Friday 28 March 2008

Download of the month - March 2008

As promised, we've started our free audio download service on the http://www.bigbigtrain.com/ site.

All songs we upload will be the full-length versions in high quality audio. We'll add a song every month and they'll stay on the site, which means that over the years we will eventually make available the full catalogue of BBT material for free download.

We're not becoming a charitable concern with this approach, we're simply trying an experiment to expand the number of listeners we have. As every listener is a potential buyer, we think it's worth exploring. We know that we cannot control illegal downloading and our CD's are pretty easy to find if somebody wants to grab them online.

The download service allows us to get some additional publicity on a monthly basis and will expand the number of people who visit our site. We can control the quality of the audio and can encourage people to support the band by visiting our CD shop where we sell CD's as cheaply as we possibly can.

We'll also be uploading some new songs prior to album releases and some rarities from our back catalogue, so it should be of interest to existing listeners as well as the curious.

Anyway, that's the theory.

The first track is Pick Up If You're There, from last year's Difference Machine CD. It's a good example of the current BBT sound, featuring Tony Wright on Van Der Graaf Generator*-influenced saxaphone, Becca King on viola, Pete Trewavas on bass and Nick D'Virgilio on drums.

Next month will be Fighter Command from the Gathering Speed CD and in May or June we'll upload a song from the forthcoming re-mixed, re-mastered and partly re-constructed English Boy Wonders album.

Greg

*the new VDGG album is worth checking out, despite the lack of Jaxon sax.

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.)