Part 13 of 18 serialised by Nuance, New Straits Times
30th October 2002
Another day of percussion overdubs with Lewis. I left it for Ronan to oversee while Shiori gave me a run down on the Japanese music distribution system.
Did I tell you that Shiori speaks Mandarin? No? Well, she does, and that’s how we converse. Anyway, the music industry in Japan seems to be even more oligopolistic than elsewhere. Shiori brought with her charts and reports describing the distribution system there. The number of middle man organisations standing between the label and the record buyer is crazy. It also explains why CDs are so expensive in Japan. But it’s never easy to get good distribution for CDs anywhere in the world, I guess.
Meanwhile, the music is going nicely with Lewis continuing to do simple and effective things. When he was done by late afternoon, I laid down some main guitar tracks. Then Bong the bamboo flute player arrived in the evening and laid down some flute parts. The flute was particularly effective in ‘Alive N’ Free’ – which is now even darker than I had thought possible.
I was exhausted after the session, but I promised to play at the Songwriters’ Round tonight, so off I went to No Black Tie after the session. The gig was good fun, but I was so tired I can’t remember much of it except that people enjoyed themselves till way past 4am.
31st October 2002
What a bad night’s sleep! Some wrong number guy woke me up at 8.30am. Lack of sleep and singing is a definite no-no in the studio, so any thoughts of sneaking in some main vocals today went out the window.
Anyway, we arranged to record backing vocals today with Amina and Sasha. Amina is a friend I met in No black Tie about a year ago. She has a pretty face and even prettier voice. My memory of her is of a late night jam when a friend and I backed her on ‘To Love Somebody’. It was a beautiful rendition that I still have the tapes to. Anyway, I called her a week ago and she graciously agreed to do backing vocals.
As for Sasha, she is a crowd favourite at the Songwriters’ Round and the owner of a dark, brooding and vulnerable voice. She has tons of potential as a singer songwriter and I hope she will continue to write and perform after she leaves KL for London in November. Sash is one of those writers/singers who is naturally gifted but completely unaware of it. She is also one of the nicest people I’ve ever met.
Anyway, poor Sash had a rough time last night at the end of Songwriters’ Round, where she was also one of the billed acts. Someone put before her a glass of Long Island Iced Tea and she’d been wobbling ever since. The first thing she said as she climbed into my car this morning was ‘how did I get home last night?’ Later, Ronan gave her a Panado as we settled down for lunch near the studio. She had plain soup and took things really slowly all day.
After lunch, Sash and Amina took turns to do their stuff. For the ending section of ‘Alive N Free’, we also introduced Shiori into the proceedings. Poor Shiori came into the studio expecting to laze about but instead found herself making up the numbers in the vocal booth. To be honest, we probably didn’t catch ‘The Long Island Iced Girls Choir’ on their best day on account of hangover, but what they were asked to do were very simple – and so we were able to be very relaxed about things. It was fun.
1st November 2002
Today, it’s finally time to seriously put some lead vocals on tape. Ronan set things up while I did my normal pre-sing routine – drink beer. To be honest I find it odd to drink at lunchtime but it hardly qualifies as suffering for your art.
It was always our intention to have my vocals ‘closed mic’ed’ in order to get a really intimate vocal sound – which means my mouth is no more than a couple of inches away from the microphone. So there I was, seated, headphones on, nicely relaxed in a pitch-black room. As the music for ‘Alive ‘N Free’ oozed darkly out of the cans and words I had written two years ago fell out of my mouth, I felt the alcohol take hold and reminded myself that good singing is not about range, chops or even pitch. Rather, it’s about moving someone, about singing as though you are not singing at all but telling your most intimate friend your happiest memory or saddest moment or darkest secret…
Before I knew it, it was over. I looked up. Ronan was staring at me triumphantly.
‘Let’s listen,’ he said.
We listened. The voice on tape did not sound like me. It was huskier than I remembered my voice to be, defenseless and naked. Ronan loved it. We ironed out a few imperfections and that was that. Including setting-up time, my first proper voice recording on the record had taken no more than half an hour. I was still slightly surprised by how smooth it had been when we moved on to our next song, which took a little under an hour. Then we moved on to the next.
This was almost too easy.
Now that we had some main vocals recorded, it is becoming clear that the record sounds like no other singer songwriter record I’ve ever heard. It’s got a really intimate feel but is at the same time rich and immersive. The upbeat songs chunk along with mild euphoria and the dark introspective ones are brooding and cinematic. The only two songs that seem not to work (yet?) are ‘The Red House’ and ‘Marianne Called’. ‘The Red House’ sounds okay, but seems to lack dynamics. ‘Marianne Call’ just somehow sounds ‘blocky’ and awkward. I’m sure we’ll sort them out soon though.
Anyway, there are 5 more recording days in the studio. The record is 90% done and I am at last feeling more relaxed about the sound. But first, a small matter of recording more lead vocals – and since we were on a roll, we decided to work tomorrow in spite of it being originally scheduled as an off-day.
Oh well, no rest for the wicked.