Not quite Loveless

I guess my ever expanding collection of guitar effects pedals and absolute necessity to focus on them, put me into the genre known as shoegaze. I loved guitar bands like Ride, Jesus and Mary Chain, Nirvana, Mogwai and for the next album, I was determined to create a homage to one album in particular. The ultimate shoegaze band is of course My Bloody Valentine. Their classic album 'Loveless' featured guitars that sounded feck all like guitars for the most part. The magical waves of swerving warped distorted guitars absolutely bled all over my next album '...Our Black Hearts'. Still coming to terms with my Dad's passing there was still an air of sadness to my music, yet the title track of the album has a wondrously uplifting feel to it. 

The other unique selling point of OBH was my decision to harmonise with myself on every song. It's a strong album in terms of song writing, I'd abandoned the sampling in favour of a drum machine, bass, keyboards and guitars layered up and heavily twisted with distortion and effects. I worked out how to get that woozy bending sound that MBV had and used it as much as I could. Unlike Kevin Shields, I was creating my masterpiece on an 8track in my bedroom, not running up astronomical studio  bills. It's alleged the money it took to record 'Loveless' put Creation Records out of business. Might just have been a few other things that contributed to that, if you watch the Alan McGee life story 'Creation Stories' you'll find out what.

The cover of OBH featured a drawing of a man and woman, possibly from the early settlement of the U.S, the man has a rifle over his shoulder, they look bloody miserable. Around the drawing I put a thick black border. A reallyy stupid move given I printed off my own covers and the black ink cartridges took a right battering! Most of the CDs I made actually had an off-black shading on them. The principles of DFR (Do Fucking Rightly) being employed yet again,  The back cover was a black and white photo I had taken of the sea, looking across some of the rocks up at Portrush. Think I made a video to accompany one of these songs too, it was just the sea moving back and forth in black and white.

One of the tracks on OBH was called 'Ain't No Faith In Medicine', a clear nod to my Dad's dalliance with chemotherapy. He beat Cancer three times, but that amount of shit being pumped into a 70 year old man's body was only going to result in one thing. Ironically, I have spent the last 20 plus years working for a pharmaceutical company. As I get older I find myself resorting to taking medication myself to overcome whatever shitty thing it is that stops me picking up a guitar and playing these days.

The beats on the album are some of the heftiest I have ever used, pushing them through distortion pedals to create slamming thundercracks. 'Dream City' is a pounding beaut of a song with sky scraping guitars, layers of fuzz and a rather brilliant harmonised melody. It's one of my best songs I think. The weirdly named 'Astrolabe' mimics MBV shamelessly with a freaky electro beat and the guitars slip and slide like a drunk man negotiating a swamp. The fired up chord sequence in 'Saint Paul' is almost identical to Primal Scream's 'Swastika Eyes'. I had to google this to see when that song came out, turns out it was me who ripped them off! Quelle surprise. Still, they're both cracking songs.

I did come up with some brilliant song titles and Prince was often a reference. The one word but not one word track 'Anywaythatyouwantme' probably a take on 'Anotherloverholeinyohead'. It's a surprisingly upbeat dizzy splurge of dance beats and siren sounds that feels like drugs have been taken, only they haven't. The album ends with the woozy 'Chico'. It's a slowed down head nodder with stunning pumped beats and psychedelic guitars that had an instrumental chorus a finale of head wrecking tones that managed to really ape Shield's sound from 'Loveless'. 

'...Our Black Hearts' is one of my finest recordings. It stands alone as a focussed body of work living in it's own little world. I didn't genre hop like some of my other albums, so it retains a unique sound and the production on it is probably the best I have ever managed. The nature of the music allowed me to indulge in a full-on effects feast and it is quite remarkable that it was made on an 8track. 

https://thefoamboydeluxearkestra.bandcamp.com/album/our-black-hearts?from=search&search_item_id=991709157&search_item_type=a&search_match_part=%3F&search_page_id=2598412169&search_page_no=0&search_rank=1&logged_in_mobile_menubar=true

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