Tinsel Face

Ages and ages ago I had the idea of recording a storytelling Christmas album. The reasons behind this were fairly simple; 1) because we'd just formed Fat Fox Productions and needed a more of an online presence so an audio recording to be released on Bandcamp can't do any harm at all and 2) because Christmas is awesome and I thoroughly enjoy working on festive material. I started writing bits of it in a hotel in Warrington, near Manchester, whilst on tour with the British IBM. Excited by the brief notes I had made, it was clear that it also needed music - so in October I assembled some of my finest musician friends - Alister Bunclark, Clare Calder and Steve Calder (plus myself on percussion things, of course) to record funky versions of classic, and most importantly - copyright-free Christmas music. With double bass, brass, strings, piano and percussion we spent a day at Steve and Clare's house recording with some equipment borrowed from my good friend Paul Malpas and after several long hours we had nine nicely recorded tracks with some pretty diverse arrangements, Alister then mixed them and got them back to me in good time.

I then buggered off on tour with the solo-ish show with Claudia for a bit, and then had to write the Christmas stage show, which opens tomorrow...somehow, Tinsel Face - the project which we started so early on, got nudged aside and it was in danger of not happening in time for this Christmas, which was a shame given the work of the musicians involved and also the fabulous artwork of Liz Bone who spent weeks on making us an image that matched my festive desires. But obviously - as you know - it is possible to make time for something if you really want it to happen. Little things had to be changed - for example I originally wanted the story to be told by two voices, Izzy Rees and Alan Hay, but Alan then got cast in a big production of Oliver, and there just wasn't anybody else I felt would be suitable, so when I finally got around to writing the rest of the short story it was written purely for Izzy's voice. The story itself was written over two late evenings before being edited, and last weekend Izzy recorded all 9 chapters of it, using my iPhone, in a small hut at the end of her garden. She was really on form, good job too - because time-wise I left this one awfully late, and did most of it in one take (looking back on the recordings now, only two of the nine chapters were second takes).

This evening I have spent pretty much the whole night cleaning up the recordings, fitting the music in around it, and seeing if it all gels together. It really, really does...I know I'm perhaps not thinking straight because I'm hungover to buggery after last night's Christmas party (this was always intended to be my night of 'rest', but as you probably know - I get anxious when in comes to resting time), but it just feels so nice. It's twee, it's gentle, it's oddly poignant at times - but it goes somewhere, it tells a proper story, and the musical interludes between the chapters keep it lively, almost like an audio cabaret. And it doesn't outstay it's welcome either - not being arrogant or anything, but it feels like it's a really nice 46 minute listen. I think perhaps the fact we didn't use proper studios to record, and the fact that things were left slightly late, somehow meant we put more effort in, I reckon I've put more hours into this than I have the actual Christmas stage show. It feels like a very homely project.

As I write this it's currently uploading to Bandcamp, the chances are by the time you read this it'll be live - so here is the link: fatfoxproductions.bandcamp.com - we're selling the whole album for a measly £2, or if you're coming to one of the four performances of our Christmas show we'll give you a free download code. Quite sad that this was my last project of 2012, a year of lots of projects, but it feels like a satisfying one to end on.