July Newsletter '26
Hello everybody, i hope you are all having a lovely summer - my favourite parts are all the butterflies, and the pinkish light that shines three-quarters up the treeline just before sundown. It's funny, from my nest in the shed (i'm hiding from the carpetfitters) I can see the Four Blokes kick drum is full of the sleeping bag i slept in on childhood camping trips - i notice this at this juncture because the sofa from the shed where we recorded the first album has now been moved into the lounge. I don't know if this is a test of my decompartmentilisation skills, but that sofa is where me or Tiago (sometimes Myles or George) would sit while the other was at the desk recording their part - recording in the shed was a sanctuary from the tense eyes of parents, where we were free to be daft and quite stoned and laugh loudly without everything turning into a lecture. I don't know, it's just weird that the sofa from the room where I'd get away from my family and get drunk and high and sing Popworld is now where my dad sits to watch tv? A strange preamble about the semantics of furniture, folks! Since I've been home from uni i find myself thinking about what objects in my house represent, I guess because I have a creeping terror being back home from unresolved adolescent hurt and I'm always looking for the sources.
ANYWAYS - down to business!!! I signed off the June Newsletter by saying, by the end of July, I could finish the album and film!!!! And if I didn't, I'd better have a bloody good reason. Well, did I? If not, do i have a bloody good reason? Read on...
After galavanting about in Weymouth for a bit, I returned to London for the last week of my tenancy - i booked a session at the Uni studios, only 9 am-11 am was avaliable so we were back on the day shift. At the end of June, while in Turkey, I'd written a song called Wishes - all holiday long i was tapping out this Phil Spector-y beat on my thighs. Think Be My Baby. I got a master take of that - note the verses have no hi-hat and very sparing crash - and
Anyways, my barista hugged me, I went to Aria's 21st, and in a terribly hungover state in a terribly hot room I packed all my belongings in a suitcase and a big Sports Direct bag and moved home - had a great chat about Galatasary with the Uber Driver which distracted me from my in-flight rollercoaster stomach. Whack that suitcase in the corner of my childhood bedroom, brief venture to see Auden in Romsey, then to swim through Durdle Door and get an excruciating sunburn, a few days wandering around in the wood dreaming, talk to Cameron Picton at the Windmill (awkwardly but I spoke to him!!!) and then to Tiago's to borrow a Focusrite - and thus began a flurry of activity to complete the album.
There I was, with our bizzare new sound, our new surrealist and dreamlike album that grew out of a soil of insomnia and just a touch of madness, finishing the job in the concrete grey room where we used to rehearse. As far back as four years ago! Cardboard boxes split at the corners full of my childhood drawings and Doctor Who books, a cobweb covered Christmas Tree, old amps and crumpled setlists for a teenage punk band called Four Blokes that, despite the optics, was the same band the 21 year old in the middle of all these manifestations of the past was recording for. I set off on an a meandering mission to complete the album.
July 24th was the first day of these sessions - I overdubbed a synthesiser part onto Wishes. As always I love my 7th chords but the pitch bending in the verses is new - the progression in the chorus is probably the prettiest thing I've ever written. As with several of the songs on the album it ends with a descent into complete madness. Next, the Synthesiser part for I Keep Waking Up - The Beatles song She Said She Said has a twinkling high organ part played on a Vox Continental wayyy down low in the mix, I found an isolated stem and fiddled with my settings until I came close to that sound. More pitch bending throughout the song, a dissonant non-chord in the bridge, and I put an extra part in the chorus with a high tempo arp that, to me, sounds like data speeding down the information superhighway. A new instrument was added, a digital Omnichord, pretty sparingly here because only 2 of the chords in the song were actually playable on it. There's a version of the instrument for Web Browsers so I literally micced up my phone and played it on there - especially at the end you can subtley hear my nails on the touchscreen. Very 21st century.
At this point my lounge had no furniture in it, meaning a huge natural reverb, so I overdubbed a few things onto Bluebells in the Meadow. I banged on a cooking pot, drummed on a paint tin, and added a few backing vocals. To be honest I'm dreading mixing that song, there's so much going on - the second verse has a drum machine, 2 synthesisers, an electric bass, a paint tin, a cooking pot, a string quartet, vocals... anyways, that it was it for the daytime session. I returned late in the evening to add vocals to I Keep Waking Up, which went well, and Wishes, which went not so well - I was getting progressively drunker throughout which I think lended itself to one song and not the other.
July 25th - the one year anniversary of our debut album - I began work on a new songs, Bedtime Story for Pigeons. This had changed DRASTICALLY from the original concept Greenbelt, I'm not even sure you could call them the same song. They just occupied the 13th spot on the track listing until I eventually formed the idea into a song - what was originally going to contain a piano chord being held out for as long as possible, then reversed so it grew instead of shrank, interspersed with abrasive white noise, was now going to be a spoken word piece over some electronica. I wrote the chord progression on the Online Omnichord, making it the lead instrument I suppose, and then programmed the drum machine in bed. I went up to the shed to dub the omnichord on, but the takes from this day were unsatisfactory and I ran out of time, I had to go and drink loads of cans next to a grain silo in Dorset.
July 26th, back to work on Bedtime Story for Pigeons. Got a decent take of the omnichord this time, and added synthesiser on about seven different sounding settings throughout the song. The first 3 or so minutes are the proper song, then the last 4 are the Wandering Girl's Nightmare - unsure yet if I'll trim it down from the full seven minutes. The balance between beauty and horror is kinda paramount to the album's aesthetic. For additional percussion, I shook a plastic tub full of alan keys and spanners into the microphone, and in the nightmare section I emptied all the alan keys and spanners into the floor tom and put it on my head, let everything rattle around while I laughed - I also operated an industrial carpet cleaner. I've always been frightened of both the sound of carpet cleaners and smell the smell of wet carpet so this was slightly disturbing.
July 27th, I made several more attempts to get a decent vocal on Wishes. By the end of the session I was stood stark naked in the pitch dark, which i had decided would help me. I reckon I must've sung every line well at least ONCE out of 15 takes.
July 28th was the vocal overdub for Bedtime Story for Pigeons. Second take was perfect - less than half an hour after I wrote the story in the kitchen.
"Someone she'd considered a friend was crouching, industrial estate coloured eyes darting about cautiously lest anyone come near enough to take her dead rat dinner away from her. Mouthfoam and greenish-red blood mixed and dripped on the sizzling concrete.
Further along was a gaggle of people, lost in the spectacle playing behind their spectacles. They were lain with mouths agape, the kind of people who have rot under their frames, those who see nothing in sunlight. Others were bent over forward, skeletal and groaning, MKed to the eyeballs. Pale dry drool stains where their lips once dripped."
My favorite bit is the nightmare at the end but I'll save that for the final release...
That was all in the realm of recording - did i finish the album? Well, not quite, but VERY nearly - all that remains are my 2 bass overdubs, Aria's 2 guitar overdubs, and a harp part. And the Film? As of July 31st 6/14 scenes have their final edit complete, but virtually all the filming is complete and I'm pretty adamant it will come out in about 2 weeks, around August 15th. The album will follow in late August. I will see you there everyone - very excited to share it with you.
Best wishes
Harry/?????
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