Art

How it All Went

Tuesday, february 6th 2002, Day 2

Waiting on the computer… I'd imagine we'll be doing a lot of that. The novelty of having a grand piano leads to renditions of richard marx songs to while away these times. We are in ridge farm studios in the english countryside, south of london. Big sprawling tudor (I think) gaff, with barm as studio…lots of dark, knarled beams of wood and uneven floors. We arrived yesterday and bagsed rooms, dragged around mats, set up, got a bit lost in which snare drum/ride cymbal? Land. This room sounds great, we're all set up in it, and I'm typing on the computer that most of brian's sounds now come from…we'll see about that. We've been playing "rockridge", and are using a click track that is a disco beat, to "buzz" off. The microscopic detail that you start hearng sometimes is insane, I now actually love my new hi-hats, they're all blondie, telvision, patti smith…yes!!!…or is that just me.

Sat down this morning and compared the differences between recording onto various tapes, or whether we should just record straight onto a computer. Paul was very afraid that he'd pick the computer out of the three options. He didn't. Hmmmm. Am very aware of not just ranting on about gear, and having this page ending up sounding like a 'sound on sound' esque techie magazine. Maybe I'll give a running commentary on what we get for meals. Yeah, I'll be good at that. Dinner, Day 1 : We didn't do starters. Main course : spaghetti, chicken in a tomato based sauce, we had salad (featuring olives and avocado … YES!!!) and garlic bread. Desert was a lemon cheesecake. We all ate too much. Oh yeah, … Dave doesn't like fish apparently. Did he already mention that? Burp.

Thursday 28th february, day 4

Recorded "real palm trees" yesterday …at one point wanted to huff and puff and blow the fucking house down,… had a lot of technical delay things, and were pulling the song in different directions, brian & i…in a kind of arms folded chest out with our backs to each other and scowling fashion…get the puss off ya! Did a lot of listening in the control room feeling it wasn't doing anything for one, and were brought back to life somehow…don't really know what it was, maybe the communal pissing and a shared love of the movie "amelie"… Had my first bidet today

Invented another new game today … 'Ignorance pool'. There are time limits and arm punching involved. Best played before dinner when your 'angry hungry'.

Recording of DAYBREAK today…day four. Behaviour beginning to sway skew-ways already at the back of the control room…worrying after only 4 days. Enjoying the food still….leaving the dinner table without cleaning up…this must be where the delusions of grandeur begin, at the studio dinner table! Woke up with a bleedin' bangin' head ache this morning…..we've been enjoying the smooth taste of Japanese beer…maybe too much….along with the other fine consumables not always available to the average Eireannach! Some strange freudian slips last night, while under the influence….I better not say much more….Brian may want to break it to his folks first….maybe it was just an innocent mistake. He does hide quite vehemently behind pointed finger at Dom regarding the sexual preference of oneself! What must prison feel like…knowing it doesn't end after 2/3 months, not being fed super food, not having an album you can always play your grandchildren, God knows what format they will be hear ing it on then. Over and out…for now

Monday, march 4th Day 8

Day off yesterday, trecked into london for our dinner…feeling a bit dirty for having abandoned this place for the clattery train, packed scowling underground platforms, chain french restaurant. Two more songs last week, "In Every Sunflower", "I'll see your heart, and I'll raise you mine"… Played a bit of 'chase the demo' with the former, we had recorded it in a house in wexford with a single mic in the room that captured something there was little point in trying to recreate, but that didn't stop us…,eventually stopped banging on about it and made a new one. We have a recording of "see your heart…" that we really like already, so we tried a few different things with it…Venus in Furs it was at one point. So, watched Withnail & I and Trainspotting last night, had a head and neck massage…oh, sweet haysus

Tuesday, march 5th, Day 9

Alphabet soup, old way or new way?? It starts with bangin house beat, belligerent guitar, singing… touch and go, could go either way…excited… we played it all day yesterday, rooting through the drawers, finding stuff. It ends with a rant of "what's that you're saying to me, tomato coded spagetti?", and I want a crowd of children shouting "she's behind you!" and "oh no she isn't!"…maybe Dave just asked me to say that he won a game of pool. He beat jamie, our bedfellow for this record…he says hi too. Today we also made "here she comes", which went from guitar song to piano song, …I fucking love it…we were, for a brief moment, Aretha Franklin…bass, drums and piano… "…before I put on my make up…" These are the moments, a good day. Banoffi for desert. Now watching angela's ashes…jesus it's grim, they're on about consumption now.

thursday 7th march Day 11

now listening to takes of "starry", waiting for The One… in this one thought is definitely the enemy, so what I'm doing now is probably bad… but fuck it. We're saying things like "the transition to bridge is a bit weird there isn't it?", and "the choruses will be alright when the ooohs are in"…we struggle to communicate things through the lame and inadequate medium of language, we argue and pull strops and intellectualise from high above about why one thing or guitar or approach is better than an other, we make up stories and statistics to undermine the other's position, we refer to records or colours we know the other person likes , saying "that's where I'm going with this, don't you see??!" and it's all just a question of taste. I prefer it because I prefer it.

Saturday 9th march Day 13

There is a dog here called "biscuit", a golden retriever I think. He has mastered the art of successfully begging for food at the table, with those melting brown eyes. He is ungrateful, though…not half an hour after I gave him some of my dinner, he was barking at me outside as I enjoyed the sunshine and he lay in the shade of the porch

Tuesday 12th march Day 16

Listening to Bowie's hunky dory… the best in theatre. Must turn and face the strange. How did they get that drum sound? Is all that singing double-tracked? and those acoustic guitars, mon dieu… Does it ruin it a little know ing it was rick wakeman who played piano? …can you imagine being around when this came out… Did a song called "cinderella marcos" recently, started with guitars that sounded like "is she really going out with him?", in fact was known as that before i was visited in the night and told of a girl who was doing the rounds of charity balls, leaving hastily before midnight and leaving one of her many thousands of shoes behind her, in the hope that someone will come and find her.

Thursday 14th march day 18

We're doing "eve, the apple of my eye", and It's been a bit of a head fuck so forgive me if I crawl up my own arse. Jamie is sticking two takes together and I can't really bear to watch, so I'm down here doing this. It's a really old song for us, and appeared in one shape on an ep called "the perfect height for kicking" we had with us while we were touring before the first record came out. In fact it's one of the first songs juniper had, then called "never". I think we're afraid of it been too cloying, too wrenching to ring true, too overstated… could be that we're scared of the ballad factor, dunno. We've tried a completely different thing with it, …there's a record by OP8 with Lisa Germano that's gorgeous and broken, and we tried it in the spirit of a song from that, which was crowbaring the song into somewhere it didn't really want to go. We've just done the song again…(sorry, brian just handed me an irish coffee, christ we're such ould wans!)…and I think it'll be ok. I'm hearing it through the wall…

In the garden, snake was a charmin'

Eve said let's give it a try

Oh lead us not into temptation

But eve is the apple of my eye

monday march 18th, day 22

home for a week, ah the emerald isle, ...carnival looks like a good laugh.

a week off, maybe see some of you at the phantom gig on sunday

tuesday march 26th Day 22

back in england, in london this time for singing and shaking and piano and guitars. stuff. Played the music centre in dublin on sunday night and loved it. We were the flakes who turned up without any gear, so thank you to turn, the future kings of spain, hopper and mundy for lending us their stuff. All credit to the lasses from phantom for organising it, ‘twas a triumph. Flew back to england monday morning, all a bit fucked, so yesterday was a bit of a wash out. Dom went jogging this morning. ?!. It was a joy to play the other night, we hadn’t played since before christmas. Bit scared, voice gone and neck seized up after half an hour of a gig, need to self-improve....
We’re recording bits for “next to you”, shaker, bells, piano in a no diggity style.
acoustic hip hop it is apparently.
we’re in a studio called the fallout shelter in chiswick. It’s a beautiful day, and as the name indicates, we’re underground with no natural light.
Must get out of the office, and into the sunshine.
p.

wednesday march 27th Day 23

listening to dom and dave singing “here she comes”...they are the soggy bottom boys, mad sound

thursday march 28th Day 24

brian has just told me to go write some self righteous shite on the webpage about my refusal to sit there listening to him go through fucking sounds....so here it is.
so we’re doing rockridge, and he’s doing a synth bit in the chorus....”shall i use the juno?”, he says, some noise ensues. “or shall i use the mini-moog?”... more noise.
fuckin deadly.
so it’s good friday tomorrow, when ireland is swept with the terror of no gargle...oh, jaysus.
we however are in the the land of the heathen oppressor, and will be able to purchase said gargle at our leisure.
ah, good friday....purple cloth covering everything in the church, except for the windows of delight that bring us the stations of the cross.

brian now making great noise with computer, fully, totally metal.
lots of synth action on this record, helium for the balloon that lifts a heavy heart

monday, april 1st, Day 28

Well now....where do we start. Very different vibe here in the Fallout to ridge farm. There isn’t the great outdoors at your disposal...space to kick a ball...take a stroll through the feilds and romantic woodlands. The exhileration of trying to score with a straying sheep on the way home from the boozer.
The studio that we are in now is in the basement of the record company. To some it may stink of ball and 12 foot chain (to upstairs) and a way for ‘the company’ to keep a close eye on us!! But no... It wasn’t uncommon in the days of yore that the artists on whatever label, would record in the companies own studio...The Beatles in Abbey road...run by EMI. Bob Marley and the wailers...here at Island etc......and now Bell X1....and we’re allowed to make tea and coffee whenever we want aswell.
The house engineer ‘Steve’ was telling me that there is a ghost in the building. Two guys from one of the bands that have been here were talking by the open door of the studio...sitting down...facing each other. All of a sudden the both of them stopped dead in conversation, turned theirs heads and looked out the door at the same time. One said to the other....’did you just see a little black girl out the corner of your eye’ ...’yes I was just about to ask you the same thing’....Steve reiterated this to me as a seperate incident to an identical one that another person experienced! They too saw this little rasta girl!! Ah! but Jaysus...we’ll be fine. We have the ghosts of Daniel OConnell and the boys with us to protect us in our quest.
Some heads calling round in a minute. Gonna go out somewhere for din dins. The man they call ‘the Hopper’ and maybe Dave and Karl Odlum. Not sure yet...but we’ll have the craic.
Happy april fool’s day

saturday April 6th, day 33
trying to keep some kind of idea of what’s going on in the world, feel really isolated from Camp Davids and The Champions Leagues’s and the likes,
And we miss our mammies.
Spoke to my mammy tonite.
She’s being one of the census ladies at the moment, calling to your home and asking how many and how much and stuff. She’s doing it near home, and wasn’t she up at Niamh McGlynn’s last night and got all the news.
Niamh is an artist in Galway, well for most of the year anyway. Her paintings were all over the house, and they were very good. Her brother daire, who i used to hang out with, is out in australia, and is coming home for their sister fiona’s wedding. Oh yeah, fiona mcglynn is getting married in may. My mammy and Niamh shared a laugh over a friend of Niamh’s that i had a thing with (?!, aged 10 1/2). Her name is Faith. She too is out in australia, with her fella who she’s going steady with now for two years, and she too is coming home for niamh’s wedding. Faith’s sister Sophie is in london now, married. And she’s only 24. Then my mammy was at Ciaran Dunne’s there behind us, who has had a gorgeous baby boy, justin... oh christ does she want a grandchild.

i love my mammy.
p

tuesday april 9th, day 36

bob marley used to record in this studio. The room where the playing and singing happens is quite a small one, so for room reverb kinds of sounds, they used to stick a mic up an old chimney which is is the hall between this room and the control room, leaving the door open from the live room, so the singing goes up this very tall, mill type chimney. So Bob’s glory would fly around the room, up the chimney and out into the world, like wisps of smoke which undoubtedly clouded the studio from time to time.
So we’ve been doing a bit of the same, singing and clapping just under the chimney for songs like “snakes and snakes” and “next to you”, all of us standing in this narrow, no-lit hall like schoolboys with headphones, excited and kicking each other.

there’s a song that was callled “five eight six eight” that we recorded in ridge farm, and we’re putting words and that sort of thing to it now. It’s metal...well, sort of. A fast song, in fast song/slow song language. I think i used to be a bit more “we must preserve the song which i have so painstakingly crafted at all costs!”...”man, i’d take a bullet for the song”. I like the fact that songs can form by flinging paint around for a while, letting it settle, scraping some off, photocopying it, scrunching it up. Sometimes they can be flung in the bin, but’s it’s a more vibrant and inclusive thing.

cooking for ouselves these days, after being very fucking lazy the first week and eating out all the time, although we did find this this great place that’s greasy spoon cafe by day, thai restaurant by night. Someone should do that in dublin, maybe they already have.
it was brian tonite. Pork chops in orange peel and ginger for the meaters, poached eggs on a croissant with parmesan for the veggies. What a wanker.

thursday april 18th, day 45

so we’re working on alphabet soup, trying our hardest... we have a version that’s whole band in from the top, head down, see you at the end style, and we want to record it how we do it live, with house kick drum and acoustic for starters, joined by spanish guitar and then electric, then band in after first chorus...finding it hard to make sense.
we have a piano doing a kind of rinky dinky bar-room we’re at the movies in blackpool in the forties and there’s an oul fella playing it before the main feature kind of way.
we have a banjo playing the riff at the top, with the spanish guitar.... we have a distorted acoustic playing a different riff all the way through, doubled by the banjo at times, which we all got very excited about last night, and there was dancing.
now we have two chimey electic picks that start the song, and dave is fixing an amp in the next room that’s farting through the wall

it is all, at this point, mixed up in a bucket, as mr. creosot would say, but there is room for a wafer thin mint.
we go home for a while on sunday, which is good...we’ve been here for a month now, and need to not do this for a while.

We’ve recorded 18 songs, ...and dave has a mohican

friday may11th, day 52

back in your arms again....is this this how it should be?....all these knees and elbows, were airbrushed out of my dreams....

so we have a trumpet player and a trombone player in today, steve and andy, who also plays flugelhorn. It’s a real buzz to have people come in like this, especially a slightly eccentric breed of classical musician...”a whisker sharp!”
We’re trying to explain a feel for an unashamed big mountaintop glory moment in “eve, the apple of my eye” and brian is waving his arms about, overexcited.

we had margaret white, who plays with sparklehorse and regina hexaphone all the way from chapel hill, north carolina , come in and play some violin and sing,... and we hired a vibraphone for the good times it brings

so it’s like playtime after some serious swimming

seeyis

oh, if anyone know where to get dreamweaver for free on the interweb, please let me know...apparently our free trial period has run out

p

tuesday may 28th, day 57

we’re at the smoothie making phase of the record, a critical time...if anyone has any recipe suggestions please let us know, ...feeling a bit festive for some reason, walking down chis-wick high road has a kind of we’re-on-holiday thing, and sure there’s a marvellous stretch in the evening...

we got back here yesterday after another two weeks (it was to be one week...) at home, most of which was spent carousing, thinking we were to come back at any minute... we’re mixing, so we have an entertainment systeme set up in the live room, with nice mood lighting, where we’ll gather around the piano for patriotic gombeen singing before the football.

we have a big irish flag on the wall. we have stupid hats. sad about roy.

p

thursday may 30th, day 59

we’re mixing “i’ll see your heart, and i’ll raise you mine”... dunno what to say, we’re about to have a moment...it’s 1.30am, and we’re all in the control room about to listen to what we’re thinking is it done, having an irish coffee, which has become a bit of a tradition, darling.
Thank you to margaret who played violin and to olly who played cello for the smiles.
it’s been a wierd day, woke up feeling shit, came down to the studio and ate a strawberry, puked in the bin...yes, messed about on the piano with a song called “i was born under a mobile phone mast”, met a man who’s just adopted an 8 year old boy whose parents are dying of AIDS.... feeling guilty for wallowing
Loving the song we’ve done, it’s good to be here.

today’s smoothie was just a simple ould orange, banana, and strawberry.
Jamie has trouble with the orange.

Read an eye opener (for me anyway) of an article at www.monbiot.com about how monsanto and other biotech companies hire pr companies that orchestrate postings on various message boards trying to discredit scientific findings about the dangers of fucking with the foodchain, and how they set up bogus consumer awareness groups that endorse the practice.

p

saturday, june 14th 2002, day 70

watched the england game today in a pub accross the road from the studio, the first one of their matches i’ve watched outside the relative calm and neutrality of our underground live room in the studio.

Standing at the back i was, lanky yoke that i am, it was a wierd one.
Too easy, or something. Scoring so many so early meant there was nothing to clench and agonise over. No “we have to score or we’re fucked!” factor, and the unbelievable relief, involuntary huggy kissy action, sceitimini athas that the irish have had.

And bring on the spain... i see a double act in a pantomine bull suit, keane in the head and duff in the arse...they’ll toss that matador, with his flowery flourishes, and his all fur coat and no knickers, out of the ring.

we’re mixing “daybreak” today.
It’s got a tango beat from the omnichord, and some tabala sounding things, and big drumkit arrives...actually, i feel a bit of a knob talking about it, as somebody else said, talking about music is like dancing about architecture... right now anyway.

so we got really pissed last night.
can’t really get a drink round here after 11 o’clock, so we went into the hotel that’s beside the apartment we’re in and played cards till everyone had won some money (oh, except for dom),... we were the only ones in the very faulty towers “reading room” and made friends with the kindly croatian night porter, went out and got munchies, carousing...
we were playing “25”, i hadn’t really played it before, it’s for ould ones i believe.
it was deadly.

we know when we’re liking what we’re hearing when we get stupid and start hitting each other, making up songs about each other, or the sasanachs, or singing first holy communion songs.
There are evenings that beam with this wonder and scittish excitement, and there’s rarely a need to acknowledge why, ...it’s cos we’re liking the record we’re making.
It’ll never be as good as the music we listen to of course, and this is quickly borne out by listening to something else in a “you know, like this...” referencing moment.
But that’s ok.
Ther are also evenings that are black, or tiring, or just fucking boring, too.
Like any good relationship, we can sit with each other for hours and say nothing, busying ourselves in insular worlds of learning protools, playing with photos on the computer, learning blondie songs on the guitar...like a couple reading the sunday newspapers.
Nothing wrong with this.
But we will live or die by our i-Books.

We’re doing it right now.
Dave is editing 8mm footage of his uncle’s ordination which he transfered to digital video, brian is scaling the north face of the learning curve that is Protools, i’m doing this, and Dom is working out an efficient way for us to write off the cost of those sunday afternoon journeys to our mammys’, for the bit of dinner.

If i could just reach out and touch him.

p

just a quick note to say "we're finished", which would be even quicker if i stopped bangin on about how quick the note was.

16 songs recorded and mixed.
that was like the drinkin and the chips.
now for the fightin'.

deciding on what kind of record we put out will be the laugh, cos it's a bit all over the shop, so it is.

excited, scared (what have we DONE!), with tense nervous headache.
looking forward to seeing folk, and playing an ould gig, bollix to "do you think we could have more bass in the hi-hat??"...

but contrary to some reports, we're not playing witnness.

might see you there though.

p