Pressure

Yo

It's been a while since i last posted, even though for me it doesn't seem like too much has happened but I guess things are happening all the time and time is getting on. First things first, The final half of the tour was really cool, again a belated thanks to everyone that watched us/helped us out with lending us gear/gave us a floor to sleep on. We were all a bit weary about the final date in London as it was our first time playing a headline gig in the capital but we needn't have worried, the gig was great! We had a great crowd, played well and had good bands supporting us, what more could you ask for. There is a diary of the whole tour written by our merch guy/good mate Ben at the following url:

(http://blog.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.view&friendID=2649955&blogID=319587363)

During the tour we managed to have a good chat with Pete Miles about the album, we talked about how we want to record, where we're going to record and lots of other geeky conversations. We toyed with the idea of recording the main backline (twoguitarsbassdrums) live as opposed to our first album where everything was recorded separately, but with us being perfectionists to a certain degree and wanting sort of a middle ground between the two extremes we decided it would be best to track the drums and bass live. Then after that we are most likely going to record everything on top of that, which is what we did when we recorded some recent demos with Pete, such as 'Help Yourself'. This way the album will have a very 'live' feel but won't lose some of the power and clarity of the songs which can sometimes happen on albums recorded live. We'll also most likely be recording in a big house in Devon, probably in the middle of nowhere so we'll be in beautiful surroundings to inspire us as we record. However it's not like we'll see any of it though because we'll be recording, haha. Nah we'll have some days off during recording so it will hopefully help us to relax if nothing else.

Since then, we've had a few practices and suported Idlewild at Preston Uni which was a big shock, seen as we found out we were playing two days before by chance. It was great to play with a band I think we've all liked and had a lot of respect for since we were all at school. The gig itself for us was a bit of a nightmare and technical problems aside, there were a few small reasons why we didnt play better but, for me personally I know I let the fact that we were playing to a crowd and with a band much different than we're used to get to me a bit. But you live and learn and all that stuff.

Practice-wise we've been over most of the songs lyrically, although they're done, we've just been practicing through them and ironing out any problems (guitar parts clashing, vocals etc). We also began writing another new song (is it 'We also began or We have also begun? I don't know), anyway I think we're on the begining of song number 13 but its slowly dawning on us that we have about 10 or 11 weeks till January and we might not get to write as many songs as we wanted to. It's a been a hard time being creative but having to be quick about it with a deadline looming, it definatly takes us a while to write a tune with three main songwriters pushing and pulling in certain directions and its been so much more difficult this time around because our expectations of ourselves, each other and what the new album is going to be has been so much higher. Also by the time our second album is released it will have been two and a half years since we released 'What We Are Today' so even though we had our own expectation musically, and even though we didn't need to set a deadline, we wanted to also bear in mind other commerical expectations too, no matter how small they might be. Maybe if we'd carried on putting it back, everyone that knows us would probably get bored of waiting. You know that Axel Rose is up shit creek without a paddle at the moment because of that very fact, haha. Maybe we've thought about it all too much but I think we care too much not to think about it all the time.

Thats all for now, its stupid o clock and I need to go to bed. Im going to say thanks to Andrew (for leaving the comments) and also Joe and Al for being the only people I know that are actually reading this, and all other possible voyeristic readers of this blog. x