katerwaul

I wanted to put my views into this video, but I’m not all that comfortable with talking to a camera as I’m normally on the other side of it. I briefly talked about the Union Terrace Gardens controversy but I felt the need to delve into it further, but in words.

So above is me talking followed by a performance of Valley Under A Concrete Sea. Below is my full statement of events leading up to this week’s Referendum.

A Vote To Retain UTG Is A Vote For Democracy

For almost five years now this debate has gone on, and this week promises to see the end of it… but will it?

Its been a long time coming and I’m guessing a lot of people are wondering why I haven’t blogged about it already, but here it is the gratuitous Union Terrace Gardens Referendum blog post.

Let me get this out of the way first, if you want to vote for the CGP I don’t see anything wrong with that. After all you are given the choice. However it is a well documented fact that I am a big UTG supporter and it has upset me at the amount of people I know, many of them my friends, who don’t know the full story.

I don’t want to be one of those “YOU GOTTA READ THE FACTS!” guys, because to be honest, what exactly ARE the facts anymore? This debate has gone on and each side of the argument has been diluted by the opposing side. But for those of you who don’t know the history of the debate, then this is a different story.

Aberdeen has been on the decline for years. When I moved there in 2000 I was moving from a small town up North, Inverness (at the time it wasn’t a city yet). The biggest thing that amazed me was that Aberdeen had more than one cinema, an HMV and a VIRGIN Megastore! My how times have changed. Inverness has become a city and seen all these common stores open up on the high street and in that time I’ve also watched Aberdeen sink into a decline.

What happened to the once great Union street? VIRGIN went bust, HMV is now a T-Shirt shop. E&M, a local thriving department store went into receivership leaving an iconic building empty on one end of the Silver City’s most prized street while Bruce Millers a similar institution  of local business closed on the other side. Union Street was no longer in its hay day.

And what is in the middle? A beautiful Victorian Garden, sunken into the Denburn Valley threatened by the plight of what is going on some 20ft over head. Sure The Union Terrace Gardens aren’t what they once were. As Aberdeen’s Oil Industry claims to be recession proof, it seemed it was ignoring the fact that the city itself wasn’t.

It was a time for Aberdeen to assert itself with a new industry to contribute along side the Oil Industry that employs a bulk of its citizens. With Aberdeen having had a big influence over the Arts in the North East for a very long time the people at the Peacock Visual Arts Center thought it was about time it spread its wings and expanded, opening what was to be Aberdeen’s Contemporary Arts Center. For many years it tried to find a new home, the Citidel was one. All the plans fell through until the proposal to build into the Union Terrace Gardens.

This plan was approved by the Council AND the public. The design by Brisac And Gonzalez was to build into the Garden’s existing grass slope so that Garden seemed relatively untouched, yet inside was a thriving cultural hub the likes the city had been crying out for. The impact would have been like the one Dundee’s DCA had when it opened, attracting more and more Artists and Creative types to move to the city in a sector dominated by the central belt. A new Industry, creating jobs for the art school graduates, the theatre groups, dancers, film makers, print makers the list is pretty long.

Peacock Visual arts were around £1,500,000 away from meeting the target to begin building. But then Sir Ian Wood, a man made wealthy by the Oil boom stepped in and decided this was not what Aberdeen needed, instead it needed a new civic heart, a square like many squares in great cities across the globe. He put in an audacious bid to stop Peacock’s plan and instead fill in the Denburn Valley and raise the Garden to Union Street level. He was even going to pledge £50,000,000 of his own fortune into the scheme.

This was something too good for the Aberdeen City Council to ignore so asked the public to vote which scheme they wanted. So a public consultation was drawn up to ask the public what they wanted in the new square. Do you see what is wrong there? Yes that’s right, the public weren’t being asked to vote wether they wanted the Peacock Design, or wether they wanted to retain the Garden as it was or even if they wanted the Square at all, no they were being asked what they wanted to see IN the square, meaning that all votes were pretty much as YES vote.

This foul scheme didn’t stop there, the public consultation reached out to Aberdeenshire, except by invitation only! That’s right, where employees of Sir Ian Wood’s Woodgroup were invited to come along to be asked the question “What do you want to see in the new civic square”. Not really a fair game?

Well, [Edit:] I Heart UTG was set up by some members of the public and along with Peacock, argued that the ballot had to be changed for an even playing field. It was. A public debate was held at the Salvation Army Citadel, one in which I showed up to with my friends. I watched as Sir Ian Wood dodged question after question, in which was meant to be an open forum to convince the people that his vision was the right one. Peacock were also present as was an opposing alternate view of keeping the UTG as it was.

Peacock were asked if they would accept a compromise, part raised garden, part Peacock Plan, a sort of best of both worlds. It was met with approval by Ellie Rothnie, the voice of Peacock. Sir Ian was having none of it. It was his way or the high way.

Sir Ian Wood was an embarrassment that night. He claimed that this new square was going to secure Aberdeen’s future prosperity and that the square was going to be bigger than the Red Square in Moscow and create over 6500 jobs.

Now lets back up a second, next year the Olympics is being held in London, one that they’ve been preparing for for many years, a bigger job than this square, yet they only created around 3500+ jobs. Even considering the labour to build the square, 6500 seems very optimistic. And the square was going to be bigger than the red square in Moscow? Moscow has a population of around 2,500,000 people. Aberdeen has a population of 200,000… that says it all really.

So when a member of the audience asked “but how” Sir Ian started talking about renewable energy from wind turbines on the coast, this was met by a “but how?!” and he reiterated renewable energy. The whole 300 strong public audience then screamed “BUT HOW?!!” This got him in a sulk and refused to answer the question.

I remember standing up, after receiving the microphone, that day and saying; “Why do we have to lose something we all obviously love so much? If E&M is empty we need to fill it. If the council have almost bankrupt themselves by moving across the road to the Marischall College, why can’t we just knock down the eyesore that is the council building? Build your civic square there, next the the Bon Accord Centre, St Nicholas Center and Provost Skene house. It won’t cost £140M and we get to keep UTG AND have the Peacock Visual Arts Center. Everybody wins. My question to you is, why not build your civic square there?”

He smirked and said “That is not the topic of discussion today”. I can tell you that to this day it is a question that keeps cropping up and time after time he deflects the question. When will it be the topic of discussion? The council have gotten themselves into debt by moving a couple of hundred yards to a historical building for no other reason than, it’ll be cool to work there. They’ve racked up a £500,000,000 debt in the process! In by doing that they’ve left a high rise block relic of the late 70s empty in the middle of the city centre, next to another empty building that was once the E&M department store.

The night of the great debate I was interviewed by STV, as were so many other disgruntled people. This was a victory for the people, and maybe not for Peacock, but it was for UTG. However the news broadcast that night told a different story.

I watched in horror as the only clips shown were Sir Ian’s pitch and an interview with him afterward saying “The only true winners are going to be the people of Aberdeen”. The Oil influence wins again. Even the papers were full of pictures of his face, a victory for Sir Ian Wood. His campaign rumored to have invested almost a quarter of a million pounds in advertising into the media, it was no surprise that the local news was nothing but pro civic square. Only the national press seemed to balance the events correctly and unbiasedly. But votes outside Aberdeen don’t count, unfortunately.

The foul play wasn’t to stop there, when the consultation was closed they said that “Due to such high voting it would take weeks to get the results” the named a date, that conveniently fell a few days after Peacock were to lose their funding if they hadn’t gained the approval by that deadline.

Peacock were given an extension, and the public voted against the civic square. Against all the odds Peacock had succeeded by a narrow margin of a couple of percent. Seeing as the conditions were far from fair it was an amazing feat.

It was not over.

Sir Ian Wood implored the Aberdeen City Councillors to over turn the decision as the margin was too close, and that the majority of the people of Aberdeen DID want it, but were somehow bullied into silence by the vocal minority. (You can’t make this shit up)

The councillors came together to vote, many of them controversially abstaining from voting. Some councillors had the balls to stand by their voters and say NO. But the unfortunate outcome was for Sir Ian’s vision to be passed and Aberdeen was to lose out on not only an Arts Centre but a piece of its heritage. Union Terrace Gardens was to be filled with concrete.

Recently a design competition was held to design what would be built on top of the Gardens. The people seemed to vote for a “Winter Garden” but for some reason Sir Ian thought it best we had something known as “The Granite Web”. Yet another democratic poll made a mockery of.

The council have once again asked for the public to vote in a referendum to once and for all decide, does the Garden stay, or will they take a massive gamble in spending a fortune in building a huge structure on top f it, losing hundreds of years of history in the process, because that’s what it is. A gamble.

People’s head might have been turned by the grand gesture, a new impressive city centre, a beautiful one. And yes the design is a beautiful one by some of the world’s best designers. But no one can prove that this square will save Aberdeen, if won’t it may well end up killing it.

Yes Sir Ian Wood is pledging £50M but where is the rest of the £140M+ going to come from. They keep mentioning schemes and whatever but the truth of the matter is, Britain is bust. The economy is going down hill, the council is £500M in debt is building a massive concrete square for £140M really the answer? When you have multiple schools closing down, people losing their small time jobs, homes etc is a grassy knoll with a few cafe and things really going to secure Aberdeen’s financial future?

There is a risk that the people may have to make a significant contribution, even if they say we won’t. But what will happen if we need to? Council tax goes up. Aberdeen’s council tax bands are already the most expensive in Scotland. I had to move away from Aberdeen, live in Dundee and commute everyday to afford to live. That is preposterous! Aberdeen isn’t London!

Aberdeen needs to take its Oil blinkers off. It needs to stop letting the Oil Industry make all its decisions. This is a case of the industry thinking it knows what is good for you to the point where its taken your democratic right to vote away!

If this were a referendum for Scottish Independence, then the outcome was that we wanted to stay a part of the UK, but then they over ruled that decision because it wasn’t won by a big enough percentage. It would be crazy right? So what gives Sir Ian Wood the right to keep trying again and again until he finally gets the out come he craves?

If I still lived in Aberdeen I would vote RETAIN UTG. IT doesn’t make economical sense. Its morally wrong on so many levels. Edinburgh’s Prince’s Street Gardens is below street level, but it’d be ludicrous to pave it over. UTG has hundreds of healthy mature trees, only to be cut down, filled in with concrete then new one’s planted instead. It would also mean your memories of the place will be just that; memories. The days of lying on your back soaking up the sun in the arms of a loved one, all consigned to  nostalgia.

Most importantly, the citizens of Aberdeen voted NO only for their democratic rights to be removed by an Oil Tycoon. A vote to retain UTG is a vote for democracy.

Thank you for your time.

TIm

LIGHT PARADES - SPARKLE NOW ONLINE!!

Today is the official release date of Light Parades’ Sparkle EP which also means that I can now show you the music video that Factotum Films shot in December! And here it is!

This was one of the toughest, if not THE toughest shoot we’ve ever done. The conditions, although it doesn’t look that way in the video, were very testing for the crew and especially for our Actor Jade Lindores. We shot the opening scene at 7am on a Saturday morning and it was wet and cold, between takes we had to wrap jade up to prevent her from getting hypothermia. The shoot took longer due to the rain going on and off.

Other annoyances were that it snowed over night while shooting which changed everything. But it gave the time travel element of the story a nice feel.

After that endurance test, editing and waiting tight lipped for the release date it gives me great pleasure to finally reveal this video and I hope you all enjoy it.

Written & Directed by - Tim Courtney
Produced by - Duncan Leishman
Director Of Photography - Sam Brill
Costumes - Lori Marshall
Editing & Colour Correction - Tim Courtney

Starring - Jade Lindores & Paul Massie

©Light Parades/Factotum Films 2012

FEBRUARY VOCAL RECORDING

In my last post I explained the reasons behind recording without headphones and the science behind it. It seems amongst my peers that this is a very controversial approach. Kevin Gilday told me he didn’t understand how I could get into “the zone” (obviously used ironically) without being cut off from the rest of the world and isolating yourself in that personal space created by wearing headphones. This is true for listening to music but not for performing.

It seems there are some skeptical people out there and I don’t expect them all to understand. I spoke briefly to Dan Hopkinson of Light Parades and he shares my view and even recorded his vocals monitoring from loud speakers too, so I’m glad I’m not alone.

In this video I’m doing a take for the song February, the sound is a bit dodgy but I couldn’t monitor the sound from where I was… and it wasn’t my number one priority. In this set up we actually stuck up a 6ft Baffle in front of the mic to reduce spill even further, once we dialed down the kick and snare, added the room tone/spill track and reversed its phase the spill was basically inaudible.

I spent the whole day recording and hit my stride pretty much on the first take, I felt more comfortable pitching to the music than I am with headphones. With out the added weight and congested feeling I get from obstructing my earholes I was able to fully focus on the music and with the ambient light in the room, it also aided me to find that space in my head when I wrote the lyrics. All in all this technique has helped not only my performance and most importantly for me, my pitching. I’m still not perfect but hey, this is Katerwaul not XFactor!

RECORDING VOCALS WITHOUT HEADPHONES

***WARNING*** this is a technical blog where I explain how we’re approaching the vocals on our new record.

The time has come. That part I always fear. The part you try not to think about when you start recording an album. VOCALS.

I’m not a classically trained singer, it was only two years ago I actually learned how to breathe properly and save my vocal chords from near destruction, and over many years of recording I’ve learned one thing… I can only sing when I’m playing guitar. Why is that?

With every recording my main complaints about my voice are “I sound like I have a cold”, “I always sing flat”, “I can’t hear the emotion in that take” and “why do live recordings of my voice sound better than when we multi track.” The answer? Headphones.

I did a little research into this, and as it turns out I am not alone. I’m not the only one in the world having problems singing with headphones on. If you are like me and your engineer/producer tells you any of the following things; “It makes no difference”, “You’re just not used to the sound of your own voice” or “You just need to get used to the recording process” that’s not necessarily true. I’ve been through all this. I’ve gotten used to headphones and the initial “is that what my voice sounds like?” shock factor, but the fact of the matter is that headphones have an effect on my vocals, not just sonically but emotionally too.

I’m going to sound like a pretentious twat right now but feeling is important. If you can’t feel the emotion in what you’re singing then what is the point right? How do you do that when you’re concentrating on the extra weight on your head or how hot your ears are getting. Some people are comfortable with it but I find it hard to connect with my music if I’m not listening to the music through the ambience of my surroundings.

Ok, so that’s the arty farty pretentious reasoning out of the way there are also a few other factors that effect some singers when monitoring from headphones. The main one is breathing. Have you ever noticed that people breathe heavier when they’re listening to a personal stereo? That’s because your ears are connected to your nose and mouth, if you yawn you’ll notice that air passes through your ears. Now cover your ears and breathe, its quite disconcerting without music to distract you isn’t it. Now while covering your ears try singing, its weird huh. Now imagine your voice being fed back to you through a sound desk and into headphones without the ambient resonance of your surroundings… its a totally different ball game, right?

Alright, so now you understand that I, and many others, are not being Diva’s or just plain awkward; how do we solve this problem. Well one way would be to have one earphone on and one off (see band aid video for reference, thank you Sting and Midge Ure) this gives you a blend, another way would be to feed some artificial reverb back to your headphones. These are techniques I’ve used in the past but if I’m honest they’ve always been a compromise.

Now, I think I’ve found the solution. Just don’t use headphones. I asked Sam our engineer and producer if there was anyway we could record vocals without the use of headphones. I was only picking his brains, but this was met with a “I’ll have to research that”. A poilte way of saying “STOP BEING SO FUCKING DIFFICULT!”. However this got us thinking and we’ve found a couple of ways of doing it, and I’ll explain the method that we’re using.

Like recording anything, its not just a case of stick a mic in front of what you want to record, there are issues like phase for instance and what microphone to use in what circumstance to get the desired sound. An engineer will always want the best possible sound at all times and this normally means isolated from other sounds to make the mixing process easy and bypass any phase issues. Recording vocals and monitoring your backing track via loud speakers is not really the best way to isolate your source. But if this gets the best performance from your musician then isn’t that more important? Its a toss up but the best engineers in the world understand this and a happy medium must be found.

What Sam and I are doing is to set up a microphone in a dead room as per usual, thankfully the control room has been modified to minimise reflection. For this technique to work you need to use a microphone that best cancels out noise from behind it, like an SM58 (just go with it) set it up on a stand with your pop shield etc as normal. Now record a vocal take by monitoring sound through your loud speakers. Ok now here is the science part; NO BODY MOVE! You’re going to now record an ambient room tone, playing back the section of the song you just recorded (minus the vocal take). Once that’s done you need to invert the phase on that track. What you’ll notice is that by inverting the phase you’ve artificially created a dead spot in the room where the mic is standing. I’m not going to lie, the science of it all still goes over my head but that’s the basic theory and it works. It DOESN’T completely eradicate  the spill, but what you do hear is a kin to the spill that would normally come from your headphones if you where wearing a pair.

The alternative method is to have your monitors at 90 degree angles equally distanced from each other and the microphone creating an equilateral triangle. Then invert the phase on one of your monitors. This effectively does the same thing without the need to record a room tone, but you need to keep measuring your set up to make sure that everything is equally spaced apart otherwise your null zone becomes void.

Its still a compromise though as using a condenser mic will not work as it picks up too much sound from behind the microphone. SM58s are traditionally used live because so they don’t feedback from the monitors, but they don’t have as good a dynamic range as other studio mics traditionally used for vocal recordings. This is why the picture above has 3 different microphones placed where they are. This was part of our experiment into what microphone to use on the vocals, with this technique. We recorded a few takes and it seems that the AKG set to a hypercardoid setting works the best out of all the mics at our disposal. The Beta58 and the Senheiser (whatever it is) don’t enough hi end clarity for our liking, but the AKG is something that we’ve been using for overheads on the cymbals. Thankfully it has a hypercardoid which give it a tighter area of front we need whilst making use of the microphones characteristics. If you search online you’ll notice other artists that have done this tend to elect the Sure SM7, its the tits but we can’t afford one. Maybe next time.

So there you have it. Katerwaul has been a massive pain in the arse at every turn for the boys at 45/R, but instead of beating us down with engineer high horse bullshit, they’ve embraced the challenge and found a workable solution they’re happy with to make us more comfortable enabling us to get a better performance.

If you try this yourself, let me know how you get on.

KATERWAUL SESSIONS CONTINUE

Last week saw us complete the last of our live recording sessions for the new album. Here are some pics taken by Paul from 45/R and a few by me. You’ll know my one’s because they’ve been processed to within an inch of their lives.

Light Parades Teaser

LIGHT PARADES - SPARKLE TEASER

Its not long now till the 15th February when Light Parades release their much anticipated debut EP, and along with it the Premiere of the music video that Factotum Films produced at the end of last year.

Here are some posters you can share with some friends. 

We’re really excited.

I’m not one for reblogging animated giffs, but every so often one shows up that must be shared.

Katerwaul - February EP

We’re releasing an EP soon, we don’t know when but soon. The details are fairly vague but its being released in the run up to our Album which will be out later in the year. The main track on it will be February but the EP might not be called that, because if this thing is released in March I won’t stand for the “but its not February any more” jokes, but until then that’s what we’ve been calling it at Katerwaul HQ.

I’ve been working on some album artwork and layouts for yet ANOTHER Katerwaul book and if all goes according to plan then we get to ***[EDIT: sorry the big boys at Brave Or Invincible have kindly requested I delete that from the blog]*** which I’m sure you’re all going to agree is gonna be FUCKING ACE!!!

This image of what the EP could/probably will look like will give you a little taste of what the new album art will be like (ie pretty different but totally the same old Tim Courtney shit of paper textures and blurry photography).

Enjoy.

LIGHT PARADES - SPARKLE

Over the last couple of month’s I’ve been busy in Factotum Films mode. Shaun and I have been working on a short video clip for a movie that we can’t really talk about until its release next Oct, so until then that’s all you can expect to hear. However Duncan has dawned his producer cap for a music video I have written and directed for the band Light Parades.

Dan from Light Parades asked me a short while ago to write and direct a promo video for the band’s single from their debut album/EP. As yet the album/EP is untitled but their single isa beautiful atmospheric slow burner called Sparkle.

I don’t want to get into specifics of the video’s narrative so for now you’ll have to make do with these teaser images until the video is ready for release. The release date will be set by the band but we’re expecting it to be around February/March sort of time.

As always I’ll let you know nearer the time.

Written & Directed by Tim Courtney
Produced by Duncan Leishman
Cinematography by Sam Brill
Starring Jade Lindores, Paul Massie
Costumes by Lori Marshall 

KATERWAUL WOODEND BARN 9TH DECEMBER 2011

Alright, so this gig happened a while ago and I’ve not blogged about it. That’s pretty much because I was waiting for this gem of a video to hit the web so I could embed it. And now that its exploded onto the net here this is me trying to remember it as best I can.

I got up at 5:45am to get my gear packed. I strapped Isobel and my pedal board to my wee trolley and laboured it to my local train station then into Glasgow City Centre to catch the 7:40am train to Aberdeen. Sound check was at 5pm so I was making good time. Why so early you ask? Well it was the cheapest train I could afford so until Katerwaul becomes my full time job I’ll have to keep making these sacrifices.

The train got to just outside Stonehaven when I suddenly, instantaneously caught a cold. When I finally arrived in Aberdeen I felt rotten. My nose wouldn’t stop dripping and my throat felt like it had swollen like a football.

After a quick band practice we loaded up the car and I pumped my self full of cold relief drugs and grabbed the bus to Banchory with Nick. I repeat, cold relief drugs and the bus… that’s the public bus… this is how rock and fucking roll Katerwaul are folks. It seemed like the longest bus journey in history and I felt like death.

We arrived to the Woodend Barn around 5pm and we were surprised with what we found. When you hear you’re playing a place called “The Barn” you expect a small place, stone walls, hay and mud all over the floor and a novelty wagon wheel proudly on display. Well I can tell you there were stone stone walls, but this venue has to be one of the most impressive venues I’ve ever been to both as a performer and a spectator.

The place was huge, the stage was massive and the sound system was the most impressive I’ve come across. The sound man Iain gave us a warm welcome and stressed that his aim was to make us happy and get the sound that we wanted. This is also a very rare thing. We’ve only ever had this when Scott Bowden did sound at the Tunnels in Aberdeen and also when we played King Tuts, but Iain wasn’t kidding around when he said he was there to make us happy. I made a quip about getting hot towels for the dressing room… and I was surprised when I was told “ok”. I was of course joking around.

It was great to be given the freedom of a massive stage and arrange the stage how we wanted and felt most comfortable. The monitors were not set rooted to a specific spot like most venues so we got place them where we wanted. When I asked for an additional vocal monitor, instead of being greeted with a warm “Go fuck yourself, Bono!” Iain reached underneath the stage and brought out another vocal monitor. We spent around an hour in sound check and instead of us labouring till we were happy it was actually the perfectionist in Iain who wanted to get everything perfect. I can tell you, we were in good hands.

After sound check we dropped off our stuff in the dressing room and made our way to the Restaurant. We were really excited about getting a FREE meal. There aren’t many venues that feed you so we were going to take full advantage.

I’ll have to admit my heart sank a little when the waiter came over and said “We’ve got a Quiche for you guys I hope you don’t mind?”. A Quiche? Aw man, that’s lame. Being the polite boys we are we said it was fine, you can’t bite the hand that feeds you. Graham turned to me and Nick and confessed “I hate Quiche.” I don’t hate Quiche but to me its party food. Something you get at a children’s finger buffet. Well ,if you’ve not watched the attached video yet I can tell you, the Quiche was amazing! I can’t even begin to describe to you how amazing this thing tasted! I know this isn’t a food blog but by FUCK if it were it’d be getting 5 Michelin men in the face!

I’ve no idea what was in that Quiche but it cured my cold. All of a sudden I felt great. Praise the Quiche gods!

Ok so enough of the Quiche talk.

Davy Shanks arrived soon after dinner but was instantly called to action. We unfortunately missed most of his set, and I hate doing that as it makes me feel like a total big headed diva. I like to watch all the acts at our shows because I like to see new music and I’m a massive fan of Davy, but we had to do an interview for the Woodend Barn podcast. (See above video)

So now the show.

It was a very odd show. I’m going to be really clear about this, as I know I’m in danger of sounding really negative and I don’t want it to come across that way at all, but enjoyed it greatly. However the atmosphere was one I’d never had before in all my days of performing in not only Katerwaul, but in Bench as a solo artist and even the odd show I’ve played guitar, keyboard, melodica and glockenspiel for Amber Wilson.

We were under no illusion that we were going to sell out this venue and by having us play at all was an experiment in itself by their booking director David Officer, to whom we are extremely grateful. The thing that was so odd about it was that everyone was so civilised and well mannered. There were no hecklers, no one talking in between songs or anyone screaming. Instead we were meet with enthusiastically polite applause. Which we just didn’t expect and couldn’t get used to.

You could hear a pin drop between songs. Whenever I tuned up you could hear my guitar reverberate around the hall despite my guitar being muted. Its not a complaint as such, more of a statement of surprise.

After we played the song “You Love & I” one person asked, without raising his voice as I were sitting next to him, “Did someone break you heart?”. I laughed and explained, off mic and also as if he were right next to me, that the song does come across like a break up song but only because the thing I’m losing is the sense of worth in community. Like anything we say or do as individuals falls on deaf ears. The song references the Union Terrace Gardens fiasco and the Tyrant that I refer to is Sir Ian Wood. I made no apologies for naming him and made it clear that I understood he employed many of the people in the audience but they/you could quote me on this, I hate the man for what he stands for and what he has done to Aberdeen and what he will continue to do for years to come. At that point I realised I was in danger of sounding like I was preaching so I reached for my water to begin the next song. While I did so the hall burst into rapturous applause and I could help but smile. I’m glad I was not alone.

I won’t go too much into the technical things, like me forgetting to set my guitar to the right tuning for December Doesn’t Hurt then forgetting the lyrics to the first verse, but the sound on stage was amazing and it really felt like OUR show. Not just that we were playing at a venue, but this was a Katerwaul show. Its hard to explain but I’m sure many of you know what I’m talking about.

For all Aberdeen based bands, I emplore you to seek out gigs at the Woodend Barn because it is the venue that the city is missing. It is like the Lemon Tree was in the late 90s early 00s, maybe even better! David is trying more and more to get bands like us out there and boost the profile of this wonderful venue. Meursault are booked for early 2012 and that should be an amazing show. So if you are offered a slot, grab it with both hands!!

Set List:

Fear & Symmetry
December Doesn’t Hurt
You Love & I
Depatrures (Debut performance)
What’s Left Of Your Homes (Debut performance)
February

You can watch us perform FEBRUARY here  it was our last live performance of the year.

To put the XFactor into a little perspective; Damien Rice was a man who struggled as a songwriter in various bands in Ireland, after being disillusioned by his first taste of the music industry with his band Juniper he quit and fucked off for a few years where he spent time traveling and living in Paris.

When he came back to Ireland he got himself a portable multi track and took time to record an album, doing it totally different than he’d done with his band. When that album was done he released it himself and gigged like a bitch. He managed to score himself a support slot with Counting Crows, and that’s where I saw him live in 2002.

I was so impressed I went out and bought (with the last of my weekly food allowance) his album in Virgin Megastore. No one else had it and even then they only had it on import, I paid a whopping £16.99!!! The CD says ©Damien Rice on it as it was before he managed to get UK distribution. I went home and listened to “O” and I was blown away.

The next day I found out he was added to the Kathryn Williams bill at the lemon tree, I missed out because I spent so much on the bastard’s Album!

I regretted that because he never came back to the UK. That was until over a year later when Cannonball became a surefire hit. His shows were a sellout across the country and I got to be a hipster bastard and claim I’d been “listening to Damien before he was cool”, “my version of his album is bound in linen unlike your paper version” etc etc

Since then he’s gone on to be more successful, however his follow up album that came out almost five years after “O” was originally released was a massive disappointment.

I’m not sure what Damien does now but I know a lot of people who have a great Damien Rice anecdote. Like the one my friend Joe Morgan told me about a gig in Dublin and of course fellow Irish songsmith Fiona Keenan probably has a few.

My point is, Mr Rice is one of those acts that has strived for years doing it himself because the industry is so fickle. Damien Rice is one of those artists that had a cult following long before his fame. One of those acts where you can be proud to be a hipster wank and claim you heard him first. The man did what all of us struggling musicians can only dream of.

And this week a group of young girls that entered a talent competition are going covering his song in a bid to be Xmas No1. They stand to make almost £8,000,000 between them and Damien Rice £500,000 in royalties.

Yup that’s right, Little Mix who weren’t even a a group this time last year are hitting the big time thanks to a talent competition.

However you have to ask yourself this; How many of you can claim to have been listening to Little Mix before they were signed? How many people have their first album before it got a major release? Yup thats right none of you.

But how many bands have you claimed to have known about since before they were big? Probably countless. So as much as I congratulate Damien Rice in his small victory against the pop industry, it still goes to show that real talent is never rewarded as it should be. Damien wrote the song and did it against many odds, and arguably is and will always be the definitive version. In an ideal world surely he’d be raking in the £8,000,000 and not left with a tiny percentage.

The great record label that lets Katerwaul do what ever the feck they like and get away with it are giving everything away for FREE. If you’ve not taken advantage yet you need to do so. All you need to do is tweet about it and you can get the entire BOI back catalogue!!

callumjoynes:

boirecords:

To celebrate our 2nd birthday, we’re giving away the entire Brave Or Invincible back catalogue, for one day only, available in exchange for one tweet

This includes:

- The Brave Or Invincible Mixtape 
- Crash of Rhinos - Distal 
- Jamie Clayton - Inside I’m Dancing 
- Katerwaul - Here There Is No Why 
- Katerwaul - Live At Kilau 
- Katerwaul - Thank God It’s Christmas 
- Katerwaul - Valley Under A Concrete Sea 
- Mark McCabe - When I Grow Up 
- Tiny Cinema - Designs 
- Tiny Cinema - Good Morning City Blues 
- Tiny Cinema - Hotel Radio 
- Tiny Cinema - Only You 
- Tiny Cinema - When The Light Comes 
- Rhubarb Radio Sessions

Seriously. Look at all that stuff. But hurry, it’s only for one day!

Please, if you like what you hear, consider supporting us and our artists by coming back and purchasing a CD, tape, T shirt, or whatever.

Thank you all for the last 2 years, here’s to many more!

These are some pictures I took the other day when it stopped raining in Glasgow. It was around 3pm and the sun was hanging low in the sky. These were meant to be recce pictures for a music video but they fit my running theme at the moment.

Here are some more Katerwaul work in progress lyrics to accompany these photographs. 

You, Love & I

The sun will set behind your silhouette
And the clouds will glow red
For red is the colour of our love
And red is the colour of blood 

You, love & I when the tyrants have won
We’ll evaporate into the sun
Some memories are only lies
These memories won’t die

So either way we’ll dwindle & blaze
Then take hope in these sorrowful days

The Sleeping Garden

Goodbye Sleeping Garden
Farewell northern seas
For we’ll all have to slumber now
While the city crumbles to its knees

Goodbye Silver City
Farewell affluence & gold
The tyrants discontent
Will never replace the memories they stole

Goodbye a decade of love & loss
Farewell equality
I promise you’ll awake one day
To salvage your former glory

Then…

They’ll turn off their drills
Hold on…
They’ll turn off their drills
Hold on…

Departures

Sometimes its hard to believe in this world
Its easier to trust if you just shut your eyes
Depart to a place we understand
Everything that comes together
Will only be torn apart
And over our cities grass will grow
Depart Depart to a place we understand 

Play, Erase, Record Again

I’m in the middle of writing the piano track for Katerwaul’s third Album, which at the moment is unnamed, well we have an idea but we don’t want to talk about it.

I’m hoping this tune will be the one that makes it onto the album as I am wanting to write a short story around the themes of this piece, tying in all the other songs written for the album including ones that might not necessarily the final release. More on that at a later date.

This song is based around the premise that the world is a simple place. A gift given to mankind by who knows what? I’m not even talking about God or any other religious theory (lets leave that debate aside if you please). The character in this song argues that the world, and life itself is one to be enjoyed. We shouldn’t just exist but live the lives given to us. He argues that we learn more from living lives, or experiencing the world around us more than just reading about it in a book or basing it on beliefs or faith.

He also vaguely touches on his own dissatisfaction in how he has lived his own life. He explains how life would be better lived backwards because we live more as children, when things don’t seem to matter. Money means nothing and war is something your toys do as a pass time.

But by the time he realises this as an old man it is too late.

So here are the lyrics.

The dirt & the trees will teach us that
Which we can never learn
From a sermon or a song
With every leaf is a chord
Something to break a fall upon

Separate the white lies from your fear of the truth

Stitch back the fragments of a life
Pulled apart by something beautiful
Or erase this tape, wind it back to the start
The best life is one lived backward
How bright the world seems
Through the innocent eyes of a child

Separate the white lies from your fear of the truth

Please erase this tape 
Please erase this tape
Please erase this tape
Please erase this tape

KATERWAUL 45/R SESSION 2 (SALT AND VINEGAR WITH YOUR CHIPS?)

Last weekend saw Katerwaul pick up where we left off when we started recording our third album. This was going to be an optimistic task considering a) we wanted to tackle three songs recorded entirely live, b) these are the least rehearsed of the songs we were due to record and c) do all this with the added distraction of having Nick and Callum (The Suits) from Brave Or Invincible casting a watchful eye over their future investment.

I had planned on editing together another short video clip from the days recording but this didn’t go to plan for two reasons. 1) With the pressure on to perform and get it right video became less important and 2) we actually got through the recording quicker than planned meaning I didn’t get to set up multiple camera angles, meaning if there was a video it’d be really boring.

We recorded our three songs in record time so I guess you could say having the BOIs there was more of a calming presence than anything.

The first song we tackled was “You Love & I (When The Tyrants Have Won)” (formerly referred to on this blog as “Sunsets Behind A Silhouette”, renamed due to my dislike of a rhyming title). We did maybe four or five takes before we got something we were happy with before moving onto the next one. This track has a free form, rubato time at the start before the drums come in to keep time then crash in for the louder heavy sections. We normally have a habit for loosing where we are in this song. In practice I normally screw up my strumming pattern in the lead up to the drums and Nick occasionally comes in with his cymbal crashes a couple of beats too early (it should be noted now that Graham is almost always flawless). But neither of these problems occurred and it was plain sailing.

The next section is something of a change of style for us, the tone  very much encompasses more of a dance vibe like Fourtet or In Rainbows era Radiohead. We played this section almost perfectly every time. The only thing that annoyed us was we let the adrenaline get the better of us and the takes would sound noticeably too high tempo. Once we’d relaxed and got a couple more takes of that final section it was time to move on to track number two.

Track two was a revelation. “Departures” is a song made up of one guitar riff played in numerous fashions over 6mins. That sounds reeeeeeeally fucking boring described that way but we fashioned a way of making that sound interesting, which is really hard to expain on a tumblr blog so I won’t even try. Basically its all about the dynamic shifts.

Sam let us know he was rolling before we went into what we regard as a 1st run through or a rehearsal. Well we nailed it… that is except the glaring fuck up I made in the first two bars. I thought that since it was the first run through it would go smoothly so it’d be best to just get through the whole song. I didn’t anticipate that we ACTUALLY NAIL THE TUNE FIRST TIME.

We did two more run throughs, but the ghost of the first one haunted us. We walked back into the live room and had a listen back. It cut me deeply to hear that the first take was the best and so perfect, because we had to spend the next hour and a half fixing that 2 bar mistake. On paper, for you pro tools enthusiasts out there, it sounds like an easy fix… well let me tell you it really wasn’t! I went back in a played the first sequence again, but it didn’t sound right. Without the rest of the band in the room and me being overly aware I was performing an over dub, the ambience and levels didn’t match enough to make a cut. So I did it again, and again, and again.

Eventually we got there and we sighed relief as we were all getting a little grump, bored and hungry. Nick Moreton even went out of his way to try and use figure out how to use his mobile as a modem just to stream the the Chelsea v Liverpool game as a way to take his mind off the mundane four chords that were being repeated for the past hour!

After this we made the trip through to Glasgow’s Dennistoun in the East End. We went to a place called Coia’s (pardon the spelling) and Italian eatery across from two tanning salons of the very same franchise fittingly named “Sunset Beach”… in Glasgow’s East End! Why in the hell would there be a need for TWO tanning salons on the same street, let alone ten metres apart? And if that wasn’t the worst part they were both part of the same company??!!! Has that what Scotland has become? Do people out there reeeeally have the need to… I need to stop now.

For those of you who have never been, Coia’s is place that serves amazing food and deserts and even has a great Deli. But the most unique thing about the place is that they serve FREE chips with EVERYTHING. Pizza with FREE chips, Spag Bol with FREE chips, Macaroni Cheese with FREE chips. Hell I wouldn’t be surprised if I ordered chips and got some free chips with that! Did this eatery that has been there for almost 100years just get tired and pissed off with people constantly asking if they got chips with everything, and just factor it into the price and dump it in with every meal? I can’t complain as it was quite a bonus having Spaghetti Carbonara with some really good chippy chips.

After sacking our diets for the day and gorging on pasta AND chips in an unplanned carbohydrate frenzy, (see above) we proceeded with the recording.

I’m not sure wether it was fatigue or the mass amount of crap we’d stuffed into our bodies but the last song seemed like a slog. However by this time last session we’d only accomplished the one track so we could take heart in that knowledge.

“Please Go To What’s Left Of Your Homes” (also a working title) is a long song that has many transitions to it was a daunting task attempting it live. After a few run throughs and a couple of false starts we began to find our stride.

Eventually we’d worked of the food and were back in business and before we knew it we’d finished with over an hour to spare. Considering the last session ran over by an hour or two I’d consider that a success. We even won the seal of approval by the BOIs tweeting; “The new KATERWAUL jams are making my Haggis wet”.

We were absolutely buzzing after that and decided to go to a pub near my flat to talk business, what we had planned for the release, advertising, formats, packaging etc. Instead the only place that was open was a bar that had the world’s worst open mic night. Middle aged men butchering the likes of The Beatles, Pearl Jam, Semi Sonic (?!!) and even Tenacious D (???!!!!) all in a very mid tempo, gruff voiced kinda way. We couldn’t hear ourselves speak so we just sat and drank quietly. Some of us even watched a re-run of the famous Liverpool V AC Milan Champions League final where Liverpool came from 3 behind to lift the trophy.

We did eventually talk business and I can say there are exciting times fast approaching in the new year. So keep your ear to the ground.