Never Trust a Man

(With Egg on his Face)

Hello!

I’m still in the process of recording this new EP and have been mainly concentrating on recording vocals and guitars. Anikó has been very patient coaching me through my lead vocals, which I’m never super confident with, and getting something resembling a performance out of me.

Then, like lighting out of nowhere, a new toy has fallen onto my lap and I’m switching up my workflow/signal flow mid EP.

A 1982 (I think) D&R Dayner has bumped the synths out of their niche.

I’m in the process of becoming a proud owner of a 1982 (I think) Dutch made D&R Daynor. It’s not a particularly expensive vintage console, like a Neve, but it sounds very good without adding unwanted colouration. From what I’ve gathered in my research, the Dayner was the first inline console produced for the European market.

If you’re not sure what an inline console is, then please allow Andrew “The loudness war is over and I won” Scheps to explain it for you.

I’ve wanted a console for tracking sessions for a long time. For me, it’s the best way to manage the workflow. It’s not essential, but makes sense for the way my mind works. I’ve still kept my regular recording and mixing set up just to the left of the console and I imagine the majority of my mixing will still be done in the box, largely because, these days, most clients expect lots of revisions and that’s a pain in the butt on a console without automation.

kokovocals

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soundfackery

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Of course, if you really want to “play” the studio like a musical instrument, you have to have a console and the first thing I did, once I got a few cables patched in, was start throwing stuff into a Copicat and and Echoplex for some dubby fun. Funnily enough, when I was researching the Dayner, this video of Bagjuice expertly using the same console for these techniques on their track Kung-Fu.

Now, I can’t mention “playing the studio” and “dub” without referencing the master. So, here we go.

Anyway, with the addition of a new console, synth corner had to be bumped out of the control room and into the live room, just in front of the collection of science fiction novels. I hope you’ll agree that looking at novels by Stanisław Lem and Philip K. Dick will be a nice source of inspiration when making splodgy synth tones.

By way of illustration, here’s some creepy tones from Edward Artemiev’s soundtrack to Andrey Tarkovsky's Solaris, based on the book of the same name by Stanisław Lem.

While we’re here, splodgyness abounds in Vangelis’s theme to Blade Runner, based on Philip K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep.

Spooky

It looks like my phone has been spying on me again. Not long after I pressed send on last week’s newsletter, which was all about the benefits of failure, Instagram decided to show me this.

bradmontague

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Talking of Spooky

I was recently browsing Substack and stumbled on this great article by Punyhuman about the debut album by Adam and the Ants, Dirk Wears White Sox.

Dirk Wears White Sox

It s great article and I recommend reading it and then running out, buying a copy of Adam and the Ants’ debut album and basking in its radiance. However, what struck me particularly was how similar Punyhuman’s experience of the album was to my own. The evidence of this is documented in my sadly neglected blog where I wrote about Dirk Wears White Sox as part of my Music That Made Me series.

So, as most of my subscribers aren’t readers of my blog, I thought I’d present from the archives…

Music That Made Me:

Adam and the Ants’ Dirk Wears White Sox

I grew up in a household that listened to a lot of music , either on the radio or on the my dad's 8-track cassette player. One my earliest memories of music is being enchanted by Cat Steven's Lady D'Arbanville, which I remember at the time thinking was the most beautiful thing I had ever heard.

By the time I had gone to primary school, I had absorbed my parents taste in music by The Beatles, Elton John, The Kinks, The Monkees etc. The first album I ever bought for myself was Sgt. Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band and the second was a compilation entitled A Collection of Beatles Oldies.  By the time I was seven or eight I had added their more recent acquisitions, such as Ian Dury and the Blockheads and The Stranglers to my own personal taste.

At junior school, I met a boy called Robert who had some older siblings into Punk. He would bring records into school by The Sex Pistols, The Clash and The Damned. One of my fondest memories of his time was playing The Sex Pistols' Friggin' in the Riggin' at my sisters seventh or eight birthday party and everybody singing along at the top of their voices, not understanding most of the lyrics. I think that might have been a bit of a shock for my mum and her friends! One of my favourite records I owned was an red vinyl, three-track EP by Generation X, called Friday's Angels, which was given to me by Robert and played to death for years

Probably, the first band I discovered for myself was Adam and the Ants. I first remember seeing them perform Dog Eat Dog on Top of the Pops when I was nine years old and I just made the decision that I was going to be "into" this band. Soon after this, I managed to wangle a copy of Kings of the Wild Frontier on cassette. Now this is where the collector in me took me on a slightly different course. Rather than just be content to listen to new Adam and the Ants stuff as it came out, I was determined that I would own everything they had done. This involved tracking down singles, such as Young Parisians and Xerox, as well as the 1979 album, Dirk Wears White Sox.

I finally found a copy of Dirk Wears White Sox in a small independent store, whose name I can no longer remember, in Pemberton (home town of Kajagoogoo singer Limahl!!) on a shopping trip with my mum and rushed home to play it. Sadly, there was some kind of pressing fault on my copy which meant that the first track Cartrouble 1 &2 kept skipping. I did take it back and try and exchange it, but I was informed by the sales assistant that the album had been discontinued and they could only offer me a refund. Faced with the option of possibly never actually possessing the album, I kept it and just learned to love the jumpy first track. I'm glad I did as I still play this same copy regularly today.

Now please forgive my youthful ignorance, but I have to confess that initially I didn't really like the album, but, because it was Adam and the Ants, I forced myself to like it. On top of that, the album had the added appeal for a nine year old of having some swear words in the lyrics and a very naughty reference to god's "knob". Whatever the reasons at the time, I'm so glad I persevered with this album as it's  genuine classic and easily a rival to 154 by post-Punk legends Wire.

Besides some great songs like Digital Tenderness, with its proto-Police drum groove, and creepy sci-fi of Never Trust a Man with Egg on His Face, the album was full of stuff that I had no understanding of at that age. Animals and Men is more or less a name check of the Futurists. At the time I thought the Futurist Manifesto was something Adam Ant had made up, but I thought it sounded fascinating and perhaps even a little bit science fiction. It's also likely that my whole view of President Kennedy is informed by Catholic Day.

Well, there you have it. I’ve left that article as it was, without updating it, just so you can compare how similar and effect that album had on us.

Back On Yer’ ‘Eds Lads

Right, it’s been a pleasure hanging out, but I’d better get back out to the studio and press on with recording vocals and guitars.

Stay noisey!