Now at Bandcamp, in whatever digital format you prefer, for FREE.
- Catenaccio
- Das Boutique
- Motorik Guzzi
- Highway Gothic sans beats
- Bootywhang Express parts 1-4
All tracks written and produced by Graham Freeman.
Assembled and tested at the Kul Tech Funk Labs Mk 4, 2008.
Cat. No. GRUD002
NOTES that you would have to be severely bored to want to read.
A few months back, I was asked by a friend to do a live set for his party, so I had to go through my stuff and figure out what would work well as backing tracks that I could play synth and guitar stuff so it wasn't all "iPod jukebox" or anything, so I had some old stuff and new stuff sorted out. I also ended up doing a cover of something, but at this stage I'm not sure whether I'll do a version of that. Maybe next year.
This of course ended up finishing off some works in progress, and they went over pretty well at the party. I was even thinking of releasing them as-is, which is where the idea for this release spawned from, but while I was doing all that I came across a newish tracker program with all the mod-cons, but slotted in with my old working methods whilst cutting out a lot of the tedious aspects. Just as significantly, I could use my old files, of which many were quite good, but just needed a little extra that the old program just couldn't provided.
So, in effect it's re-energised the way I do things; this set is basically older material that's finally been given the final touch. Some of these were played at that party, but have been worked over in the past few months simply because I could. It's not a retrospective like Chindogu where I did the bare minimum on the existing finished tracks. These were tracks that I considered incomplete, so I added and changed things, taking advantage of whatever doo-dads I now had available to me, until I was reasonably satisfied with the results.
Getting back to the original impetus for the set, I just wanted to put a few songs out, not make it too long, not make too much fuss about it, but use it as a way of getting some of the more interesting pieces I've had kicking around into the public.
So I suppose it's time to blather about each song.
Catenaccio has probably the longest gestation of the lot, for the longest time it had the working title "Electroboogie 2000" before I decided it wasn't really Electroboogie at all. I remember playing a rough version of the beginning to this to a friend freakin' ages ago. The basic idea is intact, but even in version played just a few months back, it just went on and on with no real point to it. A few new things were thrown in, certain parts were reconsidered, and now it hangs together a bit better.
Das Boutique has been a hard bastard to mix - probably just a few too many elements bouncing around in it - and to this day I'm not that satisfied with it. It sounds better than it did though, and I'm pretty much going to let it go now.
Motorik Guzzi is, as you may or may not have guessed, is a new version of "Moto Guzzi" which is available on Chindogu. Nothing too radical here, (I've treaded this groove quite a few times before, particularly on "Richland") and obviously a bit of inspiration has been taken from Neu and various bands they've influenced - as well as some guy that might be argued as their antithesis. It's also the reason that this set was delayed as the second half didn't really come together until early September.
Highway Gothic sans beats originally had beats - and that version may emerge at some point - but I decided they could be done better, so those beats were stripped out, but the tune sounded pretty good without them so I didn't bother trying to arrange a new set. Some semblance of rhythm is kept by the bassline but for the most part it makes a nice break from all the banging and clattering, especially since there's a lot of that on the next track...
Bootywhang Express parts 1-4 - I don't intend to try and explain this one. And I'm certainly not going to apologise for it.
Graham Freeman, September 2008