September Newsletter
Hello compadres near and far, and welcome to the September issue of the Four Blokes Newsletter™️ !!!! Summer has faded to autumn, and sunset-coloured tree-lined avenues hate to see a thoughtful young man such as I coming...
What's in store for you this month? The low-down on my (and thus Four Blokes') recent move to London, early efforts to recruit members for a London-based lineup, juicy details of the two recording sessions that took place this month, and a cliffhanger ending... let's begin.
As a small aside, I got round to uploading our debut album on YouTube which means all our music is now avaliable completely for free! Not much on our account at the moment apart from some old gig footage and a music video for One of A Kind but watch this space - things are soon coming!
This footage has since been lost as we will later discuss...
On the 13th I moved up to London to begin my studies at BIMM university - my move in date was 2 weeks before the start of term and I used the time wisely. I attended art galleries, theatre performances, and a wild variety of concerts - a band with upright bass player, a saxophone and flute duo, a woman who sang and played live while operating backing tracks and slideshows from a laptop, a folk ensemble with accordion and banjo, and of course multiple French Laundry gigs. I'm also good friends with my new ketamine dealer who is called Kiki - very nice lady. Most of the Four Blokes recruitment has taken place in the smoking area of the Old Dispensery - we're yet to see a first rehearsal but Will, Ari, and Sam Sinclair are all possible members... that's a story for next month. I also met a man with an impressive moustache who invited me to the Squatter's Ball - ever the networker I found a publisher for my zine, and had a nice chat with a pirate about the transgedner experience and a fella who works in a small plate bistro told me about his childhood battle with Nick Pope for the first choice goalie spot. Eventually I got so high I had to sit in the corner and listen to the Beach Boys to calm down - as you can see in the cavalcade of photos below, I painted the Four Blokes logo on their wall -
Anyways! My phone also got stolen so I lost half the footage for my movie, 2 short stories including my favorite "the man who climbed back into the womb", countless photos and the recently filmed music video for Muscovado. Bummer - luckily my phone is so old and crap a replacement only cost £99
After a week and a half of living it up in London I caught the train back down south for a final recording session with the current lineup - we were set to tape Xylazine Addiction at Planet Sounds. Halfway down, I got a message from Reagon saying he had been violently ill and was unable to make the session - things were looking bad for all interested parties 😟🫣 luckily Tiago told his housemate Matt what BOTH the chords in the song were and bought him along to fill in - fair play to Matt for coming along on short notice and on the notion that everything he played was going to be taped over.
I arrived early and helped set up a few bits and bobs - Tiago and Matt arrived together and plugged in, I sat at the piano and played a few 7th chords with a jaunty outlook before fetching everyone a nice cup of tea. Oscar showed up and with that we were ready to go! Take 1 broke down, Take 2 we got through the song but just felt we could do better. Take 3 we nailed it, but upon listening back Tiago and Oscar noticed a funky guitar lick on the off-beat that they hadn't heard live... in an unorthodox descion, which the studio engineer was adamant wouldn't work, they punched in new bass and drum parts over that section of the song despite there being no set tempo - somehow it worked! I then had an idea for an outro that would fade in after the main body of the song. For 20 seconds, everyone would play their instruments as loudly and wildly as possible, well into the red. Take 1 of the outro was good, but the studio engineer discovered some cool ways to make it clip, so we did one more - Tiago had me fiddle with the knobs on the bass DI box as we recorded. After a final 20 seconds in the vocal booth to repeatedly shout "OPIODS", the session was complete! A few days later Reagon sent me 3 guitar overdubs - rhythm, lead, and a dissonant part for thr noisest section of the song. The version you hear attached to the newsletter is assembled as follows...
0:00-2:58 - vocals, bass, and drums from Take 3, with Reagon's lead and rhythm guitar overdubs
2:58-3:45 - vocals and guitar from Take 3, bass and drums from funk overdub
3:55-4:30 - guitar, bass, and drums from Outro Take 2, vocal overdub
I wonder if that's even vaguely interesting to anyone at all! We live in hope. Moving swiftly on...
The band seemed to be in a very tight spot, but life moves on - the last 2 days of September were my first 2 days of uni. Bimm doesn't seem to be the best run institution in the world; half of the class were given the wrong room number, and we waited 15 minutes for the teacher to show up before eventually going down to reception to enquire about what to do - when we were given the correct location and entered he made a snarky comment about our lateness, as if it was our fault! We were then given 45 minutes to rehearse a cover before playing it in front of our class mates. I was given the role of drummer, backing 2 acoustic guitars and a bass on Rhianna's Umbrella - we went to the rehearsal space, only to find it occupied - the teacher had forgotten to book it. We had to go into a computer room to rehearse, meaning I had no drums to play - it was too late to switch instruments so I made up a part tapping on my legs while the other 3 practiced some rather nice harmonies. We were first up to play - the bass guitar was ditched, and the acoustics weren't micced up whatsoever- however quietly I tried to play, I drowned out everything. What a complete travesty, I made a right tit of myself. After that I had a class on the notes in a scale and the chords in a key, the cycle of fifths and things like that... to be honest I think uni might be a load of shite, I'll just have to boss the networking and gigging to make it worthwhile.
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Undettered by my Rhianna disaster, I booked a Bimm studio to lay down the drum track for "Not Worth Hearing" - the 9th song we've worked on for the album, this being the 8th recording session. My first time alone in a studio started swimmingly - I set up 3 drum mics 60s style, plugged into the wall and got ready to rock! However - Logic was not playing ball and I could not find the inputs anywhere. I began to panic deeply - I didn't want to let on to the staff I had no idea what I was doing... I bluffed my way through, saying "I'm used to something a bit more simple" as if I'd been to a cut-rate music college... of course, I'd done bricklaying at college, and there'd always been an operative in the studio with me. After finding out the computer needed to be turned on and off again because it wasn't connected to the mixing desk, all the inputs magically appeared! This whole ordeal left me with very little time to actually record - i rattled through 3 takes back to back to back, the last one being satisfactory even though one of the overhead mics fell over onto the hi-hat (I'll firm it - that bit will have a reversed guitar solo over it anyways). After another deeply stressful moment for technologically inept Harry - trying to actually get the recording off the desktop and somewhere I can across it - I finished up. Given that none of my lessons are production based, the only way to learn the studio was a baptism of fire like this - did I have to run from the second floor to the basement and back several times to get things working? Yes. But we came away with a drum track to overdub on so that's all that matters.
September ended with a lot of things in a questionable state.
How are we going to play with only two members?
Who's going to join the band in London?
What's happening with the second album?
Well... you'll just have to wait til the OCTOBER ISSUE! (All of these issues are resolved within the first 2 days of October)
Until then - keep well, cherish the good times, don't be alone for the bad times
Lots of love
Harry xx
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