Blog: Snug Media Ltd

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I awoke at a RELAXED hour on Saturday morning, happy to discover that the application of a little JHB at the end of the evening had INDEED cured me of a John Smiths-induced HANGOVER, and it was with a light heart and a carefree head that I caught the train to Derby, there to lay down some ROCK.

I arrived at The Snug Recording Company (cheques payable to Snug Media Ltd - POSH!) to find Mr Robbie Newman a) READY b) RARING TO GO, and WHAT a fine old afternoon of it we had! First of all we did ELECTRICAL guitar parts, which was GRATE as we got to use THREE different amplifiers and make them DEAD LOUD.

We started off with My Boss Was In An Indie Band, and I got to try out my REVOLUTIONARY NEW IDEA: PROPER GUITAR PARTS! In the past I've STRUMMED ALONG, but this time i thought maybe I'd actually WORK OUT some PROPER GUITAR PARTS for each song - sounds KRAZY i know, but it seemed to go OK, with a combination of ON and OFF the beat guitars for that one, i was rather PROUD of myself! Next we did Do The Indie Kid with a RIGHT NASTY guitar sound that i personally found VERY EXCITING. The BEST bit though was doing The Music Of The Future in the middle - Robbie would LEAP UP from his seat and open the door to the live room, where the Amps were. I would DASH IN and stand in front of said amp, in order to generate FEEDBACK then, when it was finished, RUN BACK to my seat ready for the end of the song. We did a couple of different guitar bits for this too, so did THAT a couple of times, it was FUN!

EVEN MORE FUN (sounds impossible, but it is FACT) came when we did Best Behaviour - I had a LEAD PART for this one which I wanted to sound "Noingy". Now, this was always the GRATE thing about recording with Mr Reverb at his (Sadly Defunct) studio in Leicester, and he ALWAYS either KNEW what my ridiculous descriptions of sounds meant OR would come up with something much better, so I'd been a bit worried about whether Robbie would be OK with this, but he took it MANFULLY in his stride - apparently the singer in his band (the EXCELLENT Plans & Apologies) is similarly "artistic", and so in THIS case he knew than "Noingy" means "Go get the WAH WAH out!"

Me being, shall we say, UTILITARIAN in my guitar SKILLZ, I needed some HELP with said item, so Robbie got DOWN on the floor and worked the pedal for me as I played - and by HECK, it sounded ACE! After THAT I did some MASSIVE ROCK GUITAR on We Can Start Having Fun, during which i wa sure I could feel WIND MACHINES all over the country start to get upset by the knowledge that THEY SHOULD HAVE BEEN THERE.

At this point THE TIGER arrived - we'd meant for him to record some Violin Parts, but as he was KNACKERED we forged ahead with GUITARS, with me doing ACOUSTICAL tracks for We Can Start Having Fun and a DAB of same for Do More, Eat Less. That was ALL my guitar DONE for the current batch of songs, so i finished up with VOCALS for Best Behaviour and We Can Start Having Fun, JUST BECAUSE I COULD.

Robbie commenced the Rough Mixing Process, just as Mr F A Machine and Frankie Jr arrived, DROPPING IN on THE SESSION. He'd brought the Artists Against Success chequebook with him - as the label is now semi-retired, only really releasing stuff by US now, there isn't really a NEED for us to have a seperate bank account any more, so we signed a few cheques to pay out the last remaining CA$H accrued for bands, and I felt a moment of SADNESS as i realised an ERA had finally closed. The glory days of the label AS a fully operating labels were several years ago now, but GOODNESS ME those were some pretty good times. Oh! The JOY of our Record Company Away Days when myself and Messrs. Machine and Whitaker would spend a happy day in a PUB in The Peak District, discussing GRATE THINGS before settling in for a MEAL and DRUNKEN SLUMBER in The Family Room! GOOD TIMES, my friend, GOOD TIMES.

But that was THE PAST, and our focus was soon shifted to the future, by THE MUSIC OF THE FUTURE. Last time me and The Rhythm Section had recorded several short PIECES for possible inclusion in that section of Do The Indie Kid, and we listened now to Robbie doing rough mixes for us. All right, some of it was less good than others, but some was ACE - different bits reminded us of several different QUITE NOTABLE Math-Rock type bands, and it was STRANGE and CONFUSING to think that we had replicated well thought of INTERLECTUAL MUSIC just by PISSING ABOUT for half an hour. SURELY there's more to it than that?

SARCASM!

With all that done we said our farewells to Robbie and The Machines and got into THE TIGERMOBILE for the next stop on THE MIGHTY WEEKEND OF ROCK: LEEDS!

posted 3/6/2007 by MJ Hibbett

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