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I’m officially done singing on my forthcoming album – unless of course something sticks out over the next few weeks that I can’t live with, but I’m sitting here listening back, and it’s sounding pretty cool. Not hearing anything that needs changing at the moment!!

People who are subscribing on Facebook would have heard all about the cold I had leading up to this session, and it was quite a worry for a while there. I went so far as to make a backup of a demo from my home setup here to take down to the studio in Tassie just incase the throat didn’t hold up. Was going to work on something new instead of wasting the day. But luckily it pulled through. Much thanks go to Lipton, Dilmah and the lemon tree out the front for their efforts in getting this album to the people this past week. I really owe those guys haha!

Anyway, we had “First Blood” to do singing on. Was a lil concerned about this one. The melodies are *just* lower than what I’d usually be comfortable singing, but at the same time, the main riffs to the song have a certain quality to them that is lost if the key to the song is changed and the riff played elsewhere. For a while I wasn’t sure which way to go with it, but I think it’s definitely come together well. Have a few harmonies to decide on using or not, but they’re all recorded, so this song is ready to mix!!!

Next up we had an intro piece for the album called “Magical Occurence”, which is a thing we did on an earlier recording ten ( ! ) years ago, but I never felt it was the right version of it.

The title, and music too is a very Kitaro kinda inspired thing that could probably go on his “Mandala” album very nicely, so I went for a Fender strat on the clean guitar to kinda replicate some of the guitar stuff on his album, which by the way is a big favourite of mine, and some of the instrument sounds are reminiscent of his stuff too, and I’m glad to say, this is the version I was hearing in my head!!

I started this one on my home setup a month or two ago, and took the tracks down to Red Planet where we added clean guitar, drums, and what has become the running joke, yet at the same time the unsung hero of these album sessions, my $300 casio keyboard for some clean chord pads.

This same keyboard was used for trumpet tones on “Tribal Eat Pop Slop” after we tried out a bunch of stuff but couldn’t find anything that worked for the song. Same thing goes here – the part was exactly what the piece needed, but the only difference was, I had demoed the song years ago and somehow remembered that the tone was called “Space Pad” and was number 73 in the sound bank, so I took it into the session especially for the part!! (No I don’t have a life!!)

The drums were good fun on this. Basically beating the hell out of two different floor toms overdubbed, then we added some reverb to give it some of that tribal thing, and it definitely adds to it and overall (I think anyway) adds a real nice and dramatic start to the album. Hopefully you will agree haha! This piece is ready to mix!!

Complete tracklisting for this thing (not in running order) is:

Magical Occurence
First Blood
October 22
(I Can’t) Start Again
Transition
Innate Self Destruct
Soundtrack
To A Scream
Lost Soul
Tribal Eat Pop Slop

The players on this thing are myself (guitars, lead vocals, piano / keyboards, bass, extra drums), My brother Mathew Szkup (drums and percussion, vocals, guitars), and our old comrade, Dale Brewer (bass and vocals), and I’ll be posting the first sound samples from it (along with confirming the title) over the next few weeks. Stay tuned!