Strings on Strangers and Footprints...
Posted by proxy, 11.9.2007 13:31
Sunday night before, really couldn’t sleep as the excitement was too much to contain in anticipation for adding ‘proper’ strings to Strangers and Footprints. The old Bill (Will) had done some lovely arrangements on a keyboard string setting back when we did our demos. Footprints had to be re-recorded cause we lost some of the tracks in the computer which annoyed us no end cause that was really ‘the one’ yknow? But anyway I think all in all the re-recorded version will be better. Nick had worked with the brilliantly talented string quartet Eclipse on numerous occasions and so it was we did on this day. First step was to play them Strangers in a Fight as they hadn’t heard it yet. We said that we really wanted to have strings in it that resembled an Asiatic tinge, kinda like the way the strings in Venus as a Boy are sort of like modern Bollywood strings. The great thing was that I think a lot of bands get quite nervous when they do strings cause it immediately implies a false sense of maturity which is probably why most strings end up sounding a tad unnecessary. If the track ain’t there, adding strings ain’t gonna make it any better or grander. Anyway that’s what we wanted to avoid: strings for the sake of strings. In the end Will did an amazing job getting the foundations down as we all enthusiastically encouraged Eclipse to ‘go nuts’ with diminished chords and progressions which were basically the guitar chords (we are so very clever). I think in the end we got ourselves exactly what we thought we had: a doo-wop tune with Asiatic strings. A bloody mess. A complete and utter bloody mess.
Footprints was a different beast altogether and stood the biggest chance of being string laden without thought in a ‘we’re the biggest band in the fookin world” type of way. But I think in the end we wanted exactly what we had with the demo, as the song itself is that kind of ‘epic’ song anyway.