ArtEfficient Intelligenz

Guitars and vocals by Stumpy Music https://soundcloud.com/stumpymusic

Written by ArtEfficient Intelligenz and Stumpy Music.

Written by ArtEfficient Intelligenz and Stumpy Music.

https://soundcloud.com/stumpymusic

Guitars and vocals by Stumpy Music.

Written by ArtEfficient Intelligenz and Stumpy Music.

https://soundcloud.com/stumpymusic

Picture by Itxaso Díaz.

One of the v first songs Gage and I put forth, as dexdexter took form.

Long track, which we knew wasn't viable 'as was', but we were always easily able to condense / drastically arrange overnight / able to extract about 5 songs from - us, and anyone else, with a track this long lol.

..Bagpipes. Get in.

Produced by Colin Thurston.

Recorded for free, live in one day, for a Melody Maker promo, at Protocol studios, London, early '96.

..We seemingly did a duran studio number on this one, in that we still didn't have it quite quite finished by the time we went in the studio. I remember it being a bit loose-ends in places, kinda like fashion show garments not quite sown solidly as of yet. But when we got to Protocol studios, somehow it all gelled and we more or less recorded the song live, including designing its outro ending, which I distinctly remember not being worked out, with everyone chipping in ideas on the go, including Colin. He was *quite* shocked and impressed we dared finish with a punky 3rd harmonic riff thing lol.

The song Gage recorded with Colin Thurston's bass chorus pedal, as used by him on the Rio album, and which, when we finished recording, Colin gave to Gage cause that's how impressed he was.

It don't get more romo than that.

Didn't use it that much, cause it instantly turned ANY bassline into save a prayer. Big massive old blue thing it was, classic gear. I think Gage used it on songs like Winter Again and April from then on.

The telephone dial upfront was a sample of my London number at the time, made with an early 'digi-dialler', which we thought hilarious at first, til I had to go ex-directories cause people figured out the tone/s and it had all gone fairly Smash Hits pretty quickly.

..This particular song happens to be the only one which is not the master / band master recording - of all tracks uploaded onto this dexdexter playlist.

This was somewhat styled into a proper romo number, production wise, by Colin Thurston, as he was aware of the label frenzy at the time, and probably thought making us sound like duran duran would report benefits I guess.

..Whenever I pointed out this song was getting fairly 80s production-wise, down to the choice of snares to be simultaneously triggered with Laura's real drums (recorded in Protocol's stone wall booth, a bit bright and a bit too stony reverby sounding), Colin always answered 'don't worry Evan, I know what record companies are after'.

I'm almost certain he was after a cross between Talk Talk and Duran Duran, two of his old time productions. Whereas this song always reminded me of Feeling Called Love or most anything else by Pulp.

Horses for causes lol.

..We were never [gonna be] as good as Talk Talk, so that wasn't gonna be painted on by a second extra thick coat of a day's worth of production, but we sounded plenty better live, than Duran Duran any Wednesday afternoon lol. I've seen Duran live enough times, not saying this for free. And I think this was finished, recorded / engineered, mixed, and produced on a Wednesday, so the circle is now complete.

'You can play keys using more than two fingers simultaneously, so stop asking me about Nick Rhodes', Colin said to me during this very session.

I still personally prefer Tiger Tiger by Duran to India by Roxy.

Duran are/were [albeit perhaps once upon a time], an awesome, rocking and truly innovative & truly sophisticated band, whose studio catalogue is probably 3/4 genius level output.

..Not saying anything less than - I moved to Britain cause of, and Depeche, Genesis, the ELO, Ultravox, Tears for Fears, Orbital, Bowie, Eno. The Beatles. I absolutely love distinctly British music.

I criticize it, cause I'm now familiar with it, so the grass is always greener.

But I absolutely loved Britain, it was my welcoming, nurturing, beautiful home for 23 years - or perhaps rather London, as Jel P. says. Lol.

And I never heard harmonies like Simon Le Bon can cut them either, ever.

Laura Elle : drums

Evan : keyboards, sequencers

Gage : bass, backing vocals

G : guitars, backing vocals

Xav : vocals, backing vocals

That's no cutout - that's Joan Collins with us at Harrods don't you know. Creatures Featured.

She kinda behaved like a life-size cutout, anyway.

First thing she asked us: '..So, who's Dex?'

Mmmyeah.

Original picture by Itxaso Díaz.

AR201222

2007, home studio, getting a tad electronic on a song Gage had originally composed on -self taught- acoustic guitar.

Featuring Phil Spector 'statement' samples from the documentary 'The U.S. vs. John Lennon'. No vocoder is required whenever sampling Phil Spector's speech, but I used one just for good oblique measure.

For educational purposes indeed.

FilamentStars by ArtEfficient Intelligenz

Audio replaced 13/06/21

G's guitar on The Day After. F*** yep.

One of the few instances where Xav backed G, playing 2nd guitar during TDA, supporting chords / supporting choppy chord bass, and the reason G got even more experimental with the very end there. Which was great.

Also one of the songs where Colin Thurston's old bass chorus pedal unit later really shined, creaming this bassline to spatial perfection.

And Gage's bassplaying here, against those off-kick drums, during TDA - it's like the swisswatch meets Mick Karn of bass-playing or something.

Picture by Itxaso Díaz.

Audio replaced 13/06/21 - 'slightly remastered'

..Cause here lies dexdexter... and why not.

Bass and guitar were originally recorded slightly left / right, off center, as per G's advice in order to get my Boss BX16 keyboard mini mixer, with mini faders, mini buttons, mini knobs, mini-everything, to cope with the complete band signal / amplitude th/ump/th.

So it is what it is - recorded in my Bayswater living room, with am early 90s Boss drum machine as a drummer, though fully programmed via early MIDI-only Cubase v.1.8, running on a -f*ing classic- Mac SE HD which couldn't really handle complex hi-hats & triggering busy syncopated percussion samples, and with my mini Boss mini mixer handling it all too. We blew -I blew- Gage's Trace Elliot amp twice, cause impedances und amperages just did not agree with. We were lucky to get these demos done before the whole set up just blew up lol.

Plus my cat waiting his turn to jump on my Juno 60 as it warmed up. We had entire songs recorded with the last few seconds featuring Pilchards, having decided to take a walk / nap across my warmed up Juno60. Priceless.

Whenever Juno 60 pads sounded extra dense, it occasionally was cause Pilchards was switching chorus modes while napping atop the fan area.

What a legend Pilchards was.

Bad White Cat! Xav softly screamed often, while giving him a treat and learning how to say it in Spanish too - so Gato Malo Blanco was Pilchards' street name from then on.

And I guess fair to say, all of these demos are produced by him, cause entire live band takes were deleted, whenever Pilchards decided they weren't good enough, by slowly walking across my keys.

Producers can be subtle, and they also can be brutal.

Feline ones don't really give a sh*t about artists' feelings lol.

Those noises upfront are Xav and G intervening with crisp bags, standard plastic bags, and whatever else, atop my intro sequence. The effing nerve lol. That's how bored we were of recording these demos til they sounded like this, basically.

It also meant Xav's vocal cords were sometimes fairly strained up by the time we got to record sort of 'the one' - and that's sometimes latent on these demos, and that's not fair either, cause no matter how tired I was, my moog lines were gonna sound the same - well, thanks to G, who always kept me on track, riffs wise, cause I was known in the band for digressing rather a lot with my keyboard lines.

Winter Again, like Rosa Mystica, and April 31st, were song titles that Mónica, the guitarist Gage and I had worked with in Spain pre-dex, had come up with, together with lyrics. We never changed the titles.