Party Line: Download mp3

Composed in early 2006 this has sat around ‘nearly finished’ on my computers(s) waiting for the right vocal take. It all started from the heavy groove riff. Once I recorded the riff I realised that it was in 7/8 timing and needed a particular odd drum beat to go with it. I improvised some vocal melodies on top of it all and came up with a nice phrase that didn’t have any words. So I went for a bike ride to think about that and I came up with:

Toe the party line
All your life
Slow…
Load…
For one.

Just this week I noticed that I had forgotten about the song and decided to give the vocals a crack. Things turned out fairly good so I gave the whole sound a good sonic polish. What you hear is the end result, without too much fuss. The heaviness won’t be for everyone, but the strength of the vocals and ambience is a proper indicator of where I’m headed with my solo pop project presently.

Download the new song: Vegemite

A little while back I saw that Mick Rippon was doing a ‘rainy day’ song, mostly out of fun because it happened to be rainy at the time. The song had a little bit of a throw-away quality to it with its standard sad pop chords and middle-of-the-road plod, but it really caught my ear for some reason. It struck me as a nice container for something emotionally rich and with a bit of work it could be turned into a bitter-sweet experience. I suggested to Mick that I quickly lay down a guitar solo for it and see what happens. He said go for it.

I wanted to work as quickly as possible to take a break from my usual approach of agonizing over songs for months and months – just work hard and get something good happening. It wasn’t long into working on this that a vocal melody popped into my head and within a few takes I had that down as well as a sustained guitar solo. Mick added some extra interesting chord changes and fx,  afterwhich I set to polishing the mix and master – the result it what you hear now. A little rainy day piece to enjoy with your comfort food of choice!

There’s no doubt Mick and I have a good musical communication going on when we need to have it, probably due to some shared computer software herritage and perspectives on song construction. There is a desire to work on more collaborations with him but there’s much to finish first before we dive into that. Some big projects to be released first, some due very soon!