a recording from my infamous first band way back when i was nearly 15. usually we only had a drum machine behind our songs but at this time we actually found a drummer. i only have two songs of this band where we recorded with an actual drummer. it is me singing. can you tell i made the lyrics on the spot?? i can't remember what had happened but tim (thumbnail), our bassist, had really annoyed me hence the title. it was recorded at a practice. we had the riff ideas in place beforehand. chris (i think that was his name!) the drummer improvised. i remember us playing the recording of the practice when we got home - tim had no idea what i had been singing until that point - i don't think he was too pleased.
the band i had with a friend called marcus. it is me on bass on this song. the song changes from "puddle" to "the bug" at around the 4.10 mark. the bug took its name from the dance craze in the film "hairspray".
song taken from our first demo. i played guitar on this and did the black metal type of screaming on the end riff (don't like my voice on this song - it wasn't harsh enough). i was usually given the basic riffs of the songs we did and made them pretty with my guitar work. we recorded the demo at a studio based in the warren building in hull. this is part of the demo we mailed to record companies (without success).
off the 2nd demo i recorded with the deathgrind band. i think this marked the end of brutal insanity phase I - the music arrangements became more complex after this. this was a song that they had initially recorded a year previous to me joining on another demo but i liked the song for its ferocity and knew with me in the band we could record it a million times better. rich, the vocalist, wanted me to do the solo at the end and i hadn't written one, so i just did my best impression of trey azagthoth from "morbid angel".
a track from my grindcore band. this is taken from our 2nd demo "sweet sickteen".i wrote everything and played everything in this band apart from drums. funny how this demo keeps popping up as a split cd with various below-par grindcore bands and the drummer gets all the $$ as he copyrighted it before i could! nice eh? again, this was recorded at the warren studios in hull. the deal at the studio was that you recorded from 9-5 on day one and on day two you mixed it. i remember the engineers face when on day one he asked me "so how many songs are we recording today?" my answer was 17! the norm would be around 2-3! but i got it done.
these recordings stem from the time i was in x.amp.L3 in which the main riffs from that band where used on the motion sickness demos. lee (our bassist) did all the arrangements. it took him months to put all the fragments and riffs together into coherent songs. then he would add tims emcee and my screams. very complex music and processes. it was more of a science project than music, which i didn't enjoy too much.
i had been listening a lot to mike pattons "adult themes for voice" and "pranzo oltranzista" albums and yamantaka eyes work. the recordings were done initially for a joke. i was at my parents house with my youngest brother nicholas. the idea came up for me to interpret people he knew in song form. i recorded it in the kitchen using my guitar amp and a vintage microphone i picked up from a charity shop. the recordings became something of a cult with his friends. i got other people coming up to me to ask me to record a song about them.
after all of these bands is when i started to sit in my room night after night and come up with the initial ideas for future work including hence the hat.
