The first album's not officially out and yet we have been busy recording new material! With Bournemouth's most intricate perfectionist producer, Gary Hudspith (or as we like to call him, 'The Prof') at the helm we got all the drums and main bits of our songs recorded nice and tidy like :)
Overdubs and editing will then be done in our own flats in our own spare time as and when the inspiration hits us, which thankfully, is often. Obviously, it's too early to give out a due by date but we feel like we're looking at a quick turn around for this one. Track titles and album/EP name will be released as and when we know them!


Next up, here's an insight into a jam session we had earlier this month over at Lee's flat. After practicing and having a jam we stumbled upon a new idea and recorded it on Steve's iPhone in one take. We liked it so much that we married the original rough recording with a few clips from one of BV's favourite all time films, Lost in Translation. The name of the song is called 'Last Night at Seventeen Eleven' (cos it was recorded on the 17th November). The video is below.

Last Night at Seventeen Eleven from Steve Beck on Vimeo.

Song recorded at a Blind Voyeurs jam on Tuesday. Thought it might look good to a few clips of Lost In Translation.

Niiiiiice !!

We played that on Tuesday during bandcamp to see if we could play it with drums AND to prove to ourselves that it wasn't a one off. It feels so natural that we've gonna risk sticking it in the set list for the Album Launch Gig, which, by the way, is at Champions, Westbourne on the 19th December 2009. Add that to your calendar and make sure you're there to see whether we f**k it up or not!!! :P

Laters, Steve

We have just posted our first mixtape of new music that is currently filtering through the world of BV. I am hoping that these mixtapes will be of a monthly occurrence so keep on checking back! Click below...

  'Pacific Shakedown' Mixtape (12 November 2009) by surrealmadrid75

This first mix has a lo-fi/west coast/surf type of vibe and the tracklisting is as follows:

Girls - Life in San Fransisco
The Clean - In the dreamlife...
The Drums - Lets Go Surfing
Pearl Harbor - California Shakedown
Real Estate - Beach Comber
Lawrence Arabia - The undesirables
The Magic Kids - Hey Boy
Cass McCombs - Harmonia
Atlas Sound - Doctor
Surfer Blood - Floating Vibes
Lissy Trullie - Ready For The Floor (hot chip cover)
Horse Shoes - The imperial School
The Clientele - I wonder who we are
First Aid Kit - Cross Oceans

Enjoy, James.

P.S. The album has arrived and looks/sounds great. Will be giving some away at our gig on the 19th,  http://bit.ly/1VoNXN

A quick note to let you all know that we're on Twitter now. Follow us at

http://twitter.com/blindvoyeurs

to get all the latest info AS IT HAPPENS!!

peace

Evenin' all,

We've just uploaded 3 new demo tracks to our myspace page. They are ...
* Closing Time
* Skyline
* Mannequin (which previewed here a while back) ...so go check them out HERE! :)

We also have a new line-up. Mark Wheeler (from Lounge) has joined the collective and will be contributing his talents to the ever growing musical catalogue of Blind Voyeurs. Admittedly, we've been a bit slack on the side of getting out debut album, Rule of Thirds, pressed but that is mainly due to being short of cash and we've been concentrating on new material. We're currently getting the new material up to giggable quality and are hoping to start gigging around October.

We've also bought the domain name BlindVoyeurs.com and are currently working on designing a brand spanking new website. Currently, if you point your browser to BlindVoyeurs.com it will re-direct you to our MySpace page.

Live long and prosper,
Steve

Hello,

Hope everyone has had a really great start the New Year. Its going to be an exciting time for BV. The album is finished and we are just finishing the artwork. This should be released in within the next month or so. We have also been busy writing many new songs as a result of our latest recruit, so expect some gigs very soon.

Evening folks.

Just a quick message. We've got Episode 3 of In 'The Studio' up on our youtube channel. We've not put one up for a while cos we've been a bit busy recently. In this video we're working on a new tune called 'You Can't Dance'. It was a song that was originally on James's own Myspace side project, The Unsocial Democrat.



And we were played on BBC Radio6 the other night as part of Tom Robinson's Introducing...
If you missed it (I did) you can check it out on the iPlayer over the next couple of days. Click on MONDAY in the Listen Again... area on the right hand side. It won't be there for long though, they only keep it on there for a week. We're on at about 1 hour 55 minutes into the broadcast/stream. You should be able to fast-forward.
Tom Robinson's Introducing...

And finally we'll be playing at The Gander in Bournemouth on Saturday December 6th in aid of a fundraiser for Dorset Cancer Centre. We've got something special planned so come down and check us out - we should be on early in the day which is good for you cos it'll be cheaper to get in (£3 b4 6pm & NUS, £5 after) There'll also be a raffle - all prizes have been donated by the bands. Should be a bit of a laugh!

Spk 2 u soon

Footage from the archives shot in Spring. This is from the earlier stages of recording BIG CITY We were still experimenting with the arrangement and had already had a couple of attempts at recording this song in 2007. It originally started life as an acoustic song

The actual recording process was spread over about 4 weeks - this is from the first session where we decided to start tackling the recording of this song. The week before we'd already layed down the initial MIDI tracks. This was shot at our friend's house (Andy Leddington), the same place as other Bournemouth acts have recorded - such as Dutch Husband, True Swamp Neglect and The Hat.


from BVTV

I can see light at the end of the tunnel, the end is near approaching... yep, that's right we've nearly finished the Blind Voyeurs' debut album. We've got a small list of a few bits here and there on each track that need tidying up. We've been clipping our lovies and sweeping the dust under the carpet for so long now that the album has completely changed direction from original vision. But all for the better me thinks - it actually 'feels' like a complete body of work.

In the last 14 or so months some of our favourite songs/tunes have been removed and new ones have surfaced that have raised the bar. We've made some controversial decisions and will be making MORE controversial decisions in the next couple of months. We've had band members come and go and then come back again (and then go...) We've also got a new top secret weapon that can only be unveiled in 2009.

In the next 2 to 3 weeks things should all be being finalised (I'm not saying too much yet cos you never know what might happen) then it's time to look at artwork and inlay cards etc.

People keep asking us 'how long does it take to make an album???' Well, the answer to that is - as long as it has to!

Y'see the thing is, we all have full-time jobs and we have social and family lives to lead. And then there's holidays and sicknesses etc. If we were a fulltime band working 9 to 5 on nothing but music, you could compress all the time we've spent on this album quite easily into less than 6 weeks. Don't forget that we're doing everything ourselves AND learning everything from scratch.

We've also switched our recording software platform 3 times since we started and new hardware equipment has been purchased halfway through from mixing desks to bass amps to microphones! Add to that the fact that we all really care about this project - it's a complete labour of love - so we're never using the "That'll do" mindset.

And then there are the gigs. We found out at the end of last year that with a project this big we can't concentrate on recording and rehearse for 2 or 3 gigs a month at the same time. So in 2008 we decided to tone it down a bit... until eventually not gigging at all!! It was tough turning down gig offers - and I still hate doing it - but we had to try and prioritise. Gig or record. One or the other. If we attempted to do both, each would suffer. We would have ended up with a string of shit gigs followed with a dessert of a half-arsed album. That would've pissed everyone off!

Anyway, I don't want to build it up - in fact I dunno why I rambled as much as I did. It all just came blurbing out! I do that sometimes. Anyway... enough for now

Hi guys.

We've just uploaded a short fly-on-the-wall 'rockumentary' to our youtube channel. Hopefully this will be the first of many as we give the public an insight into recording and writing new tunes.

This week we decide to take a break from recording to have a jam. We haven't actually had a jam for a couple of months due to holidays and constant recording and editing so this was a breath of fresh air for us.

This was recorded in our new studio which, interesting, is actually in the basement of a pole dancing studio in Southbourne

Hope you enjoy.


Blind Voyeurs: In The Studio - episode 1 on YouTube

Howdy folks.

Some of you may have noticed that Blind Voyeurs have been very quiet recently. Well, we've been busy beavering away at the album, writing new tunes, line-up changes and have had various holidays here and there. We're also shooting a new video.

Some of the tunes needed a few re-takes here and there. so we went back into the studio and re-recorded some sections. We've also re-arranged some tunes (but most people probably wouldn't notice the difference) Some tracks are proving to be problem childs and just not sounding 'right' at the moment so some re-thinks are taking place.

As you know Rob has now taken up a full-time career in graphic design up in London, but we're still hoping to get him to lay down vocals for In Power via the technological marvel of email..... just as soon as he looks at his inbox!!!

We've also started pre-production work for a video shoot. We were going to start shooting early August but we've had nothing but cloudy skies since then. Typical English weather!!!!

Meanwhile we've dusted down the Blind Voyeurs facebook fan page. We will start to upload EXCLUSIVE content to this page shortly so in the meantime get yourself over there and add yourselves to keep up to date.
http://www.new.facebook.com/pages/Blind-Voyeurs/8732545705

Peace