Al-Bummed out...

It's a weird time of year for us - and probably lots of grassroots bands - coming out of a bit of a winter break and preparing for gigs is fairly normal, but we're also in the thick of getting to the end of an eighteen month or so project to get our album recorded. And by jove, I do think we are on the home straight. It's a good job really, we're launching it in a little over a month which is incredibly exciting!

We had a few songs that had become live staples that would always feature on a forthcoming recording, a debate was had as to whether to revisit any EP tracks as our line-up has changed slightly since their recording and they do sound a bit different now. That was quickly shot down - it doesn't seem fair expecting people to part with their hard-earned cash in order to buy something they already have albeit sounding quite different.

So with four fairly well established live songs in the bank, thoughts turned to writing - as a collective we're lucky to have a naturally collaborative nature between us. Warren had some song ideas which he was fleshing out, Russ too. Alan wrote a few and attempted to put chords to them, but they generally turned out as dirges, haha! Warren completely revamped a couple of them, Ellie another, one of his chord structures survived with the help of a capo - although Russ added in some pre-choruses.

So whilst for shorthand we'll quite often between us refer to them being the songs of a particular member - in truth, they're all a melding of each of our collective creativity. Once the words, chords and structure are laid down, then Jim provides the beats, Alan the low end, Warren does Warren things - calling him a rhythm guitarist is rather downplaying his activities, and Jamie and Ellie will envision and deliver killer melodies leaving Russ to work out how best it is to deliver the vocals.

We'll work those ideas in rehearsals for a good while before introducing the odd one to live performances to see how they go. And generally, they've gone rather well - skimming through the twelve songs that will feature on the album (we had fourteen, two are on a back-burner), only two of them haven't had a live outing at all, so those of you who see us a lot will have heard most of them in some shape or form!

So that's the songs - then we need to record them, we've done that at a mixture of Ellie's studio (aka Darwin's HQ) and at Riff Factory under the careful supervision of Tom Carter. Once we get all those bits recorded, he has the unenviable job of weaving those disparate sounds together into something coherent - that's what's been going on over the last few weeks. We get together to listen through a good quality loud sound system and feed back if we have any issues, preferences or anything else.

As I type we've just had our third or fourth iteration of this back from Tom - it's excitingly close, in fact it might even be complete!. We'll decide together tomorrow at band practice when we can blast it through a loud and good quality PA and make a collective decision.

Then in the background, we have to decide things like an album name, artwork, getting CDs produced. We're lucky to have a degree of ability within the group (both band and wider team) to do this in-house which saves money - we've decided on a name for the album, the artwork is all prepped and ready in a format for the CD duplicator to use, so as soon as we're happy with the sound we can push the button on that.

We'll be also uploading to a distributor to push the album out on digital platforms too, which of course is the medium most people are using these days, and coordinate the release date with the day of the gig (26th April, if it's not in your diary already). We've organised the launch event ourselves too, booking Rough Trade and organising ticket sales ourselves - which, in truth, at times feels a little uncomfortable albeit very satisfying!

Then we'll need to share review copies with folk, upload to the BBC Introducing platform and hammering the hell out of it across the socials to try to publicise the release. It's been a labour of love from all of us, and we're so proud of it. Tom has really helped us to realise the kind of sound we want to achieve without it being something that you're not going find familiar with what we produce on a stage too. We're really excited that we'll get to share our hard work with you all soon!

Not least it will give us the ability to get back to more active rehearsing to make sure we're gig ready - tonight we'll be focusing on the set we've got planned for Saturday's slot supporting Shanghai Treason along with the Henshaw Band at Nottingham's Bodega. Then with the album signed off and in production we'll be able to start getting sets prepared and rehearsed for MurphyFest and the album launch! Exciting!