My new album, Louder Than Sound, is released on 27th October and the limited edition CD is available for early pre-order from Subjangle now as part of a 4CD discounted offer. Just click HERE and use code ‘4cdoct’ at the checkout link to claim the 25% discount before 1st October.
Louder Than Sound has had a long gestation period. I began writing the songs for it before Plainsongs was released in June 2023. I conceived it as a double album at first, but I ended up with enough songs for a triple by the time I came to record it at Nam Studios in Wiltshire in July of this year. I soon realised that I didn’t have the funds to record a triple album, sadly, although a lavish box set is still a (pipe) dream for the future!
I whittled it down to what I thought were the twelve best songs and recorded ten of these with my band at Nam with Jacob Myles Tyghe producing. Unfortunately, due to a clash with a gig at Glastonbury, my friend and long-time bass player, Joe Brown, couldn’t make the sessions so I played bass on seven of the tracks with Jacob ably handling the duties on the other three. (As luck would have it, he’s an incredibly talented bass player as well as a superb sound engineer.) My good friends Paul Kench and Hugh Lyford again provided lead guitar and drums parts, respectively.
Here's a sneak preview of a rough mix of one of the tracks, ‘Coming In From The Cold’:
As with Plainsongs, the basic tracks were all recorded live in the studio. The sessions took place over one weekend early in July. Nam Studios has a great live room. I've been hiring it as a rehearsal space since 2004 but have, illogically, never thought about recording there before. It has a great pedigree including Robert Plant, The Mission, Killing Joke, KT Tunstall and Royal Blood.
I asked Jacob to use Lenny Kravitz's album Let Love Rule as a template for the sound that I wanted to achieve. I really like Henry Hirsch's production on that album. I remember how refreshing it sounded when it came out in 1989 because it was like something straight out of the sixties and a complete contrast to the types of production currently in vogue in the pop charts. Jacob spent a long time with mic placement on Hugh's kit and I am delighted with the drum sound he captured.
Guitar, vocal, keyboards and percussion overdubs took place at Jacob's home studio in Bath. Joe was able to join me for an overdub session where he laid down some backing vocals and a pianet part.
Joe introduced me to saxophonist Nick Sorensen who added a wonderful tenor sax solo to 'Disguises', which was a real highlight of the sessions for me.
It's the usual ecletic mix of genres on the album - some heavy stuff, a couple of acoustic numbers, melodic pop-rock, a jazzy one that goes ska and some Quo-influenced boogie. It's all enveloped in a sixties and seventies haze, or at least it is in my mind. I will produce a track by track breakdown of the songs nearer to the release date, where I can discuss the subject matter. At the moment, I think it's the strongest set of songs I've recorded. I certainly don't think my opinion is likely to change on the quality of the sound of the recordings. Jacob has done a magnificent job, as I hope even the unmastered rough mix above will testify.
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