With the Foamboy debut album out there and a panoramic soundscape
to inhabit, what would be my next move? I’m not sure why but my mind has
terrible brain fog for what happened in these years. As I mentioned in my last
blog I found my wee logbook of releases, so that helped me determine what I did
for the purposes of the next few blogs. I found some old press clippings too,
but they don’t date back to the foggy years! I know I played my only gig in
Belfast’s Front Page bar somewhere around this time. I’ve a photo of myself somewhere
wearing a fetching pink striped t-shirt and at that time I was sporting a
frazzled mop of blond hair. Quite the look I’m sure you’ll agree. Ahem. Anyway,
this was a major thrill for me as I was supporting the Canadian post rockers
Fly Pan Am. The gig was put on by the lovely Darren Smyth of Strange Victory
and I had saw Fly Pan Am on a legendary triple bill in the Empire a few years
earlier.
They were supporting a then unknown Sigur Ros and Godspeed You! Black
Emperor and played their entire set with their backs to the audience. I was
mesmerised by their droning but beautiful tones and bought their CD so to get
to support them was a pretty big deal. After I played my set, which featured
me, my (un)trusty minidisc and my lovely sunburst Epiphone guitar. Fly Pan Am
had caught some, or possibly all of my set and they approached me after and
said they were really impressed with my guitar playing and that it looked like
sparks were flying off my guitar as I played, or something along those lines.
What a fabulous compliment from proper musicians to a chancer like me. But if I
do give myself some credit, I was a master of getting crazy tones from my
pedals as I refused to conform to any convention and probably had it all set up
wrong!
I had followed up my debut with an e.p. called “Spoken 4”, which had a
lovely inlay cover of a sunset printed on a clear acetate sheet and just the CD
behind it. It looked very impressive and saved me hours of cutting up printed
inlay cards. The music on there was a very blissed out affair as my love of
post rock was now allowed to permeate my music with ease. I wasn’t really
allowed to do it in Foam but there was no-one to stop me now!
Quickly following on from this was my second album entitled ‘Feel Your
Heart Or Someone Is Going To Steal Your Heart’. As I mentioned previously, I
was a musical magpie for nicking other artist’s song titles, lyrics or quotes.
One of all-time heroes is Perry Farrell of Jane’s Addiction. I’d been into
their dangerous brand of drug-induced rock n’roll for many years and his
angular snaky off the wall stage presence was exactly the territory I wanted to
inhibit on a stage. But really, despite my ability to sound very like him
(no-one has heard this aside from me!) I had nothing in common with him
physically. So I looped a sample of his in between song patter for the main
part of the album’s title track. Over a heavy electro sequence, built up using
a Playstation music simulator, I piled on some thunderous guitar riffs and
pieced the whole thing together to work as a rather nifty rock/techno
crossover. The sort of thing Death In Vegas were doing at the time. Perry also featured
on the album cover, with a heavily altered image of him singing. It looked class.
I sampled ELO’s ‘Don’t Bring Me Down’ to make a scuzzy glam stomper that had a wah-wah solo. Remember
I can’t play guitar properly to save my life, so Kirk Hammett has nothing to
worry about. One track called ‘Flowers’ was a hangover in terms of sound from
Roque Jnr with At The Drive-In angular chords and a nod to math rock and was my
initial foray into panning guitars for a beefy wall of sound. I also alluded to
some of my later material at this early stage with an instrumental with more
than a hint of U2 about it. Droning guitars and synths layered up like Mogwai
in soundtrack mode. Could easily have been off the last Cruz album (one of my
other acts-we’ll come to that).
Another track had 80s synths swooshing about, hard to believe it’s the same act as previous songs, but I was heavily into Prince, and he thought nothing of hopping styles and genres. There was a scuzzy bluesy rocky thing like Jesus and Mary Chain, I was fond of those types of songs too. Bizarre gems like the track that sampled Billy Idol’s ‘To be a Lover’ and inexplicably I put on an American accent to relay a story about a crack addict’s final days. I’ve no doubt none of this was written out. I was having a blast and was bursting with ideas and sounds.
In 2004 the Perry influence was still looming large with my third album
called ‘Try Again Tomorrow’, which was a line from ‘Jane’s Says’. The first
song on this CD had a monstrous slamming beat (think it might be Ride “Dreams
Burn Down” put through a Blues Driver pedal) and a Peter Gunn twangy guitar
riff that wound tight like a corkscrew. Messy as fuck but it made sense to me.
Part of my problem was envisaging songs to sound a certain way but not being
able to make them sound the way I wanted them to but ploughing on regardless.
I would regularly sneak a snippet of someone else’s beats, Fugazi were a
popular option to get a nice organic set of drums and cymbals. I’d like to
croon now and then too. I think I had a really good voice that never got the
proper studio props to help. The song ‘#1 Sweetie’ was like Morrissey
channelling JAMC. ‘She Gave Me Diamonds’ was another sampled hip-hop beat
shoved through a blues driver pedal to get a lovely Flaming Lips slam and
crunch.
The next track had a creaking slowed down fuzzy droning groove and an
early attempt at the Explosions In The Sky “shimmer”. Fire the delay pedal into
high speed and let it soar. This was a definite pre-cursor to where Cruz ended
up. Clearly pleased with myself for working out the shimmer I used it again on
the tender ballad that sounds a little half-baked but would have been a thing
of beauty properly worked out and recorded. It lies disregarded on one of my
albums, destined to never be heard but only by a handful of people.
I sampled Alan and Mimi from Low singing “And I can hear ‘em” looping
them with the old shimmer in full flow once again. I left off any drums just
leaving Mimi’s swooshing snare and gentle cymbal taps as percussion, before
dropping in DJ Krush’s “Kemuri” beat. I haven’t been able to listen to Low
since Mimi’s death, until now. I didn’t expect such a beautiful soul to be gone
so soon when this was put together.
The track ‘The Revolution Is Here’ had an unmistakable booming beat
from PIL’s “Rise” amped up through the blues driver and a sweep of droning layered
guitars to form a dreamy fuzzy stomper. I would be most comfortable in this
vein, singing in my natural register with ease. When the music would be simpler
it let me improvise more with the vocals as shown here. One take no doubt. A
few more Cruz-ish tracks filled out the rest of the album before the final song
that nicked Ride’s ‘Taste’ riff and drums but didn’t enhance it in any way.
Being on my own had its setback as the quality control of another’s views wasn’t
there.
I was in full flow at this point, being creative and enjoying exploring new sounds and ideas. What could possibly go wrong?
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