Welcome To Jhenge (1998)

Okay. Time for us to get serious. Probably. At least we thought so. In a way. More care and consideration was required.
But what shall we write an album about? No idea let's just record some tracks first. The Tr-707 Drum machine appears
here and largely shapes the sound of the entire album. A damn good machine that is. A new mixer was added. A Yamaha AM802.
Something I should really reclaim from Andrew. It's a nifty thing allowing up to three effects loops. Quite compact as well.
It has 8 channels, two of which are stereo. Simple but effective. It helped clean up the sound a lot.

The Korg Polysix also makes its first appearance, as well as my own personal SH-101. Other equipment that had only recently
appeared was the Altai microphone which cleared up the vocals too. Oh and I'd bought a Zoom 1201 effects unit which also
does a lot to shape this album.

The album was started by me in my bedroom with a track that was deleted. Then Duncan joined me for a session to come up with
two rather excellent tracks. It was recorded on a 120 minute tape. From Tandy I believe. They're now extinct. In America they
were known as Radio Shack.

Jessica

A lyric created by Duncan which was then cut up and stuck back down on a piece of paper. If only we could put it back the way
it was again now.. still what a wonderful track this is. Light and spacious. It's also got a 7 beat pattern if I remember rightly.
I did all the music for this apart from the tink tink sound coming from the Polysix. The mixer was on my bed and the polysix
facing the door with Duncan in front of it. For one of the first times ever you can actually hear the vocals very clearly.
Okay so Duncan is just speaking them but still.. It is very minimal and extremely repetetive but at least I drop the bass down
a touch at about 1:55. I've always liked 'She's Echo Reversed - too sharp for the neighbours'.

The original lyrics were based on my experiences in a crummy house in Intake. I'm very sensetive to noise when trying to get to sleep and one housemate snored very loudly. Fustrated that there was nothing I could do, I bashed by fists on the wall until they bled (and it didn't stop him snoring.)
Threw in some words one might find in a William Burroughs novel ("protoplasmic", etc), then cut and paste.

Renegade

Exactly the same setup as before only with Duncan providing all music. I hastily knocked up some lyrics which are surprisingly good
I feel. Amusingly they were inspired by the computer game Renegade. We still didn't know what the album was going to be at this point.
Later on I've shoe horned in the idea that it's about Nire but it isn't really. It's just a load of pretentious twaddle that sounds
quite nice. Heavy reverb on Duncan's programmed beat and a great bit of polysix playing by Duncan. I've sometimes wondered if it's a
little too busy. The vocals are a tad low in volume. I'm having a go at doing something more singy than the usual shout or speak.
I'm pleased with the sound of my whispered 'Renegade'. I have trouble not slipping into my Front 242 voice as can be noticed on the
'in harder times'. I messed up the line 'he's the art of living' and it mutated into 'carries the art of living'. It sounded okay and the
performance was good so we felt no need to repeat this brilliant one take recording. Atmospheric and wonderful even if I can't sing in tune.

A Night Without Filter Masks

By now we'd decided we'd make the album about Jhenge. We'd written enough stories about it and role-played in the universe often enough so why not?
Concept albums are ace. Blame David Bowie. His Outside album has a lot for which to answer. Or something. This was recorded in Andrew's living room.
Used lots of his synths. Andrew actually featured on this album but due to Duncan falling out with him his track was later removed. Though to be honest
it wasn't really that good. But that's to be covered another time. I'm playing the Teisco SX400 synth which is a really lovely huge polyphonic synth.
I believe that Duncan is playing the main melody on the Jupiter 4 synth to start or could it be me on the Teisco. The Jp4 had the Teisco S-100p on top
of it which could explain the loud squelchy sound early on. Sounds like it could have been flanged. Hmm. It's definitely me who comes in with a melody first.
I know I started playing the Sx-400 in monophonic 4 oscilators per note mode but eventually I change it to a duophonic with 2 oscilators per note. Things
sounded much nicer then. I believe that the weedy buzzy sound that features around the 4 minute mark is me on the Yamaha CS-5. It sounded wrong and crap so I
went back to the SX-400. You can hear that enter again as quite a high pitched sound around 4m30. I believe that Duncan was playing the JP4 through a phaser
pedal. I had the TR606 drum machine on top of the SX-400 so that I could add drum sounds as I felt. It sounds good when they come in. Except this was actually
accidental. I had intended them to be there all the way through but I had forgotten to turn the snare sound up. Still it worked out in the end.
This recording is entirely as it happened, no rehearsal or planning and yet somehow we worked. Just something to do with the way things work out when I play
music with Duncan. We think in similar ways musically. Or at least used to. That and Duncan is better at playing along with something than I am so I guess
he adjusted to what I played.

The title comes from the time in Duncan's Jhenge story where two characters take off their filter masks to experience the hallucinations etc that come from
inhaling the bacterial toxification. So the strange ambientness is meant to represent that. Or at least the title is meant to encourage you to think of such things.
Backward compatible title. Or something.

Rachael/Smitth

Two effects units used together for the first time here I think. I used the compressed reverb effect on the drums with FXR and reverb on everything with the 1201.
This was largely meant to be I Was Christ 2 musically but I didn't get quite the right sound on the SH-101. Too high a filter or too low resonance or not enough distortion.
One of the two. Duncan adds crap organ noises to this and I add the white noise via the CS-5. The lyrics are directly related to the characters Rachael Hiyatona
and Smitty from Jhenge. Duncan's lyric.

Not a bad Sh-101 sequence and the white noise kind of works but still a largely unremarkable track. Didn't quite realise its full potential. The rustling sound at the
end is Duncan messing with the lyrics sheets, noticing it gets picked up on the mic and then tries to cover it up by making more noise as if it was deliberate.
The extra bass sounds are me trying to work out why the sound doesn't decay much and just switches off. I hadn't got any release on it. Silly me.

499 Uprising

I love this track. Instrumental as it is. A nice driving bass line and a good bit of Drum Programming. The first track to be recorded at 63 South Street.
Uses Vocal Distortion on the 1201 on the Sh-101 and Drums. I love that drum sound. It's ace. I wrote the drum sequence on the wall at south street to help me
program the full track sequence into the 707. Utitlies the Gap technique which we don't use often enough. Music is as much what you don't play as what you do.
It's one way of getting from Verse to Chorus and back again. Pretty easy one at that so that's why it's here. I love the sound Duncan uses on the Polysix for the chorus.
Using one synth and switching between sounds in one track? Blimey we are getting clever! Or at least Duncan is. The title was inspired by a bit of graffiti on a bus stop
in South Elmsall. There was a list of bus routes 497 and 498. Someone had scrawled 499 Uprising underneath. I thought it a good idea for a title of a track so here it is
being just that.

On a historical note, 63 South Street (and indeed most of South Street) has now been demolished with a big JCB.

Planet of Oceans

The DR-55 drum machine appears for the first time ever. Bought in pristine condition from a second hand shop which no longer exists. Even had its original sticker sheet
with it and original box. I think I paid about £25 for it. Again performed at South Street as they are from here on up to Start Of War. This was meant to be a much better
track than it is. It just so happens that I can't really play bass that well. It still kind of works and maybe if you're not me you won't notice all the mistakes. The bass
sound isn't quite right either. It's too indistinct. Duncan playing some nice stuff on the polysix as well and enjoying a bit of sound change.
Was that organ sound inspired by Sisterhood - Gift album?

Ron once described this as a song without words. So another instrumental then? Really reaching above my musical ability and it's a shame it didn't really pay
off all that well. Sure I still like it but it should have been so much better.

No Recall Always Aggression

Ooops I accidentally panned the vocals all the way to one side. Just as well as they would have been completely inaudible if I hadn't. Alex is let loose on Guitar for the first
time and proves he's much better with that than a bass. My guitar only had 5 strings on it here. Alex gets away with just moving two fingers on the strings. The murky reverb on the guitar somehow works for this.

A Siouxsie fan that received this album on tape from me described it as sounding like 'The Cure underwater'. The lyrics are actually directly taken from some of the Jhenge Fragments as written by Duncan. They feature Rachel Hiyatona. The title comes from when I was round at 180 Woodhouse Lane In Leeds with Duncan whilst he was at Uni. We were up late one night drawing pretty pictures and stuff. One one of the pictures we did some continuey arty writing. It turned up to say No Recall Always Aggression. We thought it a suitably pretentious thing to include in a story and it features in what Duncan reads out. So why not call the track that?

Although the chord sequence is so simple, there's something really bouncy and catchy with it's timing.

Stars Over The Ocean

This is largely Duncan's work. I believe a character in the Jhenge Fragments considers stars over the ocean to be a bad omen or something. So that's what this 10 minute track is meant
to be about. I'd had a hard time getting Duncan to do anything for a while and he would only do something spooky this particular night. I'm not sure it's really that spooky. I add various
sound effects with the Sh-101 as I knew I'd be unlikely to add anything appropriate musically. It works though. It's a very nice, if largely unmemorable track. But it's unmemorable in a
good way I think. Goood for going to sleep to whilst listening. Shows off Duncan's musical talent pretty well I think. To carry the entire track on his own for 10 minutes is obviously skillfull.

Although one skill I've never developed is knowing when to stop.

Marasmusine

This was Duncan's idea. I can't remember if he intended it to be about Marasmusine in the first place or not. I think he did. I know he fancied doing a track where we have largely the same thing going on all the time but change the effects settings on the 1201. Very experimental and arty. Makes very little musical sense but kind of fits in with the drug element I guess. Marasmusine is a drug which alters time awareness I believe.

What is included here on the album is actually only half the track. The first half kind of works. The second doesn't or at least it's very hard to listen to this sort of thing for around 8 minutes which I think the full thing lasts. Conveniently we happened to pause for no apparent reason at the 3 minute mark. Various distortions and low fi effects are used.

This was before I adopted Marasmusine as my online usernames, so it's not an ego thing.

Bring Down The Regency

I took control a lot more now and started writing a lot about Nire in relation to the story I had written about him. Well I say written but in actual fact I wrote about half of it. I know the entire story in my head but I didn't get round to finishing writing it all as I hit the tricky middle bit where nothing happens. I wasn't sure how to proceed from there.
This is bit punky in sound and is meant to be sung by Nire. It seems Nire has a bit of a Dead Kennedies voice when singing and a bit of a yorkshire one when speaking. How odd. A bit of a mess but that was kind of deliberate. Duncan is playing bass on this one with Alex taking keyboard responsibilities with the Polysix. I was quite impressed that I managed to sing and play guitar at the same time. I'm not good at that sort of thing. I've never been happy with the Des..stroy bits. Why couldn't I have have just sang Des...troy instead? Stroy sounds wrong. My guitar still only had 5 strings. I recall the excess bass drums near the end being Duncan trying to do a snare fill but not selecting right instrument.

I still haven't read that story. Going to upload it?
Done. What I have put on here isn't everything that exists. There's a tad more on my Amiga but I can't transfer it. I'll just have to type it in.

Forgive and Carress

Blame David Bowie for this one. For the vocals at least. Well he inspired a lot of this album with Outside. This is rather like the Baby Grace segue. Pitch shifted vocals.
I'm not entirely convinced they sound female anyway but it kind of works. My bass part was quite tricky. I also played it with finger plucking and not with plectrum.
It hurt. When I say it was tricky, I mean it was tricky for me. Playing that high up on the bass is tricky. I think you'll notice me going out of time quite a bit.
There's something somehow very different about this track. Probably that in many ways it sounds quite slick. I think that's probably due to Duncan's brilliant beat
programming. It's probably that he didn't use snare and used Clap in its place. I think it's a brilliant track but somehow not a classic. Or is it? Oh I just don't know
anymore. Doesn't the polysix pad played by Alex sound completely lovely? You may find it interesting to note that the line 'I need your love like a tank in a barn' was
inspired by the game Mass Destruction on the Saturn which had been played prior to recording this track. If this could have been tidied a bit more it would have been
brilliant. Oh and it's meant to be sung by Jhenge Character Lun.

Prellen Vinwood's Paranoia

Now this one is definitely a classic. Duncan is largely responsible. As I recall he wanted the echo effect. Or delay as it seems to be known. Which is something I don't
understand. What's the difference between delay and echo? Is there one? I don't know. I'm getting off track. I can take some credit for the sh-101 sequence and my choice
of sound. Alex sounds lovely. If only you could hear what he's saying. The bit where I change the pitch of the sequence with key transpose on the SH-101 near the end
doesn't quite work in my opinion. Slowing down the sequence at the end was stolen from Vince Clarke.

Ring Islands

A solo work by Duncan. He slowed the 707 drum machine down to its slowest and filled every step in the pattern with something different. So it actually lasts quite a while.
Duncan was never terribly enthused with this track but I've always absolutely loved it. I deliberately encouraged Duncan to do a solo track for the album. Not entirely sure
why but I guess it's because I've always considered him such a talent. I love the change in sounds used. Brilliant. Just one repetitive bassline with various stuff played
over the top but so so effective. I don't really find it overlong at the 4 minutes it lasts. I can't offer much more insight into this with it not being mine but still
what a lovely bit of music.

Ash

Janine's character from Jhenge role playing. We were so obsessed with cut ups, this track's lyrics are composed in such a way. We wrote (or Duncan did) various info about
Ash then re arranged it all to make no sense at all. It's more obscure and arty that way! But also means far less. Vocals are badly recorded. Alex is providing bass here
on instruction from me and yet somehow he still manages to make a mess of it. Though it's probably more to do with my production and getting his bass too high.
I'm playing the keyboard part which I mess up various times. You can easy see the difference between my skill and Duncan's. I think part of my trouble was my refusal to
stick to a set sequence and trying to vary what I play just that little bit too much. Leaves you with nothing to latch onto.
I also did the Sh-101 sequence of banging white noise. An effect I appear to love far too much. I like the more metallic sound it gets when the resonance is increased.
Or the waveforms added. Not bad I suppose but it is a bit of a mess.

Start of War

More Nire stuff. This one is supposed to be a song by Nire but I wrote it about some conflict I heard about on the news. Bosnia or something. Some stupid territorial dispute.
It was just adapted a bit later on. I actually wrote it about 11pm one friday night at my grandma's in Woodlands. Not a bad bit of lyricing.. rhyming and saying some kind of
message. Even if it is a perfectly obvious one that has been covered a million times.

This was the start of things getting really rather awkward. They had been for a while previously actually. It had been proving difficult to get Duncan to do anything.
No one else seemed to have passion for creating the music in the same way that I had. I suppose it's fair enough when you're not actually releasing it properly. I forever
pestering them to do some music but it was rare they would join in. A problem that would only get worse in later years. This track was recorded quite a few times. This version
was created at Andrew's house. As I recall it was recorded in his kitchen. There was a short period time when he had a load of synths out in the kitchen. It could have been
another front room work.

I like the song in principle but it's so badly produced I hate it. I'm playing bass and singing at the same time which is quite an achievement as it's not a totally simple
bass. Duncan remarked at some point that he liked that some things in the track are inaudible for the most part until the end because it helps to give the impression that
someone was playing something all along but being drowned out. Or something like that. Maybe he can elaborate further.

A great example of how not to record some good lyrics and good music.

It's been a while since I've listened to this stuff so may elaborate after I've dug out the CDs.

Wanting the Intangible

Another bit of shoehorning here. Supposedly a Nire song again when it was really just about dreams I was having at the time. Dreams of a girl that I would see in my dreams
almost every night. She had longish straight blonde hair and a cute smile. When I held her in those brief moments in my dreams it seemed so wonderful. The "She was so cold"
bit was actually about an experience with almost dating someone online. I got interested in a girl on a chat room and I sent my picture and she didn't ever talk to me again.
Actually that happened twice. One was an alt.gothic pen pall Kristiina Wilson. When I sent her a picture she never replied either. Waah I'm soo ugly. The 'nearly fell' bit
references something I would talk about with Ron and kind of related to the film City of Angels. The idea of falling from heaven for a girl. So anyway, yes, if I can't have
those girls I thought, I'll have the one from my dreams.

This was recorded about 60 billion zillion times and we all got very angry with each other. Or rather Duncan did with me because I was never happy with the mixing until this
one. It was recorded in Andrew's kitchen again. The vocals aren't as good as I'd often hoped they were when I was putting 'emotion' into them. They just sound a bit wrong.
My beat programming is pretty good in this and Duncan's keyboard work is excellent. Andrew added a few ping effects and possibly controlled the bass as well.

I Am Nire

Still at Andrew's. Definitely front room recording this one. I'm playing guitar and singing and generally making a mess of things. To some extent it's meant to be a bit of a
mess as it's meant to be Nire getting too big for his boots. It ends up just being a bit unlistenable though really. The lyrics were made up as the track progressed.
The pings at the start of the track were played by Andrew as I recall and on the SX400. Two guitar errors early on are the slide up to the note and the early ending note
shortly afterwards. It was recorded with me in the hallway at Andrew's and the other two in the front room. Hear me get overly excited for the bit where all the music stops
and I say 'at my best', the "I'm Nire" bit after is clearly very excited and so is the guitar work. Near the end I'm clearly playing notes that don't go with the rest of the
music and it also sounds a bit like David Bowie's Dead Man Walking. The shluck sound at the end is me accidentally hitting the mic with the guitar as I take it off.

Over My Hero

A track I consider a classic. All my own work in composition but executed by Andrew. That's right, a JDB track that features just me and Andrew. The bass is from the MC-202
that was on loan at the time as I recall. Or was it Andrew's own one by then? I'm using a slight pitch shift in the hope that I sound something of a Catherine Wheeler. It's
her song to him after she's destroyed him. I think I can give Andrew some credit for the gentle piano ish keyboard part in this. Reluctant as I am to do such a thing but even
if I've fallen out with someone I insist on being fair. I certainly did 99% of the work here. I also feel I can remove his credit for his messing up the ending. He went and put
sample and hold on pitch as well as on cut off frequency so you got random pitch sounds which were inappropriate to the song. I said to him at the time (and it may be possible
to hear if I haven't removed it) "I really didn't like that ending.". He replied and said "Well I'm not doing it again." and promptly switched off and disconnected all the synths.
Still at least it turned out pretty good anyway.

The track title comes from miss reading a Moloko track title. It actually read "Over My Head" (from the album "I am Not A Doctor", their only good album) but due to the odd font the D looks like an O. Oh and by the way there's 3 drum
machines used simultaneously in this one. Cr8000, TR-606 and TR-707. All Synced together via the MC-202.

A fine track to finish the album with though all the same, I feel.