"Nothing to say" was compiled in August 1990 from a selection of offcuts and tapes I had hanging around since 1985. It was all instrumental, it was mixed entirely live by cross fading on Earnest (my mixer) between two or three tape decks (and a radio on one song - found sounds!). I can remember the maze of cables all over my bed, swapping tapes to make sure everything was in the right place. It was a lot of fun. Because of this cross fading it is impossible to separate the tracks into their discrete parts and as such the tape is presented as a 30 minute mix.
One other thing to point out, half of these pieces don't have their original titles because I never wrote them down and can only remember a few of them. As such I've made up a few new titles for some pieces using the rules of the original, which is three word titles for everything.
Nothing To Say
A slow start, and a nice bit of tape wobble too. This was recorded around Christmas 1988, in fact just after Xmas Day as I had been given a set of acoustic guitar strings for Xmas.... So that's my crap Kay acoustic and my Casio SK5 playing the keyboard part. Totally improvised and it shows.
Pulse Width Mod
Not the original title, this was recorded around January or February 1987 on a shitty Memorex tape which snapped two weeks ago. This is my Roland Sh3a doing absolutely everything, the pulsing bass, the melodies and percussion. This went on a lot longer originally. There's five overdubs here, bouncing between two tape decks through my little Tandy four channel mixer.
Bounce That Dog
Not the original title. This was one of the few pieces recorded specifically for "Nothing to say". It's me trying to do the Art Of Noise with a small Casio sampler. It's quite funny actually. Doesn't outstay it's welcome either. Right at the end you can hear that I'm taping over "Maybe after he's gone" by The Zombies.
Treats For Cheats
Again, not the original title. This was recorded in August 1988 as one of the first pieces once I got my Casio SK1 home and therefore marks the start of the sessions for "The kindest lie".
Dark Not Shark
An odd one this, I think it was recorded in November 1985 during the week I borrowed a flanger pedal from David Blake, the guitarist in my band Final Ecstasy (and yes I've found our five song tape, you'll love it). The melody is played on a Casio.VL-tone and I presume the strange atmospheric noises are the Roland Sh3a through the flanger. I think my good friend Mike Hole was involved in this recording, probably playing the Roland. He's on Twitter, give him a follow.
Cheese On Toast
Speaking of Mike Hole, this is his song. We were in a band together for a while, there were four of us - Mike, Jeremy, Steve and myself, three non musicians and me. There's a tale to tell another time about Anonymous, but the only actual song we had was this melody written by Mike which he called "Cheese on toast". This melody hung around in my head for years and I recorded it in August 1990, mainly because I knew Mike would be one of the few people to hear it. Features more sampling from the Casio SK5, including the dog preset.
Maybe Sometime Never
Not exactly sure when this was recorded, the drum sounds suggest samples of the tom toms on "The daily planet" by Love on the SK5 so maybe 1989? It just exists and buggers off again. That guitar note is annoying as hell.
NIREX commercial scare
Amazingly that is the original title,.I remember that! Recorded April or May it was just a big stupid riff and a stupid guitar lick on top of it. I had bought an overdrive pedal and I wanted to use it. Goes on too long.
The Other Side
A song with a history. I bought the Casio SK5 for £50 in my first week in the second year in Sheffield and composed a number of songs on it which went into "No happy endings". I also wrote this piece which I called "Drinking acid in somebody's house" which gives some idea of where my head was at. I recorded it in August 1990 and frankly I'm not sure how I managed it, lots of the SK5 drums, the Roland Sh3a on high resonance and me twiddling the dial on my radio and feeding it through my chorus pedal and dropping it in totally on the hoof. It worked, I think.There was an alternate version of this song I found recently, the same backing track but I had sampled some phrases into the SK5 - "Who's in the pub? Wh-wh- Who's in the pub?" -"Shit house!" And strange shouts of "Arnie!"
6th August 1986
Recorded on that day, and a piece of gloom which reflected quite accurately how I felt at the time. Again there's about five overdubs here, the guitar part is as muddy as I could make it then loads of synths being mournful over the top. Later rerecorded for "Thank you sorry" without the tape hiss, so it lost a lot of the atmosphere.
This was the second version of "Nothing to say", there was a first version on the other side of the C60 which has a few of the same pieces and a few others which never got used. If you really want it then shout.
