don’t have to break our backs lugging it up and down stairs at gigs anymore! look at this beauty here!
Anyway the song aint finished here cos we wanted a ‘Brighton’ element in our songs.. being originally from South London and seeing Brighton from the outside gives me a real feeling of escape and freedom.. So after our sessions Mark went away and out of the blue came up with a whole orchestral piece based on an oom pa pa marching band theme with trombones, flutes and strings etc..

mp3: 'Wonderland' clip

This totally blew us away and also made me think of the Salvation Army (there was a HQ in my high street where I grew up), and The Mummers Parades in Philadelphia..
This awesome (well I think so!) piece of work became a yardstick by which we measured all our other songs (do they live up to it??). It took ages to record live.. heres some pics of the players:

Pics of the Treehouse

Treehouse

We started writing it with Mark at the treehouse studio near Brighton nearly 18 months ago where we were inspired by the surroundings (lots of pine tree woods, countryside and sea!) and the atmospheric ram-shackle studio that he had stuffed with old keyboards and percussion. We didn’t really have any pre-conceptions as to how it was going to be but just decided to see what came out.. tho I had bundles of lyrics and bits n bobs of half-written songs from years previously (one of which I spent totally at the piano teaching myself how to ‘write songs’ as opposed to my normal method of closing my eyes, blanking out and singing a load of gook). Mark and Paul just went instrument hopping in their new candy shop and we recorded a load of ‘jams’ which became the foundations of our sound..