Back at Dreamtrak

I haven’t blogged much recently, but you already know that. “Yeah where have you been? What else do you have to do, Alex?” Fuck you.

For the last three days, I’ve developed a sore throat and watched – or, felt – it grow steadily worse. It feels like there’s something lodged in there so whenever I sing, or swallow, or yawn, it hurts. I’ve had so many Strepsils that I’m starting to suspect a Strepsil has got stuck in there and is the cause of my unending misery. (Except for that being obviously not true.)

In fact, when I got home today, my throat was SO painful I could hardly speak, and my mum marched me into the kitchen where I proceeded to consume honey, cough syrup, Lemsip Max, gurgled salt water, and – you guessed it – Strepsils. Is it possible to overdose on Strepsils? What a way to go. Your final moments consumed by the medicinal strawberry flavour as they dissolve your insides away.

My throat feels nearly completely healed, now, but I’m sure it’s just a temporary measure, a result of it being doped up on all the throat mixtures my mother shovelled at it.

Today was the first day of three consecutive days that I’ll be in Dreamtrak Studios recording my new three-track electronic video game-inspired EP. I know that’s quite a long title, so for short I’ve dubbed it “117% Complete” – a Spyro The Dragon reference. (The studio is in Hackney, the same place I recorded Chameleon Circuit. Hackney is where music HAPPENS. That should be their slogan. Does Hackney have a slogan?)

The first song, “Sonic Doesn’t Need A Story”, was all but finished today (the ‘all but’ being that, rather crucially, it’s missing my voice). Tomorrow we’ll start on “I Hate Mario Kart Wii” and on Monday we’ll finish with “Pokémon, What Happened To You?”

So I’m spending the evening tucked up in bed, fully clothed, listening to Dan Deacon, waiting for Lily on Skype, and trying not to move my neck. And resisting the urge to send my new song to everyone on my Skype list who’s online right now with a message saying “LISTEN! NEW MUSIC BY ME! AHHHHH!” It sounds great, it really does. Tom knows exactly what he’s doing and whenever I had a criticism, he’d already be thinking the exact same thing. And we always found a way to resolve/improve what we didn’t like. He’s just brilliant.

I even thought about copying a bit of it to upload here, but I don’t wanna spoil the surprise. I’ll release it on (provisionally) March 15th, and when that happens you can all rush here to click the embedded player and hear it for free just like Parrot Stories, and it’ll be very exciting and fun (although you can also pre-order if you have faith in my/Tom’s abilities). I want that “silence till March 15th” rule to include even my best friends (with exception of Tom, who will help make it, and Alan, who will have to manufacture it). That way the release day means as much to me as it does to you, it’ll be a mutual “ahh let’s find out what it’s like/what people think” experience.

I will tell you that the song very much reflects the Sonic gaming experience – it feels like you progress through ‘levels’, there are distinct sections to it, and I used the melodies from Green Hill Zone, the Sonic 1 drowning music and the Sonic 1 theme as a basis for what I’ll eventually be singing. (Also, one of the instruments – in fact the very first thing you hear – was the result of Tom saying ‘let’s have something that sounds like the Animal Hospital theme! I love that’. Fact.)

Tom and Oli speak in a different language, by the way. “I want the music to release. Take up the attack but then feed through the delay until it oscillates at a 16th beat.” I can vaguely guess what that means, but it mostly sounds like a covert code for my assassination.

It’s less than two hours until my next Strepsil.

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