Now that I have my new studio toy, a Yamaha 01x console, I’m really keen to get back into record. Problem is, I have nothing to record. I could go back and re-record some older tracks but they are not me anymore. I’m a different person and my music is very different. To get inspired I’ve been jumping between all my favourite songwriters in an almost manic fashion. One moment I’m on a Radiohead kick, the next I’m being blown away by a Neil Young performance.

So it has finally occurred to me exactly what I want to do. I want to record a double album. Yes I know that sounds pretentious and I’ve said my share against the sort of artists the do record doubles (RHCP???) but it feels the right thing to do for the reason I want to do it.

I am more moved by performance than anything else these days. That said I do hold great regard for great songwriting. My love of the performance is what is actually stopping me from starting the acoustic gigs yet. To be a successful as a solo / duo you must be “entertaining”. Entertaining in the way of songs that people enjoy but ultimately can ignore as background music. I’m still trying to find the balance between that and moving someone with an astounding performance of a powerful song that has resonance.

This mentality has been permeating through my thoughts on sound production / recording techniques. The Silos’ brilliant album sounds fantastic and is so simple in production it is great. Drums are centre-ish with some mild panning of toms and cymbals, guitar one panned hard left, guitar two hard right, acoustic guitars and vocals down the middle with bass. Every instrument has room to breathe but when combined sound massive. So the songwriting ideas I have been having are starting to form in that shape. When I write I usually hear every aspect of a track. All instrumentation and arrangement, and when I record it’s a matter of trying to get close to that sound. I want to stip that sound I hear in my head back down because what has started to happen, the sound in my head starts influencing what I am writing.

The double disc idea doesn’t included two different batches of songs thrown together. It’s the same album done twice. Disc one (working title Stripped) will be a typical recording with the new sound I am aiming for. The second disc (working title Naked) will be the same songs, but performed live solo acoustic. When I say live, I don’t know yet if I mean in my studio or as a live performance with audience. But I’ll get to that when I do it. First things is to write the music, and that will be done on acoustic only. I feel I write best that way. It will allow me to kind of act as my own band. Different guitars make me play in different ways and I can use that to my advantage when recording.

There will be a few old songs that I still keep (demos of the one I like most are on my MySpace page, but in general I would rather write a whole new batch of songs. I’m looking forward to doing it once I get all this other web work done.