fortressandthefatalist

Amy Blue: “Home Made”

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Clapham Junction Doesn’t Like The YYYs

We’re just in the process of buying an 8-track digital input so we can start recording a lot of (better quality) in the rehearsal space. Over the past seven years we’ve relied primarily on Simon’s slowly-dying cassette recorder that captures things in a rather sporadic fashion (plus you don’t know if it’s stopped or not halfway through a jam). We could theoretically put out a lot more free stuff that covers our other interests.. people generally aren’t fussed about instrumentals or weirdness unless they go looking for it. It’s C-Side material at best. But if it’s free, well.. score.

In terms of the new record we’ve got 9 songs recorded, one of which will need a re-record as it wasn’t our best take of the song (we’ve grown apathetic, as we’ve been playing it for 5 years now), plus we some newbies that are yet to be recorded: the fatalist, the fortress/kill them with death (it’s SABBATH), scissors (part 2… a shoegazey slip of a song), forcing the end… some more i forget the names of. We have so many songs and haven’t played the majority of them live as they’re either too complicated or sound quite weedy without a wall of overdubs. We’ll never get away from that, but we’ve tried.

In other news, I watched the Final Solution episode of The World At War last night and it put me off going to sleep. There are no words really.

If I ever get back to blogging more regularly, I’m going to make this a writing blog as I’ve got a few things I’d like to waffle about. But right now it’s Sunday and I want to kill some zombies in Left 4 Dead.

Amy Blue: “TFTF is on iTunes”

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Been a while since I last blogged. Can’t be arsed basically, but there’s been some events in motion, so may as well record ’em.

‘The Fortress and The Fatalist’ has gone off to the great big iTunes heaven in the sky and should be released in a week or so, artwork included. Very strange… I’ve no idea who will buy it or listen to it randomly. It’ll probably depend entirely on the reviews and if people think the record is good (or shit). The CD side of things has been more complicated, what with me having to learn how to use InDesign completely on the fly and working through hundreds of images to find the best ones that suited the piccy/lyrics/stuff idea. Which was pretty vague to say the least. But it’s looking rather nice and colourful, we had space for thank you’s and hello’s. Job done.

‘Who’s Wings?’
‘They’re only the band the Beatles could’ve been!’

We spent yesterday rehearsing in the sweatiest, most evil rehearsal space known to man. I felt like I was about to pass out from heat exhaustion during a rather long bit of playing. Absolutely buggered, I was. Took quite a while to get to, but it was clean. That’s a really unusual thing for a London rehearsal space. Most of them look like they’ve been befouled by Ostrich rapists. The place was also locked down like Fort Knox with the exit code being the date of the Battle of Hastings.

Amy Blue: “2008 FAIL”

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We’re nearly at the end of the year and I feel that I’ve achieved practically nothing. After the positive 2007 (getting things published, finding Lex, recording the new album, etc.) this year has been pretty much a constant bummer. There have been some highlights, like trips to other continents, walks on beaches, eating a lot of houmous, but I’m hoping next year will be more exciting, challenging and inspiring. Note to self: write more songs. Note to self #2: write more songs that don’t sound like other bands or other songs you’ve already written.

Shit.

My friend Jen from work is leaving on January 9th. She brought the following ridiculous thing into my life: Fail Blog. The best thing I saw on it was MARRIAGE PROPOSAL FAIL. Absolutely horrendous, and featured my new bestest pal, Consolation Bear. God bless ‘im, and her.

Amy Blue played one of three(ish) shows this year. Here’s a video from the last show of Simon’s song Amy Dates Destiny. It’s the fifth track on the album.. a reasonably upbeat song for us, melodic, intriguing lyrics, and of course any excuse for us to put loads of fuzz and feedback on the end. God forbid we become formulaic!

Good news though. The album is finally (yes!) finished and we’re just waiting on Rich (Random Colours) to send over the final mixed down wav files. In the last trip to the studio, we belted through six tracks, doing a bit of top and tailing.. fixing the odd blip and click, and then mixed two tracks from scratch that were bothersome. It’s come out better than I expected – very powerful, very loud, and it should make for a good listening experience if you dare attempt to. Pop in places, dark, distorted as all hell, and featuring a song about Ipswich prostitute murderer Steven Wright. It’s a Xmas stocking filler for 2009.

The final task is to finish putting all the artwork together, cropping and photoshopping the hell out of everything and maybe even doing 90s things like TYPE LYRICS OVER THE TOPS OF DEM. Or maybe that’s so played, and we need to paint the words on in our own juices. Maybe it doesn’t matter, as most of the cunts we send these to will probably not even use them as a coaster. I dread to think how many live out their days in a bin in some wanker’s office. Hopefully not SPIN magazine’s either.

Thank you to you if you came to the shows this year. You poor bastards. Though I think they were the best yet. Well done Lex on producing a wonderful little child. Thank you band for working so hard. See you all in 2009.