22/4/05
TJ: ‘Night Sail’ the 30 second vignette, has developed into a 5 minute opus. The idea was for a song in two parts, the intro a fairly conventional acoustic song, the outro a spoken monologue. I lay down a sketch on my Levoi (new strings!) and then sing and speak. We listen back and decide it works best as two separate pieces; the song to be called ‘Can I Start Again Please?’, and the spoken part to be ‘Night Sail’, the two pieces connected only by their melodic theme. ‘Can I Start Again Please’ was inspired by an article that I read about an intriguing line of grafitti scribed, very neatly, for all to see as they departed by train, from Paddington Station in west London. It read “Far away is close at hand in images of elsewhere”, echoes of ‘querencia’ again.The song ends with a hopeful mantra “Sooner rather than later, please God”. Here we track up 12 harmonies. We don’t tend to favour backing vocals, as they can over sweeten and detract from the main narrative. On this occasion though, the disinterested, dispassionate beauty of the the choral section seems in such contrast to the very personal words, that we decide to keep them; they work because they shouldn’t! Marcus adds some keyboard and upright bass. We decide that the keyboard overeggs the sound and opt for the simplicity of voice/guitar/bass.
‘Night Sail’ comes from happy times spent with John Baird, aboard his 42 foot ketch, ‘Frenya’. Anyone who has ever experienced the exhilaration of a night sail will recognise the duality of exposure, yet absolute containment and safety. The spoken outro is a keeper. I know that some folk feel uncomfortable with spoken voice over music, but for me, it is simple: some words do not suit rhythm or rhyme, melody or metre. Some words are best spoken.

MC: I had thought we'd done all the songs for the album and we were going to get ready to start mixing so I was a little surprised when Trev said “I've got this little 30 second vignette”. It's now turned into 2 songs neither of which are a 30 second vignette!
I'm not sure what had prompted Trev to change his strings but it was a nice change to use his Levoy acoustic. I mic'd up the guitar with the Akg 451straight into the SPL gold mic pre. I've recently changed the audio system in the computer for a mixtreme powerpack so this was the first time I'd used it in anger. From the SPL I went into my new Apogee AD converter then via AES into soundscape mixpander into Nuendo. Trev’s voice was recorded with the same signal path except using the Rhode classic valve mic. When it came to recording the double bass, I set up with the Rhode in the vocal booth as usual but I wasn't 100% happy with the sound. I'd just changed the strings on the double bass and it was sounding great but I think the small dead nature of the booth wasn't doing it justice. I decided to record it in the main control room and suddenly it sprang into life, with the new strings the bass was developing a bigger sound and needed some space. The bv's sound great and add a different texture which is a nice change.
I've done a bit of sailing myself and remember having to do some night sailing to get some hours logged in my book when I did my BYA course, so I could relate very well to the sentiment.

29/4/05
TJ: We add some tracked acoustics to ‘Strange Sympathy’, and Marcus adds some vibes to ‘Can I Start Again Please?’ which shimmer beautifully against the dry backdrop of acoustic/double bass. We record some outdoor ambience to place over the intro of ‘Can I start Again Please?’ There’s the gurgle of the stream, planes and trains, and a blackbird singing to the gods. As soon as we press record, the bird gets shy and we have to make do with the odd twitter. We also place some effects over ‘Night Sail’... sounds like whales mating! We also sample some single low notes that BJ has played with his ebow that add a strange undertone. We discuss topping and tailing the album with these two related songs, so that we’ll start where we end.
From here on, it is mix time. There will be small fixes, but most everything is placed. Marcus will fine tune, I’ll visit with fresh ears and do likewise. To avoid playing ‘beat the demo’ I never take mixes home until they are nearly finished. You can become so used to an unfixed mix, that it becomes what you expect to hear.

MC: Funnily enough Trev and I had both had the same thought about vibraphone, so when I put them on we both immediately liked them.The outdoor ambience proved a bit tricky as it was a bit windy, and I didn’t have the right kind of mics, so from a technical point of view it could have been better but the 'vibe' is right so it worked. The strange sounds and BJ samples were done in the computer by taking snippets of pedal steel and then I pitch shifted them around until the desired 'whale mating' had been achieved!
We've definitely finished now, so I can get myself into 'mix mode' which is stage two of the process...onwards and upwards!

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