As Peteʼs blog goes into some details about the other tracks on EP2, which were different versions of previously released tracks, Iʼve chosen to take a look at the two
‘NEWʼ tracks on EP2, namely, ‘Elusiveʼ and ‘What Do You Want?ʼ…‘Elusiveʼ was originally titled, ‘Aliveʼ and was started Thursday 26th August 2010 at 16:37
Looking at the Logic file, I see a lot of rhythmical elements and extensive use of Stillwell Audioʼs ‘Olgaʼ synth plugin. I remember Andrew Sega from US band, Iris telling me about his crazy-sounding virtual synth with all the parameters labeled in Russian. Heʼd used it on quite a few tracks of theirs. This obviously inspired me to try it out and itʼs responsible for the distorted bass sound that drives the track and other squelchy/nasty elements too.
Thereʼs also some rough vocal ideas in that stage – verse melody, ‘Wait for me, no reaction. Give it some time, I need a reasonʼ and the chorus melody. The chorus is just, ‘There is something wrong inside my mindʼ repeated, so the lyric tweaks and addition lines were added at a later stage.
Thereʼs a plucked synth line in this track that I remember removing because I found it distracting, but we used to get Roger Millington (live keyboard and bass player at the time) to play it live.
I found a version that has the lyrics ‘you commit to SHIT sometimesʼ, but I guess we decided to change it to “SHIFT” later on for artistic reasons.
Thereʼs a particularly interesting version that Iʼd forgotten all about, itʼs a bit of a gem really. Itʼs called, ‘Elusive – Progressʼ. This version is a good demonstration of how the track evolved and the different approaches we considered before reaching the final version.
Photo by Ed Fielding/Retouching by Bernard Ryan
‘What Do You Want?ʼ – original title, ‘Doodle-4ʼ created Friday, 11 September 2009 at 09:05
This file contains a simplified version of the chorus progression and a very basic beat. Thereʼs some vocals I put in there too, but they have nothing to do with how things developed. The title then became ‘Defianceʼ – created Monday, 14 December 2009 at 11:34 – which contains a more developed verse and chorus structure including some rough verse and chorus vocal melodies which we ended up using for the rest of the writing process.
Thereʼs quite a lot of virtual Moog synth in this track, mainly for the bassline sounds. As the song developed I used some sampled cellos to punctuate the bass line, but felt they didnʼt work as well and decided it would be great to get some real cello on there instead. My friend Phil Jones obliged and recorded some for us. Phil was still having Cello lessons at the time, but did a great job. This added a touch of class to the production and led on to us contemplating the crazy idea of asking Chris Payne of Gary Numan band fame to play on the track.
Fortunately, Chris was up for this. We sent him a mix and gave him an idea of what we wanted. Chris then sent back a file with what could be considered the world’s longest
violin solo! He was obviously having fun and just played all the way through the track. As wonderful as it was, it wasnʼt what we were looking for, so we politely asked Chris to play particular lines from the song. He promised heʼd follow our instruction delivered us his interpretation of what we were looking for together with a glorious solo – the icing on the cake!
After several hours of editing(!) we had exactly what we wanted. Thanks, Chris for adding that extra bit of class to the track 🙂
Well, itʼs a little brief compared to Peteʼs, but I hope youʼve found this blog a little interesting and perhaps a little fun too!
Thanks for reading and for all your support 🙂
Geoff x
**To learn more about the various projects Geoff has been involved with (outside of tenek), scroll to the bottom for a list and links! 😉
*To purchase, please visit -> EP2 – Digital Re-Release via BandCamp.
Geoff Pinckney Projects:
Geoff Pinckney
Silent Unseen Productions
My Mercurial Drive
Geoff Pinckney (Solo Work)
Resident24
Democratize