Recording with The British IBM (and other musings)

Hello, this is tired Paul writing this. I may get ranty, we'll see. Anyway, spent pretty much the whole weekend recording drum parts for the British IBM album. The British IBM is essentially Aidy, Dave and I rebranding, although - apart from the name change, there is a slight change in the music too. It's nice, actually. Having gigged with these two scallywags a lot last year including the tour there's a nice rapport there - we all understand each others playing, and there's a lot of banter. But this project also seems to be a way for Aidy to move away from the solo thing (in which Dave and I were very much his backing musicians) to the three of us actually being a proper band. At first I wasn't so keen on this, simply because having worked and gigged a lot to get the Aidy project sounding tight I felt it would be a bad move to change the name and effectively start again. Also, the songs have changed a little; Aidy has gone a bit more singer-songwriter these days. But this weekend proved a simple fact; sometimes I am wrong, and this does work - it works bloody well too. Recording at Half Ton (where I've previously recorded with Eureka Stockade, Ethan Ash, Under The Streetlamp, Flaming June, The Losers, Our Painted Nature, Michelle Bessant, Alighting and probably a few other acts I can't remember right now) I've always felt comfortable there - and working with Bugs for the first time (a producer I've met before, and someone so highly regarded I can't work out why I've never worked with him previously) we were in good hands - the drums sound lovely. The songs are really good you know, I'm not just saying this - some of these tracks are marvelous, I was a bit concerned as they're so new, but during the course of the weekend they've become proper songs. We recorded drums for 13 tracks; 10 that'll end up on the album, and 3 of the regular Aidy set - almost as a safety blanket just in case, they're sounding wicked. We got the drums down pretty quickly in theory - I estimate about 12 hours for the whole lot. There's much to be done, with the rest of the bass (Dave recorded lots of bass this afternoon), rhythm guitar, lead guitar, vocals, guest instrumentation etc to be added, but I can't wait to hear the finished product. I do fair bit of studio work, but this genuinely feels like it could end up as something really strong, really brilliant.

On another note, I had a really exciting start to 2012, and there's no reason why this can't continue, but I'm just getting a bit frustrated. Perhaps it was because I had such a good start that I was expecting things to carry on at this - they couldn't have done at this rate, there was a point about about a week ago where it felt like every day there was an exciting opportunity being offered to me. Those opportunities still exist and I'm working on them and it's all good, but the last couple of days I'm just sensing that the wheels are starting to maybe fall off a bit. Just a few negative things, I'm taking my foot off the record label gas this year (I love running Cracking Tunes, but it feels too time consuming so whilst it won't close down it won't be particularly active this year) and as a result I've found myself very angry with a certain distributor, and also I was due to play a show with a recently signed former band (as a dep) this week in Manchester only to hear today that the management has cancelled the show - it was going to be hard work anyway but I was starting to look forward to it and it had taken a lot of effort to re-arrange my diary for them. Also, some people are just rubbish at replying to emails, that's all. My existing projects look great - there's some really exciting stuff on the cards (especially in early February) but even with those I just get the sense that I'm not fully on the ball with them just yet. Next week I will be though; 2012 - no faffing around, just get on with it, Richards.

Currently listening to: The Divine Comedy - Casanova, Camera Obscura - My Maudlin Career
Currently reading: Up Pohnpei - Paul Watson
Currently watching: Match Of The Day, The Mighty Boosh