A frustrating day yesterday, unable to sing and practice due to the vice-like atmosphere, simply lack of my own space, yet, there is a lot I can do in relative silence. I made a list of the remaining things to record and refine, and worked on new tracks, trying to refine and complete the album structure. In the evening, I managed to record new vocals for a reflective song with tinge of sadness called 'Joey Deacon: The Best Spastic in the World', originally written in November 2013. I thought of putting this on YouTube or something, but for now it can simply be a spare song.
I also worked on the production to a new track called Back Where It All Began, a slow 1950s-style, lazy, late-night dancehall song, which would have tied together the New Wave 'Hitler in High Heels' and Teenage Dream.
Today began with monthly backups, then I totted up the time of the album so far and was amazed to find that the 12 tracks amount to 40 minutes, so, after all of the effort of building extra structure and preparing new tracks, I don't need them. The track list is finalised. I had written a nice song last night called In Love By Message, a song for the electronic-inspired mid section which would have linked to the literary song Incomplete Version Of The Writer, but I won't need either song, or Back Where It All Began, or any more tracks.
So the tracks are:
1. Hitler In High Heels
2. Teenage Dream
3. Eyes Of Pity
4. Be My Jesus
5. Passive Aggressive
6. Boring Ceefax Lift Music
7. The Misery's Hard To Take
8. Confidence In Kindness
9. Out Of Date
10. Ticka-Oh Ticka-E
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11. Always In The Morning
12. The Ones We Love
I've divided them up there because the first five have a sort of linked narrative, and the last six do too. There is an element of reminiscence and changing times to the whole album. The Boring Ceefax song is, for me, is a tribute to Jean-Michel Jarre because it keeps reminding me of Magnetic Fields Pt. 5 - though, to be clear, it's not a critique of it. Indeed Magnetic Fields is perhaps Jarre's best album. I'm sure that his track itself is an ironic self-parody, a mirror, like my track. Another Jarre link is my use of a coffee percolator at the start. I don't know why that should be a link, perhaps the Frenchness, but for some reason the sound of this machine in a piece of music really made me think of Jarre's music. I can't say more than that; in all good art there must be an element of the enigma.
Today I recorded the piano solo for Out Of Date, deliberately all over the place, and the 'epic' guitar solo (how I love this Yamaha Amp, and my BMG guitar!), plus a gentle acoustic guitar solo for Eyes Of Pity.
I also recorded the vocals for Teenage Dream, which are simple enough.
I wondered about making a soundproof booth. The trick with soundproofing is not absorption - that would merely collect and re-send the waves, but reflection or deflection. I wonder if two steel or ceramic plates facing each other would eternally reflect and dissipate sound?
