The birth of Cruz

 

My listening habits are wide ranging, always have been. I grew up listening to a lot of indie, rock music and metal. In the early 90s I found myself being drawn to edgier bands like Jane’s Addiction and Ministry. I also loved hip-hop and funk and soul. There were three bands that would shape my recording output remarkably. First, The Magnetic Fields. Their triple album ‘69 Love Songs’ was the inspiration for the double albums I’d put out over the years. The main man behind that group was Stephin Merritt, who had been recording under various names over the years (The Hyacinths, Future Bible Heroes to name a few). I thought this was a brilliant idea and there was scope for me to do that, given my desire to make music from genres that I’d never tried before. The second band I found myself listening to around this time was Jesu. Justin Broadrick was part of the industrial metal band Godflesh and I came across his work from his remix of a Pelican track that was just stunning. Droning sludgy guitars fused with electronic beats.

The third band is our very own And So I Watch You From Afar. I want to do a separate blog on these guys as there is so much I want to say about them. But essentially, it needs pointed out now that I stumbled across them as a support band. I’m going to say that I went to see High On Fire and Pelican and We Are Knives supported. Then a later gig I went to see WAK and ASIWYFA were the support. Anyway, I was blown away by both of these bands and through them I started to feel that I could make instrumental music too.

There’s also another important artist to mention here. An unlikely one. Watching Jools Holland’s show one night I saw KT Tunstall perform. She appeared to be creating a backing band by looping the things she was playing. I was mesmerised. I had never seen the like of it. A bit of investigation and I found out she was using a Loop Station. So a trip up to the city was made to either Matchetts or Marcus Music to see what they had. One Boss RC-20 pedal was purchased. Oh boy!

I didn’t abandon Foamboy. I also recorded what I regard as one of my best albums (I know I may have said this already about several others!) in ‘…And The Lonelyhearts’. It also came out in 2007 and was basically my attempt at trying to create a Wall Of Sound, like Phil Spector. This involved extra twinkles, strings and excessive usage of the kettle drum effect from my keyboard! I also took the decision to sing baritone, instead of my regular falsetto. (I’m blessed with a ridiculous vocal range). The whole thing had a lovely sound, the songs were full of soaring melodies and for once, the instrumentation was sounding like I could play my instruments and didn’t rely on sampling other people’s music.

I felt I couldn’t release the new music I had in mind under the Foamboy name. Nor did I want to as I had decided that multiple acts was the way forward. I needed a new name for this new enterprise. I often ventured up to the North Coast to watch the Milk Cup, a youth football tournament. This competition brought together football teams from all over the world. One team, from Mexico, were called Cruz Azul and I thought this was a class name for my band. But the Azul part was to go in the bin as Cruz was snappier. I wanted to combine heavy guitars, tuned to D and electronic beats, just like Jesu. I also worked out that my trusty old violin would add a little something too. All of this would be hooked up to the RC-20 and my one-man band would soon sound like a 6 man band.

I also decided to treat myself to a new guitar and bought a lovely blue Fender Stratocaster, Mexican copy. That came from the now defunct Guitar Emporium shop up Bradbury Place. They had a much better selection of guitars than Marcus and Matchetts. In order to get that thick deep sludgy guitar sound I also needed a set of thicker gauge strings. Whacking the drop-tuned guitar through a Big Muff and a bit of delay created the most amazing sounds. Looping them together REALLY pushed the volume. The excitement at being able to make these sounds I had in my head so easily was extremely pleasing.

As a final piece of the jigsaw, I opted to name all the Cruz songs in Spanish. I’d think up the name and go ask Jerome, a colleague in work, to translate. It’s as well I did as putting the English into Google did not provide me with the right Spanish! The debut Cruz album was called ‘El Angel Azul’ which translates as The Blue Angel. A tribute to Prince, who once called his guitar that. The cover was a striking image of an angel descending from the clouds, gown flowing, in a lovely deep hue of blue. The tracks on the album were all monstrous in length, the shortest being almost 6 minutes, the longest nearly 10. It took me a while to build up the loops, but this was how the earlier pioneers of what is known as post-rock, did things. So it was fine for me. The tracks would start with gentle waves of sound but would all end with the BIG EPIC finale, all crashing cymbals (I added ‘live’ drum machine drumming) and HEAVY guitars. Whilst my music had never previously featured much guitar soloing, I was now able to yank out the most awesome sky-scraping solos. All at a snail’s pace I might add! I was immensely proud of this album, still am. Even better, I could play these new songs live with relative ease. Violin and drum machine too. The whole process was a fucking masterstroke as this new direction would create so many wonderful new opportunities for me…