by Paul

The recording of our third album ‘Looper’ began in the Spring of 2007.  The idea was to rehearse and ‘rough’ record demos of the songs and send them to Mark Bowyer, our engineer and producer, so he could get a grasp of what we wanted to achieve in the studio and could formulate some ideas of his own.

One song – ‘Cock-a-hoop’ was scheduled to be an acoustic number.  When it came to recording the demo however, something about it just didn’t work, so it was dropped from the schedule.  At this stage ‘Wild Animals’ hadn’t even been written!

‘She Gone’ was to be this little instrumental acting as a kind of intro to ‘Cohiba’ that was to open the album proper.  Recorded at my home on mini disc.  The first guitar part – played on my twelve stringer with only six strings, plugged into my amp with loads of gain – I recorded and then played back through my Laney Linebacker combo, whilst I played the second part.  With a line taken out of the headphone socket, both tracks were then put onto a second mini disc.

The original Champion Sound parts I and II had myself talking into the mic.  We knew we wanted some kind of dialogue and thought we could record ourselves in conversation.  However, on the eve of the session, Terry came up with the idea that we use the soundtrack from a video.  This had been shot some years previously by an Australian tourist at a local farm where several old boys, including our Dad, were drinking cider.  What a great idea this turned out to be.  With Pete’s drum pattern looping around, Terry’s dubby base line, some atmospheric guitar, the Aussie who filmed it and Somerset banter, it’s a cultural mix.

When recording the rough demo of ‘As you Revolve’, something strange happened.  At the rehearsal studios we use – Bridie’s Yard in Glastonbury – there is always a pile of coffee mugs on the drainer of the stainless steel sink.  Just as we reached the crescendo of the musical part of the last chorus, all the mugs fell into the sink with a crash.  Listening to the playback, I realised what a happy accident this was and wanted to recreate it at our session with Mark.  So we set up a pyramid of mugs on a beam, below which was a dustbin lid we pinched from the neighbour of Chicken Shed Studios.  Mark Bowyer ran the track and when the time came, I swept the mugs in to the dustbin lid – perfect!

I had realised that there was two passages in the song ‘Born at Sea Level’ that were crying out for some percussion.  Terry and Peter took care of the woodblock and egg shaker.  However, we needed that thing that makes the other funny noise.  Unfortunately nobody knows what this thing is called.  I went to Glastonbury Music Shop to see if they had one.  They didn’t, but we did spot one in a catalogue and it’s a type of rattle.  Our recording session was coming to an end and still we had no rattle!  With time running out, Peter came up trumps.  Talking to his family about the situation, his son Harry remembered that there was one in the music cupboard at his old junior school.  Peter approached the school and hey presto, he came back to the studio with what we call a rattlesnake rattle, in his hand.  He went into the live room and promptly did his bit on the track.

With the week long session over, we had ten tracks in the can and Mark Bowyer started mixing the tracks.  I feel we as a band work really well with Mark.  He knows how to get the performance out of us.  It’s always a surprise to me that he is willing to work with us at all considering the bands he’s worked with and the albums he’s worked on.

Immediately after the session, buoyed up and inspired by what we had achieved, I came up with a riff that I knew I could fit the lyrics of ‘Cock-a-hoop’ to.  Shortly after, I wrote ‘Wild Animals’.  These two songs quickly became favourites.  Acting on Terry’s suggestion, we went back in the studio to record these two songs.  The session was very relaxed.  Terry’s laugh and Peter’s “here we go then” were deliberately left on at the top of the intro to ‘Cock-a-hoop’, where Peter plays the rims of his drum to demonstrate this.  Terry’s playing of his bass was confident and the session was soon finished.  We couldn’t find a real bullwhip for the chorus of ‘Wild Animals’ so we nicked the sound from another track!

The two numbers made tracks 1 and 2 on the final order of the CD. 

Complete with the artwork of Sue Partridge, we feel the album is an all-round good product.