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.

Nine facts about our ninth album

1. We've written lots of songs for it
   
2. One of them is called Better Days
   
3. We haven't thought of a name for it yet
   
4. It sounds really good so far
   
5. We're between 0% and 100% through the recording process
   
6. It's between 0% and 200% better than our eighth album
   
7. I've run out of facts
   
8. 
   
9. It will be released in summer 2008
   

The Download Chart

Well, as Simon said, 2007 was a mammoth year for downloads. Some misguided fool clicked on our tracks nearly 6000 times, so thanks very much if you are that fool. And here's the chart of our least unpopular tracks (the numbers in brackets refer to their respective 2006 positions):

1. (-) Perfect Geometry
2. (-) Consequences
3. (-) The End
4. (1) Here We Stand
5. (2) Turn the Tide
6. (-) Beneath the Silent Skies
7. (-) Moving On
8. (-) Bulletproof (western mix)
9. (-) Point of No Return
10. (-) Echoes of Perfection (demo)

To hear what you've been missing out on, why not head to the audio section of our main site, which can usually be found here.

What he said

... except there was one thing he forgot to mention...

We completed our fourth and (probably) final single of Dusk just after Christmas. It's called The End for no particularly good reason. Here's a picture:


This time we've gone completely overboard, with no less than seven songs:

1. Heaven Only Knows
2. Never Wanted This
3. What I Would Do
4. Someone Else's Dream
5. Broken
6. The End (ostkreuz mix)
7. Faint Footsteps

And it's a happy new year from him.

Electraparade for download - right now!

What do you know? You wait ages for one download site to come along, and then three appear at once.

Yes, the Electraparade compilation album, which includes our track, 'My Light', is available to download from the following sites. Take your pick, and choose wisely, depending on whether you want to pay a miserly 79p per track or a very generous £1.10:

DJ Download

Ministry of Sound

Juno records

Should you need anymore convincing, here's an unbiased review of the compilation courtesy of Electro Garden. Apperently, we were a highlight.

Go on, do it now, before you regret it!

Frohes neues Jahr and all that ...

Hello and happy new year to you (all).

I seem to remember that when we started this blog, I was going to write regular updates, just on the offchance that anyone in this or any other universe would be interested in what we'd been up to, had for breakfast, read in the Daily Mail etc.

X months later, erm, well, that hasn't quite happened has it? Road to Hell, good intentions, paving and all that. Personally, I blame the Daily Mail. Or maybe I was just lazy? Or could it be that muesli is a bit boring?

Anyway, at this time of year, it seems to be obligatory to do a review of the last year's highs and lows, preferably in a bitesize chunks top 20 format and then to make outlandish predictions for the year ahead. Do you see a bandwaggon? Well we're a band (some might say) and we're jumping right on it:

So, 2007 was pretty good for us. We released four singles from our Dust album, all packed with new songs and remixes, we were featured on the Electraparade compilation CD (buy it now!), we wrote and made demos of a pile (cohort? phalanx?) of new songs and did we remixes for Erasure and Marsheaux (not that they asked us to, mind). All this whilst trying to hold down normal jobs and occasionally have lives.

The whole MySpace / internet thing has been quite entertaining. I like the idea that anyone can knock a track together in their bedroom and then minutes later the whole world can either tell them what a steaming pile of manure it is, or propel it towards the hit parade. We've enjoyed the feedback that we've received about our songs and have been amused, encouraged, inspired and bemused in various measures by the comments that have arrived over the last 12 months.

And what of 2008? If everything goes to plan, we should have a new album out this year. The only obstacles in our way are (i) finishing the writing, (ii) doing the recording, (iii) doing the mixing and (iv) other obstacles that we haven't yet thought of. As I mentioned in the 'idle boasts of 2007' section above, the writing has been going well, so we will soon see how the album is shaping up. With a bit of luck, it will be a bit more upbeat and 'of the moment' than Dusk, but whether this constitutes an outlandish prediction remains to be seen.

Most importantly, you've been missing out on the weather updates for the last year, so here's the official summary for 2007: Summer: Wet (Jetstream allegedly too far south), Winter: Cold, everything else: Sunshine and showers.

My one and only new year's resolution: To try to make my contributions to this blog a little more frequent.

More this time next year ...

The End

This brings our week of comments to an end - hopefully you've enjoyed / endured / bothered reading the comments.

So, as you might have gathered by now, the new single is called The End. It will contain, among other delights, the brand new Ostkreuz remix of the track of the same name, and will be released very shortly.

The End was originally written in Spain, in summer 2004, but it seems to have somehow avoided having castanets in it. The other thing it doesn't have is very many words - in fact there are only 85 in total. Somehow, and rather astonishingly, despite this (or perhaps because of this) it's one of my favourite tracks on Dusk.

One of the comments we got back about the track seemed to suggest it sounded like Kraftwerk, which to be honest we could never really see, but it was rather flattering anyway. So we decided to try a Deutsche Mix approach, which wasn't entirely successful (it still sounds nothing like Kraftwerk), but it's a nice new approach nonetheless.

Although the single's called The End, that's only one of the tracks on there, but somehow this seemed to be the best name for it (even if it's a joke we seem to keep reusing!) News about exactly what the rest of the single entails will follow as soon as we've come to a final decision!

Hidden Context

Oh, the delicious irony.

Because of course, a "hidden context" is the one thing that this track doesn't have. Or, come to that, a hidden meaning, which might have been a better name for the track anyway.

Well, the slight lack of meaning aside, there are some quite fun lyrics on Hidden Context, which in some ways echo a number of tracks off our first couple of tracks. And we definitely owe a debt to Sparks for some of the inspiration.

Certainly, the whole thing was thrown together very quickly (well, relatively speaking - we're probably talking weeks rather than the usual months or years!) It's tempting to wonder how it ended up on the album, but if nothing else it provides some light relief between Signs of Life and Perfect Geometry.

My Light

As far as I can remember, we never talked about putting My Light on the album, and I'm not entirely sure why not. Whether or not it would have worked is another question, but maybe we should have tried it just in case...

So when we were offered the chance to submit a track for the Electraparade compilation, we decided to go for this, because it was new; because we liked it; and because it didn't seem to have a place. And then we ended up putting it on the b-side to Consequences as well, and that was probably because we were a bit short on other completed tracks, although I don't really remember right now.

When we wrote it, it was another case of a line just dropping into my head (the bit about 'my light in the darkness'), which normally means I've accidentally stolen it off someone, although I think this was relatively original. Although I was very worried that it would end up being too soppy for a long time, but I think I rescued it in the end.

Perhaps more interestingly, the music is inspired by Hallowed Ground by Erasure. Which, when you consider that Empires b-side Fateful Hour was inspired by Imagination, means The Innocents has been responsible for a disproportionate amount of inspiration in recent years. Especially given that it's not even their best album.

In the Moonlight

If Dusk is our autumnal album, In the Moonlight is definitely the most autumnal track on it, and in a way defines the mood of the whole album.

For a long time, I kept a list of 'good titles' for inspiration (I suppose this habit stopped when I realised it was a bit silly to write a whole song around the title, although it means we now have the problem that we can never think of titles for songs). One of these was 'The Devil in Winter', and there were probably some others here as well.

From that blossomed a slightly confused track. I have a habit, or rather had a habit when I was writing the lyrics for Dusk in particular, of using the second verse to turn the song on its head, and this is an example of this. At the beginning the narrator is clearly having trouble understanding, but the blame is placed at the feet of the person the song is being sung to, whereas by the time the second verse comes around, the truth is starting to dawn. And I think by the last bridge, the explanation has been found.

It's always fascinated me that a song consists of maybe twenty or thirty lines, with no more than 150 or 200 words altogether, and yet somehow in that you have to try to find a way of telling a story. Well, unless you're just stringing random words together, of course. But that's a story for another day.

Sadly though, neither of us remembers an awful lot about writing it, so we haven't got much more to say here...

I Have Never

The second track on Dusk is I Have Never, which has the unusual claim of being the only track we've ever written (as far as I can remember, anyway), where Simon has told me to write more lyrics. It started with two verses, and ended up with four. Does it feel too drawn out because of that? You decide...

Its other claim to fame is that it contains an entirely unintentional reference to Merry Christmas (War is Over). Can you guess what it is?

Anyway, obviously the name comes from the popular (?) drinking game of the same name, which is a very good tool for getting to know complete strangers very quickly, and in a very short space of time. Hence the introspective lyrics, which I'm probably being much too cagey about here.

And continuing the drinking theme, the sound of the song is built around samples from Absynth. The synth though, not the drink. Which makes you go mad, anyway.

Signs of Life

Signs of Life was actually a fairly late addition to the album. With a couple of exceptions discussed previously, we started writing tracks for what would eventually become Dusk in 2004, and somehow, due to other commitments, it ended up taking around two and a half years to complete.

By late 2005, most of the tracks were written, and in many cases already recorded in their final form, but for whatever reason we held back, making minor tweaks, until it eventually surfaced at the end of 2006. The proposed 2005 track listing wasn't even all that different: Hidden Context hadn't made it on, and Consequences hadn't been written yet, and a couple of more uptempo (and distinctly out of place) tracks were included instead: Running with the Wind and soon-to-be-released Heaven Only Knows. Apart from those, it was almost identical.

By that stage, Signs of Life was already complete (subject to a minor remix in late 2006), but it hadn't cemented itself as one of our favourites, and so was largely ignored. Which is ironic, given that it has since become one of my favourite tracks on the whole album. But at the last minute, we decided to remove The Healing, and put this on instead.

The track is actually mainly Simon's work, from, by his account, a stream of fairly meaningless random words. But for me it struck a chord - in autumn 2004, I moved to an anonymous northern city, and that seemed to me to be exactly what the song was about. There seems to be a strong feeling of claustrophobia, and of being lost in the crowds.

Our 2001 album Ephemeris included a track called Age of Ignorance, which is fairly similar in terms of mood and subject matter - although, given its era, it's probably a lot more pretentious. And many of the sounds on the final version are sampled from Simon's old Yamaha keyboard, which we used a lot on our late 1990s albums Prophecies and Odyssey, which all makes for a strong mix of past and present.

Bulletproof

It's very nearly a year since Dusk was completed, and we're very close to finishing the project as a whole (an announcement about the final single will follow, hopefully in the next week or so, although we've not entirely decided what's going to be on it yet). However, the track-specific comments have ground to a halt somewhat, so I have formulated a cunning plan.

And it is this: every day for the next week, I shall add comments about another track. That will still leave us with a few more for the new year, but it will help clear the backlog, and it might help put somebody in the mood for the new single when it eventually surfaces. So, here goes...

Bulletproof was started in early 2004, not long after Empires was released. It was a track that we were both very fond of, so an obvious choice for the album. It is, however, another case of coming up with an idea for a song, and flogging it entirely to death by using the metaphor in every single line.

It's always reminded me a little bit of Depeche Mode in style. They probably wouldn't have gone quite so over the top, but top marks to Simon for avoiding using gunshot samples at any stage of the production.

The idea of remixing Bulletproof came about very simply: I was never happy with the mastering of the album version, and I wanted to have another go. In the end, I didn't: in the summer, Simon remixed it to create what would become the Kevlar mix instead.

At the same time, I'd been playing with some ideas for a remix which essentially borrowed the bass line from a certain successful 80s hit which should probably remain nameless. Unfortunately, this wasn't really going anywhere, so I passed it over to Simon, who carried out a very impressive rescue job, and created the Western mix.

Catching Up

Well, as promised, a handful of new tracks are slowly making their way onto the download sites, including Bulletproof (western mix) and Lose Control from our latest single, as well as My Light from Electraparade.

Recently we've been working on the ninth album, which we're hoping will be complete early next year. We've got about twenty tracks in progress, and we're currently working out which of those to concentrate on.

We've also been plodding on with the next single / EP / whatever it actually ends up being. Thus far, we've got four new tracks and another remixed track from Dusk in progress. I need to record some more vocals; and then we might have something worth releasing.

If that weren't enough, we've also been remixing Marsheaux's version of New Order's Regret for a remix competition. Details, and possibly a downloadable version, will follow at some stage in the future.

And that's about it really. A bit boring, maybe, but that's where we've got to...

Single news

Yes, it's that time again.

Here is Bulletproof:



The tracks we've chosen this time are as follows:

1. Bulletproof (western mix)
2. Fallen
3. Lose Control
4. House of Cards
5. Bulletproof (kevlar mix)

Yes, that's right, you get not one but two highly special new versions of Bulletproof. The Kevlar Mix is an extended version of the album track, which was recorded in September, whilst the Western Mix comes at the song from an entirely new direction. More information on each of the mixes will follow in due course.

There are also three previously unreleased tracks, all of which have very long histories: Fallen was started in early 2002; Lose Control started life in late 2003; and House of Cards was even considered for inclusion on Empires over four years ago. They've all been revisited since then, and we're actually really pleased with how they ended up sounding.

To prove how not bad some of these are, downloads will be available from the normal sites in the near future.

We've decided there will definitely be a fourth single, which we will try to throw together by the end of the year. At the very least it will be a double a-side containing a couple of our favourite tracks which didn't quite make Dusk; at best it might be an EP, or even a mini-album - anything could happen! We've got some new (old) songs to record; and one more track from Dusk that we want to try remixing. Time will tell, and we'll put up more details once we actually know ourselves!

And then we'll be all ready and rearing to start 2008 and the ninth album...

Oh yes, I remember

"Some news will follow in a bit," I said.

OK, that was a lie.

So then it was September, and Autumn was almost upon us. It would be easy to pretend that we'd spent the summer eagerly beavering away at new material, but that would be another lie. In fact we've both been far too busy enjoying the nice weather. And the rubbish weather, of which there has been quite a lot this summer.

So, here's a roundup of the latest news, in no particular order:

I have been finishing lyrics and starting to record vocals for the not-very-forthcoming ninth album. I'm really pleased with the direction it's taken so far, and I think we both hope to have it finished much more quickly this time, maybe early next year. There's a lot still to do, but we've also got a lot done already, so things are looking up. Rejoice.

For some months I have been about to try and remix Bulletproof for a possible future single, but never seem to get around to it. It will happen eventually. At some point, we'd like to do at least one more single from Dusk, possibly two if we can manage it. OK, here's a promise: I'll try and blitz said remix in the next couple of weeks, so we can have a single ready within the next month or so. Of course, whether that's a promise in the New Labour sense remains to be seen.

Simon did a really good remix of Erasure's track When a Lover Leaves You, the original version of which appears on their not-particularly-good new album Light at the End of the World. He has rather generously called it the Hypernova Remix, even though my involvement was limited to saying "Well done," in a very patronising voice when I heard it. I've just spent ages searching the website, and finally managed to find the page where it's posted here. Scroll down a bit. Keep scrolling... we're number 148 on the list. I think you'll agree that it sounds more like Erasure than the original.

Electraparade can now be bought for real dollars. If you have a bit of spare cash-money, click on one of the links on Electraset's MySpace page there. Someone had even singled out our track My Light as one of their favourites, which is all the more impressive given that we don't wear nice hats or do songs about Hoovers. So thankyou.

I've been for lots of nice bike rides around the Yorkshire countryside, averaging a little under 100 miles a week in recent weeks, and I'm hoping if I pretend to be really enigmatic and German, we might one day turn into Kraftwerk. The other positive thing would be that we'd only release an album every decade or two, which I'm sure would be preferable for most people.

Also, Bruce Parry's Tribe and Michael Palin's new series are both extraordinarily good. Are you actually interested in what I'm saying here? What's that? It's more interesting than going on about music? Yes, probably...

Right, that's enough for now. Some more news will follow. In a bit. Possibly.

Beneath the Silent Skies

This is a song dating back to some time in 2004, and it's really just about enjoying the little things in life. The basic premise is this: if you close your eyes, you can find heaven anywhere. Even in Yorkshire. Anyway, we had some trouble shoe-horning the title into the lyrics somewhere, but it seems to work. It's not my best vocal performance ever, and really the song might have worked better if I'd made a better job of singing it, but that's the way it goes sometimes.

It's actually not changed an awful lot since the original demo. It started off life trying to be electro, and probably ended up a lot more gentle than Simon intended. Then, in summer 2005, we came back and remixed it, although we didn't change much except the drums. At the same time I had a vague idea that we should do a prog rock extended version, where it just disappeared into an entirely unrelated instrumental section, and thus Part 2 was born. Initially, it was an extended version, but Simon took it apart, and we never found a good enough reason for putting it together again, and there you have it really.

Some news will follow in a bit.