Day 5 - Cake of the day of the cake

Hello blogheads!
Today was a guitar day, so you have Jamie to bring you up to speed you in on events (from this point forward he will be referring to himself in second person)

You started the day with 4 guitars in an unusable blob.

Flippin' useless bruv! So you spent much of your day re-amping the guitar tracks that were DI'd whilst recording the drums and bass to try an make them sound a little more

AwwwwYEEEEAAh!

Although this lead to a day of knob-twidding and "does that sound warm enough?" type debate, you were delighted with the work done! You found yourself with all sorts of control over your guitar sound, and with the master craftsmanship of Oz "the wind beneath your wings" Craggs, you felt as though the music skeletons of day 4 had been blessed with fleshy life.

Although Cats and Cats and Cats are world renowned for their "not horrible bastards" reputation, little is documented about their shocking policy on paternity leave! They gave you only a few moments to celebrate the birth, then she was handed over to her mother, the whale, where she will be raised and nurtured lovingly.

After re-amping the bulk of the guitars, and eating approximately a thousand biscuits, you were in need of some rest and recuperation (when you're in near hysterics about a football terraces style sing along entitled "cake of the day of the cake" it's time to step away)

So you projected yourself from the wobbly galleon, dressed all 'Geldof', and set sail into the snowy night on Carlos Santana Claus' guitar car.

Tomorrow's plan is to tackle some cello, lapsteel, mandolin so you'll return then with news of your progress.

With love,
You
Xxx

Day 4 - Something about bass

Welcome one and all, this evening your scribe is none other than the cats and cats and cat’s bass weapon, Sir Thomas (T BONE) Baker.

Yes it was Thomas who just wrote that intro, introducing himself, and he will refer to himself in the third person throughout this blog, because he has had a drink and thinks its funny, read on dear reader…. Please?

Tom feels that today was.. a bit slow.. a lot was achieved.. but not a lot was actually done... if that makes sense…

Post Rock sing along ‘Olympus Mons’ was tracked in the morning (Tom is petitioning for the song to be called ‘Olympus Mums’) and then the rest of the day was spent conjoring up a bass sound which had enough dum dum dum but not too much bringggg – possibly the reason that Tom was asked to write the blog for tonight – he prefers to think it was because Ben was running out of ideas and had to step aside to make room for Tom's unique and witty writing style..

Actually ‘return to danger castle’ was named by me – I have good writing ideas sometimes!.. ahem I mean tom has them.

So anyway the bass tracks back through an old Bass Head (think amplifier non music tech geeks) and he can confirm that the sound has ‘character’ – which is a word which has had a lot of use since being on the ship. The ship has character, the studio has character, the snare sound has character.. I suppose tom would be disappointed if the bass didn’t?

Now that the bass is good, the album is starting to sound more like how it should. There is still a lot of work to be done and the songs don’t sound right without vocals.

We will be working on the sound of the guitars tomorrow where Jamie is bound to spend loads of time twiddling knobs and getting things sounding right and writing shitty facebook updates about me… that are based in fact but still hurt – damn you J DOG!

Check back tomorrow for some more news/inane rambling, most likely involving whales in a car crash and a screening of the film ‘jaws’ to an audience of sharks.

Tom

Day 3 - The sky fell out of the sky

After the struggles of day 2's tough riffs, we needed to smash some tracks up. Then record them. So we locked all the big clanging doors of the ship, shut all the port holes and cleared our heads using a combination of tea and chocolate digestives. We proceeded to leg it through about 5 songs with relative ease. Cracking open the hatch to go out on deck the snow tumbled in and we were almost buried alive (exaggeration) in an avalanche (exaggeration) of snow. It was a bit like waking from a very productive ( sleep into a beautiful marine film (exaggeration). Here's some photos of our journey out into the snow:

Much frolicking ensued and the album was almost forgotten, but Oz suddenly remembered why we were all there and called us all inside to try and finish the final song of the album Olympus Mons. Unfortunately we didn't manage to finish it because we were all too excited about the snow, so Sunday it'll have to be.

Today (saturday) was our only day off for Tinseldayer II which looked like a line up from heaven, we were all looking forward to it so much only for our day to be ruined by the lovely horrible snow. We are all pretty gutted about the fact we had to pull out, but so did pretty much every band that isn't from Folkestone -n it was certainly a reluctant decision to say the least. Hopefully it will be rescheduled for another time.

So next stop, Olympus Mons tomorrow, and then, who knows. Here's some random photos:

Here's Toms face:

PS - We all love drums

Day 2 - Tough Riff

Due to everyone forgetting their cameras, today's blog is brought to you with the help of Tom's paint skills.

The title of this blog relates to us getting completely stumped at the very beginning of the day on what should be an easy song. It also relates to a deleted scene from the amazing film Some Kind Of Monster and we're all aspiring to make this album even better than Metallica's St. Anger (subject of the film if anyone hasn't seen it). There'll be more tough riffs no doubt, and maybe some even tougher tough riffs. Here's what we looked like when we were playing it:

Then drum bashing began again in earnest. I'd like to think that when you get to hear the snare on this album you'll be blown away by how well tuned in it is and recognise that that level of tunedness only comes from hours of ear bleeding boredom. I highly suspect this won't be the case so here's another paint classic from Tom to illustrate our plight.

Frustration and lethargy seemed to be the order of the day but, like a dog let off its lead, the water rose and the boat bobbed free of it's muddy shoes and we managed to pull 3 more songs out of the bag. Standing on the deck a little disappointed with today's progress, snow started to fall making the wharf seem more magical than it already is. I took that as a good sign for the following days, unless it stops us from being able to get to the studio. Then it's bad.

But on a happier, Christmas based note a demo version of one of our new tracks is up for free download on Joyzine's advent calendar over here: http://www.joyzine.org/index.html  The song's called Christmas Lions too! Enjoy.

Bencat and the cribs x

Day 1 - The sound of London's riverbanks

So today we set out in search of that elusive "sound", if this was some kind of indie film then there'd be a cardboard set with all of us represented by different animals in stop motion animation. The animals would travel the globe (a giant orange of sorts) attempting to discover the sound only to realise that all of their findings alone didn't cut it but when combined they created the perfect combination. This ain't no indie film and finding a sound is boring. Doug began his day confronted with 3 bass drums, at first he was delighted but soon remembered he only had 2 legs.

Soon after Jamie wheelied up on his bike, threw it in the river and, before we could blink, had his guitar on and was wailing away.

 

By this point we were hungry, so we went to the standard of every wharf in the world; an American style diner. That's right, instead of a classy Come Dine With Me competition, this time we're eating burger and chips and drinking milkshake EVERY DAY. When we got back, Oz (our producer extraordinaire) discovered this little gem on the mixing desk:

That's right friends, "Telephone effects". And we'd found our sound. Imagine phoning your mum, only to have her blurt out some mathy folk rock into your ear. Or imagine you buy our album and it's just a conversation with your mum. Neither will happen don't worry. We started tracking some stuff down, for the music tech geeks we plugged the guitars straight into the desk and are going to amp the recorded sound at a later date. I'm assured there are good reasons for doing this. 

We got 3 tracks done and one of them is the nastiest of the lot so we were pretty chuffed. As the tide came in and the boat started bobbing about we came back home to write blogs and eat crisps. 

Better stories tomorrow.

Bencat and the crabs x

Album recording starts tomorrow!

OK, we hit the boat at 10am sharp tomorrow. We were meant to be starting today but unfortunately all the power went in the dock so it's been put back 'til tomorrow. Let's spill the beans though so you know what to expect over the next 7 days.

The album's called Motherwhale and the tracks are as such:
1 - Speckled eggs for speckled lovers
2 - Return to danger castle
3 - The projectionist
4 - A song for my mother, the whale
5 - The seaweed brother
6 - For the love of the mechanical bears
7 - O' Science
8 - Celebration
9 - Christmas lions
10 - Match of the day
11 - Olympus mons
12 - Zoomercroom
13 - Come home

We're going to be recording the main instruments (drums, guitars, bass) live, which is something we strayed from with the last album but we're hoping to return to some of the energy of our earlier material. Don't worry though we've still got a stack of extra curricular instruments stashed away to up the upness.

In the meantime here's my top 5 of 2010:

1 - Heartland by Owen Pallet
2 - The Age of Adz - Sufjan Stevens
3 - Oftentimes - A Genuine Freakshow
4 - Man Alive - Everything Everything
5 - Weathervanes - Freelance Whales

Tomorrow we'll have some photos and better stories,

Bencat and the chats x