At last! On July 6th our album HARRISON will finally be released after an impressive three-year delay.

We sat in a café with a tape recorder and a few friends and talked about it.

WARNING: This piece includes the use of words such as "rocking", "raw", "tight" and "overload the flanger".

NB Any mention of Phil Collins is purely ironic.

Ben Firstly, what are the feelings about finally getting to release this album and what do we feel about the delay that has
Stephen Are we allowed to swear?
B You can say what the [pause] the hell
Matt H Oh Ben!
Matt VB We don't want any of that kind of language
B Just remember that nine-year olds will be reading this
MH I think it's flipping great that the album's going to come out
S Yeah but we should say that the album hasn't actually come out yet, I mean it said in FHM about a year ago - there was review of the album saying 'go and buy it', which to any discerning reader would imply that the album's in the shops
MH But everyone knows! Everyone knows -
B You're not a discerning reader if you get FHM
MH But they do the February edition at the end of December, jaknowwhatImean, so the point is that review was intended for a year later
S Sorry - were you talking to me?
MH Sort of. Anyway what I'm looking forward to is seeing the album in it's little packet, all printed up and proper and finished
B And putting it behind us and forgetting about it and moving on?
MH Well exactly - I don't have to listen to it, I mean I've had a CD of it for two years…
S Can we be really honest about it? Because the thing is that I'm really bored with the album now because I've heard it so many times and we've played it at gigs so many times and before long regular attenders of our gigs will be bored with hearing us start with Take me over and finish with Chicken and Valentine's Day
B But the difference is they'll actually know those songs -
S - because they've heard them on the album. Yeah, that's fair enough but I'm sick to death of waiting so long for it to be out - I just wish it had been released a year ago
MH When I listen to the album it's really weird cos it's been so long since we recorded it, and mostly we've just done gigs since then, so I keep thinking it's a gig which we played really well - the great thing about the album is there's no mistakes on it
S There are
MH Well there are a few
MVB But compared to live…
MH Less than a gig

MISTAKES

B Let's just nail this down: What are the mistakes?
S Playing the wrong notes at the wrong times
B I know what mistakes are generally
MVB What, are there mistakes on the album? Yes there are
B For example?
MVB OK right. On Crash
B Yes
MVB Just before it goes into the bridge
B Oh, I know, the snare
MVB Yeah, it's not sort of doing an off-beat and it's not going onto the on-beat. It's a quarter beat … as I like to put it
B That was really cool kind of jazz drumming then
MVB Yes, that was a really good mistake
S And in the new single -
MVB It's all going to be drums!
S In the new single when it comes to the end there's a big slide down before the ultimate chorus and there's a tiny delay before we actually hit the next beat
MVB But I think we all come in at the same time don't we?
S But we had to work for hours in the studio to slide down and hit that note at the right time
Tony Perretta It sounds really good though
S It gets me every time
MVB It's that anticipation thing
B So there are only two mistakes on the album then. That's not bad
S There's more than that
MVB There's a tom bit in Valentine's Day where it goes 'bombedubbadee, bombedubbadee' - the first tom is late
ALL Oh
MH The thing is, if we're going to be nit-picking, there's most likely going to be more drum mistakes than anything else just because of the nature of recording drums. Cos everyone else can just drop in and make it slap bang dooby perfect. We only let him do it once
T You can drop in drums and make them slap bang dooby perfect as well
MH Well we didn't do that -
T That's cos Tony wasn't engineering heh heh heh
MH Well thank god for that
S [quietly] There's loads of mistakes in the bass

pause

B Well the guitars are all right
MH Oh actually there's another mistake I've thought of: in my fantastic solo in Sideways on the Rhodes is a bit where it's out of time, and there's a bit where the actual, like, velocity on the keys is a bit irregular so there's one note which should be in the quiet sound bangs out as loud as
S [taking mic] Sorry about this
MH [background] …and even though I asked if we could really compress it
S This is my girlfriend. She's called Deb. She's eating banana cake at the moment
DEB mmmmmmmm
S And anyway...
B [taking mic] Can er I just, sorry. I need that.
MH So anyway. Let's move on.
MVB Are we going to go through one song at a time? Like, for example, Chicken

CHICKEN

S So, how were the chickens recorded at the beginning of the album?
B That was beautiful because they were recorded by Mark - you remember Mark?
MH From Louth?
S LLLLouth
T Who's Mark?
B He was just a student who came to make tea. He was making Hot Chocolates, right, which was a bit of a pain in the arse, for seven people or whatever it was, and he did a big carafe of boiling milk -
MH Glass!
B A glass jug, and he took it out of the microwave and carried it across the kitchen and dropped it all on the floor and -
MH Poor old Mark
MVB And then got sacked
MH But, as he did in fact say to me at one moment, and I had a lot of respect for Mark at this particular moment, although no other moments before or afterwards, where we were playing pool and I did a really really slight mistake, where I mishit the ball and I looked up a bit sorrowfully, and he looked at me with great
S Pity
MH … as if he was the Messiah, with a great light behind his eyes, and said, slowly and clearly, "into each life a little rain must fall"
T Into each what?
MH Life. A little rain must fall… So I liked him
B He was definitely aged beyond his years - he could only have been in his early twenties…
MH But when he shaved his beard off he was then aged before his years
MVB He was twenty, well forty
B Twenty going on
MH A hundred and twenty! Going on twelve
B Yes. Mark. The only real thing that he did do was record the chicken sounds because Ewan, the actual engineer was standing in there with us
MH Making the chicken sounds
MVB But the important thing to mark … Mark is that he did do the chicken sounds, and those chicken sounds are good
MH They're well recorded
S He didn't really record them, he only pressed the record button
MH … they've got this really nice roomy sound. The great thing is they sound live - I mean it's so easy in the studio to get sterile recordings; everything's close, two-dimensional -
B They do have a nice live feel
MH It sounds like the chickens are really there, you know, just playing
S How many people were actually there?
B There were ten of us because there was the string quartet there as well. I mean, you should have heard them - they had those chicken sounds in four parts
MH But they had to have a score though, that was the thing. We said "do some chicken sounds", they were at a loss. Till they wrote it down
T They couldn't swing the groove at all
MH That's the trouble with classical musicians, they're all cunts
T They all can't what?
B I like the part where you can hear me and Matt there laughing very clearly like human beings
MH And it's great cos it's like the chickens slowly metamorphosise into laughing humans. And I like to think that the sound that chickens make is actually them laughing
T Isn't that a Kafka novel?
B "The Chicken's Laugh"?
T No
MVB Another thing is that we recorded the maracas in the toilet, which in some ways was a novel idea, but it didn't actually make that much difference
MH Any difference
B It was a very stoney toilet, so it had all these excellent brittle reflections and also meant you could record the toilet flushing which we might have put between some tracks
MH But we didn't
B But we didn't
MH The great thing about Chicken was we had this vocoder like on Mr Blue Sky, and we learnt this lesson from ABBA where we did the backing vocals and then we duplicated the chords of the backing vocals on the vocoder, making a fantastic rich, slightly robotic stereo spread which is probably one of my favourite sounds on the album
B Along with the theremin there, lovely piece of work Matt
MH Yeah - the thing about the chorus is in there it's got theremin, vocoder, backing vocals, handclaps, maracas -
B Toilet maracas
MH - and it still isn't as exciting as it should be
S But less is more, that's the thing. That was the second attempt wasn't it?
MH We did it dreadfully fast
B The good thing was we recorded it too fast the first time, recorded it slower next time, and when we finished it we sped it up so it was about as fast as the original version
MH It's like Strawberry Fields isn't it?
B Oh it absolutely is. I wish the guitar solo was a little louder
MH A lot louder
MVB I wish the guitars were a lot louder actually
B Turn it up then
MVB OK
B I think it's the rawest track on it and the most exciting and I really like it, aside from all those things we mentioned, the bad things. We do have a tendency to dwell on the dark side
MH We had this great idea of flanging the whole track at the end. We spent so long trying to overload the flanger
S I was probably in bed cos this would have been about nine o'clock in the morning - not having just got up to start work, nine o'clock in the morning having worked since three o'clock the previous afternoon
MH Yes, we'd probably gone green by then. Anyway, that's enough about Chicken

CRASH

B I was particularly delighted cos I'd never used the Leslie cabinate before on the guitar. I'd heard it on a lot of recordings but I didn't know how to do it - I thought it was some kind of flanger. But no - you stick the guitar through the Leslie and it goes excellent, just the best sound ever. And this was the first thing I'd ever used it on. And. I. Like. It. And now I have to use it on everything.
MVB In fact, I think, having heard Crash recently it's probably one of the best songs on the album.
MH It's a good sounding arrangement, I like the vibes later on in it, I like the backing vocals, it sounds really cool. Perhaps a bit bright after the cut
MVB It's got good dynamics hasn't it
MH It definitely has, yeah, it's cool and there's a nice snare sound
B That one always really did sound nice, really rich brown sounds while we were building it up through the tracks. It always had a really good vibe about it.
MH Yeah it's cool.
B [Montgomery Burns voice] Destined to be a classic
S I think it's a bit bright after the cut though
T The thing about Crash is it's got [Homer Simpson voice] an Excellent Guitar Riff.
B Courtesy of Paddy Kingsland
MH Anyhow it's a good one that one. The lead vocals should be a bit louder. Probably all the tracks on the album apart from the ones Alan mixed the lead vocals should be louder, because we didn't realise that you have to make them so loud when you mix stuff
B The words are very good on that song
MH Yes, very good song
MVB That could be a future single
MH I always thought so anyway
T Why don't you release every track off the album as a single.
MH OK! Let's release the album.
S As a single?
MH Yes
MVB On to the next one

WHERE IS THE ONE

MVB It's probably the best performance we've done
MH It's our most recent recording by miles. Let's not forget that we recorded the album in the summer of 1995
T [background] The summer of '69
MH … and we recorded Where is the one in August 1997 - two whole years later, and we've learned a lot in those two years. I think Where is the one is a good indication that our next album, should the Lord bless us and let us do one, will sound brilliant … I did the vocal with stitches in my head. I think it's the most rocking recording we've ever managed
MVB Yes

YOU TAKE ME OVER

B Take me over - disappointing all round I think we'd all agree
MVB I wouldn't actually, I wouldn't
B Oh. Not all round, then
MVB I don't know if everyone hears the album every day, and I haven't heard it for a long time but that track, although it has it's problems it's still quite raw
MH It kind of rocks at the end and what I really like is the kind of dodgy DX7 through an amp, that's playing the synth line. I played a low note towards the end which I kind of bent up on the pitch bender and for some reason it actually sounds like a string orchestra doing an amazing run up from low, which is really cool and you would never have thought it was a DX7
S DX7 is a synthesiser
MH gives a verbal representation of the mighty power of the DX7
T That sounds like something coming from underneath the water
MH Yeah well it doesn't actually sound like that, but anyway I think that bit to the last chorus when the falsetto bits come in, that actually rocks quite well
S The thing is about in Titanic right, when the ship goes down there's no way they'd survive because they'd be so far under it would take them too long to swim all the distance back up because the ship is so big it would pull them really far down wouldn't it and they'd drown before they got back up.
B But the fill at the end really was a bit of a one off
MH Yeah that was cool.
MVB That was a very tight fill at the end and only Phil Collins could've done it
MH I would like to point out as well that that now unfortunately terribly, terribly affected-sounding laugh at the end on the last note was for real, honestly, it did actually happen
S I think the cymbals are a bit bright after the cut
MVB Do we want another drink?

VALENTINE'S DAY

MH We had to slow down the piano to play it because it was too fast to play, and I had to do it in a really funny key on all the black notes, and that made it surprisingly hard to play such an easy part
B Sounds good though, Barbara Dickson's piano

Apocryphal Barbara Dickson stories

MH I listened to Valentine's Day the other day and it sounds really cool, it's kind of cute, and as long as you don't expect too much from it in terms of rockingness, it's just really cool.
MVB It's a very good pop song
MH It is pop
T Great pop song, crap snare sound though
MH True -
MVB Yeah that is very true
MH but the rest of it sounds pretty good
B And the strings
MH The great thing about that was we recorded a quartet on it in the bridge-y bits which are about the most pretty moments on the album, and the first time we heard that little part, when I heard them play the arrangements that I'd done, it was really really cool - I really like it every time. Especially the end where the strings come in for the last choruses, and they sound a bit more like an orchestra than a quartet for some reason
S A bit more like an orchestra than a DX7
MH It kind of sounds like a real record by a real band. Probably from twenty-five years ago, but nonetheless a real record
B And you get the whole solo and that's good
MH A very good solo indeed
MVB And you get a microwave ding
B How was that done?
MH I can't remember. Was it a triangle?
MVB It was a little bell from a bell tree
MH I dinged it with my dinger

long pause

FEAR OF FLYING

B Then there's Fear of flying
MH I have nothing to say about that
MVB It is a bit dated
MH Of course it is, it's about two hundred years old. We didn't write it. We found it in a hole in the ground. In our back garden.
T Worst moment on the album

SIDEWAYS

S Sideways - old old old song recorded three times now. Three times, progressively better each time. No, not progressively better; good, TERRIBLE, and then very good
MVB I don't mind the second one
B You will never hear the second one
MH Or the first one
S You might do
MH Let's hope not
MVB But it's a very old song
S Good organ er Rhodes sound on it
MH We were going for a bit of a Paul Simon circa '72 sort of easy, round…
MVB Easy Rider
MH … nice flat lovely sound, and we did all right. The snare's really weird on that - sounds like a dustbin lid
MVB That's probably the way I played it
MH I did the whole vocal and we left it for a while
S Thing is, about Titanic, right
MH … and I had to insist that, even though it took a little while, that I redid the vocal, cos I knew it could be better,and the vocal in the end is really quite nice
S The fact that Bob Champion survived cancer is a credit to him and the sporting industry
B I really like the sound of the guitar solo which we got by distorting it off tape to make that really spiky sound. And the bit where it goes "badly, badly" is really good
MVB For me that's one of the best bits of the song, and you could quite easily make a song out of that
B And probably will

CAN'T STOP MYSELF

B Can't stop myself, the Disco Thing. This was a great thing for us, we just thought 'right, here's this track, we want it to be a period piece - we want to get ABBA's Voulez Vous out and listen to all the sounds, and steal them, so that it doesn't sound anything like the rest of the album'. So we used a different drum kit altogether, we taped a duster over the snare to make it sound like this [hits table]
MVB To make it sound like a packet of crisps. Actually, what was exciting for me was recording the drums and then putting an extra hi-hat track down
T Did you? I never knew that
MVB It's not that exciting; it's not that loud. It's not as loud as Stevie [Wonder] would have it, which is louder than anything else
T So there's two hi-hats on that
B Cos you can hear them opening on either side
T I've never really listened to it
MH The coolest thing from my point of view on that is there's double-tracked piano, with two tracks of mono piano, and there's a bit where it cuts to just piano playing Happy 8s, but what I did was I played alternate ones on each side, so for that bit it goes da da da da da da [ you'll have to imagine the stereo alternation for yourself] and it sounds really good
B And that's got vocoder on as well, for the ABBA thing
T Nice clap sound
B We did a mixture of horrible synth-clap -
T Oh you've got to have horrible synth-clap
MVB We sampled our claps and then tracked them and then sampled them again
B We did a lot of claps at the same time as we did the chickens which meant that we had ten people clapping and tracked it three or four times, making a small crowd clapping
S It's the one song that always frustrates me to perform live with the knowledge of the recorded version
T I think that's a very successful recording
B Considering that we had decided that we wanted it to be a particular way and made it be that way, that was a really good laugh
MVB We achieved what we wanted to
B And we were having trouble arranging the song at all, and once we had decided to go by this route it became a much more fun sort of thing. So if you want to know why it sounds so much different from the rest of the album, that's why. Also, I was particularly pleased to get the guitar sound from 'Everyone's a winner'

Everybody sings it

I DON'T KNOW

MVB This one for me, and probably all of us, was a really hard one to play. For some reason it was very stressful
MH The thing is that we didn't know it very well
MVB It took ages to do, and this was the time where I broke a couple of cymbals because I was hammering the drums so hard
MH You can really hear the learning on the album; the tracks we recorded later on are on the whole better than the ones we started with. Before we recorded I don't know it had a really long rock outro which probably would have killed its chances of anyone wanting to listen to it. Thankfully we decided to get rid of it, speed it up so it was a bit less rock, and make it the Great Little Three-Minute Pop Song it now is. We did the backing vocals all three of us behind the mic and that was cool
MVB Yeah. I was in the control room or sulking somewhere, thinking 'oh bollocks, I'm never going to get a good drum take. Ever'.

I WISH I HADN'T

B The next track is I wish I hadn't which kicks off with Matt playing the drums
MVB Matt Hales
B … while he was doing the piano. Just as the song was counting in he rushed over to the drum kit and played that little loop there. So it was actually recorded through the piano mics and sounds really stupid
MVB It's actually a really good drum sound
B So we thought 'let's put that at the beginning'. And so we did. This is one of my favourite ones off the album cos it's such a strange song
S Yeah… that build to the chorus has always frustrated me, and I've never ever accepted the lyric er er er er er "you and me child" rhyming with
B "Seaside"
S Yes, I can't-
B - Accept that
MVB I don't have a problem with that. I mean it's not the best song in the world but it is cool, and it was enjoyable to record. Especially at the beginning where you don't really know where the beat is, whether the guitar's on the off-beat or the on-beat
B And then the drums come in and you find out
S And I guarantee you'd be wrong
B Apart from that we put the drums in in the right place at the beginning so you can tell. It was always very eccentric, but it was nice to have that bit of oddness cos otherwise you just get all of these nicely rounded songs, and that isn't entirely what we're about. So weird stuff is good. It's also got the saxes on.
MVB I was going to say … what was it, a tenor?
B He had a baritone and a tenor
S It was great cos when we recorded the saxophones, he did a fantastic breath-y bit at the end, and it went from note to breath to kind of metal sound of his fingers on the keys, but you can't hear it
MVB That's the problem, you see, when you've got lots of other instruments going on, you just can't hear it, and unless you pull those faders down…
B I like the way that it ends, that track, just with loads and loads of weird stuff going baggeddabbuerrrb and then that strange cry, and that odd sound that was on some track that sounds a bit like a tape machine being turned off. In your house or something
MVB There's also a bit of delay on the snare drum
B It had this really weird delay on it, the whole kit which, if you turned it up really loud sounded like it was some kind of Brazilian street party
MH And let me tell you, when you're mixing and you put delay on the whole drum kit, you know you're being a daring mixer
B So watch out
MH Cos we're daring
B And there's loads and loads of guitar tracks on that one rrrreally loads
S Four or five bass tracks as well
B Yeah. We had to erase a lot of them, but Steve doesn't realise that
MH That's what the full title of the track is, "I wish I hadn't let Steve play so many bass tracks on it"

LOST MY WAY

S We started recording this and we put the basic instruments on, then Matt sat in there and did this organ part which was a really gentle Hammond sound which was so cool, but unfortunately after adding all the other instruments and vocals and everything, it's lost in the mix, which is a shame. It would be really good if we could just break it all down again and do an instrumental version
B The overall sound of that is really nice because it's much more lush than most of the other arrangements, so it's got organ and electric piano and guitars. It's the only track with acoustic guitars on it. I particularly like the mandolin-y part on the acoustic at the end, and all the vocals. I think it's really successfully beautiful-sounding
MVB It was the first time I'd ever recorded my voice in a studio, and it took a lot of time to get used to it. Matt and me and Ewan spent a LONG time doing it
MH From starting the vocal takes to making the master version was eleven hours… but it was worth it
MVB And it turned out to be very nice
MH Yes, very nice

pause

B Yes, very nice
T Can I say something about that track? What's significant is that it's not a Hales composition, and it does have a different emotional attraction
MH And that's what's so nice about it, and what will hopefully become a feature of albums of ours to come will be that contributions from all of us as writers will give these varying personalities on the songs - it's a good thing

WAITING FOR THIS

B The way we've scheduled the album is that it starts off hectic and gets more and more relaxed, so the penultimate track is the most sombre and slowest, Waiting for this
MH I think it's a very sumptuous mix
S Except that the guitar solo is way too loud
MH It's certainly as loud as it could possibly be without breaking the song in half
B Makes up for Chicken
S I like the strings on that better than the ones on Valentine's Day
MH You can hear them more. It's a nice arrangement for the strings and I was pleased because it's kind of… restrained. It's very tempting when you think 'Oh my god, strings!' to write really full fat chords all the time. But I kept it basic - austere, and that complements the vibe of the song. Even though the music's quite rich, the tone is quite… dour and introspective. So it's nice; it suits it. It's got a long outro, which is not something we do much of, with a solo going round and round the same two chords. That kind of thing can build up a certain intensity, and at the end of that song we achieve the most intense sound that there is on the whole album. Which is welcome, I think, and something we'll see more of in albums to come.

WHIRLER

B And finally Whirler, which we've spoken about before on singles, but we liked it so much as an antidote to the sombre feeling of those last tracks that we put it there to leave a little sugary taste at the end of the album
MH It's a coda; the perfect sweet little sugar-coated full-stop.

TO SUM UP

B To sum up then, do you think we're happy with what we've achieved? Not forgetting it is our first album
S As a first album, if it had come out a year and a half ago, I'd have been happy. As of now, it feels a bit late
MH About a year and a half late?
S As though it should have been released a year and a half ago… it actually feels like the second album with old songs on it
MH You have to think 'where were we at when we started recording it?' When we went into Chapel, which incidentally was like the Best Holiday in the World. And a lot of doughnuts. But we didn't know anything about anything, and we just went in there with the bizarre job of having to record our debut album, which we didn't really have a clue how to do, and to produce it, and we've ended up with an album which, to people who don't know the story will be a quite enjoyable and fruity debut. It's not a significant album, it's an intriguing beginning.
MVB I think that sums it all up - I really enjoy listening to the album. I'm not one for listening to it every day, but it is enjoyable and I think you'll like it
S The thing about Titanic
B In two years time this album's going to be old to the rest of the world as well, but it will still stand up, I think, as a good collection of well-made songs. Not as good as we will do in the future, but certainly in the Story of RUTH, a very intriguing and satisfactory first chapter.