"Extras, extras, read all about 'em"

So then, I thought I'd just stop in to talk about all the wonderful little 'extras' this album is getting added to it right now (Max & Dan are still at the studio, I'm in the relative comfort of my room).

For those of you who haven't read about whats been coined 'extras', its pretty much a cumulative name we've given to all the little bits that make an album feel complete: a glockenspiel part in your left ear you can barely hear, the choirs, the shouts, the strings, the background guitar bits, the cabasa parts - more about this in the forthcoming podcast, and all the gubbins we haven't put in so far.

Anyway, its getting there and sounding way more complete than the eps. The podcast should be up in the next few days, there are a few unmixed clips in it, also the podcast is pretty funny this time, worth a listen anyway. That should finally give you a taste of what we've been up to for the last several months.

Only a few more weeks to go on production, then we can go to the pub.

Maunder - hope that made sense.

Choirs And Groups

End of a busy week in the studio. We had a 6-person choir in on Wednesday night, then a group of our friends came by last night to sing some extra parts. To be honest, I have barely listened to any of it, as amongst all of that me and Dan were using the little time we had to get the last few tambourine, shaker, triangle etc parts done. We even had to make our own shaker out of a water bottle and some rice (you remember doing that in school??) as the one we had sounded wrong for the song (it was a little high-pitched and had a funny rattle in each shake).

I'm gonna drop down to the studio later and listen back to what we've managed to record for the last two days and I'll report back.

More informative post soon, promise.

Max x

Safety In Numbers

So this week we have some awesome stuff happening at the studio - we have a choir coming in on Wednesday night to record a few parts, then on Thursday we have some friends of ours coming over to do 'group' vocals (basically they all just kinda yell along to some songs).

I'll take some photos to Flickr and some video for YoutTube - we're so 21st century it hurts.

All the main vocals (apart from like 5 words) are now done, which feels awesome - a little bit of a slog towards the end, but hey - who cares now?

Max x

Do you remember why you did it?

So close to finishing the vocals I can taste it...well, it's either that or the throat sweets we use to keep ourselves going. One more night should have the main vocals done for the songs. Then it's onto mixing/extras (we're doing them both at the same time for convenience and to save ourselves a little time.)

This is getting closer to something I've recorded I can actually listen to (all I ever hear are the mistakes, the things we could have done better, the words that didn't come out quite right etc.).

I have to write two more verses of lyrics this afternoon, but then i'm done...until we start writing again.

Max.

A summer on the east side.

Got the intro for Fireworks done with Kev last night. We decided to give sampled drums a try for the intro of Red Lights Mean Go - no idea if it'll sound any good but you never know unless you try.

I Flickr'd a photo of him in case you miss him.

Max.

Back to my reality show.

Yesterday was cool - listened to some of the out-takes from the vocals to put in the next podcast (we have been chatting about how to make them more regular, funnier, more entertaining and get other bands involved...make a bigger thing of them so we can all stay in touch).

Then a young lady by the name of Rachel Dawson came by to put a female touch on the record with her voice. She was a pro, so we rolled through the parts that we had in mind for her in a couple of hours. Making the most of having her there, we came up with some small parts on the fly and they sounded cool too. No idea how many of them will make it to the final mix but at least we got them down.

I am now measuring vocals left to do in verses and extra little parts rather than entire songs. no songs are left without vocals on. We will start mixing and doing final extras (vocal, guitar, percussion, samples etc) next week. You have no idea how relieved I am to get to this stage.

Am leaving in five minutes to record Kev's parts for song intros that we have been waiting ages to do. It's all starting to come together, little piece by little piece.

Max x

Cover story.

This sucks - I was doing vocals for Dancefloor and after a couple of hours my voice developed a kinda scratchy noise that we couldn't get rid of (I took a break while Dan finished his vocals for Red Lights Mean Go, drank water and ate cough sweet type things). So we knocked off for the day and Dan came back to mine to do the wording for the CD artwork, the details of the extra photography still needed and what will go where.

Dan and Maunder seemed to like the draft of the cover I showed them so that's two happy customers so far. The website should look awesome with the same concept running through the whole lot.

In a way it's cool that we get a day or two to work on it now, rather than getting to the end of recording in a couple of weeks and starting to panic. (Ok, panicking isn't our style, but we'd have had to think harder).

I realised by the very low number of "thank-you's" on the record how much of this thing we'll have done ourselves. If you think you deserve a mention, speak up now.

Max x

p.s. I haven't spoken for two hours now. That is like a record for me or something.

Another day, another complete lack of dollars.

Rather than being in the studio (not my fault, please see Mr Probert for an explanation) today, I worked on the artwork for the album. The concept is there and the cover photography is done, so all that's left is the hours of photoshop work. I spent like 3 hours on this today and I still can't get it to look like anything other than three oddly-shaped boys plastered haphazardly across a badly-drawn background. Inspiration, perspiration and more photoshop hours are required.

Wish me luck.

Max.

Singstar

More vocals done. Finished "Shakedown" and "Invincible" over the last couple of days. Felt horrible at the start of the week, we had computer problems, throat problems and it's hard to throw yourself into something when you feel crap. Things picked up and we rocked through the rest of the week.

Dan has hit the day job this weekend and I'm just finishing up some of the lyrics we have left. I spoke to the guys about how much we wanted to let our ego's out in the words and they both said I should throw myself into it. We are not self deprecating. "I am not sorry, I am just sick and bored of doing all of this so well."

If you want to tear us apart when we're done with this (there will be a queue - you don't get sent the reviews from punk zines we get, I do. There will be a much longer list by the time we're pushing the album hard.) feel free - I wouldn't write it if I wasn't a big enough boy to know it was gonna come back and bite me in the ass. Worth it for the rush every time.

The songs are sounding good - we should be done with the vocals this week and then it's on to all the little extra bits that we've been thinking about all this time.

Max x