Thursday, June 29, 2006

Recording Diary - Day 163/164

The Loungs were happy that they had decided to record in St.Helens as the early morning walks gave them a chance to reflect on the day ahead.

Ssssooooo we cheated a bit.

For the past few weeks we have using any spare time we have had between working, drinking and designing space shuttles to record little odds and sods for the album and endeavour to make it sound a mighty beast rather than a cheeky rodent.

The past two days have been a culmination of this as we transferred all our parts from PTL's recording desk of first flush kissing to Andy Bowes' mighty recording desk of sweet and tender lovemaking. As well as this we have recorded all the little bits that we had forgotten about until we got the preliminary recordings of the album on our ipods/cd players/8 tracks last month. There were plenty of these little blighters and it was not a task that we were looking forward to be it entire parts of songs that we are not used to playing live or a single word inserted where the sun don't shine. A list was drawn up and we set to work yesterday dotting a few I's.

Today however everything fell into place finally (apart from Jamie who is'nt very well at all) and we all came away feeling that we are getting to the point where the album is sounding like it does in our heads. Minus the bum notes of course.

In a week or two we will finally have our Bolton string quartet down and they will be filling out a few songs with their lovely arrangements. Around this time we should be grinning like extremely happy cats and it should hopefully spell the end of our first album recording experience and we can start looking into other potential minefields such as artwork, tracklistings and the like.

Then we can finally start thinking about album number two....

Friday, June 23, 2006

The Loungs in lad mag shocker


The Loungs made a surprise appearance amongst hordes of naked ladies in this weeks Nuts Magazine. Odd.

There was abit of Loungs/Road To V action in the NME too. No naked women though.

Sunday, June 18, 2006

The Loungs on Channel 4

So we finally have a date for our appearance on the telly and that date is Wednesday 28th June 2006 at half past midnight. It might be good, we may look like idiots. Time will tell.


STUDIO UPDATE: We are booked in for a few days next week and have spent the past 2 weeks recording some parts ourselves that may or may not make the album depending on how they sound in the grand scheme of things. Stay tuned.

Friday, June 02, 2006

Scribblings And Scribblings

I took a nice new pad into the studio in order to keep a track of things, make notes, write down ideas and make the whole recording process much smoother and far more organised.

We ended up drawing in it. Enjoy.










Thursday, June 01, 2006

Vote The Loungs on Xfm

If you have a spare minute and don't mind would you please click the box next to our names on this link for Xfm Unsigned.

http://www.xfmmanchester.co.uk/Article.asp?id=194019

It will only take a moment and is much appreciated.

Recording Diary - Day Ten

Today's belated recording diary was written and composed whilst listening to this
www.myspace.com/soundofacloud here www.unityradio.co.uk

FRIDAY 26th MAY 2006

Again my day begins with 8 hours in work fully aware that somewhere over the other side of town DTL is slowly removing all of my parts from the album and replacing them with what he likes to describe as 'experimental noise'. I finish my work up and get a lovely surprise when my manager lets me off early. He says he can tell I'm itching to leave, I'm not sure if it was the dirty protest i left in the staff canteen or the fact that I have lost each of my fingernails on the walls of the stockroom that did it but it worked so I'm happy.

On arrival at the studio I find DTL sat with the dvd lady drinking Strongbow. NTL is in the control room re-recording some of his (or Macca's depending which way you want to look at it) bass parts. DTL shows me a copy of racist 80's comedy 'Love Thy Neighbour' which he has 'purchased' from the dvd lady. He tells me that he had no money and my mind wonders as to how exactly he came to pay for it but I stop myself in time and return to the control room.

We're up for a late one at the studio tonight so over the next hour or so all 6 Loungs arrive and talk quickly arrives at drink. JTL and I decide to nip home and do a 'booze' run on the way back. We return with Strongbow, bifters, various lagers and a large mound of chicken butties made by me mum. What DTL does'nt know is that it was his sheer bad luck that he happened to be recording one of his parts in the studio when we returned and on opening the magic silver package we found only enough butties for each of the Loungs sat in the recreational area. We ate one each and kept the secret to ourselves.

As various guitar odds and sods are finished of we begin to prepare for the vocal takes that are on tonight's agenda. We begin with the terrace style "La-La-La-La-La-Laaa's" of 'All Your Love' as all 6 of us watch Andy's slighty nervous looks in the control booth. It's raucous but I think it will work. It is my idea for us to record many of the harmonies and backing vocals together around one or two mics to save time and to get better takes. After various attempts at the opening of 'Googly Moogly' it quickly becomes apparent that this is probably not going to work and we split off and complete our parts seperately instead. It sounds good. We then move onto 'Electric Lights' and it becomes apparent that NTL is a bit pissed and this makes us laugh.

A long day for DTL and Andy who have been here since 10am this morning draws to a close as we tidy up and plan a trip to the Zoo Bar. St.Helens on a Friday evening can be a daunting prospect but we stick together as GTL points out a ruckus down a side street in town. We look and see around 14 well dressed young men being set upon by a tall dark shadowy figure dressed entirely in black. On closer inspection we see that it is Purcell. JTL is about to shout out when we realise that the boys are coming of worse than Purcell and that he seems to be in a state of extreme drunkeness. We think better of it and continue to the Zoo Bar which I have second thoughts of and leave for an early night, one that will end our first 2 weeks in the studio.

There is a lot more to be done and hardly any Loung funds with which to do it. What will we do? Will we ever complete the album? Will it be any good if we do? Will it be ready for the end of the year? Will we ever see Purcell again? Does anyone care?

Stay Tuned skids.