Fallen

It may not have sounded it, but Fallen was one of the oldest tracks on the Dusk project. But not the oldest of all, as will be revealed soon...

Fallen started life as a sequel to a track called Swan Song, from our 2002 album Zero. Both were started well before the album came out, so its origins probably go back to mid 2001. Superficially, Swan Song is about a rock band on its last legs, going out on a blaze of glory, and so its sequel, initially called Come Back (with the footnote "the one after Swan Song") was about the not-so-glorious comeback.

I'd also made a vague request that Simon should write a song where the chorus and middle eight should have the same chords, so that the two could be combined in some sort of marvellous crescendo at the end (in fact, the chords for the verse are the same as well). So at some point around the time we were working on Empires, that is what he did.

You'll probably have realised by now that one or two things went wrong with the whole procedure. It's not called Come Back; it's not about a band making its comeback; and it doesn't have any sort of marvellous crescendo at the end.

Somewhere along the way, we realised that the whole thing wasn't really working out, and so we ditched (at various times) all but one line of the lyrics, and also reworked the whole production as well.

Instead, we ended up with (in my opinion) one of the stronger lyrics I've ever written, and actually a pretty good song generally. It may not ever have been album material, but it's a track that I'm very pleased with, and one of the ones I go back and listen to every so often.

The Healing

The Healing was the fifth and final track from the second Dusk single Beneath the Silent Skies. It was even on the album for a while - I just uncovered an early tracklisting where it was sandwiched between Perfect Geometry and Bulletproof, followed by a note advising that it should be replaced with The End. Which was undoubtedly a sensible move.

It's strange though, because The Healing is still one of my favourites. It's an unusually upbeat lyric over a decidedly midtempo backing, which is always a great combination. It's even got some lyrics that I'm very proud of, such as "We've turned our home into a war zone" (and also some that I'm less sure of, such as "... to reap the seeds that I've sown", which fortunately wasn't intended as a rhyme for the other line I just mentioned).

Somehow it got lumbered with the label of "another midtempo track", and got missed off the album. In fact, there's a very good reason why it shouldn't have been before Bulletproof on the album: the chords are the same, but backwards. It's a trick we've used a few times, and mostly you'd be none the wiser - but would it have been a good idea to put the two next to each other? Probably not...

Heaven Only Knows

Heaven Only Knows rather confusingly ended up as the lead track on the last single The End. For a long time it was one of our favourites, so you might be wondering why it wasn't on the album. The story is long, and not especially interesting...

The track started life as a sample from Simon's beautiful red SH-101, with a very analogue sound, with the working title Battleship Grey. When Simon passed it on to me, it was a lively track which reminded me (ahem) very much of the wonderful Röyksopp single Remind Me, which has some really evocative lyrics about happy memories, particularly about travelling abroad.

At the same time, Simon and I had been doing a lot of city breaks across western Europe, visiting obscure places on late night flights, and so I had a lot of places from which to draw inspiration. I've got a feeling there were already some rough lyrics, and I can't remember what remains of those, but I effectively rewrote the whole thing. I've got a feeling the line about "All the sins and the harsh regrets" may have come from the original...

At this stage it was all going well, and we must have been pretty happy with the production, because I don't think it changed in the slightest from the original demo. Unfortunately, it was in the recording process that we discovered it was almost entirely impossible to sing.

The final version is a patchwork quilt of different vocal takes from different sources, many of which were recorded several months apart, and incredibly it works pretty well. Once again we have a track which we're both pleased with. So much so, in fact, that it was very nearly held back to be included on album number nine.

And so it's a bit of a shame really, because this track could have fitted nicely on Dusk. But that was clearly never meant to be...

Neglect

Hello.

Well, we've been neglecting you a bit recently, haven't we? (Don't bother answering that; we already know the answer).

So here is some news...

Maybe you thought Dusk was over with, dead and buried? Frankly, so did we. It was an album which took about three years to write, record and mix. Then we prolonged the agony by releasing four singles / EPs / whatever you want to call them. And in the past, that might have been (if you'll pardon the pun) the end.

I'm not really at liberty to tell you what I'm talking about at the moment, so I'm just going to have to remain enigmatic. (Is that the right word? Probably not.) Anyway, suffice to say that Dusk still has one final trick up its sleeve. To celebrate this, the handful of remaining comments will make their way onto this very blog over the next couple of weeks, at the rate of one every day or two. I'm not going to make any promises about how regularly I can get them on here, but I'll do what I can.

That wasn't really news, and it didn't really say anything particularly informative, so here's something a bit more substantial...

The ninth album is really starting to take shape now. An impressive total (or should that be toll?) of 34 tracks are being considered, each in a varying place somewhere on the road between "vague musical idea" and "finished". Before you get too excited, here are some statistics:

• 2 are left over from Empires (yes, they are that bad)
• 2 are left over from Dusk, and are completed (but possibly not very good)
• 2 are left over from Dusk, but the vocals haven't been mixed yet (these two are OK, actually)
  
• 2 are left over from Dusk, but I haven't finished recording the vocals yet (one of them is quite good)
  
• 4 are left over from Dusk, and haven't quite got full sets of lyrics yet (none of them are any good)
  
• 1 is complete, but I want to re-record the vocal because it's not very good (yes, we now have some kind of quality checking procedure*)
• 1 is a song by someone else, which probably won't get released properly anywhere (I'm not sure why I'm telling you about it, actually)
• 1 is a song by Simon, for which he's hopefully going to take full responsibility
  
• 9 have been recorded, but the vocals haven't been mixed yet
• 8 don't yet have any kind of lyrics recorded for them
• 2 don't have any kind of words yet (or rather, they do have some kind of words, just not a very good kind)
  

* That's a vast improvement on what it replaced, which was nothing.

One of the nine recorded but not fully mixed tracks is called Here Comes the Summertime, and was recorded a few weeks ago in one of my more hirsute periods. It also coincided with me playing with my new iMac, which has a built-in iSight camera, and so I recorded a video as I was going along. It was fully edited in iMovie, and so it's not exactly up to the standards of Señor Spielbergo, or even (dare I say it) George Lucas, but in fairness it's our first ever video, and I didn't really know what I was doing (I still don't).

Hopefully the final version of the video will be ready to premiere in the Summertime; there might be a single at some stage; and the album should follow not long afterwards. If everything goes according to plan, which of course it never does.

In the meantime, you'll have to make do with the dregs of Dusk.