"I have a microphone, and you don't, so you will listen to every damn word i have to say".

Last night we recorded vocals on a song of ours that Theo's using for a university project. We've had the means to get full recordings done for a while, but I guess it's been the impotus of impending course work deadlines that got me screaming in a spare bedroom at 11pm on a Tuesday night ["We have to do this tonight!" - Theo's reply to my informing him of an impromptu hangout with Jameo], and finally have a proper track to show to the world as Us, albeit electronically.

I left the session relatively happy with it all. The first bunch of lines sound a bit out of time, and some distortion will be needed, but it sounds a lot better than most of the stuff I've recorded before, and was a lot trickier than anything I've ever attempted - both in fucked-up time signature stakes as well as just pure vocal stamina!

Up until this stage the lyrics were still fairly interchangeable - if something sounded stupid on retrospect it could be rephrased or taken out - but now I've committed myself to these words.
I know that with the insane amount of terrible lyrics out there I really shouldn't be anxious about putting mine into the world, but whatever. Maybe because recording vocals has been such a long time coming, I've gotten too precious or something!

I think of all the bands so far the best stuff I've written was in Duckstab. The disjointed nature of the songs meant not having to stick to the monotony of the verse-chorus-verse-chorus norms, and opened up a whole new world of lyrics to me - i could just Spew and not have to worry about fitting some restrictive structures.
The new band is kind of 80/20 on the disjointed/structured lyrical approach - it's hectic-as-fuck meaning i've got space to just flow when I want, but there's also occasional moments of normality where a catchy chorus-part fits right in. Overall, it's a lot of work but listening back after all the vocals had been laid down was a good feeling, can't wait to hear the final mix.

We've got 4 other tracks that also need my vocals, but these we're recording with the masterful Jason Sanderson at his studio in Barnsley, booked for some time in February.
I think this course work track we'll give out on CD-r's to folk who want to hear us, and the other 4 we'll send around labels to see if anyone can help us in putting it out. I'm gonna start getting inlay ideas together in the next month, so once someone says "Sure, I'll put your record out" we're ready to rock with getting it to pressing.

Also to do with the band, think we're gonna get some shirts done. Not sure what design it's going to be, but i might play with this idea a bit more, and have it as black on white.

We've got our third gig coming up in the 30th of this month, and it's with a few friends bands, Chickenhawk and Lavotchkin. Playing with mates bands is always cool.
After that I guess we'll just be concentrating on recording with Baby Jase. Fingers crossed, by April we'll be getting in more peoples faces and raising hell further afield than The Fenton.
Lates.
-Steve