MOJO Bar - Music for the people

Bonjour Bonjour,

Just a quick note to say that we’ve been nominated for The Rebel Jukebox on the rather lovely gent Steve Lamacq’s Six Music show. Be rather lovely if you could go ove and give us a vote….PICTURE THE SCENE

Election night.

The eyes of the entire planet are firmly focussed on the battle for the american presidency. History uncoils before our very eyes.

Yet one member of your favourite band has the bare faced cheek to draw your attention to another voting contest that opened this evening.

Official Secrets Act are up against the Holloways, and the Futureheads in Steve Lamacq’s Rebel playlist on his 6 Music show. This is your chance to listen to three new songs and vote for your favourite.

Take a step from the sublime to the ridiculous (you choose in which direction) and vote here:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/6music/shows/steve_lamacq/

Or simply send an Email to: Lamacq.6music@bbc.co.uk

With the Subject Matter; Vote 2 Official Secrets Act

voting closes on sunday.

Change we need!!!

Anywhooo….that done, here is the kind of equipment we’ve been using in the studio. Total gear tech’s heaven!

Alex has been using a 1976 Ludwig kit which he got off of a lovely guy called Martin who used to play in The Others and is just about the best Drum Tech a band could ever hope to come across. He also bought a whole load of new K cymbals, which are only new to him really, cause some of them are from the 70s. He would also want me to tell you that his high hats are not of a pair and are different makes from different years, which makes them kind of special.

I’ve been using Liams 1970s Jazz bass mainly, putting through my ashdown amp and a boss blues driver which is actually designed for guitar but which we just pull all the tone out of and drive it a little bit to cook the bass slightly. I’ve also got my beloved 63 P-bass reissue which I restrung just before we came in the studio so I can get some really nice aggressive New Order sounds when I want them.

Mike has been playing with a synth called an Oscar which was made by the Oxford Synth company, it’s got some wonderful Grandaddy/Muse type sounds and we had hours of fun trying to synch up a 6/8 arpeggio that it generated with a 4/4 beat that Alex was playing. He’s also been using our trusty old Harmonium which is flat, broken and older than OSA themselves, but it’s been all over Britain with us and is doing us proud in the studio. He’s also currently laying down some synth parts on an old Prophet 5 which are sounding gorgeous. When guitars have been needed it’s hard to take Evans away from his Hohner very thin (I’m sounding like a QVC advert)

Tom’s had a lot of fun with his 60s reissue Strat which I think he bought cause he liked the colour, but it’s been great for getting a whole different load of tones on the songs, and we never fall out of love with the Danelectro guitars we’ve got. Alex especially did some lovely guitar parts on one of our songs using he favourite lipstick pick-ups.

We’ve got Line 6 modulators, loads of memory man effects and the old school dirtboxs for when they’re needed as well, but that’s all pretty standard stuff. We’re also all taking turns to hit away at the piano keys, and Mike and Tom have flirted with some Clarinet/Horn and trumpet parts.

We’ve been exploring found sounds and the sounds we can make from anything we find around. We’ve stomped our feet on floorboards, whistled melody lines and tried reversing them and spent hours on the free sound project listening to thunderstorms in Madrid and busses driving along Parisian backstreets. Europe has been a big influence on this record.

A lot of this is probably pretty boring stuff, we don’t really understand it all. We just get on our hands and knees and dial in any sounds we can find and see if we can get something worth having out of it.

The sound of the assistants at Konk dancing round our amplifiers may also be detectable on one or two of our songs. They are like our modern equivalent of the Old Grey Whistle Test, if they don’t dance and smile then it doesn’t work.

This entry was posted on Thursday, November 6th, 2008 at 10:35 pm and is filed under News & press. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.