drummer on Skylarking

Jamaicaist.

BAHAHAhahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha

You know IT!

drumming on "Earn Enough For Us" is so nice

"the part of the time bomb was played by..."

been revisiting Skylarking a lot lately and just got bowled over once again by the drumming on Man Who Sailed Around His Soul.

Prairie Prince does cool airbrush paintings

it's just stunning that they tracked the whole record without drums and put them on last. because yeah, the drumming is fantastic throughout, particularly on "Earn Enough for Us."

also the secret ingredient on 'My Life In The Bush Of Ghosts', turning all those pieces built out of loops into things that no longer immediately sound like loops. also a completely solid person, which sure helps when it comes to this whole music thing. still touring with Rundgren live, as well as festivals with the Tubes.

"release the tapes!" the public cries, "release them now!"

it's just stunning that they tracked the whole record without drums and put them on last.

Yeah, I was fucking stunned when I learned this - I'd always assumed that the drums were tracked live to a click along with the drum machines/samples etc. but I never would have guessed the drumming had gone on last. It's such a backwards way of recording, and I'm surprised P. Prince got it to sound so natural - especially given how quickly and cheaply the record was made by post-1982 XTC standards.

ABCs Lexicon of Love tracked drums last, iirc. The final mix is a mesh of programmed and real.

Oh, Def Leppard's Hysteria or Pyromania - maybe both? - were drums last, too!

The Lexicon of Love was done using a method that was a bit like tracing, everything was programmed up first to get the arrangements down and then gradually replaced with "real" musicians to get the performances super tight.

Hysteria I think was all electronic drums out of neccessity.

Even before that! From Tape Op:

You and Mutt were trying something truly revolutionary, compared to the way rock drums were being recorded at that time.

The previous Def Leppard record, High ‘n' Dry, was recorded with real drums. On Pyromania, Mutt wanted to be experimental and leave the drums to the very end. He would keep changing the arrangements, so therefore the drum parts would need to keep changing. We had to figure out how to sync that up. It was on the cutting edge, but somehow we managed to put it all together. Take "Photograph," for example. Like all the other songs on the record, the song's drums were all samples from the Fairlight. There are no real drums. The cymbals are played, but the bass drum, snare, and toms are all machine. We had all kinds of drums in there, and I sampled them into the Fairlight and detuned them. We'd sample them in at half-speed, thinking that we'd get a better sound, because that's when Fairlight was at 8 bits – you had to get around that part of it. We sampled Black Beauty snares, other snares, and all kinds of bass drums. We ended up with something that Mutt liked that we could detune a little bit. When we were sampling in the sounds, we used KM 84s and we used 58s. There were so many mics. The toms were primarily Simmons toms back then, which were electronic. We experimented, EQ'd, and mangled the sound up a little bit to come up with the drum sound. It was pretty unnatural, but that was kind of the point.

The Fairlight seems like it basically became like another member of the band. What kind of role did it play as you got near the end of tracking?

We were recording Pyromania on 24-track, and we spent a lot of months on that record. By the time it came to mixing, the tape was peeling off in 2-inch pieces. It became clear from the intensity of working on a record like that, going over and over and over, blocking out backgrounds, changing arrangements, and all that. I'm surprised we ever got it finished, because the tape literally fell to pieces. It was experimental; we were using a Fairlight, trying to sync that whole thing up and work like that, and we hadn't figured out ‘til the end how we were going to do the drums. So even when "Photograph" was about to be mixed, Mutt decided to change the chorus. Songs would evolve, and he wanted to have control until the last minute of what the feel was going to be. Rather than commit to the drums, and have to re-cut them and re-cut them, he thought this was a better way to do it. I don't think anyone had done it before, but we decided to give it a shot – scary as it was – and we just went on blind faith. It was more about being able to change the arrangements at the last minute, which was very important to him.

1. The buzz of a bee crossing from left to right speaker on Summer's Cauldron

2. "Please don't pull me out, I'm relaxed in the undertow"

3. The moment Summer's Cauldron transitions into Grass

4. Colin Moulding reprising his role as the amorous West Country farmboy on Grass

5. The little clockwork ticky tick intro on The Meeting Place

6. Why wasn't Supergirl a single? Would have mad e more sense than The Meeting Place at least. Anyway, the guitar solo alone...

7. The audible vacuum of space that Another Satellite orbits through.

Yeah that one

8. "Your moony moony face..."

9. Todd Rundgren's idea to put The Man Who Sailed Around His Soul in 7/8 (I think)

(Sorry Andy)

10. Ballet for a Rainy Day and 1000 Umbrellas when taken as a piece are XTC's BoRhap

(until The Wheel & the Maypole of course)

3. The moment Summer's Cauldron transitions into Grass

i think this is probably the greatest transition ever put on a record

11. Big Day teaching Damon Albarn everything he knows

—ning here in summer’s caul-DRIIIIIIIIIII [string mob busts in]

is it a british thing to pronounce umbilical to rhyme with cycle? or just a partridge thing

I've heard both but it's not that common.

2. "Please don't pull me out, I'm relaxed in the undertow”

Ah, but it’s “I’m relax in the undertow!” Think there are one or two other songs where Andy adjectifies verbs like that.

I only knew Grass on the Fossil Fuel compilation for several years so was not emotionally prepared for the transition from Summer's Cauldron

Andy’s high note finale before the strings enter there is all time.

I also heard "Grass" first on a compilation and you'd never guess there was a transition from the previous song

Ah, but it’s “I’m relax in the undertow!” Think there are one or two other songs where Andy adjectifies verbs like that.

That's weird. It doesn't even make sense but never mind. I like it when he makes up words like "obheard"

isn’t it “please don’t pull me out / i’m relaxing the undertow” ?

it is indeed odd but "I'm relax in the undertow" is correct

It's some poetic English-massaging behind which the logic seems to be something like "if 'lax' is an adjective, why can't 'relax' be an adjective too?" The other one I'm thinking of is "suffocate seaweed" from "That Wave," where his pronunciation of "suffocate" is to the actual pronunciation of the verb "suffocate" as the pronunciation of "duplicate" (adjective) is to the pronunciation of "duplicate" (verb). I feel like he's done this in at least one other song, but I'm drawing a blank right now.

12. Season Cycle, like the whole of it and how it manages to be Penny Lane without being too similar. oh and also the sheer amount of DETAIL in that one, the backing vocals and how they literally cycle around the lead vocal like that

it's a nifty chord progression too, the chorus cycles through the same melodic idea in three distinct harmonic ways.

Actually maybe it's not Penny Lane, maybe it's Friends-era Beach Boys

i can hear the “penny lane” in there for sure, but it does seem to have a lot of brian wilson dna. the “i really get confused” bridge in particular sounds like it could’ve been on smile

Wish Wheel and the Maypole was on Spotify