Haze/World Turtle News April 1997

Haze
World Turtle
Von Daniken NEWS UPDATE! April 1997
April 1997
April 1997

World Turtle Recording News
Ex-World Turtle, Chicken Ass Blues Band & Pigs, Apes & Spacemen drummer Sam Carr is working with us on the new album. He's playing a combination of Simmonds pads and practice pads with triggers fitted, so the performance can be recorded live into Cubase and then edited and used to trigger any drum sounds we like. We've recorded 'One Day', 'Wolf', and 'Rip Van Winkle', and results so far are promising, giving the 'feel' of a live drummer with the vastly superior sounds available from drum machines/samplers etc. We're running out of time, and Sam has family & other band commitments, but hopefully he'll be able to get a couple more tracks done, probably 'Heroes' & 'Let Go'.

We've also reformed the 'Stone House Choir' for backing vocals on 'One Day', with the addition of Martin 'Frederick Satsuma' Sommers and Mick & Mole from Izon Paradise. All together we've recorded 60 voices singing 5 harmony parts on 8-tracks, giving a fairly large sound! Martin has also provided backing and some lead vocals on 'More'. Other guests confirmed are sax & flautist Derek Nash, a university colleague of mine who now works for the BBC & has his own jazz band 'Sax Appeal', & recently toured with the Bootleg Beatles. Cousin Linda Wilson, who is first viola in the Hull Youth Symphony Orchestra has contributed to a couple of tracks, as has violinist Gordon Walker. Finally we have the 'league of crappy guitarists', comprising Me & Paul, Warren Jacques, Nick Robinson & Martin Sommers all playing acoustic guitars on 'Wave', which we recorded in the back garden last Saturday! We asked Fudge of Pendragon to do a couple of tracks, but he hasn't got back yet...

So Why All The Special Guests?
Especially when the biography goes on about how good it is being a duo?

Well, it's one thing inviting friends to play on your album, it's quite another having the buggers in the band! But seriously, we've been a duo now for five years, and at the beginning we felt we had to justify not having a drummer or full time bassist, and ended up being quite defensive about it, especially in the light of antediluvian prejudice against 'machines' on stage.
However, since recording the Haze CD, on which we played fairly safe, sticking quite closely to the previously recorded versions of the songs, we're now working on eleven new songs (plus one previously recorded 'Rip Van Winkle'), and are a lot more confident about taking chances with the arrangements/sounds etc, and don't feel that we've got anything to prove by doing it all ourselves. It's also interesting to see how other people approach the material, without the pressure of having to be democratic that being in a band demands. Hence all the guest appearances, in some cases to replace keyboard samples with 'real' sounds, in others to add new creative elements to the songs.

All the backing tracks are now recorded, Paul is in the middle of doing the guitar parts, so there's just the lead vocals, a few odds'n'ends and the mix down to go! We're still more or less on target to finish by April & have the CD out in time for a September/October tour. More soon.

Chris


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