Village of Dolls

I, Stumpy Boxhead, returned to my original, machine form today – and HowManyDevils started work on a new song: Village of Dolls.  Pete had some music, and we built on that.  Simon wrote some lyrics after reading an a newspaper article about a Japanese village where the dwindling population are being replaced with dolls by one of the residents.  Rob made some feedbacky noises with a guitar and a fretless bass. It got a bit noisy.

The song is still a work in progress, but you can hear bits of it in todays Vlog.

Flesh Reunion 19 – Drummy, drum drum

World In Flames, A Different Breed, Icepick Lunatic.  These are the HowManyDevils songs that got some more drums today.  Who played drums? Me.  Whose fault is it? Mine.  I’m not a drummer…  There’s a tom fill that I can do pretty well now, and I’m pretty close to being in time.  Not really selling you on it there though am I?  Intensive editing will happen and you’ll think the drums were played by a professional. We have got a much tighter drum sound out of this session though.  How? By covering the drums with plushy dog toys.

A band marches on its drummers stomach

I’m not sure if that’s strictly true, a band marches on its drummers stomach.  In fact it sounds painful, especially since it may be me that is the drummer today – or it might be Simon.  Either way, today is another drum track laying day.  If it is me drumming I expect to expend a lot of energy, so I want a lot of food.  So I’ve just made sandwiches: Ham & Mustard on Sourdough.  I can’t remember if we’d declared sandwiches as Rock n Roll or not, but I’m sure Simon will let me know in a few minutes.

Pete will be engineering today, and I don’t expect we’ll play much guitar or bass but I’m taking ‘Little Brian’ just in case.

More later…

Flesh Reunion 14 – Bass Week

Ok, bass week, it sounds like it belongs on the X-Factor.  At least we gave it reasonable separation from drum week.
Pete did all the hard work, we just observed (and pressed buttons).  And for added studio Rock ‘n ‘ Rollness we did most of the session putting the bass through a Marshall pre-amp stage before Pete’s favoured Hartke rig.
Christmas break now, except for all the in-the-box editing and submixing, then it’s back for a couple if weeks of guitars.

Flesh Reunion 13b – yeah, b

Last week got postponed, to this week.  We laid down some particularly shoddy drums (me), and some decent vocals (Simon).  Digital editing technology will be our friend.  Stumpy Boxhead himself joined us in the studio for a few of the tracks.  Pete videod lots of soft toys.  Jessie the dog lost her blanket (temporarily).  Rob defined exactly what was and what wasn’t Rock and Roll.  Simon drank lots of water.  Things are really taking shape now.  Next week we should (adding to the list of what is Rock and Roll) be recording some guitars again.

It’s all coming together.

Flesh Reunion 11 and 12

The HowManyDevils Flesh Reunion recording sessions are happening so fast I can’t keep up with blogging about them.  Two weeks ago we finnished putting down the basic live takes for the album.  Last week Simon laid down drums tracks for everything.  I (Rob) also put drums on a few songs, but I get to do the rest next week.  I need more practice too. 
Once the drums are done we’ll be re-recording the vocals.  Then… we may have something to release. 

Flesh Reunion 9 – Thirteen, Flesh Reunion

I am listening to Thirteen.  It’s the thirteenth and last song to be written for Flesh Reunion.  And a seemingly recurring theme with HowManyDevils, having already done the 13EP.  It’s a bit more post-punk and a little less rock than we usually do.  We also re-wrote Flesh Reunion the song today.  We want it to be right, and now it is.

We have thirteen songs now, and we’re ready to go in to the studio.  So next week we go in to the studio.  The studio is of course the same room as we’re writing in, but we’ll be recording on something better than mobile phones.

These are the songs for Flesh Reunion:
Insomniac
World In Flames
Set Him Free
Halfway There
A Different Breed
Through These Eyes
The Lit Match
Dysfunction
Icepick Lunatic
Older
Carolyn
Flesh Reunion
Thirteen

We have been a little thin on the ground with content, other than my summing up of things, during this writing phase.  To make up for this, here’s a picture of today’s lunch and some guitars.  We are pretty rock n roll as you can see by the All Day Breakfast in a can.  …and the dark Bounty.  \m/

www.howmanydevils.com

@HowManyDevils

Flesh Reunion 8 – Carolyn, Flesh Reunion

Flesh Reunion 8 has been and gone.  We stuck to the pattern and got two new songs out of it.  This week it was Carolyn, another mellower song compared to the majority (and don’t ask me who Carolyn is), and Flesh Reunion.  I thought we needed a song called Flesh Reunion, and had a riff in my head, then the song rewrote itself when the whole band got hold of it.  The old riff is still in there, and there a new riff that is a little bit faster than my fingers move.  That seems to have been a thing this year, riffs slightly faster than my finger move…

So we now have 12 songs, a good number for an album.  We have said though that we’ll do one more writing session next week, so with the established pattern we could have 13.

Flesh Reunion 7 – Older

I already can’t keep up with Flesh Reunions.  Last Saturday was Flesh Reunion 7, and we have 8 and 9 arranged for the next two weekends.  Plenty to do then…
Following the pattern of one new song from an odd-numbered FR and two from an even one we got one new song.  It’s called older, and Rob (me) slipped up by writing full lyrics before showing it to the band.  He ended up singing it.  Older is a deliberate change of pace from the other FR songs, being slower and more reflective.
This is the magic 10th song, so we’re intending to switch from writing to recording.  This month we’ll carry on writing or tweaking – so we might get 13 songs if we follow the pattern – next month we’ll start laying down tracks.

Flesh Reunion 6 – Icepick Lunatic, Dysfunction

It’s Sunday morning, I have no energy.  We put in 12 hours hard work chiseling away at the rock-face yesterday.  The effort payed off though, we have another two new songs: Dysfunction and Icepick Lunatic.  And we have Through These Eyes in a more fully formed shape.  So that’s 9 new HowManyDevils songs towards Flesh Reunion, pretty soon we’ll be thinking about recording them…

Those songs are:

Insomniac
World In Flames (Stockholm Burns)
Set Him Free
Halfway There
A Different Breed
Through These Eyes
The Lit Match
Dysfunction
Icepick Lunatic