Wednesday, May 04, 2005

Chimney

Yeah yeah yeah. It ought to be explained that, at the same time as putting together this album, angel tech have been simultaneously working on other projects. As a result the LP is a sort of constant background hum beneath the bursts of more focussed, time-conscious work: shows constructed with our collaborators in the performance group “Bodies In Flight”; film soundtracks; radio broadcasts; educational work. In addition to this we have our own self-contained alter ego called “El Hoover” which involves recording obtuse and often bizarrely comic electronic music inspired by the stuff that never quite makes it onto an angel tech track. We have a whole album of this stuff kicking around.

Meanwhile the studio is currently undergoing serious renovations. The ceiling has been ripped out and stuffed with rockwool… new doors are being added (they lead to the same places, but it’s all framed differently. Which is nice.) The chimney against one wall has been torn away and replaced with a series of magical devices to ensure that the entirety of Doug’s house doesn’t collapse and flatten us beneath a mountain of Edwardian brick and baby toys. And as we’re currently involved in a theatrical tour on top of all this, it feels as though our equipment, resources, time and energy have been burst across the face of the city like a series of giant life-changing zits.

The majority of the recording equipment is now set up in my flat in Central Bristol. This would be fine were it not for the birds outside my window, which - now that spring has finally made its mind up, and sprung - have developed fantastically loud chirrups, cackles and whistles in order to compete with the city rumble. I’m thinking of some sort of air rifle… or maybe a powerful bow and arrow, with the arrowheads dipped in pitch and set alight before being let fly. You’ll be able to spot my house for miles: it’ll be the one surrounded by flaming blackbirds, charred, plummeting chaffinches, and the RSPCA.

I quite like the fact that our music is briefly aping the rupture produced by packed diaries, fuck-you birds and a general lack of sleep. We’ll grab little moments here and there in some provincial theatre to suddenly burst into a series of angry riffs, and these will then find their way onto the latest mix of one of the album tracks. I’ll be up at 6:00am editing a radio ident and it will suddenly strike me that Molotov should collapse under its own weight at the end, struggling, drowning beneath scuzzed-out guitars. So I feed the whole track through a distortion pedal Neil has left lying around called a “Jekyll And Hyde.” It’s silver and shaped a bit like an axe head. Maybe over the top I’ll add the noise of the birds outside, compressing and distorting them until they sound like hellish choirs of bad ringtones. Maybe at 7:30am I’ll crack open a beer. Dammit. Sleep is for tortoises.

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