Chris Francis

There has been another 'big push' on the new album. Eight songs are now replete with drums, bass and guitar tracking. I have five more songs of guitars to do and then it's on to vocals. Doing the guitars for the new album has been such a huge thrill - I always feel that my latest recorded work defines me as a musician and the guitar parts are where that identity is always most marked with me (unsurprisingly). I have certainly come at this batch with a pretty new approach in regards to composition, tone and technique, and it's seriously smoking my doughnut (or some other expression that actually exists).

There's something about rolling back that gain and getting those more classic overdriven sounds - more of a "graannngg" than a "vvvshizzzzzzzzzzzz" and more of a "doyoiinng" than a "dweeeeeeeeeeee-dwiddly-dweeee-dweeeeeee" (know what I'm sayin'?) - that just is bringing this project to life. All sustain must come from the fingers in this new unforgiving land. There are buttock-loads of the buggers too - guitars everywhere! Acoustic ones, electric ones, thick ones, sparkly ones, wobbly ones , bendy ones and picky-pick-strummy-chug-chug-chug-strum ones too... beautiful. So it's vocals next, then additional instrumentation and percussion (strings, horns, piano, shaker and some probably frickin' weird stuff too), then mixing and global domination... then lunch, probably.

And, by the way, thank you to Pete and Paul Maher for helping me with a bit of a computer crisis lately.