Constantly digging up aural gems for our delectation, the audio antihero imprint are releasing ‘Last’ the final album from Low Low Low La La La Love Love Love this week. A lo fi nugget amongst the ruff its gloriously ragged melodies and fuzz laden landscapes which bring to mind the likes of Daniel Johnston, Sparklehorse and Grandaddy are a delight to behold. To celebrate we have a track from Low Low Low La La La Love Love Love written by their creative axis Kelly Dyson and Ellis Dyson.
Goodbyes
K – It wasn’t always the first track on the record, but over time it became inevitable. Wipe the slate clean and set the tone from the beginning. The chaotic intro is the same three chords as the part that follows, but stretched and tortured. We looked through the window into the control room and used the digital counter on the Fostex tape machine as a cue to change chord.
The electric riff Ellis came up with I really liked at the time. I thought I heard a Velvet underground vibe in it, though I don’t suppose it really has in retrospect. I sing “migrating” as the rim shots come in.
E – This is exactly the sort of music I always wanted to record. It’s like the first two tracks off ‘Mount Eerie’ by The Microphones but in a more condensed form. Beautiful, sweet and messy.
Burrow
K – Burrow is being backed into the hole you dug. The teeth, the fur, the skin and the sinew above ground. The circle of sky criss-crossed with migrating birds. Which is how I was feeling at the time. For a while during recording it was underwhelming. It became the mess that it is when Ellis thrust a massive distorted bass guitar on top of what was until then an unremarkable little folk song. And then we were away.
E – This is probably my favourite Low Low song. Sometimes good songs are left unused and unheard because we can’t get the desired effect in the recording. Burrow was recorded, as best we could, to be a clean folk pop song like ‘Heart of Gold’ but it didn’t work. I put a distortion over the whole mixdown and saved it. Yes it’s too distorted and crushed but we like it.
Guard
K – Guard is walking around your house like a museum security guard at night. It’s noticing things in the torchlight that belonged to someone who isn’t there anymore and forgetting their meaning.
There was an old out of tune piano in the house. A Polish man offered to tune it for not a lot of money and he sort of did tune it. It was a couple of rooms away and up a flight of stairs so I bought a portable 8 track tape machine (with one broken track) as our wires wouldn’t reach from the studio. On this machine, noise reduction was optional and never used. I don’t remember how we did the drums and noise at the end.
E – The drums were put though the shredder, I remember depressing the footpedal, as the verse goes on, to increase the fuzz. This also provides the bed for Dandelions to peek through.
Dandelions
K – This was one of the last things recorded in the studio we had spent every weekend for a few months building. It wasn’t a strong track so I left it as a demo. I was running out of steam. I moved to London and the next time I heard the song it was a trimmed to a single verse smothered in white noise in what is really a transition between Guard and Harvesting.
Harvesting
K – Harvesting is being self-consciously disgusted by the mammal that you relapse into when faced with having to find yourself a member of the opposite sex after having had a long time off from such diversions. “I am free to believe in a world I perceive to be real” had been knocking around for a couple of years with the riff before it became Harvesting.
Ellis wanted to layer the drum riff over and over. We recorded maybe five kits on top of each other and realised it really didn’t sound like we were expecting. You can’t really tell there’s more than one kit playing but there’s an odd, rhythmic clunking just under the drums that was a byproduct worthy of the effort.
A World In Ruin
K – A world in ruin is looking over my shoulder at Low Low after it was becoming clear that I was slowly dismantling the band. Papering over the cracks and taking a step back like my work is complete. I recorded it on the 7 track cassette recorder with Dolby noise reduction off and lots of red lights.
E – I didn’t know it was about that. Kel made me cry when he ended our first band. The second time it happened I was angry. With Low Low’s demise came acceptance.
A Shadow Of A Doubt
K – This was first track we recorded in the studio as soon as the paint on the walls was dry. For a long while we expected it to be the first track on the album. The electronic whines are a couple of Stylophones put through a distorted amp, harmonising with an Ebowed guitar.
Dispel
K – Dispel was recorded after Shadow Of A Doubt and has always come right after it. Making infinitesimal adjustments to the angle of the guitar to get the feedbacks to flutter somewhere between being in harmony and discord with the acoustic bridge at the end of the track. Going round and round the sun and over and over the same ground. The riff in the bridge completes a circle, harking back to the way we played on Low Low’s first album.
E – I hardly ever got to do big guitar in Low Low, it was good doing dual guitars with Kel on this one. As with a lot of songs on this album I failed in the mixing of the song, resulting in a lot of corrective EQ and compression in the pre mastering. The drum sound in the outro is probably the best we have managed.
What You Wanted Most
K – Leaving. Things you choose to forget, things you choose to regret most. I would’ve recorded this short song on cassette like the suite of short, fuzzy songs on the album including Guard, A World in Ruin, and Bedroom Window, but for whatever reason we gave it the full treatment and I’m glad we did. I remember Ellis and me half-randomly working out two separate glockenspiel parts and allowing the melody created by putting them together to create the riff.
E – What would he do without me? I thought really sweet middle of the road songs, but then he came up with ‘Bedroom Window’.
Little Heart
K – I wanted to try something similar to the end of Goodbyes – hence the rimshot on the snare and the jangly dark electric riff. Your heart is migrating but your body is scared to go. We had been listening to too much Mount Eerie in the days running up to this studio session. Recording two guitars so that each separate strum could be panned was trickier than it should have been.
E – The electric guitar on this and ‘Goodbyes’ was close mic’ed to the strings without amplification to get a thin percussive sound, you can’t tell. Kel’s solo is through our old 12watt Marshall practice amp. For some reason it sounds great for those reverbed, slightly gainy solos.
The Field
K – One of the last things we did. It’s a straight forward folk rock song. Drum, bass, guitar, banjo, earth. The ground a you put roots in is same thing as your grave. It’s really the overloaded cassette recorder that makes this anything other than ordinary. It deserves a credit on the album. We might have transferred it to 1/2 inch tape to fit the drums on. I don’t remember. I pronounce ‘vase’ like an American at the end to make it rhyme with ‘same’.
E – Kel likes to do things first take if possible. If I take too long on drum tracks I can sense him becoming agitated. I didn’t even know the song when we recorded this one.
Bedroom Window
K – A condensated window in a small bedroom in London in which I later lived for a few weeks. The winter sun would come through it. Recorded on C60 cassette. The drums are a floor tom played with a wooden stick, put through an amp and shredded. There’s a lot more going on as well as the drums, but the tape couldn’t handle any more and so instead it just crunched everything up.
E – Kel’s plucking rhythm is a rip off of ‘Black Black Window’. I played this to a couple of friends recently, they didn’t like it. ‘Its too distorted’ they said, it made me smile.
Last
K – This had to go last. When you’ve been making music for most of your life, you realise after a while that you are going round in circles, regurgitating the same things you have done a hundred times before; the same words, same chords, same plucking pattern, same themes. This song says “fuck it then, we’re doing guitar solo’s over the whole thing” while screaming that there’s nothing left to play. One last crash of all the cymbals.
E – Great rocking song with lyrical references to some of Low Low’s past songs. Ruined for me (and by me) by the awful mix. Probably only means anything to me and Kel. Love the end of the song.
