The Videos - Blood, Sweat and Tears

For the Blood, Sweat and Tears video I wanted to try and emulate some of the shadowplay of The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, and other related films from the 1920s, but without any actual cinematic knowledge or lighting, that was clearly never going to happen.

The semaphore ("blood", "sweat" and "tears", depending on the chorus) obviously comes from the single artwork, and the handwritten lyrics just seemed to make a nice addition, even if I messed them up a bit in the middle. You can also probably see that apparently I hold pencils in a very strange way.

The video also stars my friend's cat Blue, who can be seen performing his typical act of running manically out of the room without warning. He died a few months after the single came out, which is rather sad, because crazy though he was sometimes, he was a very friendly cat.

The Videos - Golden Wheel

Sappy's video for Golden Wheel is pretty much the reason that the Blood, Sweat and Tears single came out when it did, and for that we should be grateful. It mixes from footage of me singing Here Comes the Summertime through to some rather raunchy posturing by a lady in a way that I do find a little bit disturbing, but I really like the 3D footage in the background.

The person running manically in the top left corner is a great addition, too...

The Videos - False Dawn

For our second video I wanted to put together a travelogue with all my sunset photos in it, and I think it works quite well, but pretty much nobody has ever watched it, so obviously it only really works for me.

Getting the photos in sync with the beats proved to be pretty much impossible, as the software that I was using didn't really have that capability.

You might recognise several images from the Dusk sleeve sessions.

The Videos - Better Days

There were a number of early video attempts for Better Days during the demo period, including one in which we tried to emulate the retro technology themes of the artwork, but the quality really wasn't good enough to use (and anyway I think a lot of the footage was lost in a computer crash).

The off-colour negative footage was recorded in Leeds in around 2008, but we didn't really have much to go in the middle section, so my right hand plays the part of Simon here.

The Videos - I'll Give You Electro

The first video that we completed was the extremely dull one for I'll Give You Electro. We really just wanted to test the water, and see what would happen if we released something on YouTube, and it did reasonably well. I think the main reason that we never got around to doing a proper video was this...

Sappy has a track record of making videos for all his remixes, clearly demonstrating that he knows what he's doing rather more than we do where promotion is concerned. I find the grainy footage of woodlands gives it a slight darkness which isn't there in the audio, but it works rather well altogether - I particularly like the different fonts used to say "electro".

The Videos - Eyeballing

Eyeballing was the first of our proper videos to ever see the light of day, as Sappy made his own visuals for the song by cutting together excerpts from old footage. The floating squares and chevrons make for a slightly retro feel, but it's pretty effective.

The Videos - Here Comes the Summertime

Here Comes the Summertime was actually the first video we made, way back in 2008 while we were working on the early demo versions of the album

It also has the rare distinction of only having come out as a single because of the video. The original intention when Transmission came out was to release some kind of video for a number of tracks, not just the singles. But Here Comes the Summertime is one of the longest tracks on the album, and we couldn't really be bothered filming enough footage to keep it interesting for five minutes. So we started work on an edit, and everything just spiralled out of control from there.

In the end, the plan to make lots of videos never actually came to fruition because we were too busy, and also we didn't know what we were doing with the video editing software, as you can probably tell.

Sappy's version of the video takes some of the footage from ours, but also uses some fun 3D model footage, which mixes in rather well actually.

The "Art" of Transmission (Part 3)

In the previous two parts of this post, we looked at the artwork for the first five releases from the Transmission project, leaving just the singles Here Comes the Summertime, Blood, Sweat and Tears, and Intermission.

Here Comes the Summertime

My personal least favourite of all of them is Here Comes the Summertime - the ideas are fairly clear. The circle of caterpillars somehow seemed appropriate, the lyrics are handwritten, there's some kelp, and the weird seashore shape going diagonally across the image. The earliest attempts were blue:

The weather symbol in the middle - loosely styled on the BBC's symbols - doesn't entirely work unfortunately - we probably should have chosen either a cloud or a sun. But instead we were concentrating on making everything go a murky green colour:

The final result is definitely better than that green one, but ultimately compared to all the other singles it just seems a little bit of a mess:

You can listen to Here Comes the Summertime here.

Blood, Sweat and Tears

As you saw last week, many of the elements that worked their way into the fourth single actually came from the Remission remix EP. Even this had a couple of false starts though - here's the working version:

Which obviously still needed a bit of fine tuning (although if you're looking for trivia, that isn't actually a sad face - it's a character from one of the Inuit fonts I found on my computer).

This mimics the album sleeve very closely: the floppy disc has been replaced with a View-Master reel; the interference pattern has been replaced with a picture of our Korg Prophecy in the background (playing the patch "Lovely Noise") and the waveform has been replaced with the semaphore version of the song's lyrics. Finally, the icon in the centre is a droplet (although it hasn't been confirmed whether this is in fact blood, sweat, or a tear).

You can listen to Blood, Sweat and Tears here.

Intermission

For the final sleeve on the Transmission project, we had a lot of elements to combine. We did have a couple of leftover sleeve ideas, one of which we had vaguely been considering for Golden Wheel, if it had ever been a single:

I had also at one point considered wasting some money and getting an actual 7" single pressed for Distant Moon, for which this might have been the artwork:

Note the image of Simon playing his synths, which sadly still didn't make it onto the final release. I particularly liked the moon icon on this one, which sadly never saw the light of day on an actual release. For the final version, we toned down the colour slightly, and combined our favourite bits of both the sleeves:

I think the waveform on the right hand side may still actually be from the vocals for Distant Moon, but it didn't seem to matter hugely with this release. The spider icon, web, and vinyl are there from the Golden Wheel sleeve, and most of the elements are there from Distant Moon too.

You can listen to Intermission here.

So that concludes our little journey through the artwork of the Transmission era. Hopefully you've enjoyed the trip!

The "Art" of Transmission (Part 2)

In Part 1 of this post, we examined the genesis of the visual style of our most recent album Transmission, and looked at how the first two releases ended up looking the way they did.

I'll Give You Electro

After the multi-layered complexity of the album, we decided to keep the single sleeves relatively simple, but we still worked a few oddities into this second single:

This is the only sleeve from the album which doesn't contain any photos. The initial background is a sort of vague, badly stylised circuit board pattern (inspired by the badly stylised interference pattern on the album). Overlaid on that is some binary code, which like the waveform on the album says "I'll give you electro," except for fun I took out the first column, as they were all zeroes, and replaced it with the words "ELECTROHYPERNOVA". And the centrepiece this time is an electric danger sign which we drew especially.

Ultimately the lack of photo makes it just look a bit like a wallpaper, but it's reasonably effective.

You can listen to I'll Give You Electro here.

Remission

For the remix EP, we decided to take a more complex approach, like the album sleeve. It was actually combined from two different sleeves, as we couldn't quite work out which direction to take it. This is the original sleeve for what might have been the Eyeballing single:

This version didn't last particularly long, due to the slightly disturbing bloodshot look, and because we already had the vague idea that Blood, Sweat and Tears might be a later single. At the same time we were also working on alternative ideas:

Interestingly, the eject icon was never actually used, but ultimately, ideas from both sleeves were combined, and the colouring was altered slightly, to create the final sleeve:

Which is distinctly less disturbing than some of the early versions.

You can listen to Remission here.

I'll Give You Electro II

The reissue of I'll Give You Electro came about very quickly and largely accidentally. Since we were tweaking everything a bit (a different version of the single, with different b-sides) we decided to change the artwork too.

This early attempt proved how easy it is to make these sleeves into a bit of a mess:

In the end we added a photo of some banana plugs from my Chimera Synthesis BC-16 mini-modular synthesiser, altered the colouring, pushing the circuit board image right back into the distant background, and added a different centrepiece. I think I prefer this version to the original:

By the way, the title I'll Give You Electro II only came about when we were uploading the single and realised that we couldn't have two releases with the same title, otherwise it might have appeared on the artwork too.

You can listen to I'll Give You Electro II here.

In part 3, we'll take a look at the later sleeves from the Transmission project.

The "Art" of Transmission (Part 1)

Of all our albums to date, I think Transmission probably had the longest gestation period, and the artwork developed very slowly over a number of years. This week we're already celebrating the third anniversary of its release, which seems a good opportunity to take a look back at how the "look" of the album evolved.

Initial concepts

After a few false starts, the very first idea we had was that we would incorporate images of retro technology into the artwork, so I spent some time over Christmas 2007 taking photos of old tapes, floppy discs, and vinyl, like this one which you might recognise from the Remission sleeve:

Not having taken the time to find any sheets for the background or light the images properly inevitably meant we had to diminish the quality of the images somewhat before we could use them for anything, but soon we were coming up with concepts such as this:

With 7"-sized sleeves for the singles, and LP-sized ones for the album. The battered 7" sleeve is from a series of singles containing nursery rhymes which I had as a child, and the 12" sized one is from a promotional single (I think it's Alizée's Moi Lolita, although I might be wrong).

I chose the silhouette of myself from the original Here Comes the Summertime video, although we played with a few other ideas too. At some point the waveform concept made its way in, as well (note the album title Distance - I don't remember if this was ever seriously considered, but it would have been quite a good name).

By late 2010, we had a relatively clear idea of what the visual style might be, but we still weren't quite sure how to fit all the ideas together, so a brief sidestep took us to what I called the "squares concept", trying to build a sleeve using evenly spaced images laid out across the page:

From this you can see we gained the centrepiece, replacing the actual cut-out vinyl section, where somehow the cassette spindle seemed to fit the bill rather nicely. This would become one of the key parts of the album imagery.

Better Days

Once the album was almost complete, we decided that Better Days was would be the first release, and we wanted to keep it relatively simple, so we just went with the arm waving image on the 12" sleeve, without too much processing, so that you should still just about be able to tell that it's taken from a real photo.

My only regret is the choice of colour - I'm not sure why we never changed if from that foul shade of vomit green which you can see on some of the early conceptual versions above. But never mind...

You can listen to the Better Days single here.

Transmission

There were some quite effective early versions of the album sleeve floating around in early 2011, such as this one:

Which actually works quite nicely in its minimalism (and no, that wasn't ever going to be the album title). I was keen to use the image of Simon, because I really like it, but that was vetoed. Somewhere along the line, it lost the 12" photo backdrop, and gained the floppy disc pieces instead:

Finally, within a couple of weeks we had added the waveform (that's me saying "transmission," in case you were wondering) and the simulated interference pattern, and we had a completed album sleeve, although we weren't too sure about the colour:

We had already had a "green" album (2002's Zero), and so we wanted to try something different. Another early attempt used a colour called "grandma's refridgerator," mainly just because we liked the name:

But finally we ended up with the bold blue colour, and since we had never even had a blue single before, let alone an album, this definitely seemed the way to go:

With the album sleeve complete, we had what we thought was a strong visual style for the album, something worthy of following up the Dusk sleeves of which we were also very proud. We just needed to ensure we could keep up the theme for the rest of the album releases.

You can listen to Transmission here.

In part 2 of this post, next week, we'll share some of the concepts and final designs for the early Transmission singles.

Leftovers

A few new versions were released after we published the initial commentary on this blog, so let's grab a nice chunk of bread and mop up those last few leftovers.

Golden Wheel

You can see the original notes for Golden Wheel here.

Sappy's Spinning Mix

Our friend Sappy approached us and said he'd like to try remixing Golden Wheel, and came up with this new version. As with some of his other mixes, particularly Eyeballing, it was a total surprise to us and took it in a completely different direction.

At one point, I think we had vaguely considered releasing Golden Wheel as a single in its own right, but we never quite got our acts together...

Funnelweb Remix

I wanted to try a remix of Golden Wheel around the time it was originally released, and it ultimately became this. I didn't have any particular grand plans in mind - just to try changing a few bits here and there, and maybe extending it slightly. The vocoder line from this was later added to the album version, but the backing vocals on the original never made it onto this remix.

Better Days

You can see the original notes for Better Days here.

Phased Approach

This slightly cacophonous version started life around the time we were finishing the album. I wanted to try remixing it from a completely perspective, and this was what happened. It gradually builds, adding a new part every couple of bars and steadily getting louder and louder.

At one point I was going to leave the choruses off altogether, but they seemed to work at the end, like one of the remixes of Useless by Depeche Mode. I did try putting them back where they belonged, but it never quite seemed to work as well.

Almost

You can see the original notes for Almost here.

The Extra Mile

Almost was the newest track on Transmission, and the one which helped us get back into gear and finally finish the album. We worked on it in parallel, and my take - and remember this was just for fun - was a drum and bass version. Several of the noises and ideas from that version made it into the original.

I'd long since ditched that version when in mid-2013, Simon decided to resurrect some of the ideas from it, building this great extended trippy version, and mashing my vocals a bit at the front. As one of our favourites and the track which had launched the album, it seemed a natural lead track for the remix EP.

And with the lead track from the seventh and final single Intermission, that concludes the commentary for the tracks on the Transmission project. We hope you enjoyed it!

Splinters

As a postscript to our ninth album Transmission, we released a second remix EP in October 2013 entitled Intermission, which included one previously unreleased track, Splinters.



Splinters was initially written by Simon, starting almost exactly a decade ago. It took three years to transition from "idea" to "demo", and even longer to finally appear on a release, as it took a very long time for us to find the right sound. Despite that, it's one of the early Transmission-era tracks which helped to define the sound of the album.

The lyrics come from a frustration about party politics, particularly Tony Blair and his cronies.

The lyrics:

You pierce my skin with your splinters
You freeze my spring back to winter
You turn my world on its side
And switch my day into night

And there’s no one but you who can take the blame

You wage acts of war and you expect me to talk
You redefine the crime as you lay down the law
We’ve suffered your arrogance so many times
And now you go asking us to toe the line
Splintered words

Your words etched deep on my conscience
A stream of venomous nonsense
You spit and you twist with your lies
And you’re the thorn in our sides

And there you go, you spew more rot and hatred

You wage acts of war and you expect me to talk
You redefine the crime as you lay down the law
We’ve suffered your arrogance so many times
And now you go asking us to toe the line
Splintered souls
And there’s no one without their head in shame

You wage acts of war and you expect me to talk
You redefine the crime as you lay down the law
We’ve suffered your arrogance so many times
And now you go asking us to toe the line
Splintered minds

(R. Martin / S. Martin)

Centuries Later

The final single from our ninth album Transmission was Blood, Sweat and Tears, released in March 2013. It included just one new b-side, Centuries Later.



In retrospect I think we got a couple of things wrong with the Blood, Sweat and Tears single. At the time we weren't entirely planning to finish things off with Intermission, so we thought this might be the last single from the album - otherwise we might have put the Golden Wheel remix on the EP, where it would have been a more natural fit. And we only had one b-side ready at the time, and unfortunately I'm not sure Centuries Later is the best song we've ever written.

It's pretty old actually - the earliest demos date back to early 2005, which is why the lyrics have a slightly more preachy Empires / Dusk feel - and the chord sequence is borrowed from House of Cards, but played backwards. Over eight years it underwent numerous rewrites and lost the raw octave bassline with which it had started life, and finally it turned up as the only b-side on the fourth Transmission single in 2013.

The lyrics:

We should be proud of what we’ve achieved
We’ve satisfied our every need
As time goes by, we always attack
Blow up the past and never look back

Many years of progress
But look at what we've done

Centuries later, still nothing has changed
Our progress is driven by our own decay
Centuries later, the same people reign
So many lives wasted, building our remains

Look at the past, and see what has been
We're driven by our anger and greed
Should we be proud with so many dead
Or look behind for each step ahead?

Many ways to repress
We chose the loaded gun

Centuries later, still nothing has changed
Our progress is driven by our own decay
Centuries later, the same people reign
So many lives wasted, building our remains

Many roads to success
And still we stumble on

Centuries later, still nothing has changed
Our progress is driven by our own decay
Centuries later, the same people reign
So many lives wasted, building our remains

Centuries later, still nothing has changed
Our progress is driven by our own decay
Centuries later, the same people reign
So many lives wasted, building our remains

(R. Martin / S. Martin)

Words Come Easy

Our third single Here Comes the Summertime included two new tracks when it came out in mid-2012, of which the second was Words Come Easy.



According to my notes, I overheard some people talking total drivel one day, and I think I found it amusing that it's so easy to talk about nothing, which seemed as though it might be a good idea for a song. And while it might not particularly sound like it, the music is actually inspired by Umbrella by Rihanna and Enjoy the Silence by Depeche Mode.

It took quite a long journey from its original demo, and it might have even made it onto the album if only we had managed to mix it in time - unfortunately the backing vocals only turned up at the very last minute and I was really struggling to do them justice. It turned out pretty well in the end, although I think I might have buried the vocals a bit too low in the mix.

The lyrics:

Words come so easy
When there’s nothing left to say
It’s almost tragic
How my heart has turned again

Have I missed another chance to find
The perfect balance that was in my mind?
It drives me crazy and I can’t explain
Why words don’t come to me as they did then

Days pass so slowly
With a boulder in the way
I know can’t be there for real
When I look again

Dreaming of another time when I
Thought everything was perfect in my mind
It seemed so easy, and I can’t believe
But now it seems my words are failing me

Have I missed another chance to find
The perfect balance that was in my mind?
It drives me crazy and I can’t explain
Why words don’t come to me as they did then

Dreaming of another time when I
Thought everything was perfect in my mind
It seemed so easy, and I can’t believe
But now it seems my words are failing me

(R. Martin / S. Martin)

Homeward Bound

The third single from our ninth album Transmission was Here Comes the Summertime, and included two new tracks, the first of which was Homeward Bound.



Most of the b-sides on the Transmission project were very old indeed, and this is no exception - it was started in about 2003 or 2004, and wasn't finished until 2012. I completely forgot about having written it, and could never really get the hang of the original demo version, which I think was maybe just a bit too dark for its own good.

Simon had always pushed it as a track that might have some potential, and I'd been trying for years to work it into a finished product. Then, late in 2011, I was living in Los Angeles and contemplating where life was taking me, and everything just seemed to fall into place. As it turned out, it's actually one of my favourite tracks of recent times - if we'd finished it a year earlier it might have even made it onto the album.

The lyrics:

Only you can bring me home now
The horizon is black again
All that time I hoped to wander
Every chance is built on pain

As the light fades into night
There's nothing left inside

Sometimes it's hard when the road goes nowhere
Every step leads you astray
Sometimes the signs point in all directions
Boulders fall into the way

Souvenirs are all I have now
Postcards of another town
When I left, my route was clearer
On until the sun went down

Now it's straight, and through the sand
This highway never ends

Sometimes it's hard when the road goes nowhere
Every step leads you astray
Sometimes the signs point in all directions
Boulders fall into the way

While my vision fades and burns
I've no drive to return

Sometimes it's hard when the road goes nowhere
Every step leads you astray
Sometimes the signs point in all directions
Boulders fall into the way

Sometimes it's hard when the road goes nowhere
Every step leads you astray
Sometimes the signs point in all directions
Boulders fall into the way

(R. Martin / S. Martin)

These Four Walls

In early 2012, we reissued our second single I'll Give You Electro, and included two new b-sides, the first of which was These Four Walls.


I think this was written in the second shared house I lived in when I was in Leeds. It was an enormous house, with plenty of space and some great people, but things fell apart a bit over the time I lived there. This was probably written one day while I listened to the sound of bass coming through the floor...

I'm not sure it all works entirely as a song, but actually I'm quite proud of some of the lyrics - I like the rhymes, and the way each verse refers back to the first one. The line about "a fallow machine," can be quite an apt metaphor for city living as well. Having said that, the repetition of "grey" was not intentional.

The music takes some inspiration from Take That's Back for Good, which is quite a claim to fame. At the last minute, Simon decided to add a new backing vocal line, which turned out to be impossible for me to get right, so the vocoder sang them in the end.

The lyrics:

Thinking back when the skies were blue
And these four walls seemed bright and new
Your faults were careless and unreal woes
That would get to me as I sank below

Those uncertain people who all seem the same
With no time for dreaming or playing new games
Their urban existence is hollow and grey
Drifting through life’s pathways on these endless days

Now all I hear is the selfish din
And these four walls are closing in
My will broken by vulgar streets
That hold me back as I face defeat

We’re uncertain people with different lives
And no time for dreaming, impatiently drive
My urban existence, a fallow machine
Drifting through life’s pathways with no sleep between

So yesterday I tried to break
Down these four walls inside my head
To clear the dust from my greying mind
And leave the past to crawl behind

Those uncertain people who all seem the same
With no time for dreaming or playing new games
Their urban existence is hollow and grey
Drifting through life’s pathways on these endless days

We’re uncertain people with different lives
And no time for dreaming, impatiently drive
My urban existence, a fallow machine
Drifting through life’s pathways with no sleep between

(R. Martin / S. Martin)

Sleepwalker

At the end of 2011 we released a remix EP called Remission, on which we also included a new non-album track, Sleepwalker.



Sleepwalker was a very easy set of lyrics to write (admittedly they may not actually be very good) - I had a simple idea, and following it through to its logical conclusion was pretty straightforward. Simon had been trying to sequence an old track called What Makes it Go back in 2006, and this had furnished him with some new ideas.

It was a strong influence on the sound of Transmission, although it didn't quite make it onto the album in the end. When we were compiling Remission we decided that it would be nice to include a new track, and this seemed an obvious candidate.

The lyrics:

Midnight comes, I want to run
And hide from everything
I hear the voices in my sleep
And wonder what they bring

I can’t stop my mind from thinking
I can’t face life in the cold

I’m a sleepwalker, deep waters
Flooding through my dreams
A stargazer, blind chaser
Running out of time

And at this hour, I feel no power
I want to live and breathe
When freedom calls I can’t resist
Its lure and energy

I can’t stop my mind from thinking
I can’t face life in the cold

I’m a sleepwalker, deep waters
Flooding through my dreams
A stargazer, blind chaser
Running out of time

And then the days became a haze
With nothing to enjoy
Once vibrant streets are dead again
Like long-forgotten toys

I can’t stop my mind from thinking
I can’t face life in the cold

I’m a sleepwalker, deep waters
Flooding through my dreams
A stargazer, blind chaser
Running out of time

I’m a sleepwalker, deep waters
Flooding through my dreams
A stargazer, blind chaser
Running out of time

(R. Martin / S. Martin)

The Journey Here

The single for I'll Give You Electro featured a rather unnecessary three bonus tracks, the last of which was The Journey Here.


I had been spending some time listening to our older songs, trying to understand what it was that made them what they were. This one was inspired by the Zero era.

The journey that Simon took to writing it was similarly obscure - the chords were originally built around the bass line from New Order's Blue Monday, and he also took inspiration from the Crash Test Dummies' Mmm Mmm Mmm Mmm when writing the "aaah aaah" parts.

It might have even been good enough to go on the album, except that it wasn't ready in time, and also it's not too far from Better Days in terms of "message". Never mind...

The lyrics:

Well it’s true, life was simple then
I would learn something new each day
So now my feet move more easily
But it feels as though it’s all been said

I wonder where I lost my way
It looked alright until today
The journey here was long and slow
Now nothing’s easy any more

You were right, things were normal then
Never fought, or struggled anyway
So now the torment comes readily
And the past seems livid, cold and grey

I wonder where I lost my way
It looked alright until today
The journey here was long and slow
Now nothing’s easy any more

You gave me freedom, made me think
You drove me crazy, made me sink
And now at last I know who you are
You always watch me from afar

I wonder where I lost my way
It looked alright until today
The journey here was long and slow
Now nothing’s easy any more

(R. Martin / S. Martin)

Weather the Storm

The second single from Transmission, I'll Give You Electro, featured three bonus tracks, the second of which was Weather the Storm.


We got a bit stuck on the title to this one - it's a lot like In the Eye of the Storm, which you probably only noticed if you were really paying attention. The World Will Still Be Broken in the Morning might have been a good title if it hadn't been quite so long, and we had plenty of other ideas too. In the end I think we just forgot about it and called it Weather the Storm anyway.

When Simon wrote the music, it was slightly by accident. He had intended to sequence another track, but had got distracted with this instead. We both quite like the way it turned out, although the chorus doesn't really make sense. Even so, there's something quite uplifting about the melody.

The lyrics:

So here we are again
Waiting for the day to end
Close to the hour at last
When these wretched feelings pass

I’m sailing too close to the wind
To find the heart of the problem

But the world will still be broken in the morning
It won’t seem brighter but at least it will still be turning

And that’s pretty much the way
That I felt until today
Then the sun split the clouds
Till this ship ran aground

I’m drifting along through the days
Towards the root of all evil

But the world will still be broken in the morning
It won’t seem brighter but at least it will still be turning

I’m sinking under, paralysed
Away from freedom and rescue

But the world will still be broken in the morning
It won’t seem brighter but at least it will still be turning

But the world will still be broken in the morning
It won’t seem brighter but at least it will still be turning

(R. Martin / S. Martin)

Dissolution

The second single from Transmission was I'll Give You Electro, released in October 2011. There were three new non-album tracks, the first of which was Dissolution.


I'm not sure we ever really saw this as anything more than a b-side, but there's nothing particularly wrong with it either. The lyrics - particularly the second verse - feel distinctly to me as though they belong on Dusk, and so it should come as no surprise that it was originally written in about 2004.

The lyrics:

You dissolved into the air
Like a ripple in the breeze
Then you sank under the shoreline
With nothing left for me to breathe

Memories, your dissolution
Leaving me in isolation

Far beyond on a wind seeking freedom
And you’re never to be seen again
You dissolve, in a day you go higher
But you’ve never been this high before

Swept away into the distance
On a zephyr to be free
You drift off with leaves and martyrs
With no air left for me to breathe

Perfect times, no confrontation
Then you left this situation

Far beyond on a wind seeking freedom
And you’re never to be seen again
You dissolve, in a day you go higher
But you’ve never been this high before

Memories, your dissolution
Leaving me in isolation

Far beyond on a wind seeking freedom
And you’re never to be seen again
You dissolve, in a day you go higher
But you’ve never been this high before

Far beyond on a wind seeking freedom
And you’re never to be seen again
You dissolve, in a day you go higher
But you’ve never been this high before

And you’ll never fly this high again...

(R. Martin / S. Martin)

Shattered Mirrors

The second b-side for the Better Days single, released in April 2011, was Shattered Mirrors.


Broken Mirrors, as this was originally called, was essentially just an exercise in trying to push a metaphor much too hard, with lots of lines about "shards of you," and so-on.

Simon, meanwhile, was trying to build a simple dance track in the style of Sylver, but it didn't take too long before he had decided it sounded better at a slightly less manic tempo, with glass breaking samples to lighten the mood a little.

Caught next to a song called The Broken Generation and only one single after Broken, we were stuck with a bit of a dilemma for the title, so it ended up with the better name Shattered Mirrors instead.

The lyrics:

There you are, you see
You made me believe
Then my world caved in
With shards of dreams on me

There you are again
My fairweather friend
Look who turned my world
Into dust again

Everywhere I look are pieces of you
Shattered like the day it ended for good

Too far gone to ever be repaired
Too late now to ever be the same

There you are at last
You live life too fast
And always forget
That I was here first

Everything I see is battered and bruised
Scattered when the hope I clung to diffused

Too far gone to ever be repaired
Too late now to ever be the same

Everyone I knew has sided with you
Left me on the ground, and found something new

Too far gone to ever be repaired
Too late now to ever be the same

Too far gone to ever be repaired
Too late now to ever be the same

(R. Martin / S. Martin)

The Broken Generation

The first single from our ninth album Transmission, released way back in early 2011, was Better Days. There were two non-album tracks, of which the first was The Broken Generation.


Lyrically this isn't too far away from Blind Youth, but although ancient, it's not quite that old - it started life around the middle of 2004. Simon took it away and built a song entirely out of Roland SH-101 samples before eventually breaking his own rules and throwing loads of other stuff at it.

We rewrote the bulk of it in early 2008, and it turned out pretty nicely, but we weren't completely sure it was strong enough to go on the album, so it became one of the b-sides to the first single instead.

The lyrics:

We live in a world
Where nothing is real
Can’t escape from this place
Where the truth is concealed

We do what we want
You couldn’t care less
We’ll do anything
To keep up with the rest

We’re the broken generation
No ideas or inspiration

So this is our moment
We live for the day
We’re always the only ones
With something to say

Try anything once
Who cares what it does?
Tomorrow will come
If we don’t all die first

We're the broken generation
But we're you're hope and your salvation

It’s kill or be killed
On the mean streets for us
We always protest
So you’ll listen for once

We’re the broken generation
No ideas or inspiration

We're the broken generation
But we're you're hope and your salvation

(R. Martin / S. Martin)

Infrequently Asked Questions

We dug this out from our archives - it appeared on our website in around 2008.

1. Do you play live? 

As a general rule, no. There is no particular reason for this, but we live a very long way apart these days, doing most of our songwriting using pigeons. This makes rehearsals rather difficult, and very long. Experiments using baked bean cans and pieces of string are ongoing, but apparently we need to eat the beans first, and we're worried about flatulence. Right: an early gig. We changed our sound a little for our fifth album Ephemeris. [The image to which this refers is unfortunately now lost.]

2. Do you write all your own songs?

Yes. We hope so, anyway.

3. Do you do cover versions?

See above. After a number of early experiments, which were particularly unsuccessful (we once recorded an album of hymns, and that's not a joke), we decided to steer clear for the forseeable future. 

It's not particularly that we think our songs are better than everyone else's: we just think that there needs to be a very good reason for doing other people's songs, and we haven't thought of one yet.

4. What equipment do you use? 

Obviously you're having trouble using the menu on the left hand side, so here's a direct link to our equipment list. You'll find it helps if you click on it. [See the separate blog post for the most recent information.]

5. How long have you been making music? 

The truthful answer is: we can't really remember. Officially, we started in 1992, when we recorded our first album Schizophrenia by pointing two tape recorders at each other; playing keyboards and singing badly; and banging things together. Now, fifteen years later, we have moved on to recording albums by plugging two computers into each other; programming synths and singing badly; and banging things together. Well, we never claimed to be innovative.

When we originally recorded Schizophrenia, we had a different name, and several of our songs were written by taking other people's songs, and running them between the tape recorders so many times that you could no longer hear the original. This meant that what you could hear was mainly background noise, with the occasional sound of somebody trying to sing here and there. Fortunately, the original tapes from 1992 have long since been lost, but many of our recordings from the early 90s still exist. And they're every bit as bad as you might expect.

We started calling ourselves Hypernova in 1995, and spent the next four years going back to re-record the "classics", plus recording three more albums, Nemesis; Prophecies and Odyssey. We did this entirely for our own amusement, which is probably a good thing, as there's not much worth listening to on any of them.

After that, we decided to start doing proper music, and so newly armed with some decent songs and equipment, we recorded a daft EP of spare songs called Behind the Waterfall and then a full album called Ephemeris. It's quite good actually, even if the title isn't actually a word. Since then, we've done another album every couple of years, and you can find more information about that over there.

6. Which comes first, the words or the music? 

We thought it was the chicken. It depends, usually Rollo writes words and then Simon sets them to music, mutilates them and then sends them back for re-writing, but there have been quite a few occassions when the music came first.

7. What are you doing next? 

This is obviously one of those questions which will need updating from time to time, but the answer in early 2007 is as follows, roughly in the following order:

• Some more singles - we expect there will be three or four off Dusk, each with extra tracks and remixes, and nice artwork. [Four singles were released during 2007, with an EP the following year. The artwork was quite nice.]
• A compilation - this might not actually happen, but we had a vague idea of putting out an album with new versions of our favourite old tracks, with some remixes and exclusive stuff. [We still keep talking about this, but as of now still haven't got around to it.]
• The next album - writing is going well, and if it continues the way it has been going, it will probably be released early in 2008. If it doesn't, it will probably be three or four years again. [No kidding. Transmission was finally released in mid-2011.]

I've got some more questions... 

Good. It's nice to see you taking an interest. You could either keep them to yourself, or email them to us here. [Our email address is now shown on our main website, right at the bottom.]

2014

Hello! Our compliments of the season, or something... hopefully you enjoyed 2013 as much as we did.

We've had a pretty busy year. We finally polished off the tail end of our 2011 album Transmission with the last single Blood, Sweat and Tears, and also a bonus remix EP called Intermission. We also took a trip back to 2006 to reissue our eighth album Dusk in its original form, and now accompanied by a bonus compilation album, Dusk Archive, including the tracks from all five singles. There's more information about all that on our website.

If you've been paying attention to this blog, you'll have seen the commentaries and lyrics we've added for each of the tracks on the album:

1. Almost
2. Golden Wheel
3. Eyeballing
4. Walk with Me
5. Better Days
6. False Dawn
7. Untouchable
8. Blood, Sweat and Tears
9. Distant Moon
10. Here Comes the Summertime
11. I'll Give You Electro
12. Without Life

Those commentaries will continue over the coming months, with a detailed look at the twelve b-sides which we've released since 2011.

If you're wondering what we're up to... well, we're currently in the studio, working on tracks for what will hopefully one day become our tenth album. Although actually recently we seem to have spent more time working on remastering our older albums for potential future releases, which has made for quite a pleasant diversion. Seemingly we used to be quite good.

So it looks as though 2014 might continue to be busy for us, although we might not actually have much to show for it for a little while yet...