well i have finally completed redoing the old brutal insanity album from 1999. i am really happy with it too. just wished the original had sounded like this version.
i did what i thought about doing in previous posts regarding the album. i recorded new solos for three or four songs and it fit really well. god my speed has improved since 1999! i think i did all i could to get the frequencies correct too.
i also made it flow as a whole album by adding samples between most songs - racking my brains for soundbites i had heard over the years that might fit.
its now just 26 minutes of non-stop brutality. unfortunately because i added samples and because some ex-member holds the copyright (even though i nearly wrote the whole thing!) i cannot make it available to buy, however i have made it free to download.
i am content now knowing the album finally sounds how i always wanted it to sound.
http://soundcloud.com/jamiexgraham/brutal-insanity
Friday 6 July 2012
Tuesday 26 June 2012
BLACK METAL PART II
This took up most of my time between march and may of this year. but finally i completed the second song in my black metal project. (the first being symbols in the sand).
i am aiming to write nine songs so i can put together a full album of this stuff. but it's hard work! i really started to get bogged down with this one and it got to a point where it wasn't a labour of love anymore. yet i didn't want to rush it just to finish it. i can't remember how many tracks i ended up recording for it but i remember listening back to the finished version for the first time i was disappointed in it. i guess it's cos when you're recording something you listen to the passages countless times so i was sick to death of it. but now listening back to it i am pretty pleased with it.
i am aiming to write nine songs so i can put together a full album of this stuff. but it's hard work! i really started to get bogged down with this one and it got to a point where it wasn't a labour of love anymore. yet i didn't want to rush it just to finish it. i can't remember how many tracks i ended up recording for it but i remember listening back to the finished version for the first time i was disappointed in it. i guess it's cos when you're recording something you listen to the passages countless times so i was sick to death of it. but now listening back to it i am pretty pleased with it.
"my own private armageddon"
i am just garnering a few ideas for the third song. i have a couple of riffs written for the next one. at the moment i am thinking of opening the next one with a classical piece. we will see. i seem to swing from one idea to another though during writing.
aside from working on this song i have been working on redoing the brutal insanity cd from years ago (see previous post). i started to write new riffs to play over it but when recording them it sounded to disjointed - kind of like an afterthought (which is exactly what it was). anyway i have redone 9 out of 10 songs - just adding little bits here and there and tidying it up a bit. it's just that the original cds frequencies and balance are all over the place so there's not a lot i can do with it.
once i have remastered the final song i am thinking of adding guitar solos to it - but then again it may sound like an afterthought. i will see how it goes. the other idea i had for it is this: i was going to take 3 or 4 songs at a time and run them together - linked maybe by samples so instead of it being a cd with 9 or 10 it'll be a cd with 3 parts to it - the first (that i am aware of) deathgrind concept album!
so i will post it here once complete and maybe make it available for download.
it's been a while!
wo when did i last post?! so much to catch up on! where do i start?
ok......looking back on my youtube account there's a few videos that i haven't posted here so here goes!
ok......looking back on my youtube account there's a few videos that i haven't posted here so here goes!
"the nocturnal silence"
this was a cover of the swedish band necrophobics early 90's classic. i really felt the sample of bela lugosi would top it off well. i play this song slightly different to the original.
"dreaming of drowning"
i had a simple riff in my head but by adding layer upon layer of guitars and synths it makes it sound anything but simple. my favourite "guitar sound" of all time is the sound billy corgan has on his underrated solo album "thefutureembrace". i sort of got that on this song. don't know how though - i think there'll be a bit of difference in the price of equipment we use!
"wolf at door"
once again i kept it simple. simple drum patterns, ugly little guitar riffs, just adding and adding things as the song goes along and grows. i think it has a sort of film score quality to it.
i have several other videos on my youtube account which i won't be posting here if you would like to check them out.
Friday 16 March 2012
brutal insanity to reform?.......NO!!!!!
travelling in the car with me must be painful sometimes. getting ready to even pop to the garage or the shops i scan my cd collection - grabbing 5-6 cds for a 10 minute journey! at the moment all i am listening to is black metal or death (not usually the best music to drive to unless you want to get zapped by speed cameras!)
anyway i digress....the other day i picked out my brutal insanity album (my old band). i really like most of the music on it but it reminds me of bad times, petty squabbles etc. i suddenly had a eureka moment!
i find the cd plagued by shitty sounding weak guitars and tinny bass. i also hate some passages from it. so.... my idea is to not really remaster as such but to edit bits that don't do it for me and to write new guitar lines for each song and record them over it. keeping the original guitars but trying to beef the sound up a little bit. not sure if it'll work. anyway i guess it'll take a while what-with it having 12 songs on it. but i will cut two songs at least that i really don't like anyway - don't think i can make a good song from a bad starting point.
i'll be posting little bits here and may even make the whole thing available for download here when complete.
other that that i am still working on my black metal project but it's coming very slowly at the mo. also garnering ideas for and 80's cover cd for my parents xmas present - did my mum a cover of the stones "paint it black" last xmas and she loves it so asking various friends to add to my list of 80s covers. will whittle it down to 10 or so. got about 30 ideas so far. anyway here's a song from the brutal insanity album in its original form before i try and make it better.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v0oYwVRH9fE
anyway i digress....the other day i picked out my brutal insanity album (my old band). i really like most of the music on it but it reminds me of bad times, petty squabbles etc. i suddenly had a eureka moment!
i find the cd plagued by shitty sounding weak guitars and tinny bass. i also hate some passages from it. so.... my idea is to not really remaster as such but to edit bits that don't do it for me and to write new guitar lines for each song and record them over it. keeping the original guitars but trying to beef the sound up a little bit. not sure if it'll work. anyway i guess it'll take a while what-with it having 12 songs on it. but i will cut two songs at least that i really don't like anyway - don't think i can make a good song from a bad starting point.
i'll be posting little bits here and may even make the whole thing available for download here when complete.
other that that i am still working on my black metal project but it's coming very slowly at the mo. also garnering ideas for and 80's cover cd for my parents xmas present - did my mum a cover of the stones "paint it black" last xmas and she loves it so asking various friends to add to my list of 80s covers. will whittle it down to 10 or so. got about 30 ideas so far. anyway here's a song from the brutal insanity album in its original form before i try and make it better.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v0oYwVRH9fE
Tuesday 6 March 2012
missed opportunity.....
ugh......
checked my emails today. got my monthly smashing pumpkins newsletter. i hadn't read them for a while. i was unaware that billy corgan was running a competition for smashing pumpkins cover versions! i have done sooooo many of them. i often record covers when i am in between writing my own material. i only do them for my own amusement really. that and to get more experience in recording processes.
anyway on reading it the date for submissions has already been and gone! argh!
shit happens i guess. but to me more than most!
http://grungereport.net/?p=10513
ok so regardless of that i thought i'd post one of my pumpkins covers. it's for the song "starla" - bside to "i am one". it also appeared on "pisces iscariot". thought i would cover it as it's not the usual song a fan would cover (being over 10 minutes long and layer upon layer of guitar and one of the great guitar solos). as per usual it is me on all instruments. enjoy!
checked my emails today. got my monthly smashing pumpkins newsletter. i hadn't read them for a while. i was unaware that billy corgan was running a competition for smashing pumpkins cover versions! i have done sooooo many of them. i often record covers when i am in between writing my own material. i only do them for my own amusement really. that and to get more experience in recording processes.
anyway on reading it the date for submissions has already been and gone! argh!
shit happens i guess. but to me more than most!
http://grungereport.net/?p=10513
ok so regardless of that i thought i'd post one of my pumpkins covers. it's for the song "starla" - bside to "i am one". it also appeared on "pisces iscariot". thought i would cover it as it's not the usual song a fan would cover (being over 10 minutes long and layer upon layer of guitar and one of the great guitar solos). as per usual it is me on all instruments. enjoy!
Monday 5 March 2012
music to come....
hmm thought i'd better post as i haven't done for a while.
i have been listening to a lot of black metal recently, ranging from burzum and abigor to usbm. but i have seemed to be busy doing other things besides music so after this week i will focus solely on writing.
i have set myself a target too - to write a black metal opus each month until i have 9 - enough for a full length cd. it doesn't seem too difficult to achieve if i look back at how many songs i was writing last year but this is going to take a monumental effort as the amount of work that goes into each fragment of a song is almost infinite.
last week i started writing the 2nd song for my black metal project "baal ov". it took over 3 hours just to record the opening 10 seconds. i could say an analogy of the process is a quote by boswell on the writing of "the life of samuel johnson" - "every word was like tearing a strip of flesh".
the beginning to the song - hmm - well i sampled for a beating heart (it was actually very hard to find a decent sample on youtube). i use the beating heart as the rhythm instead of a drum and a piece of music fades in over it reminiscent of goblins soundtrack to profundo rosso. then it kinda goes folky and then BRUTAL!!!!!!!
last year i would have been posting a song here every few days but hey i'm going for quality over quantity now.
i posted a new vid to youtube a few days back. i was a black metal song i did using samples of anneliese michels exorcisms as the vocal track. see what you think.
i was quite pleased with it apart from i didn't like the sound of the drums too much.
oh well - better go and get on with music now.
i have been listening to a lot of black metal recently, ranging from burzum and abigor to usbm. but i have seemed to be busy doing other things besides music so after this week i will focus solely on writing.
i have set myself a target too - to write a black metal opus each month until i have 9 - enough for a full length cd. it doesn't seem too difficult to achieve if i look back at how many songs i was writing last year but this is going to take a monumental effort as the amount of work that goes into each fragment of a song is almost infinite.
last week i started writing the 2nd song for my black metal project "baal ov". it took over 3 hours just to record the opening 10 seconds. i could say an analogy of the process is a quote by boswell on the writing of "the life of samuel johnson" - "every word was like tearing a strip of flesh".
the beginning to the song - hmm - well i sampled for a beating heart (it was actually very hard to find a decent sample on youtube). i use the beating heart as the rhythm instead of a drum and a piece of music fades in over it reminiscent of goblins soundtrack to profundo rosso. then it kinda goes folky and then BRUTAL!!!!!!!
last year i would have been posting a song here every few days but hey i'm going for quality over quantity now.
i was quite pleased with it apart from i didn't like the sound of the drums too much.
oh well - better go and get on with music now.
Sunday 12 February 2012
History of me and music part II
so here are snippets from my lecherous musical past - recordings of each band i was part of dating from 1991 - 2004.
spastic carcass - kill tim (1991)
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.
scab sausage - puddle/the bug (1994)
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".
inamorato - painting with multi-colours (1996)
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).
brutal insanity - religious inveigle (1998)
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".
mouthful of grub - grot (1999)
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.
atheist is your stable mind - motion sickness (2000)
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.
jenny - voice (2004)
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.
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.
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