had just like now on friday with broken chip and underlapper. underlapper was mind blowingly good (and broken chip was excellent, too). the last time we saw them live, they were doing hip-hop vocals and were fine, but not brilliant. they've morphed considerably since then and are pretty awe-inspiring now.
as for thursday night, all the feedback i've been getting has been fairly positive. those that have seen us play before have pretty much had a similar feeling to what we did - that it wasn't bad, but that it didn't quite take off like it can when it works. (i think the monstrous now were very much the same) but, particularly for those who haven't seen us before, there has been a very positive response - from the sound guy and the barman, who were both quite rapturous (and i've played to many many sound guys and bar folk to know what is real and what is politeness!) to others just there. so in retrospect, i'm fairly pleased with how it went. i agree that problems we did have were probably due to set list structures in that particular environment. i also think that we probably need to have more volume coming at us on stage to help us feel it and that then makes us do things better.
i've been pondering a lot over what to do with the love show come february. i feel a reasonable level of momentum building at the moment (reasonable for us in relative terms, anyway!) and i'd like to keep it going. however, i don't want to just try and graft in replacements for the live show to simply fill in the functions on you two. i would rather set it up differently in order that telafonica as the three of us still exists with a clear identity and function, and the live thing has its own identity, presenting what we create in a live context but without trying to be the three of us. i mentioned to marcella a little while back that i had thought of the idea of a small group of singers - possibly two female and one male - to do live stuff. i like that our live set-up is fairly simple and don't want to complicate matters too much, so that is a fairly simple way of getting something distinctive that isn't just a straight 'let's find a replacement to do marcella's bits' option. having also done the show at the vic on the park, i think it would be impossible for me to do anything meaningful running everything myself (laptop, fx, singing etc) other than just the old press play and sing along, so i've thought of possibly getting steve fox to help me do that stuff. at this point in time, i would pretty much envision all of that happening as a hired hands kind of thing for the live shows, while we continue creating telafonica as we always have.
lastly, this album. i think we can have it ready for january 6. what i think it will involve from a musical perspective is to put aside 2 days. on the first day, we lock ourselves in with the microphones. the songs still needed to be finished (i'm thinking specifically of gem and smells like rain) get done on that day - (re)written, sung, recorded. as do the last few vocal bits that need redoing. the second day we mix it all. now, a lot of the mixing is already done and we've been listening to it all and have a fair idea of anything we want to adjust etc, and then there's the newly recorded things from the first day which we'll have on that day. the mixing day i can do solo if needed, then run it through you guys for any more adjustments, though having at least one more pair of ears during mixing would also be great. i think we've sat on the whole thing long enough to know what it is now, and what needs to happen with new things to be able to pin it down - i think we just have to bite the bullet and do it. so - do you have a spare day or two bfore new year? we'll be away from friday until sunday the 23rd. perhaps a time between christmas and new year, if you're not away of course. otherwise, perhaps we could break them up - do the singing on one free day (weekend?) and then i can do the mixing after christmas.
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