To give a little more insight into the Board’s songs, the lyrics from all the songs in the first two albums are now available on the website.

Simply click on a song name on either the Eponymous Debut page or the Difficult Second page to be taken to a more detailed view of each song showing the lyrics and credits for the song. Over time we’ll probably add to these details to give some more background about the songs and their inspiration.

I thought this blog would be very busy over the time we were putting together our 3-album release, but in fact the whole process has been so demanding of time that nothing has been posted here about the albums. So over the next week or so I’ll try and rectify that with a series of posts about the albums, starting with a quick run through of all three before I go into more detail in the next post.

Eponymous Debut

Some artwork problems (of my creation) created a delay in getting this album completed, and there was some to-and-fro between the duplication company and myself to fix it, but once sorted and the CDs arrived I was very pleased with the results. Thanks to Stuart of Gillies Audio for providing a great service and being patient in the face of my errors.

Difficult Second

There was a lot of preparation involved to make the ‘Album-in-a-day’ work smoothly, but it paid off and despite a couple of glitches (no sound on the webcast and me falling asleep unexpectedly) I think the results speak for themselves. The finished result is certainly rough around the edges, but we came up with some tracks that I’m really quite proud of that could easily sit beside anything on the first album were they subject to more rehearsal and a less rushed recording process. There are elements of everything from progressive rock, folk and blues through to the avant-garde, music hall and even country all tinged with a bit of a punk spirit.

To mirror the collaborative nature of the first album, we put out a call for guests for this album, resulting in an album with three different theremin players. Gordon Charlton of Beat Frequency and Wilco Botermans added a wide variety of theremin parts, from simple melodic accompaniment to wild and weird sound effects, to six of the nine tracks – thanks go to both of them for taking the time out to join us.

Stockholm

All the music on ‘Stockholm’ is improvised instrumental music, but some of it was recorded as far back as our second rehearsal on fairly basic equipment, so some editing and noise-removal was required to bring those pieces up to a similar sound quality as the more recent recordings. There are a few tracks for which only a few seconds will be audible in the film of Stockholm, but the whole track is included on the CD for the sake of completeness.

Incidentally, the picture above shows the artwork for all three completed albums in almost all its glory. What you don’t see in the picture are the insides of the CD booklets – all three have two pages of liner notes about the songs, including a short extract from the Stockholm script in the case of that album.

Last Chance

And finally, the pre-order offer was due to end on the final release day, but with the delay to ‘Eponymous Debut’ we decided to let it run until we had sent the first batch of discs out. In that time we got a few more orders for all three discs, so I’m going to let the offer run until the end of this month or until the ‘Difficult Second’ discs run out (which won’t not be long as only 50 were made). Once they are gone we’ll not be producing any more, so the only way to get the second album after 31st of August will be by download.

Click HERE to order the 3-disc collection before they’re gone.

Yes, we’re releasing three full albums in three days.

Eponymous Debut

The first album will be released on the 13th of July 2008. This is the one with all the songs, including a couple that have been available to download from www.lunacyboard.com for a while now. It has unexpectedly turned out to be a concept album, or at least to have an underlying theme. Full details are available here, including the ability to pre-order a copy now to be amongst the first to hear it.

Difficult Second

The second album will be released on the 14th of July 2008. It will be part of the ‘Album-a-Day’ project, being written, recorded and published within a 24 hour period immediately following the release of the first album. Sounds like a suitably daft thing to do, but the idea is to open up the improvisational and collaborational nature of the Board so that anybody watching the live webcast can contribute an idea, as well as keeping us well-and-truly on our toes for the day. I can’t describe what will be on it, as it will all be inspired on the day, but you’re welcome to be a part of it!

No risk with this one – not only will you be able to hear it being constructed, but it will also be available as a free download at the end of the 24 hours. If you really want it on CD, we’re doing a very limited run of signed, numbered copies for anybody who pre-orders both the other albums. Further details are available here.

Stockholm

Our instrumental soundtrack album will be released on 15th of July 2008. Featuring almost entirely improvised pieces recorded over the lifespan of the band, which form the soundtrack to the forthcoming animated film “Stockholm”, this album travels from rhythm-led rock numbers via jazzy interludes to sinister ambient soundscapes. Full details, pre-order information and downloadable samples are available here.

It’s been hard work and a lot of fun getting this all together, so get your pre-orders in and put the 13th/14th of July in your diaries to join us at the webcast!

Over two years ago I mentioned a re-mix that I had completed, but no more was said. Unfortunately the album it was destined for, a special re-mix version of Ninki V’s album “We Can Fly”, is currently on-hold, so the song, called “Count the hours, Fix the Wings”, will appear on our debut album.

The song is based on Ninki V’s original solo melodica piece, which has been warped and extended before adding several layers of theremin, guitar, mandolin and vocals. I have now also re-recorded the vocals and added some de Florette drums through the process of xenochrony, and so we now have another Lunacy Board track to add to the growing collection.

Ninki V’s style is certainly as eclectic as our own – she composes for a Wakemanesque collection of Casio keyboards, theremin, flute and melodica, whilst her stage show includes playing the theremin with her hair and extensive use of puppetry. Jump over to her website for some samples.

In a similar vein we’re pleased to be including our first foray into xenochrony on the album. “Xenochronous Requiem For A Head Laying In A Field In Butler” was based on a bass solo by Board collaborator Doug Boucher and was originally destined for the “Stockholm” soundtrack album.

Since the track fits within the style of the first album so well, and has already been regularly featured on Spellbound Radio, it has been placed where it belongs. Doug has been pretty busy writing new material for his solo shows lately, so a trip to his Myspace page is worth a regular visit as he swaps new material in and out on a regular basis.

We got some good recordings for the three ‘big numbers’; “Performance Evolution” where we managed to navigate through several time signature changes and vocal styles, “Fairytale Propaganda” which we’ve tended to play too fast in the past, but settled on a more laid back tempo today, with a long building introduction partly inspired by Pink Floyd’s “Shine on you Crazy Diamond” and the new song “Freeman” which came together quite naturally and took on a new life with bass and drums.

The two atmospheric spoken-work songs, “PKD Dum Dum” and “The Bell Curve” had a few layers of percussion and vocals added, which I’ll be editing down to fit into the style of the music. “The Parallel Curve” also started life as a slow spoken-word thing, but we’ve tried a number of approaches to it over the last year without success. Today Sean started singing the lyrics at a much faster tempo and it fit well, so we quickly pulled together a rhythm part for him to sing along with and we finally had a recording of the song that actually works.

With all that put together, I have some further overdubs to add, then work can begin on mixing, so I’ll probably not be reporting back on here until I have some completed songs to comment on (i.e. Hype!)

There will also be some lead-up PR work being done over the next few weeks to let people know what’s coming from The Board, including the cover for the album, which is now complete and agreed and the ability to pre-order the album with a special incentive!

I’ve just finished off the first of the three songs that have been worked on for the last week or so, ‘The Winning Smile’. I ended up taking out all the midi tracks and keeping everything analogue – vocals, guitar, ukulele and the Crumar Performer string section – it sounds totally different to the first attempt.

Then, after posting this and looking through the lyrics to the song it dawned on me that I had missed a whole section out, which explained why the song had ended up about a minute shorter than I had expected.

Currently busy with the artwork for the new album…

No update on finished base tracks, as I ended up working on three at once, two of which are our longest songs, so are taking a while. The other day I spent a lot of time on the introduction to ‘Fairytale Propaganda’, which builds up gradually from a quiet and gentle start to a full-blown rocker. When I returned to work on it at the weekend I realised that it was just too ornate and over-orchestrated, so it will need to be stripped back a fair bit.

‘The Winning Smile’ also had to be changed, as I had set it up with a simple piano backing, but it just didn’t sound as good as it had done previously, so it now has a gentle guitar backing to start it off, but is still in the early phase of construction, so will also be getting some bass and strings.

‘Performance Evolution’ is our big concept number in about five sections which vary in style from ethereal dream-like harps and strings via neanderthal punk waltz and sugary pop to aggressive guitar serialism. Needless to say, this is taking a while to come together, though all the basics are there – it’s really only needing drums, vocals and lead guitar parts added. More on this when it’s done.

This was a very productive evening, following a bit of research over the last few days, I have written and recorded the basic backing parts for a whole new song. It is an upbeat, almost 50′s style, song about the antics of neurologist Walter Freeman. He came up with the idea of the transorbital or ‘ice pick’ lobotomy, featuring the practice of inserting sharp implements into the eye sockets of patients and waggling them about inside their brains. No, really.

What I think is more jaw-dropping is that he traveled the USA in his lobotomobile (yeah – see what Batman was missing!) performing this procedure without surgical equipment or even any surgical training. Sometimes it worked, but there are many documented examples, of over 3000 he carried out, where things didn’t exactly go to plan.

Although lobotomy in general has been widely banned and replaced by antipsychotic drugs, there are still a few places in the world that practice a more refined variation. Like Ninewells Hospital in Dundee, just up the road from here.

Nice to know.

Another set of backing tracks have been completed, this time for a short spoken-word piece by Sean, called “The Bell Curve“. It is a very laid-back track, starting with an atmospheric build up of synth textures which give way to a gentle string-based backing. This was the first time I’ve extensively used my ‘new’ Crumar Performer on a recording – the resonant synth-brass sound sits in the background of the introduction, then the string sound was used in the main part of the track. It can be quite noisy compared to modern synths, but has a great feeling of movement which helps keep the fairly simple chord pattern interesting.

Some of the effects noises in the introduction came from the depths of my old TX81Z sound module, several of which were originally designed for the instrumental “Mick’s Astonishing Megamix (parts 1-4)” back in the Deserters – slowly evolving drain-like sounds. Great fun to revisit those things and find another use for them.