Out of the Blue

Where do songs come from? What once was not, suddenly is and even if you're the one who did it, that doesn't stop it being a surprise sometimes- that moment when you do a double take and think "oh, hang on, this is a song!" Finding the genesis of a song or idea is often like finding the source of a river. You go upstream, constantly being met with decisions over which fork to take, and eventually you make it into the mountains before thinking "fuck it, this is too hard and now there's a cat in the way". Hang on, that's what I just thought now. Forget the mountains... Radiostasis, then. Where did it come from? It started out almost as an acoustic guitar, strummy, campfire, mock Johnny Cash song. You can kind of hear it if you listen to the melody. It probably wouldn't have become a Captain Horizon song were it not for a cunning little app called 'Bloom'. Designed by Brian Eno of Roxy- and ambient- music fame, it's just a rectangle of colour. Touch or click it, and a note will start to play ever now and then. Touch a different part and a second note joins it. Eventually you get your own little ambient music piece, which is nice. Well, one evening I touched in some essentially random notes and promptly left the room. I played the Radiostasis idea for a while, then came back upstairs and walking into my room to find a cool, melancholic sequence of notes playing to me out of the Bloom program - over the time I was out, the music had evolved into a haunting little riff that I knew I had to put with the idea I'd just been working on. It totally changed Radiostasis, and next time you hear it spare a moment to think that the guitar riff which opens the song is just a happy accident, written by a computer! I came up with the music that would become 'Patch' in 2006. I showed it to my band mate at the time, he hated it, and I gave up on it for a few years. It had a set of lyrics, but one morning I was driving to work and Radiohead were on radio 4 - a tribute they'd written to Harry Patch, the last living person to experience ww1 trench warfare. I've always been fascinated by the First World War, and I thought Radiohead's attempt was a bit weak so I wrote another set of lyrics to Patch. Still, it took two years before I demo'd it to show the rest of the band. I had no idea people would think it was good.

Summer Afternoon

Some things just find you. A memory found me today and I’m glad it did.

It’s a summer afternoon. Fluffy white clouds drift slowly across the sky, and a gentle breeze stirs the leaves on the tall trees that line the fence of my back garden. They whisper, a gentle rustle that answers the chirping murmur of birdsong. I run across the lawn, chasing my younger brothers in a game. Midway through the long expanse of the summer holidays, school is a forgotten memory and all that matters is now. The year is 1995, and I’m 10 years old.

My dad’s in the house, upstairs in his study which has a big window that looks out over the garden. He was working earlier but now mum’s shaking her head and tutting from the kitchen because he’s got his bloody guitar out. It happens once a year (if that), and today’s the day. He throws the window open and starts to play. It seems very loud from outside, and he’s playing some kind of old fashioned music. I recognise a couple of tunes from last year’s afternoon of guitaring. There’s one that goes “If God was one of us...” and another that seems very upset about something; “Is it getting better... or do you feel the same...?”

I like them both, but I’m mostly happy Dad plays guitar because it’s just another thing he does that proves he’s cool. I walk in from the garden, through the kitchen, and the muted rumble of a little practice amp turned a bit too loud forces its way downstairs. Mum’s still grumbling about “that bloody guitar”. I’m only 10 but I know not to be underfoot when mum’s grumbling, so I go to the living room and fire up Sonic 2.

An hour or so later, Dad’s exhausted his repertoire of half remembered lyrics and licks. I’m pretty sure Smoke on the Water was featured at some point. He comes downstairs and turfs me off the Sega Megadrive so he can watch some TV. I saunter upstairs and find myself in the study. The guitar’s there and unusually there’s still a lead connecting it to the amp. I’ve seen the guitar, unloved and shoved into an unused corner of the room, for as long as I remember. It’s nothing special. But today it looks different. I notice it in a way I didn’t before. I study the amp’s control panel and find the “power” switch. Flick. There’s a pop and a hum starts. A little red light comes on.

The guitar’s on a stand. I have no idea how to hold it so it stays there. The strings feel a bit sharp so I treat it with caution. I sit cross legged on the thick green carpet in front of this object that’s suddenly caught and held my fascination, reaching out gingerly, vague worries about sharp metal strings and electricity in the back of my mind.

My fingers touch the thinnest string. A gentle squeak emerges from the speaker. I pull my hand back a little, place my thumb against the string, and pluck it.

The note fills the room. It sounds and feels different to anything I’ve heard before. It doesn’t just stop - the rich and pure sound carries on, gently receding towards the silence I pulled it from. I just sit and listen. It fades, fades, and after 30 seconds I can’t hear it any more. Even then I know it’s still there, quieter than I can fathom, ringing away. I want to hear it again. I pluck the string once more, and move from right to left, each string thicker, deeper and more sonorous than the one that preceded it. The thickest string makes a sound I can feel through the floor. I move back up the strings one by one, then with a final flourish rake my finger down all 6 strings. The notes vibrate the air and beat against each other. The chord I made from the open strings is dissonant and not particularly musical but that just adds to its wonder; this isn’t a sound I’ve heard before and within the noise I can hear possibilities, different notes fighting each other and hinting at melodies I won’t find for years. I sit, hypnotised, as the notes once more fade to silence.

I have no idea what the frets are for and I won’t find out for another 6 years.  The guitar stays on its stand and, having exhausted the possibilities offered by the open strings, I turn the amp off and go back outside to chase my brothers in the garden under the long afternoon sun.

The Light at the end of the tunnel.

My last blog entry was almost 6 months ago. I’d feel more contrite about that if I hadn’t been busy doing. It’s the old blogger’s cliché – when you’re doing stuff worth writing about you’re too busy drowning in it to acually write about it. This has probably been the busiest 6 months of my life, a perfect storm of preproduction and recording sessions, and fighting to get the tracking done before we resumed gigging earlier this year. We didn’t quite make it, but hey. We’re not saving lives here. In the meantime me and Hannah bought our first house, which some say is stressful. I wouldn’t know, I was too stressed to notice.

Where are we then, 6 months after my blog? It saw us hammering out the coarse slabs of my demos into something more detailed that the whole band could be proud of. Have we managed? Are we deranged? Today Whitty recorded vocals for two songs; “Patch” and “Bottom of Your Heart”. This pair are the 14^th and 15^th songs we’ve laid vocals down for, and now there’s one more to go; “Torn Up My World”. It’s being held up because midway through our last performance of it I realised my verse guitar part, the product of hours of searching, inspiration, practice and recording, is totally shit. It brings the song down, clouds the verses and confuses our intention. My ego tells me that it’s good because it’s fun to play, and until now has blinded me to the fact that it doesn’t serve the song. I think I spoke about losing perspective in a blog entry last year. In the studio, when you’re on your own throwing aural paint onto the blank canvass of drums and bass it’s very easy to lose perspective. I’d add something to that here. Playing songs live is where you regain that perspective. Playing your songs in front of people is simultaneously the greatest joy, the most powerful high and the most sobering cold shower you’ll ever experience in your life.

And so it has been a very interesting experience to start playing the album songs live, while still working on them in the studio. I think it’s benefitted Whitty the most. There’s a part of his soul that only lives in performance and that’s the part that guides his delivery and teaches him what the song means. It’s been immensely rewarding watching him develop his performance before recording it and I think Whitty’s vocal is going to be a massive highlight of this set of recordings. He’s growling, he’s shouting, he’s giving himself a prolapsed larynx. But he’s also doing something else, something beautiful, and something I don’t think he’s had a chance to do properly for years. He’s singing. Stripping back the affectations of being a rock vocalist and delivering melodies and emotions in a way I’ve never seen from such close quarters before. I know he finds recording a challenge since he’s such a social beast and it’s hard to be turned on in an empty room, but I think he’s really pulled a blinder this time.

It’s been a great ride for me. We spent four long weekends in the months leading up to Christmas recording drums and bass, a process I always enjoy. We learned from what we’ve done in the past, not only in terms of capturing sounds onto tape but also in how to allow ourselves to perform well. Alex and Mez recorded together, grooving and interacting with each other like the human beings I think they are (Mez might still be a spam-bot). I played producer, trying to coax the best out of them, eschewing my guitar and instead opting to wave my arms around and talk about the music at hand in terrible baffling metaphors that left my rhythm section flummoxed. Somehow despite my meddling they still managed to put down killer takes. We took risks, we made decisions on the fly. We cut sections that might drag, tried new beats and special effects on the bass, experimented with new mic techniques and playing styles. In a number of cases we’d completely re-work a whole section of a song while recording it, with no idea what guitars or vocals would even fit over the top. We were bold, because inspiration lives in that moment. Indecision is the antidote to Inspiration, playing it safe is how to kill that special kind of chaos that lets new ideas sneak into the universe. I’m proud that one thing Captain Horizon can never be accused of is playing it safe.

And I’m so excited by the results. I know they’re killer takes, because they sound brilliant even before I’ve mixed them. I can’t wait to take all the credit for that. Literally all I did was sit in a chair and watch. But then, it’s like God said in Futurama. When you do things right, people won’t be sure you’ve done anything at all.

I’m just hoping some of you fuckers like it.