The Fountain

[Thin White Devil]

Let me stress that I wasn't intending to give anybody in particular 'a torrent of verbal abuse' or 'shoot anyone to pieces'. JackT sums up my intentions very well.

[guitarplayer on here too]

And let me "stress" that my "intentions" have mostly been on the side of sarcasm before there are any further misunderstandings.

[fat cherry]

I'd fricking love it if Albini was producing.. or indeed maybe even some Butch Vig-ness !!

Recently picked up the remastered 'seamonsters' that was albini produced and thats a pretty good sound - in the notes gedge, or whovever says that the albini approach is to spend ages placing microphones and then have the band play live, more or less. Which again would be good, if you ask me. But would it work for the band.... maybe not.

C.

[Red]

first of all...Red never said she LOVED the new single!

and.....if Jimbo is the new Red, maybe that means that Scouseass and his boyfriend Dave will leave Red alone for a while! Hot dog!

[insanejane]

Most of the Bunnymen's songs traditionally use three to four chords anyway, and many are basic chords.

Reminiscing ( a passage from the book "Never Stop"):


"Gil Norton, who would later co-produce the Bunnymen, recalls his first encounter with the band....I walked in the room and there were four people in this dark room, all with sunglasses on, walking into things!"
"We were definitely on the edge of no return there," comments Mac. Plus we wrote everything on D and there wasn't a chord change in sight. Bill Drummond was saying, "You're not writing songs anymore." I remember saying to Bill, "How am I supposed to get a tune when it's all in D?"


At least, it seems, they've added 2 or 3 since then?

[Dave Smith]

Recently picked up the remastered 'seamonsters' that was albini produced and thats a pretty good sound - in the notes gedge, or whovever says that the albini approach is to spend ages placing microphones and then have the band play live, more or less. Which again would be good, if you ask me. But would it work for the band.... maybe not.

C.

Seamonsters has stood the test of time well.Dalliance is a great song.

Red -do you think Scouser is two timing on you then?

[guitarplayer on here too]

Insanejane. D does seem a common chord used, along with E, G, A - all the open chords. A quick look at the tabs on this site shows a pretty simple song composition, but I always think it is pretty amazing how varied the songs are from just using those. A Promise was the strangest one. Just one chord (D as it happens and other than the bass line) going round and round.

[tonywojo]

Goudie's the link - he wrote several songs with McLaughlin for 911

As long as they don't end up sounding like Simple Minds!

As far as I'm concerned, as ever, I take all of Mac's statements as a pinch of salt, tongue in cheek and throwaway.

As long as we don't get such classics as Scissors' recreated?

Boyband ain't gonna happen, unless Mac changes stools every line.

But I can see his overdubbed layered melodies maybe choking Will's creativity though.

[Frank The Bunny]

I think this should be the album art:

[mark]

Seamonsters has stood the test of time well.Dalliance is a great song.

Albini is producing their new album too, El Rey, out in May.

[moses (2)]

If a song is shite then it is shite and all production will do is make it interesting and enhance it.

however bad production will destroy the best songs - and the Grey album testifies to that -- when you strip those songs to basics they are fucking brilliant musically and lyrically. I'd say many where shocked that such a highly regarded producer could have erred so much.

Some of the best produced and musically interesting songs in the last 5 years have been from so called mainstream boy band/girl band groups..I atually like a lot of Girls Aloud songs -- some of the musical ideas are very clever...and I think the best 2 songs (musically) of last 2 years was by Take That
Patience and Rule the World.

I am actually very suprised at the choice of producer ...it was not what I expected and now I understand why it was kept somewhat secretive .. still many on the forum where urging the band to throw cuation to the wind and do something daring -- this is certainly daring.

In a way I admire the band more -- it is a real fuck the world and all the music heads attitude - this is our music and we will do what we think is best ....

As long a Kayene West doesn't appear then that's good

[guitarplayer on here too]

Talking about the grey album and Laurie Latham, I recently saw Hugh Cornwell play live and he commented that The Stranglers' Aural Sculpture was too overproduced as well. Seemed Latham had his own way of producing and sound that he couldn't get away from every time he went in the studio. Just play Skin Deep and Bring on The Dancing Horses side by side and it's uncanny.

[fat cherry]

I'm sure there's a mac quote saying that skin deep was the reason they chose him. Also from Will that he sampled all the drums, implying I guess that its all sequenced, presumably, I guess,since I know nothing of such things. Also, simultaneously removing the heart and soul. I mean if pete had been allowed to vent his frustrations on his kit then it wouldn't have been so crap. Not to mention deleting half the songs and replacing them with the B sides from about that period. Who knows what might have been. I've got a book in which Hugh Cornwell speaks about all the songs wot they did and he goes through this. Apparently they fell out because after the first, successful collaboration with LL productions he rejected the next lot of songs as not been ready. Another of his frustrations being that Jet practically gave up drumming in favour of programming everything..

[Scouser]

From what I can gather from Red's friends Mac and Will, the problem with Laurie Lathom was the overdubs. He had about 15 overdubs for each instrument, then overdubbed it again, then got Henry "Christians" Priestman to play a load of synth over the top before overdubbing it once more. Then it was sent to Bruce Lampcov thousands of miles away to be mixed.

Having said that its a millions times better than anything post Evergreen and better than half of that.

But the demos on the box set are amazing compared to the finished versions.

I would have quite liked Kanye West rapping on The Fountain.

[Red]

hey Scouser: