8 June 2006
The World Cup began on Friday. I've watched a lot of football.
It's hot today. Dave is here for the next few days, and it suddenly feels like we're making progress.
We're looking at Blood on our Hands. The other week Matt had spent a few hours on this and put on loads of crazy synth parts, including one which was just a loop of the Korg breaking, which sounded great. We weren't sure whether this was a candidate for full drum kit, so Dave delved in his percussion hamper and came up with an arrangement of cowbells played with rubber mallets. It doesn't sound anything like what you would expect that to sound like - it calls to mind huge rusted sheets of metal creaking in the wind.
We started one of last years' tours in Portland, and round the corner from the venue there was a marvellous drum shop run by a tremendous Portland hippy where Dave had picked up a rather fine gongHe also picked up a rather fine bong.. During that tour we started using the gong on Take Me Home. Dan Tuite would just keep it softly rolling throughout the song, getting louder and softer as the song developed. It was very effective for creating brooding tension, so we thought that idea would fit right in on this track. SO WE DID IT IT WAS GOOD.
Then we did brushy tom drums like on Human Shield. The combined effect was suitably dramatic, although every time I sat on the couch I found I was asleep.
