Through
The Leaves
"If
you asked me of my fondest memory,
I'd
say don't just stand outside you can come and see"
This
is actually the last track I wrote for the album and one of the most
personal. It's also one of the only songs on the album that uses metaphors in
the lyrics rather than more objectively describing my childhood memories as the
other songs do. I'm sure I'll explain more inside secrets in these descriptions
but working on this album was one of the hardest years of my life for many
reasons. I wrote this track as a way of explaining directly to the listener what
I had been doing for the last year and why I had lost touch with a lot of the
people I cared about most in the world. I imagined taking my loved ones by the
hand and walking them through a forest (a metaphor for the album) like a tour
guide and explaining "Youth" to them as we walked through the
leaves.
As
I'll go on to explain I'm sure, this album covers many themes such as
post-adolescent alienation, peer-pressure/bullying and nostalgic memories of
childhood innocence/dependence/naivety over 11 tracks. I was well aware it was
impossible to say everything I intended to in one song so I included the line
"If
you asked me what these sounds are meant to mean, I'd say don't you try and take
in this whole scene"
to try and will the listener into making it through the whole 35 minutes before
analysing the music they've heard.
Garden
Friends
"Awake
in the garden 7am, our clothes have been soaked in dew,
Just
as the summer's on its way out, I know you'll be leaving too"
If
anyone has ever heard the reason why I came up with the name "Kissy" they'll
know it had a lot to do with mixing many wild alcoholic drinks together at the
big birthday parties I used to have in my back garden and having disturbing
dreams when I went to sleep as a result! This track is about a few memories of
those parties starting with one of my friends falling asleep in the grass over
night and waking up at 7am with his clothes soaked in dew and walking through my
house avoiding the vomit and smashed glass and stepping over the people sleeping
on the floor.
I
think something tragic about the last days of our youth is how aware we become
of it ending. I remember when we were all lectured in my first year of sixth
form college about choosing universities and deciding what we wanted to do with
the rest of our lives and feeling terrified that instead of being free to enjoy
the last moments of our childhood, we were being constantly reminded that it was
about to end. I was pretty confident at the time that I was going to be a
graphic designer or a painter as my profession so my main concern was losing
touch with my dearest school friends - hence the second line of this
song.
Essex
Boy
"Sitting
on her bed and watching dirty dancing, Swayze's getting freaky while we're
getting off,
Someone's
at her door I've got a nasty feeling, I can hear her boy friend and I bet he's
tough"
Although
there are a lot of themes and concepts weaved into the songs and melodies on
"Youth", it's not all deep and meaningful - some of it is simply silly memories
of some of the situations I got myself into when I was young. On this occasion I
touched on 2 specific memories I have.
One
is of pulling this girl I barely knew from the year below at a local night club
(I used to sneak in there from the age of 15) and going round to her house
thinking I was well in there only for her to put on her VHS of Dirty Dancing and
make me watch it all the way through with no action and the distinct feeling I
wasn't the only boy in her life.
The
second anecdote is about my mates smoking weed in the car park of a local park.
We'd sit in my mate Gav's car and listen to "Speed Garage Anthems Volume 2" -
hence the speed garage vibe of the track. I was the only one who didn't smoke so
they'd arm me with a football and if the police came down to the park they would
send me outside the car to do keepy-uppies to make it look like we were there to
play football - as the second verse suggests I didn't always convince them
hehe!
Apple
Jelly
"When
I got out of school you didn't like me, that look on your face was plain to
see,
I
heard you laughing behind my back, just because my jeans were
black"
This
is essentially an anti-suicide song written from the perspective of 2 popular
girls talking about a boy who recently jumped off the roof at my sixth form
college. It's also the only song when you can hear me singing
acapella!
The
concept is of course based on some real events which I heard about when I was at
secondary school but I don't want to explain too much for fear of offending
anyone's families - after all the song isn't really about someone topping
themselves but more about the response of the other students which highlights
what a waste of life it would of been if I - or any of my friends had allowed
such short term problems such a peer-pressure to get to us.
It
took me ages to get the "body hitting floor noise" right, and I spent the best
part of a day diving up and down on different surfaces in the studio to get what
I wanted. Lots of people think it sounds like a gunshot noise and I think I
thought that too when the track was finished but I like that's a bit
ambiguous.
This
Kiss
The
track was originally supposed to be about how frustrating it is to make small
talk with people at special occasions instead of talking about stuff that really
mattered. I realised quite quickly that I needed to include something a bit more
specific to write the song around so I used a story for my early teenage years
about when I snogged my mate's girlfriend on several different
occasions.
It
seemed a strange idea to me to include my spoken parts showing off my delightful
Essex accent, but after I recorded them in that style for the original demo
everyone I played it too liked my bits best so I kept them in. In the first
shows with my live band Dan used to say "this is as poppy as kissy sell out will
ever get" before we did the song and I still stand by that comment with regards
to my own material I think.
Bubs
& Bizzle
Or
as the hardcore ravers will probably refer to it - "finally an instrumental!"
haha! I wrote this when I was doing my second tour of Australia as a DJ. I think
there was even a YouTube video up for a while of me DJing in New Zealand playing
the original demo of this track that I made in my hotel room! This is first
example of me fiddling with the BPM so much that it's almost unmixable in most
people's DJ sets (as I've done on a few subsequent remixes) - but I kinda like
that!
Someone
once suggested to me that I should put this out on a vinyl where the outer music
part and the centre label are in opposite places to make it unplayable on most
record players - a bit pretentious but most 12" records are for nailing to walls
now anyway so I still like the idea.
Go
Explode
"Surprise
all the suits grab the first thing in sight"
Very
hard to explain what this is one is "about". Mainly because the anecdote about
setting fire to a girl's hair in a failed attempt to impress her was penned more
to cover up the extreme hatred me and my cousin felt for all the "suits" who
kept invading my studio to tell me "how to make a hit" than as a funny
memory. Most of the song featured completely different lyrics about how much we
hated working with a major label on the album up until the final submission date
when we realised it would never get released unless we changed the lyrics. Of
course a few lines where left in there like the line above and the chorus is the
same too but takes on a new meaning with the new lyrics.
I'm
really happy with the tempo changes and synth work on this track. I was
listening to a lot of live Gary Numan tracks at the time and I think that shows
in the notes I played. I also like the way I mixed the live drums with the
crunchy full stereo percussion - even if I say so myself!
This
is also one of our most effective tracks when my live band perform which I think
is interesting since most people feel this is the least strongest track on the
album.
Pop
Bottle
This
is one of my favourite vocal tracks on the album I reckon and probably the only
"indie" track I've done. I had to get Steve Osborne to play the bass on this
track because I can't play bass well enough. Another geeky fact for you is that
Sarah Sausages from New Young Pony Club (who performed some of the live drums
and backing vocals on the album) was supposed to be featured in the harmonies
but me and Dan rewrote the verses last minute and Dan had to sing the high bits
himself hehe!
Harriet
At
long last - I have been sitting on this track for about 3 years now!?! I've
written about this many times before but basically when all my friends had gone
to university and I was still in Essex doing my art foundation course, my
younger cousin Harriet became my dancing partner at the local indie/electro
nights in town. We used to mosh on the dancefloor all the time during that
period in music history around 2004 or something when "electro" first started
hitting dancefloors, mashing up rock and dance music. Those were really exciting
times and it was nights out with Harriet that made me want to start making
electro tracks of my own.
Then
Harriet went to university herself and I suddenly had to fend for myself on the
dancefloors of what few cool club nights there were in Essex in my ultra-skinny
jeans. After I produced my debut single "Her", writing an experimental electro
track about how much I missed moshing with Harriet seemed obvious.
Geeky
fact: the track is heavily inspired by the awesome "Daydream Nation" album by
Sonic Youth - not only in its sound but also its lack of repetition. A lot of
record label A&R's (the people who sign records and say what's hot and
what's not - apparently) thought I was "shooting myself in the foot" by making a
6 minute long instrumental which has arguably the best "hook" I've ever written
but yet makes you wait 2 minutes and 14 seconds to hear it and it only happens
once hehe! The horrible major label people - whom I've since escaped from
incidentally - even made me make a version which had the main hook twice - which
I dropped in my live essential mix for radio 1 in last year. Like all the tracks
on this album "Harriet" is a really personal to me so giving it "more commercial
potential" ruined the track for me which is why the original version is on the
album.
Bethnal
Green Cafe
So
I mentioned that writing this album was the hardest experience of my life
earlier and this is about one of the reasons why. My time away from home during
this period had basically destroyed the relationship with my girlfriend Caz and
it was made worse by the fact that it was very hard to explain why I was never
there for her. It wasn't just me who was suffering girlfriend problems either,
my cousin and by this point, partner-in-crime on this album was also getting
angry phone calls every night which would last for hours sometimes.
So
basically this song is about resentment - and in particular the tragic way in
which we argue with our loved ones instead of making the most of our time
together. The local greasy spoon represented this to me since it was one of me
and Caz's favourite things to do together but we'd often get stuck arguing
instead of just relaxing and enjoying ourselves.
The
synths are supposed to sound a bit like those on "Love Will Tear Us Apart" too
as it happens but the subject matter of the songs is just a
coincidence.
Youth
My
favourite track on the album this - but maybe not yours haha! It's also the most
complicated piece of music I've ever written and I kinda refer to it as "Harriet
Pt. 2".
This
is about a very specific memory of when me and my school friend Rob went to a
house party on the other side of town. Rob was staying round mine that night but
my mum said we had to be home by midnight at the latest. Anyway we got totally
smashed up on Bacardi Breezers and 20/20 wine as usual in those days and both
pulled hot girls from school which was cool. When it hit 23:40 I suddenly
panicked, grabbed Rob and we walked miles and miles (we couldn't afford taxis)
home as fast as we could until we hit my front lawn at about 00:01. We were so
out of breath that we didn't say anything to each other and just collapsed on
the lawn looking up at the stars.
We'd
had such an awesome time that night - one of many around that age of about 14-15
- and although this sounds a bit cheesy I remember thinking that I would
probably never get a chance to have a night like that ever again.
And
that's what "Youth" is about! Sorry I've written so much!