I Live In A Mansion

[Above] Shady Bedroom Setup

Over the weekend I moved into the servant's quarters of a Palatial Georgian mansion. My room is in the attic with some slanting ceilings which means the reverb is ok but the headroom leaves something to be desired. I am cracking on with some shady bedroom recording, when I'm not cracking open a can and kicking back at the party. Sorry, my mistake. It's not a party if it happens ALL THE TIME.

Anyway, it's nice to have a room with a view(ish) and a USB microphone. Hopefully at some point I can circulate a shady bedroom demo, in tried and tested lo-fi style. Perhaps I will record it on the built-in mic of a budget boombox and make sure that it can't be copied unless someone transfers it cassette-to-cassette. Because music's just not cool if you can't make it horribly exclusive. And I for one am heavily in favour of elitism. Personally I will only listen to a song if it hasn't been written yet.

Look out for revelations soon. Behind the scenes, hard work goes on towards EP 2.

Rimmer

Howlin' Wolffe Demonstrates the Rimmer from Zygmunt Day on Vimeo.

I was 21 years when I wrote this post.

I turned 21 today. Christ.

Recording is finished.

I think it's a pretty good one. It's been a long and hard process fitting in recording around full time work, nights out and people's holidays, but in the end, after a couple of sleepless nights for me, we got it done. The EP will be released before Christmas, but not a long time before.

It might sound stupid, but a lot of sacrifice goes into making anything like this, and I want to wholeheartedly thank Sam for being his usual stoic self, and thank everyone who came and played on the record. Thank you Tom, Ed, Ollie, Helen and Conrad.

I can't wait to get this record out there, but in the meantime I will still be playing shows and writing. I have plans to maybe record another EP of acoustic songs before Christmas. Turning 21 has made me feel, even more than I already felt, that time is short, and there's work to be done.

I'm playing a gig at the Horn this evening, the 21st, which seems like an appropriate day this year. Hopefully it will be the first gig of the rest of my life, if you know what I mean.

See you in the morning.

The Mermaid, St. Albans, 19th August 2010

Second gig with The Shadow-Line. It was the first night of the Mermaid's beer festival, and we were the 5-star entertainment. It turned out we had to fill more time than we thought, so I did a couple of solo numbers, and then Joe Waters jumped up and did one or two with me. Then we set up the band and ploughed through a couple of boneshakers. Sweat was sweated, pints were drained. All in all, we managed to get paid.

Recording Summer #5

Ed and Conrad made it down to record some Piano and Cello. It was a long night, but we got it done. Suffice to say that stuff is sounding good. Here are some pictures:

And here are some clues for the new EP:

Work goes on. Two weeks left.

Vertigos EP Launch