Feeling Tight ?

[peluche]

I read in the review of 'too' that the album sounded much 'tighter' than the debut.

Did you feel when recording that the band had actually become 'tighter' in perfomance, writing, etc ??

Or would you put this down to a natural evolvement just down to 'continuation'

Cheers, Chris

[Slim Shaney]

I think that the thing with the debut is/was that it was a recording of some songs that James and I had written and which we just wanted to get down for posterity before we all went back to our proper jobs and stopped being so silly about things - we got people in to do what we had in mind, and there only three minds between us at the best of times, and so it was (understandably) 'loose' - and that's not a bad thing, I'm tellin' ya....
By the time we recorded 'Too' (available from the site now, kids...) we had been gigging for a while and so folks had put their mark on things that we were playing already, rather than just being turfed into a studio with the barked instruction "play, monkey boy, play!!!" and so I think 'Too' may well have a more of a considered feel about it. That's not to say that there isn't an awful lot more stuff (or a lot of more awful stuff, depending on your definition...) which didn't make the cut, both song and performance-wise.
Of course, because we'd all been playing together for some time live, that made recording much more relaxed in terms of personal relationships when it came to spending eight hour days in very small rooms with each other. Also, our timing's got better, and so our brilliant engineer, Steve Tsoi at Soundmagic, didn't have to spend so much time thinking of new ways to say "Great guys - that's just the take.....now can we just do another one for safety....?"
There'll be more about writing, recording and James' enormous debt to the Inland Revenue, society, and chickens, on the main site shortly, I'm sure.
Cheers
Shane

[Slim Shaney]

Oh, and we used a click track on some things. You should hear the version of Antibike featuring the drum track from 'Mickey'... ;D