Well, it looks as if things are finally starting to come together. I began thinking about this album as I was finishing up the recording for "Theodore and the Spectres" during the summer of 2005, and now, almost exactly two years on, I'm only just getting down to writing it. So what took me so long? Well, firstly I went off to university in Exeter, and then I was sent to Vassar college in New York for my second year, and in between that I spent more time than anticipated on a project with Owen Fung that turned into an album called "Sachiko's Seasons", which we are on the verge of releasing under the name Ex-Tap Dancer. These are busy times, to be sure.
But during all these transcontinental shifts and musical sidetracks I've been itching to get another Hailstones record out there. "Theodore" was everything I wanted to achieve at the time, but when I finished it I wanted to move away from my fascination with the 'concept album' and see whether I can actually write straight up songs about personal experiences and feelings, rather than hiding them in fictional stories. So I bought a cheap handheld tape recorder from ebay early on in my first year at Exeter so that I could capture any bits and pieces of guitar lines and vocal melodies that came to me whenever I wanted. That proved to be a pretty useful idea, but by the end of the year I had loads of bits and hardly any that I really thought were good enough to go on an album. Oh, of course I had no lyrics.
So I took some time out, wrote and recorded "Sachiko" with Owen in the summer of '06 (an exercise that allowed us to figure out how to get the best sound from our new Tascam 38, as well as experiment with instrumental music), and went off to America. While there, I picked up a little stereo mic for my iPod so that I didn't have to use that crappy tape player anymore, and got a better idea of the direction I wanted to take the album in. Eventually I began noting down ideas for themes and any lyrics that came to me, and by the time I flew home I had a lot more subject matter, a lot more ideas for songs, and a lot more confidence in this album.
And that pretty much brings us up to today. I have a long bus ride to work every day so I'm keeping myself awake by writing lyrics, and musically the basic song structures are, if very roughly, practically finished. So in the next few weeks I'm going to carry on writing lyrics, arrange a general track listing, and start thinking about how I want each song to sound when it comes to recording. My hope is that I'll finish the album acoustically by the end of the summer so that I can team up with Ian Humberstone of Tisso Lake (with whom I will be sharing a house in October) to record it. Good times.
So in the meantime, I'm going to try and keep this blog updated with where I am in the writing process (I may share some thematic ideas and lyrics etc possibly), and also with links to things that are influencing me at the moment. Plus anything else that I think might be interesting. So do keep checking back, and I'd really welcome any comments or suggestions etc if you're willing to make them. Thanks a lot!
George
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