Hello dear Midlander,
Lots of projects have kept us occupied over the summer.
More new material for the BIG un-announced project, more work on Placeford (more soon, promise!) and the opportunity to contribute a remix to the Music of Sound's remix album, a collection of interpretations of tracks from their last album 'Eleven Short Stories'.
2,4,6,8, motorway 10
We were given the track M10, a swinging instrumental that bounces along for three minutes. You can hear the original here :
In trying to find a way into approaching the project, we did a little reading around. You don't need me to educate you on the evocative and seemingly ubiquitous presence of roads in pop / rock'n'roll songs. They're everywhere. People escape down them, fall in love on them, race on them, drive off into the sunset on them, have existential experiences on them... But the m10 is kind of different. A little bit of research unearths that it's really not a rock'n'roll kind of road.
Purpose eroded
The m10 tried really hard to be a motorway for almost 50 years after its opening in 1959, but it wasn't really motorway length (2.8m). Strategic changes and expansions to the network around London, in particular the development of the m25, meant that its 'purpose eroded' - a benign sounding, but brutal assessment from the wikipedia entry about the road. Poor little motorway.
So, that set us on the path for exploring the lonely melancholy of the m10 - very much our wheelhouse.
Having split the stems from the masters supplied by Neil, we set about dropping the tempo right down and attempting a hazy, woozy, Floydy kind of vibe. The original driving synth was replaced with a much slower, acoustic guitar led approach to underscore the falling flute motif.
To try and give some concrete context to the track we added a spoken voiceover, for which we tried a few different approaches - finally settling on the fairly calm read it has now (via a series of misguided Brian Blessed approximations).
It still needed some sort of head-nodding, slowly repetitious refrain so with a blatant disregard for mathematical accuracy, we added the top-line "three miles of road" as a vocal. It's actually 2.8 miles, but that's too hard to scan.
And there you have it. Our remix of The Music of Sound's m10.
Hope you enjoy it!
ALSO AND FINALLY!
Make sure you check out the amazing Paul F Cook's remix of the same track (as well as all his other ace stuff, of course). Totally different approach, but kinda interesting how we both found our way to using voiceovers.
