Opening the Archives

I've had a dig around the Deserters archives recently, and have decided that the time has come to open them up and share the goodies within.

Track of the Week

One Night in the Back of a Fire Engine

The aim is to make a song available every week until the well runs dry, and try and provide some insight to the track here. I've started off with a classic Deserters song, as featured in 'The Songwriters Guild' compilation mentioned previously.

The song was written by Lee Newe many years before it was recorded. Jennifer Leigh features on lead vocals, with the Porter Girls on backing vocals. The 'NeeNaw' sound is provided by George the Bedford Fire Engine.

Click here to download.

Go to the Deserters website and look on the 'Tuneography' page for more details and other songs.

Enjoy!

Change of Direction

We had another jam/recording session at the weekend, and things took an interesting (for me, at least) turn following a bit of between-track banter. We'd been working on a song that just wasn't quite coming together in the way expected - it kept turning into a ballad without being asked. Some chat later, we came across the discovery that we both have a deep love of Can's music, which changed things in a significant fashion.

So now we're going to focus on longer improvisational pieces, which may be overlaid with spoken word or singing depending on the music. We recorded a number of improvised snippets with just bass and synth, with fairly mixed results. Mostly it sounded like a part of a larger piece, lacking percussion and a lead instrument or voice, whilst some bits just sounded painful, like when we changed key to different keys, but time and practice should sort those things out, or at least address how to recover quickly. There were a few parts where the sounds and the lines we were playing meshed together really well, giving a hint of how good it could be with work.

What I particularly like about this direction is that it will allow us to swap between instruments and make use of our whole sonic arsenal, which means I'll get to put the theremin and yobstick (when completed) into use.

Hopefully we'll have another session within the next week or two, and more progress can be made...

Happy New Year

Survived another round of Christmas & Hogmannay festivities?

Yes - and welcome to 2006. Eventually. I'm having computer problems by the handful - one thing gets fixed and another gremlin pops its ugly little head into the middle of the hand-crafted box of wires which connects me to the online World. The end is in sight, but I'm not taking anything for granted... Making the switch away from the Gates empire into Linuxland - it's either going to be a breath of fresh air or a stream of expletives following a trashed PC. Digits are well and truly crossed.

Some good news, though. I wrote a new song, "12 Years of Christmas", and did a fairly basic recording of it. It's a bit slow and needs a little jazzing up, but most of my gear is still in storage for the time being, so it's just bass, guitar and vocal for the moment. I'm going to set myself a target (or new year's resolution, if you like that sort of thing) of a new song a month. Whether that is likely to happen is another matter, but it would be good if I could get some more new material under my belt.