ArtEfficient Intelligenz

2005 avant glitch experiment.

This track had been kicking about since 2002.

Sparking Toys 2002. Probably actual first demo we recorded using a basic DAW.

Absolutely awesome guitars by Rachel Johnson, particularly as it was our first DAW recording, using a 300Mhz AMD computer which didn't cope/mpute with much at all. Cubase back then, running within such an environment, was quite simply a digital 4-track. I could never get it to cope with 8 simultaneous tracks, for sure.

Long live 20bit Echo Gina convertors, basically. Poor things coped with so much on their own.

Pictured - Gage onstage at the Bull & Gate as Sparking Toys, circa 2002.

Evan - keys + drum programming

Gage - bass

Mark Rutherford - vocals

Rachel Johnson - guitar

Sparking Toys 2001/2. Probably the first demo we recorded onto a DAW.

Whenever we played as Sparking Toys at the Bull & Gate in London's Kentish Town, even as a 3 piece without a vocalist -before Mark Rutherford, featured here-, the crowd went mad with this one, in ways I'd never seen with dexdexter.

Gage and I never told anyone we used to be in dexdexter - in fact we hid it as much as we could.

So these crowd responses were true, unlike it seemingly was the case with others - lol.

...Mark and I also got chatted up by Chrissie Hynde over a pint after a gig, about the meaning of these lyrics. ..Mr Rutherford's lyrics were kind of depressing so she wanted to know more about 30s angst.

She had also kinda become a regular, though she often kept herself to herself and would give us big smiles as answers, having previously grilled us. Anyways, she was always very very cool with us, and perhaps remains my best non-proxy music industry interaction to this day.

London's Bull & Gate house cider atop dangley massive wooden tables, atop proper old, wooden, over-mopped floors, while Chrissie Hynde percolated us unrelentingly, questioning why we just played live, and why we 'didn't want anymore' from the industry.

She kept getting us pints so the answers kept getting worse.

And so did my drumming, once, at The Bull & Gate.

Not, one, pint, before, drumming, I learnt.

Evan - keys + drum programming

Gage - bass

Mark Rutherford - vocals

Rachel Johnson - guitar

Rather pleased with how the production evolved for this one, with Mark Rutherford on vocals, and Rachel Johnson on guitar.

..Despite it still just being yet another live cassette tape demo.

..I also find Gage's bass on this particular version to be more exquisite than usual. By now, she had refined this bassline into something of a live cult thing too. Such a fine fine FINE bass. You couldn't groove with programmed drums the way Gage did, if you were born 73 times, cause there was no in-ear monitoring and the headphones we were using came out of a basic splitter sharing the signal, so I remember I couldn't hear myself and don't know how she could either.

I was also finally getting the hang of the E4, basically. Cause all the drums, and sequences, and keys, came from it, on this one. Beast.

No wonder the E4 was the SFA's favorite piece of gear to get ravy / mangly back then.

I remember our manager Raf Edmonds ‘forcing me’ at the time, to push the vocals up, a lot more than advisable, on the back of some deal with Sony.

And this will now remain karaoke forever.

Raf you c***.

...I'm just sort of sayin' lol.

Evan - keys + drum programming

Gage - bass, arrangements - as always

Mark Rutherford - vocals

Rachel Johnson - guitar

Audio replaced 13/06/21

Original picture by Itxaso Díaz.

'Evan remember not to do dinosaur hands ffs' - and he went and did.

1997 experimental track.

Always meant as an interlude, probably a B side lol.

Though I must say crowds including Chrissie Hynde loved this one when we played a longer version of it live, with me on live drums, Gage on bass, Rachel on guitar, and sequenced keyboards including a few Blade Runner dialogue samples sprinkled as lyrics. The reaction was always fairly brutal, a live favorite which I had always considered an 'ugly duck'.

Original picture by Itxaso Díaz.

Part of the demo recorded immediately post dexdexter, early 1997.

Gage's. Bass. Here. Too.

The Clash, Marley, and pre-dub - all in there.

Bass-Grooving like that, during the outro, to a -famously sterile- early 90s Boss drumbox, in 1997. WTAF.

I must also say I would've never wanted Xav to sing this song, whatsoever.

This vocal was ideated by G as we worked out new songs post Xav -though I already had the chords for this one figured out and embryonic-ly sequenced etc-, G was definitely the vocalist who ideated this tune, and it's the one and only, the sole ideal materialization of both lyrics and melodic delivery for this song that there could ever have been, particularly at the time.

I absolutely love what G did here, both melodically and in terms of triple-layered syntactic innuendos and linguistic tongue-in-cheek-und-chinwags. It's absolutely f***ing genius, with quadruple-y intertwined meanings at times which will forever -unfortunately- wash over most people's perceptual abilities, and Xav could've never even have approached the vicinity on this one, with an aid stick.

End of.

..*Right up there* with G's best guitar work ever, too, imnsho lol.

Original picture by Itxaso Díaz.

Part of the demo recorded immediately post dexdexter, early 1997.

Spanish Basque British Americana or what.

The song that featured all of my samples from Hollywood's Stacey 's Casio, from a celesta sound as leadchord during verses, to the actual 'Casio auto-accompaniment chord' section, which had a million organ-like harmonics in there and it probably remains the most interesting accompaniment mockup-chord-texture I ever came across to this day, having owned a few casios in my day.

The fx sounds are also from its 'preset fx's completely Emu-ed up.

I always wanted to do that.

A state of the art sampler workstation device, mangling with pure casio potential.

My old Casio VL1, SK1 and Yamaha PSS270 home thing also got sampled at some point. Best fx ever.

Casioxters lol.

Original picture by Itxaso Díaz.

Part of the demo recorded immediately post dexdexter, early 1997.

Picture by Itxaso Díaz.

Original picture by Itxaso Díaz.