Tuesday 18 March 2008

Thirsty Apes

We recorded another five songs with Nick D'Virgilio yesterday; mostly short tunes from along the way which, for one reason or another, never made it onto an album (Rob: 'These are fucking dregs. When are you going to write some proper stuff?') but also one longer piece which is a possible contender for English Electric.

The short songs may, indeed, be leftovers. But, like cold turkey on Boxing day, they are quite tasty and will be making an appearance on our retrospective CD which is coming out after the English Boy Wonders re-release and the new album.

Rob and Nick have been working on the new Spock's Beard live DVD and we had a listen to a few of the surround mixes after the session. It's gonna be a great release; I couldn't get 'On a Perfect Day' out of my head and sang it all the way to the curry house (I think Nick really appreciated hearing my vocal performance over and over. He mentioned that he'd never realised some of the notes I was singing even existed; don't be surprised if some of the subtleties of my rendition influence the SB live performances in the summer.)

After a few beers, Nick told us an unusual and alarming story about Giraffes. Which prompted Steve Thorne to suggest we check out this YouTube video (warning: may offend; do not click on the link if you are squeamish or have young children looking over your shoulder.)

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Good to hear you're working with Nick again. His drumming on the Difference Machine was awesome!

Is Steve Thorne involved in any of your projects or was he just hanging around?

I'm really curious about some of the background of big big train. How did you get together with Nick, Dave and Pete Trewawas in the first place? If you don't mind getting asked the same question all over again. ;)

Anyway, i'm a convert and plug you everywhere i can. You definitely deserve some more public awareness.

Greets from Germany,
Chris

Gregory Spawton said...

Hi Chris.

Thanks for spreading the word - greatly appreciated.

We've been working with Rob Aubrey for many years - he's mixed all of our albums. Rob works with Spock's, Transatlantic, IQ, Pendragon etc so we've been introduced to Nick, Dave, Steve, Pete etc. through him.

No plans to work with Steve at the moment, although we have discussed it and it is a possibility.

Cheers

Greg