Again, I have been largely absent from the blogging scene of late, what with the Anubis website, new Anubis album in the works, flogging off a old Anubis albums and rehearsing new songs and old ones alike for gigs. It's been hard to even come up for air.
As followers of Facebook will be no-doubt fully aware, things have been nuts with reviews and orders flying in from all over the planet for 230503, and although it's still shifting modest numbers, the fan base is widespread, and seems to be very enthusiastic. The album has gotten some very good press which we're indebted to the lovely people who have had really nothing but kind words to say about it. I can only guess that the thread of emotion that runs through it is strong enough to hold it together and not become too pretentious, even though it is at times a bit overblown... but it's at least overblown how I want it.
I guess the most recent success must be Progfest, and that was really one of those 'wow' gigs... I know for a fact it looked amazing and we seemed to keep the audience onside through the lengthier pieces. I guess they couldn't have expected anything other than lengthy, surely? From the video and audio, the band was pretty hot from the off, and held up a standard. Robbie gets better at every show. Not that I've ever had reason to doubt him, but he's growing in confidence and becoming more of a frontman, as a focal point, rather than looking a little static and uncomfortable up there. Dougie's stint away from us with Hemina has undoubtedly brought his confidence up and our three-part harmonies seem to be better than ever. Dean is more integrated and having debuted the Tower Of Silence material, he is as integral a part in the arrangement. Not to say that he didn't find a place to exist comfortably within the existing material, given his involvement in it from the off, but this is on equal footing. I know I find the dual guitar quite exhilarating.
As the next album's concept comes together, I find myself, aided and abetted by Robbie, traversing the socio-economic hierarchy of 18th and 19th century Britain, back to the days of the Union Workhouses, and mixing it fairly liberally with an interest in the hypothesis of the supernatural. All in all it makes a fairly dour but utterly compelling story that the flesh and muscle of the next album (called A Tower Of Silence) will hang on. The new lyrics have a fairly spiritual bent, albeit from the perspective of the protagonist of the story, the shade of a 12 year old girl called Sarah. Having spent my childhood in a house that I believed very strongly to have been haunted and having had a number of unexplainable psycho-spiritual experiences over the years, it was undoubtedly an atmosphere I felt compelled to explore. Robbie was, when we first met a total skeptic but has since been more open to the matter after being party to, and indeed present with some form of 'vibe' that is inexplicably present. The lyrics are, by the way, quite outstanding.
So every Tuesday, the boys and I have been chiseling away at these new pieces, refining arrangements and getting notes under fingers/into larynxes. For the most part it's been a largely painless process, interrupted by outbursts of Steve's monolithic temper. Not for no reason is he well known for it. The 'Tower' pieces are, on the whole, more musically intricate than the ones on 230503, with some have multiple time changes per song. With Doug's excellent writing also on a much more level footing with 'the old firm' of Rob and I, there seem to be a lot more notes to contend with, especially in riffs and runs, where his speed and dexterity has upped the ante a little.
The recording process began a couple of weeks ago with a new piece entitled 'Archway Of Tears', which came initially from Doug, that Rob and I edited and arranged further, adding the chords in the middle section that has become a guitar solo. As the tracks were put down, Rob and I found it sounding very like UK - something unexpected as Nick and Steve - who initially improvised the original repetitive rhythmic figure - have, to the best of my knowledge, never heard 'In The Dead Of Night', which it resembles fleetingly. Doug's solo channels Alan Holdsworth, but he indicates thats more intentional. Regardless, it's a stunning solo.
The other piece that we've begun tracking is the concluding epic, the 12-minute 'All That Is'. Now this, I know, to be far and away Steve's favourite Anubis song, and it is a bit of a classic prog track in a Genesis meandering sort of way, with elements of Muse creeping in with the drums, bass, guitar and keyboards all playing figures in different time to form one common whole. It's got a great melody and one of Rob's best lyrics. It is fairly heavy and breaks from a sweet, very Breaking Water-esque Piano intro into the body of the song. The song is also very much the way Rob and I write together these days, as the first bit is entirely his and the second, more anthemic and slower section was mine. But with his melody, naturally.
The lyrics seem to be shaping up in a similar way to the last record, where the initial idea comes up and we throw it back and forth until we're both satisfied with it. We're 4/9ths of the way there.
The other thing, which has been quite fun, has been the idea of videoing all our recording sessions. One of my regrets is that nothing exists from the period where Rob and I wrote the last album, and only about 2 minutes of very shaky video exists from those long sessions at Razorback that nearly killed Dean as the three of us continually butted heads, I read many books and sniped at the other two whilst they recorded endless takes of vocals (probably because I didn't think any of them were yet good enough and likely made my point known, much to the others' chagrin). Which up until recently had been my single favourite Anubis experience. Naturally going into the studio with a new, better, largely group re-arranged album, with a band to record it instead of people we liked showing up at my house to add bits and pieces, it feels even better this time around. As much as I love gigging, and I do, it's still the studio and the process of making a few songs into a big long-form statement that gets the heart beating faster.
That said, the gigging experiences we've had lately, as I said before, have been great, and the last one we did at the Excelsior only a couple of weeks back was an immensely satisfying musical endeavour. Additional sentimentality was there to beef up the occasion as it occurred to me halfway through Waterfall (that I should have been concentrating on what I was doing...?) that it was August 26th 2010 and thus exactly 10 years to the night that Nick and I had first trod the boards together, or at least the sticky carpet, at Tattersall's Headroom in Rozelle - Department's first real gig. Had I known we might have worked up Codename: Velvet for the occasion. Or probably not.
So coming up, we probably have about two more shows for 2010. One we're pretty sure is happening at Candy's Apartments in Kings Cross at the end of October, and maybe another at the very end of Nov that may include Arcane, our friends from QLD. The studio time is probably the biggest priority right now as we have set ourselves a deadline of May 2011 to get AToS finished for release. Given that 230503 took 5 years, I think to follow it up in 10 months is bloody impressive. The other obstacle, albeit a very warm fuzzy one, is the arrival of Antoinette 2.0 (the next generation) in the first week of Nov (all being well) that could crimp musical activities slightly for a month (If we're in the studio, it'll likely not be too big an issue - but with a gig offered for the end of Nov, it's really up to Nick if he's willing to commit to that or not, we all understand his reasoning if he doesn't feel he is).
Finally, I have a new baby too. Not of the flesh, bone and nappy-wearing variety, but of the red-and-black uber-hotness of the Nord C1 organ. Since the Hammond L100 melted down spectacularly at the Wall, I have been umm-ing and ahh-ing about replacing it and the road warrior OB3 with a common organ that will sound like a B3, not weigh more than Steve and Nick in a big box, and allow me to avoid having to take rotary speaker appendages to little gigs and waste time setting it all up, and something that could double for a Farfisa co I could not have to take my old Farfisa out too. Plus, I was not about to risk taking the Hammond out again, and risk losing the whole rig to power fail. I did record the organ part for Archway or Tears with the old girl, but will likely replace the part with the C1. It's more B3-like than the L100, which has minimal keyclick, and has zero mechanical noise to boot. It's a beautiful keyboard, and I'm very much in love. It feels like an organ. Simple. I played a Hammond B3 recently and this feels almost identical. And the leslie sim is just wonderful. Can't wait to take it out for Floyd show if and when we get back into doing it.
That said, I have loved the old organs, the L100 has been a joy for me since day one and I still get excited playing it. I shall miss it most when it's gone. The OB3 has been to every gig I've played in the last 10 years bar two, when I played with my OLD Hammond at the very start of Department. Sure, it's sat out rather forlornly in the car whilst I got my jollies from some heavy piece of 1960's junk on stage, but it was always there in case the unthinkable happened at soundcheck and the Hammond gave up the ghost. The one time we didn't have a soundcheck... bingo.
It saw four Floyd shows, was a spare at another three. 52 Department gigs, 12 Anubis gigs, The Department Eponymous LP, a couple of bits on 230503, a recording session with The Saturns, and hundreds of rehearsals. Whilst sonically, it's less inspiring that Steve after a Lamb Vindaloo, it is something I've shared a lot of memories with. The Farfisa is ugly, noisy, falling to bits and nothing more than a cheap and nasty plastic low-end beginner's home organ. I bought it for the princely sum of $30 on eBay and spent more on petrol driving to St. Ives to pick the thing up. I've never liked it much, and it's been genuinely useless to me except for one thing, which is whacking it through a ton of reverb and adding vibrato for the build up in Echoes. Which is fortunate really, as it was the only reason I bought it at all. That effect, however, was stunning live, and I saw Dean visibly shudder with approval every time I raised the fader. It did get used on the Archway Of Tears demos, and was tracked for use on the final version, but will be replaced with the modelled compact duo on the C1 which is pant-wettingly good.
