Fast
forward.
Unbalanced
Grass’ first and only gig at White Noise had been four months ago. David
was still playing the keyboards, Laura was still living in
January
2005, anyway, was more of a millstone than a milestone for UG, but at least the
tail-end of the Christmas holidays were something to remember, as it was the
first meeting between Pooka, David, and the guitarist Andrew. Not only had
Pooka and David never seen Andrew play the guitar before, they had never even
met him before, either.
Yet,
on that cold day, Andrew sat on Pooka’s bedroom floor, the guitar plugged
into his computer, and played. That wasn’t nearly enough for the
musically starved artists, however, so that afternoon, something special
happened – they, for want of a better word, jammed. Due to the poor quality
of the recording equipment (a very old tape recorder), coupled with the fact
that the three had absolutely no idea what they were doing, the end result was
even more of a mess than Sappharis
Moonstone had ever been, yet – in a rather curious way –
somewhat inspiring. Well, it had eaten up an afternoon, anyway. The ‘Bush
Hill Park Sessions 2005’ will remain in the band’s possession,
ready to play if anyone ever has a need for assurance that brown sauce, despite
all other indications, certainly does rock around.
Everybody
is rocking with the sauce that is brown.
For
a record with only four tracks on it, Bigger Than Judas took an
extremely long time to make – considering that Sappharis
Moonstone had taken eight hours, this was more than a little confusing for
Pooka, at least, who set himself the task of travelling around the country to
visit the five band members (the exception, again, being Laura, who managed to
record her l337 xyl0ph0n3 5k1ll5 into her computer as WAV files, and taken
advantage of a broadband internet connection to port them to Pooka’s). By
the time May 2005 rolled along, however, he had managed to glean lead guitars,
rhythm guitars, bass, piano, keyboards, harmonica, xylophone, glockenspiel, synths, djembe, and the most
random percussion and sampling work ever. David stopped by, and the two warbled
into Pooka’s long-suffering computer microphone under the pretence of
recording the tracks’ vocals. They also realised that they had to knock
together an acoustic Never Touch You, which they duly did. Three
quarters of an EP completed… surely it would all be finished soon.
Three
months later.
August 2005, the time-location of a bizarre creative venture known
as the Knightmare RPG. However, in its dark
underbelly, three members of UG lurked, and, as a remarkable coincidence, three
UG T-shirts. Oh, and a computer and a microphone.
With
a ‘session in progress’ sign on the door, for an hour one dormitory
was out of bounds for all but Pooka, David, Keith, and DJ Matt ‘The
Experience’ Richings, as Keith finally stepped
up to the mike and let loose with additional vocals for the chorus of Please,
Siren. One practice, one take, and one digital cleanup effort later, and
the dark deed was duly, dastardly, duckingly
done – except with perhaps a little less alliteration.
Be
that as it may, Bigger Than Judas was complete,
or as complete as UG could be bothered to make it at the time.
I
never thought I’d write that.
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