Kings & Queens

We’ve been in the studio about 3 days over 4 days. New songs are materializing out of thin air.

Wednesday last week we spent an evening coaxing the magic out of David; he can play drums and loves Zidane; its a good match. His bass drum is huge and he don’t use rack tom. imagine the fatness of that. Jonathan and I scratched along that night but the next day we rolled out new sounds (from instruments) and captured the sound of hot sun in the hot box. Some pretty fruity stuff i’d say. Jonathan has been on a strict diet of thai coconut this summer so you can feel where the bass is going right? Strapon disco from a can of neu!? alright. There was this thing he did with lap bass and slappy fingers – good lord.

We also employed my first ever electric guitar on a track tentatively titled ‘celebrate’ (could be brelecate). wait, no that was the first guitar i got here; a vox tornado. that sounded good too. No, the one with the oldest guitar is called ‘Like a Warning’ – anyway, that guita has been through a lot and so its cool to have him on there. i don’t know why i said ‘him’ but it does feature a painting of spiderman on the back (that was from my early teens by the way; not because of mr Maguire, freaks). It has pink knobs.

On friday after a few more guit/bass riffs Andi pulled out the fuzziest organ sound we could get and droned the hell out of these tunes. Icing on the cake, more like ‘the uncooked cake mix off the spoon’, so smooth people. shit! alright, again. Ok, so in the middle of all this we bought a pool from Kmart and picked cherries from trees. Cool down.

Last night we set up a microphone and crooned ourselves out of our minds. Must be the elevation but things got weird… especially Dana – he’s a right one, let me tell you. Writing songs is hard friends! Anyway, back in today to see what all that sounded like and to add some random psychedelic topping…

Magnolia, originally uploaded by Rich in Orderly Manor.

today we begin recording 5 new tunes. So it’s Magnolias all round. The songs we are recording are: Like a Warning, Celebrate, See you in the Sky, Olbers’ Paradox and Just fields.

just completed a 15 minute drone-out for this cool art-audio project called Finetuned. Go check it out here; there’s a schedule in the player so you’ll see when we are on the horizon… We recorded another tune for this project but it got lost in the shuffle; if you’re reading this you might feel like trying it out here. It’s a good ole one take jam done in the Manor with some meaderings added from desert central…
This reminds me, we are in Dana’s new ‘Station to Station’ studio in two weeks. We’ll be recording four or five new tunes to add to the 2006 recordings which will in turn give us a full LP. This will be officially available by the end of the year. Then we’ll be coming to play your nearest living room in the autumn. The full track listing today is looking like this:

What’s in Mind 6:06
See you in the Sky 3:23
National Divide (Kings Theme) 4:52
Slow Motion 3:29
070523_celebrate 3:56
Like a Warning 6:31
Sign of Life 2:53
070601_seen_it 3:55
Confessed Again 3:19
Hearts Ease 3:38
070418_sudden2 5:54
Olbers’ Paradox 15:48
While i’m thinking of new sound i recently took delivery of the first three Grass Roots releases; Lee Bob Watson, Aaron Ross and Mariee Sioux. All three records sound like they were made for you’re particular living room. They’ll be out soon.

thought i’d communticate the last 5 months with some schnappps….