Sometimes you read that a song had a really long gestation, and then you read Wikipedia only to find out what differentiates a ‘long’ gestation from a short one is the number of hotel rooms and hookers, multiplied exponentially, the guitarist had to pass through in order to come up with the band’s next hit.

In contrast, the main riff to ‘New Electra’ was one of the very first I ever came up with on picking up a guitar. Which was in the mid 1990s. As a reminder, ‘Battletech’ came out in July, this year.

The base of the song was laid down in the late ’90s, early 2000s, and pretty much left to rot. I never brought it up for consideration in any of the bands I was in, and never considered it for recording in my my previous solo iteration, luna spark, which wasn’t as ‘rock’ oriented as ‘Battletech’.

But new technology and such let me try it out, and though it evolved greatly in the mix, I don’t think it could have come out any better. It’s a far cry from what I imagined in 1996 or whatever, but if you knew what lyrics used to hang off the riff, you’d be worshiping the ground Charles Darwin used to listen to music on.

‘Cause really, the whole song is pretty much that riff. And to have some whargarbll over the top of it, with some crappy AutoTune, w0uld just be lame.

The verses aren’t so hot, so AutoTune there is required, for sure.

If you’ve got the album, and it’s a free download, so if you’ve read this far I’m guessing you do, you’d notice the snare sound is different to most of the other songs. It is, yeah. I used a different sample, and to this day, I’m not entirely sure why. It has a more generic session-bad pop sound to it.

The synth sound in the second verse you’d recognise as one I’ve scattered throughout ‘Battletech’, and it’s cropping up a bit in the new recordings I’m working one - perhaps a little too much! I’ve had some troubles with one of my wrists this past year, and combined with the fact I’m now a freakin’ dad (”freakin’ dad” ’cause it’s still a freakout that I’m a freakin’ dad) I’ve not been on the guitar/bass so much.

In its place is that pulsing, so-very-1990s sound. Or ’80s. I”m not sure. Needs more guitar to sound like Rob Zombie, less to sound like Ultravox - the dilemma of my life.

LINK: DOWNLOAD ‘NEW ELECTRA’

Mirrored from Radio Over Moscow.

FICTION

I sometimes go through phases where I try to write songs I could imagine a famous band or artist playing. Normally each artist gets one phase, then I move on - Weezer are an exception. I’ve tried to write a thousand Weezer songs in my life, with varying results.

This was one of the success stories, I feel - even if it ended up sounding nothing like Weezer (much like Weezer themselves, these days).

It began in 2008, I think, making it one of the most recently-penned tracks from ‘Battletech’. It was initially just the power chord verses, with a fairly monotone, wordless melody. The bridge/chorus chords came soon after, but it wasn’t until I recorded it that it really took shape - there was no demo version, what you hear on the album was the first and only attempt at putting it together.

For example, the synth lead that underpins the entire bridge (bit after the verse but before the chorus) was only added as a way of making the bassline melody stand out, and ended up being perhaps the catchiest phrase in the whole song. It also leads nicely into the guitar solo, contributed by R William Murphy - he who helped write ‘The Purpose Of Man’. I told him ‘like van Halen’, which is probably the first and last time I’ll ever ask for something with those words.

The vocals were one of the first I tried using software to do pitch correction, and found by doubling it up with octave higher and lower backing vocals, it gave the song an other-worldy, robotic kind of feel. I utilised the technique to fill in vocals on the other songs, liking what I heard here. Because the verse melody on ‘Fiction’ is quite plain - all the catchiness there being in the chords, really - it helped make the vocals stand out, sound more interesting.

The lyrics are one of my signature mish-mashes of two different ideas; one which came with the chords, and one when I actually sat down to flesh everything out so I could record it. The first idea is that gossip - lies in particular - doesn’t spread by itself. Pretty obvious, really. It takes people to pass it on, and people get a kick out of it - else they wouldn’t do it. In other words, fiction is a lazy bitch, or as the song puts it, Yoda-style, ’such a lazy bitch, fiction is’.

The second angle is basically an attack on the current National Party. They’re always good for a kicking, and last time they were in power I could barely even play the guitar. Still can’t, but hey.

And no, I don’t know why the tom roll going into the second chorus is so quiet. I must have accidentally muted the close mics when I was putting it all together, and by the time I realised something was wrong I couldn’t be arsed remixing it. One mixing error that made the master is still about 5000 less than the Beatles had, per song…

LINK: DOWNLOAD ‘FICTION’

Mirrored from Radio Over Moscow.

In the past couple of weeks, here in NZ there’s been a whole lotta love, no wait, the opposite - what’s that, hate? - for a couple of politicians who were previously seen as being of multiple opposite sides of the political polygon, but have spent the last year in coalition - for reasons unknown to themselves.

Or for power. Take your pick.

Thing is, I had respect for at least one of them up until this week. Background alert: this part may bore non-New Zealanders. Feel free to skip to the next paragraph or 16 - promise, I will get to the song at hand eventually. It does relate.

Anyway, I like Hone Harawira, and though I’ve not always agreed with his politics, since he came and spoke to us students on our overnight marae trip on my grad-dip journalism course (part of which I skipped for a gig), I’ve appreciated his candour and way with a word and situation; until now.

Turns out the motherfucker - to paraphrase Harawira himself - is a wacko racist. Sure, I should have been ticked off by fact he is in the race-based Maori Party, but he struck me as someone who could transcend that crap and actually say it like it is, on behalf of the left.

As we all (in NZ) now know, he took a detour whilst on one of those random overseas missions no one actually knows or cares about until a politician fucks up. His fuckup was taking his wife on a sightseeing tour of Paris whilst he was meant to be in some apparently un-sightseeing-worthy Belgian town - Brussels, I think. Turns out he paid for that part of his trip himself, and by his own account, he’d done his business the night before, or something. Like he operates in some kind of freaky world where race-based electorate MPs from obscure Pacific countries get to meet the world’s playmakers at some kind of pre-ball party and knock out the real arrangements, leaving the formalities to nerds like the UK and shit.

So far, so meh. But when he got back, instead of arguing his case - what he did was within the law, he’d done his work already, it was fully legal according to the rules and fuck, if you were in a day’s drive of Paris and hadn’t been, wouldn’t you go? - he accused “white motherfuckers” of I don’t know, ‘uckin’ with his shit. I wish I was, but I’m not kidding.

The whole puritanical bullshit argument he tried might have flown in the 19th century, but it’s 2009.

As for Rodney Hide, the irony precedes itself, surely. But think about it - Rodney Hide is pretty much capitalism incarnate, so the fact he’s raping the public purse without remorse (to paraphrase, “I disagree with these perks, but I’m not a martyr”) and thinks he is entitled to it, I’m guessing through his own interpretation of virtue, shouldn’t really surprise anyone.

Sooo - to the song at hand, Policies. Written in its initial form over Nov/Dec 1999.

I suppose it’s odd that it starts with an apparent grammatical error - but no, it’s just a possessive. ‘Policies are all’ would have been acceptable, but the word ‘policy’ fits, okay? Not that I’ve been asked about it very often.

New Zealand had a general election in November 1999, a year throughout which I’d developed my songwriting and political idealogy to a degree, I guess. We’d had a right-wing govt for nine years, and the election result was a foregone conclusion. Helen Clark’s Labour won, but as us young’uns are wont to do, we soon imagined cracks.

To be honest, I’m not sure what cracks I could have seen that quickly, despite the lyrics. I was yet to endeavor on proper student protest (that would come in 2000) and Labour’s victory was something I’d awaited since 1990.

The ‘no party vote’ lyric I suppose is the most interesting part. The reasoning was at the time, we’re so young, we don’t have a party we’re loyal to (we get two votes in NZ - one for an electorate, which is nigh on useless, and one for the party, which decides the government). It was a very fresh idea at the time, the separate party vote, and it has fallen in recent years to the same kind of political manipulation as the old meaningless electorate vote used to be prey to.

The electorate vote is still almost entirely useless, but seems to hold a spell over much of the electorate who want a return to the bad old days.

I can’t say much more about the original lyric, but its message seems as timely as ever - listen to the distinct messages each party sends, as opposed to their stated policies. And judge them on those.

Sound and structure-wise, the song has remained remarkably intact since it was first written. A few synths were added, replacing what were originally guitars, but apart from that, what’s on the album is pretty much what was on the demo I recorded in 1999.

LINK: DOWNLOAD ‘POLICIES’

Mirrored from Radio Over Moscow.

PAKISTAN

I say in the blurbs (and soon, hopefully, the interviews) I’m heavily influenced by Nirvana, yet no one seems to get it. People hear drum machines and think it’s synthpop, and/or hear distorted guitars and assume because they’re accompanied by drum machines, it’s Nine Inch Nails I’m ripping off.

Whilst both assumptions aren’t entirely false, I think it’s a little lazy to write off just how much an effect Kurt Cobain’s songwriting has had on me.

The first album I ever bought was Nirvana, Unplugged in New York. I’m not sure there’s a cooler album for someone my age to have begun with; I suppose I was a late starter, being 14 at the time, but I was doing alright for a fan of Australian rugby league who switched his allegiance from balls (balls) to penis substitutes (guitars) almost overnight.

I remember sitting in my mate’s garage when we were 15 (he’d been kicked out of home, and moved to the garage - it sounds lame, I know, but when you were 15, in 1995, the fact he was allowed topless (not full-frontal) pics on his wall, simply because he was no longer in the house, was pretty awesome), listening to Nirvana pretty much non-stop.

It was the same at home - mum once came into my room, and asked: ‘Do you like any other bands, apart from Nirvana?’ I thought about it for a few seconds, and replied, ‘No.’ Obviously.

A few months later I’d jump on the whole mid-90s Britpop/Beatles wave, but anyway, years later…

I’d learned a bit about using semitone discordance from Placebo, using single-string riffs from Muse, yet still loved the basic, ‘happy’ C-F-G power-chord progressions of your everyday Weezer song… and one day in early 2004 hit upon the main riff. I used the fact the riff - based in E - landed on C, giving it that minor kind of sound, to switch to F-C-G in the choruses, but keeping an angry melody, and somehow it resulted in something that was simultaneously catchy as hell, without being a total cheese-fest.

That sounds totally nerdy, but I insist - I have absolutely no musical training or knowledge, honest. It just sounded right.

The first time it was played live in my band at the time, Vetox, was the drummer’s… something. Engagement party? It was an odd audience anyway, and he hadn’t been in the band long, but it was draining, which yeah, made me think there was something to the song.

And as for the parts everyone says sound like the Killers, a) I’m actually quite proud I managed to pull off a song that equally ripped off Nirvana and the Killers, and b) one review said instead it was White Zombie I was channeling. Which you cannot argue with, or Rob Zombie will kill you, or something.

The recording obviously uses a lo-fi approximation of Muse’s Chris Wolstenholme’s distorted basswork, and if you listen carefully - it’s more apparent on the dynamic, alternate mix - drum machines in the intro and from the second verse onwards.

If you’ve read this far, you might even be interested in what the song is about - well, it’s a clumsily-written simplified view of what Pakistan, the country, seemingly wants from the United States. Crossed with wanting a girl. Heavy shit. This is where I insert the ‘in a post-9/11 world’ quote to get people’s ears on fire, I think.

LINK: DOWNLOAD ‘PAKISTAN’

Mirrored from Radio Over Moscow.

This probably isn’t the first time I’ve said this, and probably won’t be the last, but I do pretty much all of my ‘blogging’ via Twitter these days (a quick look shows it’s been two whole months since I last said that!).

It’s a slow night at work though, you see - the evenings usually are. Been a while since I did evenings, and it’s good to see nothing much has changed. Thank fuck the boss is back though - things around here have been a little… tense, let’s say. Won’t go into it here, but.

One of the news directors has loaned me the first three seasons of Battlestar Galactica on DVD - it’s a show I’ve always heard was good, but I realised early on it wouldn’t be a show to dip into, or take on without serious consideration. I mean, I’m on my third (for some episodes, fourth or fifth) Lost watchthrough. It’s almost like work - if work was totally awesome. But my point is, it’s not exactly Friends.

Took me a while to get started - the show dumps you straight in, but after a few false starts I think momentum will get me through the first season at least pretty quickly. It’s pretty damn good, and I’m glad I’ve managed to avoid spoilers all these years.

In other unimportant happenings, I’ve had to make the ‘loud’ version of the album free to download at any quality, not just 128k mp3. Bandcamp (the host) simplified their sales policy, so you can’t sell low quality versions at a cheaper rate. Their justification was that it just doesn’t work, which is fair enough. Still, with two versions of the record on sale - one sonically superior - I think it’s no harm done really. Not like I expected to make any money from it, ha ha! The $60 I did make from the Fark greenlight was awesome enough.

I make music for the satisfaction of it - to me, if no one else, it has inherent value. Maybe one day I’ll be discovered, probably after I’m dead. Pfft. Stupid death.

Anyway, work happening.

Mirrored from Radio Over Moscow.

This song is one of a few written immediately before I began recording ‘Battletech’. Many of the songs were penned long before the album itself came together, and never recorded through a lack of the right technology - ie. real-enough-sounding drums without getting a guy, paying a different guy, and feeding them both beer - and being stuck with the results.

But this one was originally written for a band I was in at the time, KittyHawk. Early 2008, or late 2007, I can’t recall. In one of my ‘get out the gear, muck around, and see what comes out’ periods, I went in with the intention of writing music for the band; which at the time played mostly material written by the singer, Kent, with input on arrangements from the drummer, John, and I.

Kent wasn’t so keen on it (other stuff I had he liked, so it wasn’t time wasted, not at all), so it went in my big pile of ‘unused songs that rock’. Soon after, when the concept of Radio Over Moscow came to me (then as ‘Raid Over Moscow’) Anti-Human Nous was top of the list of songs to try out.

I took the original demo, and literally just transferred the demo drums onto the newer samples, tweaked them a bit of course, threw in some synthetic samples in the choruses, and pretty much had the drum take ready. It was one of those songs were the structure was already in place from the get-go, like magic or something.

It was one of the first songs recorded for the album, and I had my distorted bass sound going, in an approximate replication of what I used live in KittyHawk. It’s a lot simpler to play than it sounds - a few people have commented it sounds like a synthesizer - or thought it was one. Nope, it’s just a quickly-picked bass string, mostly on the A-string.

The actual synths though are played mostly on the Yamaha PSS-460. It’s an old keyboard I used a hell of a lot in the past, but have kind of ignored recently in favour of softsynths. Anyway, nothing does a good ‘beerougnh’ sound like the PSS-460, so I pulled it out of retirement for Anti-Human Nous.

It also makes a really cool sound when you’re recording it live, and you suddenly kill the power - but when you do that, you lose your slider settings, which sucks. So don’t do it unless it’s your final take, and the overpaid producer is giving you massive thumbs up through the studio window.

As for the lyrics, well… they’re gibberish. Completely. If you don’t believe me, listen to them. People often take meaning from um, words. In this case, don’t. At all.

Right, I’m back to watching the train wreck, with a good cause, that is Telethon. Or as it’s known in the Twitter world, #telethon.

LINK: BUY ‘ANTI HUMAN NOUS’

Mirrored from Radio Over Moscow.

Okay, so this idea might go over some people’s heads, but I’ve always found it interesting to find out about bands’ writing/recording processes, so thought I’d write about making ‘Battletech’.

I know it’s not exactly the Classic Albums series, but how often do you read about obscure, no-budget recording sessions, that don’t end with the phrase, ‘thank god for that NZ On Air funding’? If nothing else, writing this stuff down will at least be interesting to myself in decades to come../

Anyway, so we’ll start with the first track on the album, and the oldest song on the album by a long way, ‘The Purpose of Man’.

The song’s genesis dates way, way back to 1996. From memory, R William Murphy (not that he called himself that in those days - let’s call him Rob) and I were in town - Hamilton, of course. We were walking down the main street, on our way home I believe, when two Asian Christians accosted us for a chat. This wasn’t entirely normal in mid-90s Hamilton, but my bullshit detector must’ve been functioning well ’cause I got out of my conversation unscathed, whilst Rob’s guy wound up trying to get him to come back later that night for a streetside baptism - and no, that’s not a euphemism.

So after 20 minutes or so, we managed to extricate ourselves, but the bible-bashers left us with a parting shot - a small booklet called ‘The Purpose Of Man’. Yes, that’s it in the pic - the exact one - complete with 13-year-old pencil scribblings in my handwriting.

Now, in my memory’s version of events, I can’t remember which came first - the words or the ‘music’. I put ‘music’ in inverted commas because what I had written down was most definitely not music. I was yet to learn how to play, and from memory had drawn a series of lines on a piece of paper with dots representing the next note in the riff I’d supposedly composed. I gave this ‘music’ to Rob, who understandably not having a clue what I’d done, came out with the choppy, key-ignoring riff the song’s verses are based around.

For the chorus, we literally just took the chords from the verses and played them from lowest to highest up the fretboard as power chords, then highest to lowest, repeat. Seriously, that’s how you write songs when you’ve just learned to play! Go the barre chord.

The lyrics were a collaborative effort, from memory, written pretty much at the height of our Beatles obsession. The idea was pretty simple - write the first great hippy anthem of the next millenium; hence the references to flowers, colours, hazes, the outside world, things being in your head, the plants being peculiar, colours surrounding you, being amazed, and so on. Pretty simple stuff, but when combined with the very British-sounding off-key riff, quite effective.

The structure of the song has a slightly more convoluted origin. There’s an old demo of the two of us in ‘96 or ‘97 recorded onto a tape recorder with a borrowed Yamaha keyboard providing the beat (that keyboard has an entire story of its own I won’t go into here!). One of us (probably me, as Rob was the only one who could play the guitar properly) tapped out the chord progression on the keys as a thin, tinkly rhythm played, soon followed with Rob’s dun-dun-dun, dun-dun-dun guitar riff and the first verse.

The demo followed this basic pattern until halfway through the second verse, when we started shouting, and Rob dropped the staccato playing for a straight strum.

And as for the outro, I can’t recall whether it was spontaneous or planned, apart from the slowing to half-time. The falsetto I’m sure was a shock, even if we were only 16 at the time. It’s seriously high, and Rob did it without the benefit of technology!

We played the song in our band Sequester in 1998, which is where the more menacing aspect to its arrangement arose - the military-style beat in the second half of the second verse. As I said, we’d always made that part louder, but our drummer Arie threw in these vicious, urgent snare rolls that flipped the song’s feel and attitude entirely. Live, it would start out as a plodding psychedelic pop song, then have its meaning put in doubt by a raucous, menacing twist.

Then we’d throw in five minutes of feedback and noise, and play it again. It was a great way of padding out a short set!

So when it came to recording it for ‘Battletech’, I was a little wary - I’ve always loved the song, and thought it was one of the best Rob and I wrote together, but wasn’t sure if I’d pull it off with all the twists and changes it had accrued in its life.

Rather than rely on the same basic ‘live drummer’ set up most of the other tracks largely use, I beefed up the main rhythm with a loud, compressed dirty hip-hop kick drum and some choppy, gated snares - this gave the track a more synthesized feel than the rest of the album, but as it was already musically quite different, I figured it was a go. For the intro, I mimicked the sound of the old Yamaha using a bunch of drum machine samples, and threw in this great loping synth I’d found (and used) on ‘Images of Bliss’, which was recorded earlier.

I programmed in a pad playing the basic chord progression, so that if further down the line I had pull out instruments that just wouldn’t fit, there would still be at least something droning away in key. It worked too, as I later pulled the electric guitars from the verses in order to make the choruses have more punch.

At the end of each chorus, it seemed a little dull just to have the descending chord progression pay itself out, so I added in a synth-string sweep and some cheesy techno synths, which worked better than I had expected. If someone had told me 13 years ago ‘The Purpose Of Man’ would have strings and a cheesy techno synth, I probably would have punched them for being blasphemous, but hey. Not really.

Something did go wrong in those chorus outros, though. As you can hear, they skip a chord - a gap I’d completely forgotten about in the initial recording. It was only when I sent Rob an in-progress mix of the backing track that he pointed out it had a couple of skipped beats I’d forgotten about completely. I had to painstakingly remove them, adding in fades to cover up the edit.

Throws a little doubt on how accurate my recollection of the ’90s might be though!

So, coming to the outro of the song, I initially planned to get Rob to do it, hoping for a repeat of his ball-busting effort on the mid-90s demo. Instead, I relied on ol’ AutoTune to get me through, and when Rob first heard the mix, he said he wans’t needed. Or words to that effect. He did have some slightly more intricate vocal runs I couldn’t do, but in their place I put some melodic bass runs, doubled up on a last-minute synthesiser - in fact, the last thing recorded on the entire album, I think.

I planned early on to close the album with ‘The Purpose Of Man’, figuring if I pulled it off successfully, nothing could really follow it. Somewhere along the line I decided it was far too good to shove at the back of an album probably no one will hear, so promoted it… to the front. It was just so different to everything else, it kind of had to be had out of the way, so the album proper could start. It’s the only song on the album I didn’t write alone, and has its genesis in a completely different part of my life to most of the material.

Still, I’m very proud of it, and think yeah - perhaps back in 1996, we did just write the first great hippy anthem of the new millenium. Even if it took cheesy techno synths and a dollop of AutoTune to get there. Putting it at the front of the album certainly weeds out those who don’t have an open mind, and serves as an excellent red herring for the next track, ‘Anti-Human Nous’ - which was composed 12 years later, and will be the focus of my next, no doubt much shorter, entry.

LINK: BUY ‘THE PURPOSE OF MAN’

Mirrored from Radio Over Moscow.

If you don’t want to use the Bandcamp.com-based store, the album’s now on Amplifier.co.nz here. It’s a little pricier, at NZ$1.99 a track, but at least it’s a NZ-based company that’s been around for years, so you can trust ‘em.

Mirrored from Radio Over Moscow.

The album ‘Battletech’ is out! And here it is, in two different versions… if you’re not sure which to grab, well, the first one is louder, shinier and will slot in with the other albums on your iPod; the second, alternate mix, is quieter with more dynamics, more suited to closer, dedicated listening. The former you can download free at 128k mp3 quality, or pay-what-you-want for any quality right up to and including FLAC; the latter is pay-what-you-want only.

If you download the full album (of either mix), there are two remix bonus tracks.

And that’s it! In the time I’ve spent working on this album, I’ve learned to drive, had a baby, moved house, started a new job and had two birthdays. I hope you like it. (If you can’t see the widgets below, you may need to install the latest version of Flash, or go straight to radioovermoscow.bandcamp.com and try downloading from there).

BATTLETECH

BATTLETECH - ALTERNATE MIX

Mirrored from Radio Over Moscow.

And that reason is Twitter. It used to be I’d collect my thoughts up, like guitar riffs, then put them altogether in a blog entry (or a song, in the case of guitar riffs, ’cause they don’t make such good blog entries).

But nowadays it’s just, ‘Ooh, I’ll put that on Twitter.’ It’s probably just as well, ’cause usually I’d forget my thoughts (and guitar riffs) when it came time to write a blog entry.

So I suppose a proper update is in store - but you’re not gonna get it just now, haha. But I will say the album is pretty much done - been working on the opening, and therefore most important track, ‘The Purpose of Man’ these past couple of days. I think it’s done - might cut part of the intro out, as it’s about 45 seconds in before the first verse otherwise, and the last minute-and-a-half has no drums at all, which might give a false impression of what’s to come.

Another one of the tracks might need a little vocal editing, and a few need them pushed a little higher perhaps (Jebus, I never expected to see myself writing those words - thank YOU, autotune), and one needs Rob’s killer guitar solo, then yeah. I’ve got the mastering settings pretty much locked in. Shit, might even be done for my birthday on the 7th.

I’ve completely dropped the double-album idea now, so the album’s just gonna be called Battletech. I’m still deciding whether next to work on all-new songs, use songs I already have but haven’t used, re-record what I did in these sessions (but better), or re-record an old luna spark album I know in my heart is good, but ears (and friends) tell me isn’t. No matter what I do, the result is going to be more electronic/synth oriented than Battletech, ie. no ballads.

I should make that a rule for ALL future albums, otherwise I’m gonna be stuck with autotune forever…

Mirrored from Radio Over Moscow.