Winter in Chingeltei

Good evening all. Here is 'Winter in Chingeltei', the latest mp3 to come out of my little bedroom-recording-studio. I hope you like it. I've just realised that the title is horribly similar to another demo that is floating around. never mind, names can be changed very easily.

You may notice that this sounds extremely similar to 'childrens park'. there is a very good reason for this. Both were recorded in a very similar manner. Both are basically just messing around on top of a nice little riff. Both have a 'bass' part recorded using my whammy pedal to send my guitar down an octave. Both have the bass part recorded twice and panned in stereo to give the impression you are inside the music. Both have slightly unnecessary e-bow parts that are mostly there because i like using an ebow whenever possible.

Oh and those of you with good memory may recall this was once recorded under the title 'christmas lights'.

See if you can spot the points that my computer gets confused and adds in worried crackles and spits, or the sound of my desk chair creaking at the end.

For your information, Chingeltei is a district of Ulaanbaatar, where my flat was last winter. It is the north-western part of the city, and probably the most smoky part of the centre. There is no particular connection between the notes of the music and my flat, but as the last thing i recorded was named after the ub childrens park (and the play i wrote the music for), it seemed fitting.

Winter In Chingeltei

In other news, i have ordered a pickup for my violin. This time next week i will know what a violin sounds like when played through a fuzz factory. Time to get practicing i think.

Jx

We Passports

I got bored...

Accrington left home.

Hello bloggees,

I'm in London town doing London things and all is well but expensive and tiring. London is not the place I thought it was, it's much smaller in a way. I came here prejudiced against it, but I'm thinking of it differently now; it's a bit like as if the centre of Oxford were a short tube ride away from the centre of Brighton. You just have to get to know the areas that sound good and then it all becomes a bit more local. I'm getting there slowly but still don't appreciate the black snot.


I think we should release a single.

We've been a-hipping and a-hopping and vaguely flirted with the idea of an EP but never really got anywhere. So why not get a proper single done? 7" would be best for a single.

We've got three great singles as I see it: Ash, Boatswain's, Chalon.

B sides for a first single to contrast Fleet, Alpe, Haste? Two of them?

I think a single could be a good thing for us. It means we don't have to blow our musical load on one release but could still get some attention from a proper product and be able to give something professional to people who are interested without having to make one or, as of late, ask Cunning to make one.

What are the We Aerothoughts?




Lyrics for A Strange Sign of Life

You've been so happy lately
oh can't you be a little sad
We've been apart

For a month and a half...
And the distance is distance and more

I hear you've been having a good time
completely without me
I'm glad that you found
your feet on the ground...
oh I'm just petty and a bad person

The second 'I'm glad you found... ...a bad person' should be different but I haven't written it yet, so if anyone fancies having a go, please do.

Childrens Park (again, and better)

This evening i have been doing a little recording.

This song is dedicated to all of us. It is about nothing quite working out that way you plan. How nothing is simple. It's about layers. Layers of understanding, and communication. It's about distance, and closeness. Mostly it's about love.

Red wine. It's probably about red wine too

Childrens Park

Jx

Blexy Time

Hello We Aeronauts. How’s it hanging?

Small talk over. Now down to business.

Here is a tune I made. To add to the others. (Do I make that currently 8^th in the queue of songs we are working on?).

I want to hear some more textures provided by you guys eventually. I would especially like to hear some accordion and violin/string instrument (that means you Tallant).

I am also open to the idea of lyrics.

Feel free to overdub your parts.

That gives me an idea that would be both cool and fun. Seriously, hear me out. I think We should start an online ‘music chain’.

Whereby one aeronaut lays down a track, posts it and then another aeronauts listens to it and overdubs something and so on and so on... until the inevitable

Not completely original. The results could be disgraceful however if given the right amount of time and dedication we could create something pretty effective.

.............oh yeah, the song

http://www.mediafire.com/?sharekey=d78ee42b062579ecab1eab3e9fa335cafcd67f2835048cd8

Zuberbuhler will see you soon

Conductor 71

So, here's another. It's only about 45 seconds long. As far as I can tell i think this will be a chorus. I need someone to help with where this could go, so Log, learn the chords on your ukelele, Greg, put a relative major somewhere, Zoobs, put down your krautrock manual and help me!

You must tell me if you think this track is too dreary for WA. It might well be, I just thought I'd check. Lyrically, it is important to note the two perspectives. Firstly, of a young radio operator who has been searching the airwaves for any signs of life after a WW2 bombing mission- and secondly, most importantly, a pilot, who is alone in his aircraft after the crew have jettisoned. He has no parachute, can't see anything for the fog surrounding his aircraft, and has no systems working. He is ready to die.

Some of you will have realised that this is essentially the first 10 minutes of the film a Matter of Life and Death. The lyrics concern a small portion of the amazing dialogue between the two main characters in that section. It's an incredible piece of cinema, especially for 1946. He actually does say "you are life and i'm leaving you", with an incredible jollity. It's wonderful.

The next bit is best, and is hopefully where the lyrics will go. In the film, when people die, they are collected by envoys from heaven called 'conductors'. Our pilot's assigned conductor is an incredibly camp French Duke (played by a cornishman) called number 71. In the fog, our pilot was lost, and conductor 71 failed to do his duty. At some point later on, the conductor freezes time(in film terms everyone freezes, but the bushes carry on moving in the background) and tells our pilot of his mistake- but the pilot argues that he has fallen in love (with the radio operator) in the extra time that he was granted, and that was not his fault- so he is taken to heaven to fight for his right to live in a celestial court with a huge cast of wonderfully mismatched characters.

The title comes from the fact that the scenes on the earth are filmed in glorious technicolour, whilst heaven is in monochrome. It offers a wonderful contrast between the green landscapes of the planet with the almost sterilized hospital look of heaven.

Anyway, please do let me know what you think because of all the songs that I've had a part in posting on here, this is the one that I'm least sure about...

If it's going to go somewhere I need help.


Anyway, it's a great film. The lyrics are:


Are you receiving this transmission? Are you falling out into the night into a better place?

Mayday! Mayday! I can't read you, I am bailing out and they'll never find a trace of this plane and it's crew. You are life and I'm leaving you, oh, it's sure been nice to spend some time with a girl like you on the end of the line.



Monochrome for Heaven

Absent Lullaby

Buenos Dias, All,

Greg has once again produced a tug-at-the-heart-strings Stuart Classic, I like it a lot...can't wait to see how it progresses.

Just a quick post to add a wee demo of my own. Recorded through my skype microphone and therefore very shoddy but just to give you all an idea. It may have to be a Logster if it doesn't seem conducive to full-bandage but thought I'd pop it up just in case. It's currently called 'Absent Lullaby' and it's really short. (Also I spelt 'lullaby' inncorrectly on its name....just for fun. Honest.)

Byeeeee.


Absent Lullaby

Ivor Novello strikes again...

I write this, as per usual, sat in my room in Oxford, on a dingy sunday evening, looking forward to the working week ahead! ha! No doubt the rest of you are sunning yourselves, falling off buses, swearing at Spanish children by mistake or generally being elusive(Ads, I'm looking at you).

This weekend seems like it started ages ago. I met Tom on friday night and went to a gathering (not sure it can be called a party) with Woody and a couple of others in a house in Cowley. I felt horrible the next day. Tom left fairly sharpish in the morning (I knew I shouldn't have spooned him while he slept), and was replaced in my house by Greg, who spent the whole time complaining about the cold- and started talking on the phone about 'style' whilst clutching a pink waterbottle between his shaking legs, wearing only boxers and a sodden shirt. He's a style guru, that Greg.

Anyway, while he was here he layed down the basics of a track that he'd written a couple of days before. I have enjoyed mixing it, especially the bit where he forgets the words and laughs. I have added some keys and some far-off singing. I'm not sure he's going to like it, but he doesn't check this blog so more fool him. It's come off very pretty sounding, which isn't what I expected when he played it down my phone in the early AM last week. He's decided on the name 'distance learning' for reasons that will no doubt become clear to you, dear reader, when you partake in a spot of listening.

*edit* I played the chords wrong in the first one, so here it is amended.

Distance Learning