recording blog

I have removed all of the previous 24 months ELIJAH FEW recording sessions mixes until the project is finished. What is left here are the basic song ideas and demos, recorded into cameras, tape decks, laptops as I traveled around – more often raw, unmixed, unrehearsed, immediate and completely unproduced.

Possible opportunity to play in front of the city’s Music, media , film and advertising hotshots at the biggest shindig of the year….a real chance to shine. Most of the countries leading musicians will be in the crowd.

Thank you to Seth for speaking directly to me this morning, you have confirmed my course of action!

When I wrote The Prince of Cats and Little Grey Angels I had, as usual, made long pages of notes, ideas, poetry, non sequiturs etctera: most of what I throw away from the song would make a fine series of strange vignettes alone…I’m thinking of creating a new section for these entitled

“I went to sleep a tramp and woke up a God.” or “If you’ve got an ounce of happiness they’ll want that too.”

Drowning ants fall from the ceiling, freezing water`s somehow leaking and the floor`s too cold for kneeling; in unsuccessfully appealing… to some god. Blood like cold needles that slide; in my veins – corpse candles hanging in the trees and circling stones.
“I never had the shine of a coin in my pocket” the road mender sighed and every one laughed blood, a hundred sagging mouths.

Desolation angels everywhere….I’m on the road, thank god for freedom; after the sting of disappointment and the hard earthquake work of a tectonic shift is gone comes the mellifluous colour-tones and taste of time, motion; mountain, river and ocean, vision and celebration, dedication and devotion.

Be the water – you cant stay in one place too long but unlike the million raindrops falling on the glass around you  – avoid the path of least resistance. Take the difficult road and be prepared to die for what you believe in…risk everything to complete your vision…just to write and breathe; songs, messages, art that eat worlds…

Take me back up the country.

I’m off the road;  and, beautiful as it is, the city seems wholly a vestibule of aspiration and dysfunctional bullshit – will kill your soul, tie you down and limit your consciousness.I will not reduce my music; my self to soundbites; will not compromise; will continue to self doubt; will continue with fits of madness; will do what I want and when; will believe, trust and exist nothing but the whole; will accept the demon; will re-purpose the music altruistically; will not rest; will be patient; will make mistakes; will enjoy the journey; will fight fire with fire & I will burn in hell for it all….

We separate ourselves through a broken language from the surrounding milieu. Both bird and tree are the same. A guest here says god is an astronaut – if he is; then his ship must be in for repairs or he has abandoned us for a cleaner, less f*&^ked up planet and people elsewhere? Do the quantum notions of great astrophysical thinkers, the musings of Von Daniken or the ‘superstition’ of pagan systems offer us any further respite?

How do you know but every Bird that cuts the airy way
Is an immense world of delight, closed by your senses five?

Make your life a labour of love… a cluster of stars; there is no fast track to glory…victory comes not from a simple strategy but from passion, love, necessity – fire. An eternal fight for meaning over mediocrity…years on a ghostly ship and no end in sight look for reflections dancing across the surface of the mighty river. Pieces of the puzzle do not fall immediately from the sky but people appear intermittently in the mist upon the horizon….like the terminal moraine of vast and varied existence on the edges…but that would be futile. We do not have the time for that.

What is writing real emotions? Being able to operate on a median level, taking your experience – the place, the settings, the immediate, the transient fleeting glimpses of the past, the literatures of your own belonging and fusing them together with an imagination that gleams like the flashing of a shield.

You’ve gotta be able to shine….and listen to the rivers speaking.

Religious people have told me that this is a music of god and called me to play in their church. They are right but Amerindian pantheism, paganism and the church of biosphere is more important to me than allegiance to some mere singular “god” – or vain organised form of deceit – Maybe its all imagined in the solipsistic mind of god – we`re just a part of the universe, emboldened enough to consider self, although more than mere particles held together electrically, an experience – I don`t want to be their damnéd messenger.

Another weekend of recording & mixing is fast approaching – we`re looking to retrack and track as much as possible – songs we tracked a few months back with a plank of a guitar prior to our involvement with Music Planet in Wellington.

After a couple of weeks off playing an electric I decided to fire up my under the desk guitar rig which consists of a loopstation, a delay and a distortion box into a Music Man amp. After four hours it was about midnight and I was pretty burnt out but I whipped through the footage real quick and here are some random guitar snacks for anyone who gives a damn….

I watched the Motorcycle Diaries yesterday. I had no idea that Che Guevara was killed in 1967 – that wasn`t so long ago; and with the help of an American Government Agency apparently. Disgusting. Heroes, freedom fighters, mystics and warriors of consciousness from Jesus to Geronimo, Byron, Malcolm X and more have been persecuted and ripped up by the snarling rats of the “establishment”…

Kennedy and Lennon shot down like dogs in the street by parasitic filth and an explosion of increasingly sophisticated advertising together with media, intellectual, and parabolic corporate ownership of the intangible and esoteric: land, time and space- Exxon, Clear Channel, SKY and god knows what else; to help us all feel good while our minds are repossessed and our lands are ripped up.

Since 1967 So much has changed but the human machine. Ugly homogenisation of towns and village streets across the U.K. by monolithic edifices of corporate greed, the blight of surveillance, drunkenness, violence and crime are all allies in an unconscious response…
Travelling around the South Island in New Zealand convinced me that there is a reasonable argument for fighting against eco-terrorism, exploitation and standing up against irrelevant modernisation and the damaging pollutants more often than not labelled as improvement or whatever else bullshit lexicon beaurocrats and other official madmen can use to subvert, bend and lie about the truth. Does anyone care? There are people out there who do; let`s connect.
Our relationship with the land is an integral part of our consciousness. The land is not capable of a lie. More soon.

your DNA possesses and encodes evolutionary time…….the ancient “church” is everywhere; that is everywhere we haven`t desecrated it with base architectures and  pollutants often incorrectly disguised beneath a veneer of language such as “progress”, “industry”, “change” and more. Water is the carrier and light is the messenger.

Liberte, equality, Egalite…
freedom, equality, egalitarianism; the hypotheses of European Revolutionaries remain still only ideals encoded into arbitrary signs. I recently picked up a copy of the 1962 Freedom Movement songbook – unity & music were at the centre of social change.

Well, its a dirty old world we live in and music is dirty business that`s for sure.  Is it possible to separate your art and your integrity, your ego and your conscience from the business of your product?

Sure. There`s no product without a business model or a channel behind it. Similarly there`s no revolution without subscribers to it`s system of belief or even it`s system of belief marketing. [click to continue...]

After four years with no acoustic guitar writing songs on borrowed planks and often times on my beloved stratocaster with a collection of maybe 6 guitars left to decay, rot, decline and gather dust, rust and cobweb somewhere in an empty cupboard on the other side of the earth I have finally found a plank for myself. Its a simple rather than a complex machine…An old hofner F-hole!  Fortunately the gods here have smiled upon me and hooked me up with Mojo Sound in Wellington for recording with some pricey pricey guitars…

With a mellow, aged, ochre, molasses and diesel sound this baby is just built for percussive, skiffle styles, slide lead lines. It`s great even if it rattles like tthe eeth in an old desert lost skull, and the actions higher than god…

Ive been using my phone for years now to record stuff ..modern technology makes me sick.

Ive just started working on a new song with this new blues guitar but I can`t.

I`m surrounded by more technology right now than used to launch the hubble telescope, video cameras, sound interfaces, computers – windows and mac, photo cameras, mixing desks, amplifiers, electronic drums, p.a.`s and I cant record a single damn riff into any of it…so I`m using my mobile phone and I wish I had a cassette recorder…complexity is the enemy of creativity…

“Blood like cold needles that slide in my veins
You fell from heaven in the yellow rain
Stealing the crimson flowers of day
Black embers shone of a time now gone
crosses & candlesticks, conquests, cathedrals now forgotten”

aeons ago, almost another lifetime – arriving on the plains with a guitar, a bicycle and a rucksack 6 months in the fields taught me the titan majesty of mountains & rivers. I traveled around as much as I could and I slowly built  talismans and people, gifts, and found objects into a huge feathered dream catcher onto the rear view mirror of my van which was my accommodation on excursions across the island…

Four years have passed -  working in a city, a beautiful city, flying to the capital to record songs that came out of the  rivers, mountains, hills and plains…but, this beautiful florid city is sucking the life out of me…I need to work to pay for the recordings, to work in the city to make enough money, but it doesn`t make any sense…

Here are the contents of the slowly assembled “dream machine” mosaic of minds and matter:

…rekiie healers handmade amulet as gift, antique remnants of barcelona spain cathedral prayer beads-rosary the crucifix lost, amerindian ex-girlfriends animal gift from 1999, southshore plastic toy handgrenade, 2006 kaitorete feathers from long walk, emo cow print new brighton bracelet plus two brass bracelets unknown origin, maori doll wellington, plastic sun amulet mid-canturbury plains `06, paua earing and purple feather (now decayed) (both found objects), silver watchchain early 20th century from U.K., american indian silver handmade ring – white feather, working pocket watch trinket originally japan from friend (returned). semi-precious rock collection from Longford river, Waikakahi/Jacobs Bay/Rangitata & Rakaia bed/Motukatuka point – Pauau from Wahine Park, Purau and east coast S.island bays shells…

Alot of people substitute melody, production  or style for lyrical content and allow marketing in all its myriad guises to persuade them of qualities that are simply nonexistant. We live in a world in which people are increasingly ignorant of history, sacrifice, emotion, trauma and the hurt of others. We live in a world divided into those who think and feel with their hearts and minds and those who think they can feel.

Some people have a god given talent with a pen and it clearly shows they have been around and experienced what life has to offer -  without this experience there is nothing to offer the song writing pantheon but second hand echoes and dull, inarticulate reflections of life`s mirror.

The last recording sessions went well again with the presence of the underworld, the invisible and the unholy taunting us from the ruins of forgotten lives and lessons. We re-tracked  the guitar parts for Rakaia River a third time and breezed through the anthemic You Lost It All in no time at all. Film Broadcast quality hardware combined with ultra sensonic microphones and expensive Martin timber really makes a difference. Messing about with a slide, in natural open tuning can be pretty good fun…

The song Architecture of Destiny is an loosely constructed homage to the autistic, but multidimensional City of Glass, The sublime House of Leaves, Beckford`s Vathek and intertwines the everyday, matter of fact relational breakdown, difference and decay within the broader context of an “architecture” of pre-ordained bad luck. I journeyed today with a psychic to an abandoned school built in the early 20th Century;
We live in a  supranatural world.

Click here for a slideshow.

There`s obviously a supernatural tradition innate to the blues lyric and the historical context from which the early blues pioneers emerged.

It`s a subject of great interest both for its pseudo religious supranatural leanings and the degree to which this tradition has been perpetuated… The lone artist, soaked in liquour, absinthe and opium, an artist struggling with, for or against the elements or humanity in defiance of tradition, change, oppression -a freedom fighter channelling the forces of good or evil through a talismanic or demoniacal engagement to the guitar, the pen or the cause. A vocal tradition hoodoo-esque, incantational, evangelical, proselytising, confessional, mean, base or sexual…it’s blue.

We`re using the custom martin guitar to re-record the Rakaia River acoustic guitar tracks and there`s a world of difference. We`re also using Jamesons Irish Whiskey as it gives a warm, mellow tone – this music is made by authentic musicians who play with their boots off and their glasses loaded. Our mix is beginning to sound exceptionally smooth, with complex flavours of toasted wood, spice and sherry, superbly mellowed by time…Elijah Few recommends Jamesons Irish whisky, and, for Scotch The Balvenie and Lagavulin. Now it would be easy to suggest that the mystical otherness of the whiskey has infused our recording with the warmth and oak mellowed manuka tones we`ve been seeking but the fact of the matter is that  now we`re using 8 grands worth of acoustic honey.

Thanks to Pete at Music Planet here in Wellington we’ve just picked up the Aston Martin of Martin guitars – a custom model Martin valued at around 8 thousand dollars. This particular Martin has an acoustic tone that is smooth, rich and highly natural; bright, lively and warm with an entirely even response across the strings. Its a breeze to play and when simply strumming an E chord resonates with rich, manuka, gently oscillating overtones.

What is it about old guitars, old planks, old timber, old gold even? Who knows? Analogue or digital? I`d definitely rather listen to an L.P. or even better still a 78 on my gramophone.

If you write from experience you will develop a sense of place, character, a message, tone, symbolism, imagery, and figurative language, metaphor and simile. Ignore everybody and never even consider any filthy dirty money. Remember though the best-laid plans of mice and men often go awry…..alot of  “learning” would get in the way, that alot of equipment, amplifiers, effects, preconceived notions, riffs, hooks, rhythms and ideas just don`t even help with writing a song. It`s like writing, you can pin it down to a set of motifs, a set of ideas, devices and techniques…but these alone do not a great piece of work create. You need genuine experience. Remove from view all the pillars in your sight. I find the hardest guitars to play, and don`t mess about with any kind of notions of playing finesse as you can see in the video on my other posts. Writing a song aint about playing the guitar.

WE live in an age of surveillance and ORWELLIAN control by drug companies, oil companies, banks; telecommunications companies and systems – a world in which the basic inheritance of life such as air, water, LAND, speech, time and perception are increasingly monopolised, trademarked and owned by the few. My life and my work is informed by an increasingly rare commodity – FREEDOM. You can find it between the leaves of a thousand years of knowledge…

A book is a bomb. A book is a time machine.
A book is a recruitment device. A book is mantra. A book is terror.
A book is enlightenment. A book is life. A book is death.
A house of Leaves and a city of Glass.

…at the end of my time, the mother of pearl crucifix I wore around my neck for a decade had cracked and broken – on my last journey through the gorge cast my crucifix into the waters …When I came back into the countryside the following year,  the river welcomed me in high flood, submerging islands, wreaking havoc. I was inspired by true tales – real lives. sometimes anger and the devil will blind and trick you; choose the way of the gun and a vengeful Miltonic god or cast yourself asunder, through the tides.

Loneliness, happiness and in between. Back in time when I lived on the other side (of the world) I sat in an interview and watched the twin towers exploding in outrageous fury right in front of my eyes.

Much like the Kennedy assassination we all knew there were going to be a few survivors, scapegoats, betrayal, fury, greed and a litany of lies, hollow promises and bitter recrimination. Every time I drive by that twisted, burnt, heat melted, white hot new york metal, the skeletal remains, the old bony fingers pointing helplessly skyward into space, to a god looking down upon the shame and the deceit, the lies, the cowardice and the damage done to the hearts of every man woman and child alive, breathing and capable of now understanding what a hollow piece of rock we inhabit, and what a terrible thing we have doe to ourselves.

I usually write out about four pages of spontaneous poetry or material and work backwards from there. Some of the material comes directly from headlines recollected from memory. Betrayal, fury , suspicion and greed came through the television. I try not to watch it.

I spent at least 6 months, more like a year, cutting down the words, ridding them of complexity, making them simple and making them count.

[your television will help you objectify our gross global cultural output: there is very little beyond the smattering of charity, hope and faith except for violence, sex, death, destruction, greed, monopolising, pollution and a vast modern ACEDIA.]

911. kennedy. CIA. FBI.

Money should be the last thing on your mind when you pick up a guitar. F**k the money. If you get any, give it away. video features from 2005 The Way of the Gun – recorded live , with no rehearsal and no tune up.

I wrote previously here about perfectionism. My recent day long recording session with a plank of a guitar, a boiling hot studio, a strange routing to the desk, lack of sleep, the pressure of fast, fast decision making regarding choosing and recording guitar parts, the arrangement of these plus the vocals and the lyrics, the tempo of the song and the need to get on a plane at the end of the day, (which meant not using a Martin acoustic) all added up to a situation which was not ideal. Ideally I’d like a Martin acoustic, plus my Strat into two Session amplifiers for a great stereo mix. But hell who wants to let go of their Martin and leave it to the vicissitudes of baggage handling, not me no way.Anyway, this is just the preliminary working arrangement

The point is that looking for perfection can often become a barrier to achievement and it applies to everything. You have to do what needs to be done sometimes. Its like playing a gig with a hangover  – turn it on like a tap or go home. Every test is a test created only by yourself.

Perfect takes forever, Good takes time, Shit takes 5 minutes. It`s the fourth time around.

You can`t make something out of nothing, but too much nothing will make a man feel ill at ease. Worldly possessions; you cant take them with you. But this is the 21st century too. Better be sure to put a value on the things you really care about, because at the end of the day, nothing material counts for jack shit. Look after your soul and travel light. Ignore the media and don’t buy any of their crap. Suddenly I own too much and then Suddenly everything evaporates. Maybe I bought into myself too much.

1.fender stratocaster, leads, pedals, small amp, pair of cans, small midi keyboard
2.laptop, hardrive, leads, mbox mini
3.Small pile of books
4. small car
5. Bicycle x 2
6. rucksack with clothes, 3 pairs of shoes, 2 caps, 1 broad brim hat
7. large collection of rocks, pauau, and 1 cactus.
8. couple of paintings, a few pictures, mobile telephone
9. pile of cd`s including Subterranean Homesick Blues, 6 cassette tapes, Big Lebowski & Dylan other side of the mirror dvd
10. battered hofner side guitar

Having said all that it sure is uncomfortable without table, chairs, or bed. Sadly though at the end of the day you only have yourself; and yourself to blame. That last breath you breathe is gonna be mighty lonely but at least its brief. There`s only the in between. Truth might get in the way of a good story, but life’s cold hard realities will never get in the way of a good song…

jug jazz, blooze infused, dirty earbash, folk country, streetside hicksville freakshow. Howlin`  Troutmask intertronic groove message 40 feet beneath the dirty city space. Jack Kerouac in the vicinity listening to a scanner ….

I`m currently working in the studio as a composer; this blog – which by the way is not meant to be a “How to make it in the music industry” deal , or a “How to make a record” or “album” or become a “popstar” effort.

It`s more aligned with a why it takes forever. I managed quite royally to fail, fail and fail repeatedly. This time I’m hoping I’m in a position to get things a little more right but in a metafictional, metaphysical and intertextual way everything I`ve ever done is everything Im doing now and vice versa. UNderstand that and maybe it`s a step towards understanding the universe. One thing is for sure  it isn`t about money, fame, glory, free rides , or whatever. I never spent years and years jamming in dirty studios, living in smelly windowless rehearsal rooms in filthy industrial areas, working manual jobs for money or glory. I only ever did it because I owed it to my guitar

I`m pretty fond of anecdotes, they sound so great; but then again is there any truth in them? Who knows. Most of life is conversation and therefore prone to becoming anecdotal. Some people live off them. Some people live inside them. Some people foolishly become them. Anyway I cant remember who said it; it was either Keith Richards, Jeff Beck or someone similar and Ive paraphrased it and embellished it myself over the years:

“I dont like the idea of my guitar signal floating around in the air man. Otherwise I`d record in space.”

What`s interesting is that during the last Elijah Recording session because of some weird routing anomaly problems my guitar signal took a rather tortuous and circuitous route to tape (hard drive). Here it is:

1. Guitar 2. Into transmitter. 3. Through air. 4. Into 2nd transmitter. 5. Into Sound Devices recorder.

6. Into Pro Tools interface. 7. Into desk & Computer.

I think thats it.

Flew into GRUNGE city. The drive from Seattle down to San Francisco California and especially Mount Shasta is awesome. It`s great to be on the coast ! Last time I was up in Washington state I was fortunate enough to spend sometime in the mountains with a Winchester rifle. I love America.

Hyperbusy – city to city. more sleep needed.

For a while now (last Ten Years) I`ve been really into the Jeff Beck road to guitar sounds and that`s a simple dirty old fuzz pedal (hot cake anyone?) into a great amp. Got my stratocaster bridge set up in a unique way so its a bit of a bastard to play too, you have to earn everything with it – you don`t have to fight it but it doesnt give too much away either. The vastly tactile approach of a used stratocaster has all the character and excitement of a divining rod in a lightning storm as far as I`m concerned.

I’ve been really keen on using AWARD SESSION amps since I first tried one in 1990-91. I finally got my hands on one in 1999. They were known as the British Mesa Boogie and Clapton used them on his album Behind the Sun. I bought another session since for stereo. It’s alot easier than carting a couple of twins and a cabinet around.

…using a really strange routing into the desk  and thrown away all of yesterdays tracking & hopefully with an intense days work we can get this demo off the ground. It`s 6.44 and we`ve finished tracking all the acoustic and all the lead and rhythm parts on the electric guitar, the stratocaster plus and the plank in one day. Oh and basic drums and some rough bass as well. It`s been intense and very hot. The original title is the RAKAIA RIVER MURDER. While everyone else has been chilling out on the beach in front of the studio we`ve been inside laying down as much creative work as we can, fighting the increasing humidity and working up a sweat. It has definitely been worth it. I havent time to listen to the demo mix because I need to eat something and get on the plane. Here are a few pictures.

Another busy day in the studio. After yeserdays warm up re-tracked all the acoustic parts on the dreadful plank which I`ve been fighting all damn weekend. Play it, tune it, play it, tune it &cetera….like I mentioned in an earlier post – yeah I`m going to burn it come the winter months even if I have to pay  for the priviledge and the pleasure.

We`ll be using Mojo’s Martins next time…

- is human emotion merely temporal expression?

The original acoustic parts were laid down on the dirt cheap,tree-trunk, low-end, low-performance, collection of guitar shaped, firewood you can see here in the center picture. I`m saving it for winter, when these recordings are done and I`m going to toss it in the fire where it belongs.

Some seriously expensive SCHOEPS microphones in a multi million dollar environment. The pressure was on for me to sing and play 4 tracks that I hadn`t played in a year.

The Rakaia River Murder,
Wicked Messenger Returns,
The Architecture of Destiny,
Life Support,

I`m nearly healed enough to get back out the guitar and start cooking a little; so much about dynamic playing for me comes from posture, which is only a part of the way you relate to an instrument, not forgetting attitude, focus, flexibilty and tone. Having good ears isn`t just about what you play either, it`s about listening to the producer, listening to the client and really getting to grips with THEIR vision – if you can assimilate that into the right stylistic lexicon you are onto a winner. What makes it exciting is that it`s not a precise science but an emotional one; like any literary conceit multifaceted and fractal but what usually happens is you pick up the instrument and the client says….I need some of that. You have to distill their emotional connection to the song….So back into a studio and this is what I will be doing.

Contrary to popular belief Studio time is intense, demanding, unsociable and very hard work requiring high creativity coupled with an unusually high level of productivity. You have to know your stuff, think very fast and turn on your skills like a tap. You need vision, experience, technical capability and imagination, but also need to work within the clients remit. The key is in manipulating your own strengths to fit within the overall vision of the project but it`s no different from any client engagement. `Listen and listen good`, there is no room for ego, only for brilliance. You don`t have to bury your personality beneath a lacklustre, formulaic veneer but flair, discipline, enthusiasm and professionalism are key elements. In a way you’ve either got it or you ain’t…but you can always improve your chances.