This was the very first song written for the project. Its original title was 'Bye Bye 14' and was my test piece, I was trying out some of the instruments, mainly little drum sounds and wibbly bits, a simple bass line to tie it together, a tambourine and a little robot radio thing, nothing special.
I've always been a bit obsessed with massive numbers, those concepts that our minds can't really process, and none really blows my little mind quite like world populations. 7.5 Billion people on this planet right now, more joining the big blue ball every minute, to me, that's amazing.
While doing the Bos rehearsal sessions, we had managed to create a faithful rendition of this song, using a drum pad to have the exact plinky plonky rhythm bits. The biggest additions to this tune that Macey made was the chorus, all the sweeping strings and warming organs that burst out were not in the original version at all, they turned the song from a plinky plonky test song to an epic poignant one (good work Macey).
I wanted to do a big clever animated video for the song, using a map of the world and complex stop motion, but the idea was too big for our limited budgets on both money and time.
As this was the title track for the album it really needed a video (see just above), so I turned to the trusty old interweb, signed up to a stock video site called biteable.com and made the very video referred to in the bracketed bit a couple of lines ago.
The current world population is over 7.5 Billion, but getting the 'extra half a billion' people in the song would have been clunky, so they don't get a mention, I'm giving them a shout out right here to make up for it, Sorry half a billion people, you rock and should not have been left out of this song.
Deciding what song to put out after 'Lucky Lampshade' was tricky, there were several candidates, but in the end it went to 'Stump the Fee!' (but that's the next blog...this is a little tease)
This was the interlude song, the last minute addition to the album that almost didn't make it. More a musing then a song, the original version that I had handed Macey was just three organs that I had improvised and not known what to do with, so I wrote a little poem to go with it.
When we were doing our album listen throughs to see how it sounded, this song stuck out as not quite working, so Macey stripped it down to it's knickers and gave it a complete overhaul. I'll return to this point in the conclusion to this album breakdown.
inverted mushroom pic
So last summer (the 2016 one, you know, the year that all the celebrities died), Cosmic Bos was running along side Meta-Cassette (metaphorically speaking of course, we didn't have races), a whole new batch of songs had landed in my lap and I was tasked with coming up with synth parts for them. If felt like musical Christmas, I had so many gifts to unwrap and play with. Fun times indeed.
Once it was decided that Cosmic Bos was going to release an album, only one song from the bunch felt like it could take the burden of being both it's own name AND the album name...'7 Billion' of course! (but that's the story for the next blog)
When I was naming the instrumental pieces way back in the frantically heady summer of 2015, I was coming up with titles based on letters of the alphabet I hadn't used, by the end of it I had one song for every letter (and a few letters that got greedy and had a couple of songs).
'Lucky Lampshade' was my L title. (more of a double L title really)
While I was going through the process of writing lyrics to go with these bad boys, most of the songs would get a name change, almost all of them in fact, but this song, it was born out of it's temporary title. I played with the lyric for a long time before settling in on 'strap on' as the method one would use to keep a lampshade safely on ones head, this was logic and basic science winning out over creative whimsy.
The single cover
The song was a structural oddity. Macey had wanted to move it around a bit, make it more conventional, but I asked him to persist with it's two part, one verse, one chorus structure, to make it different from the other songs. What came out the other end was amazing, Macey built a whirlwind, layering on elements slowly and methodically until a beautiful mess of sound has you in it's clutches (a far cry from the plinky plonky nonsense I had originally given him).
I didn't know if Lucky Lampshade was ever really going to work, but after it's Macey facelift (or Macelift), I think it might be my favourite song on the album, which is a true testament to the production skills of Treeman himself.
We played this in the rehearsal sessions, in fact, we played it differently every time. We had a swing jazz version, punk rock version, dub version, country pop version, you name it, we probably tried it once. I don't know it this influenced how the recording turned out, but it was always a highlight of the live sessions.
As this was the second single, it needed a special video to go with it. Abi and I spent a long time discussing ideas that would utilise light, since the song was about lamps just as much as it was about shades and their potential luck bringing qualities. We had loads of little finger lights, and rope lights, flashing crystal maze bulbs (as used in Given Half a Dance video), light up balloons, UV paint etc.
Negative version of the single cover.
So we tried out a bunch of ideas, and quickly discovered that the UV paint stuff in complete darkness with just a UV bulb, looked freaking sick on a stick. It looked so good on its own that we ditched all our over light based ideas and went full UV. We painted ourselves all UV (well, Abi painted us both actually, I merely sat and got painted), and we painted up some lampshades we had purchased. We shot the video over two evenings using two UV bulbs and a whole load of UV paint.
This song managed to get a little bit of radio play, which was nice.
Once 'Lucky Lampshade' was out, it was decided that this whole project would become an album. Nick had returned from travelling around the world, so the Cosmic Bos live band rehearsal sessions came to an end, and I joined the 'old' band as a synth player and backing vocalist.
A still from the video shoot.
Macey and Nick have been working together for a long time, and in 2013, with Charlie Gibbs on drums and James Finburg on Bass, they had released their debut album 'Something in the Water' - they were known as 'Jipsy Magic'. James left the band the following year and the guys recruited the amazing Paul Bradley on Bass. Before Nick went travelling the guys had been working on a bunch of new material, on Nicks return, with the addition of beardy old me, a new identity for 'Jipsy Magic' was born... META-CASSETTE
While rehearsing Cosmic Bos I had gotten the opportunity to play with these amazing musicians that I admired, I have been an avid fan of 'Jipsy Magic', and I had always hoped that one day I would get to be part of it, it was, and still is, exciting and special getting to make music with such talented individuals. Bos shifted gears back to being an electronica project, but it had been infused with the live musical energies that only a band can give.
Lucky Lampshade made it to the acoustic recording sessions, it's just two chords back and forth so not the hardest song in the world (for any musicheads out there, it's Dm and G)
After such a big epic track, the album needed to calm down a bit, so we went Pondering...
Peace and infinite love
Andy Jackson (Cosmic Bos)
Me all UV painted up for the video shoot.
Here are the '7 Billion' album links if you were out looking for them:
So we reach part 4 of our musical journey, and this time we get introspective.
TRACK 4: MY BRUISED EGO
Probably the most personal song on the record, this one took a long time to get right. Musically it was there from pretty early on, but the lyric was a struggle. I had the 'kicking me down while trying to get back up' line going round and round in my head for ages, but the lines to follow that went through many iterations before finally settling on the whimpering sounds of a bruised ego.
I think the hardest part about writing about your own ego is removing said ego long enough to honestly analyse it. Every time I felt like I had nailed it, it became clear that my ego had snuck in and tried to big itself up (probably by distracting the rest of my mind with tea and cake - damn you delicious cake).
UV Cosmic Bos artwork by Abi Jackson
There is something very therapeutic about honest self analysis, once you get over yourself enough to realise that we all have these strange struggles with ourselves internally, we all want to be special in some way or another, but really, when all is said and done, most of us, the vast majority in fact, are unremarkable, normal, boring and the same as each other. That's a good thing though, we can't all be the best, the very concept of bestiness allows for only a very select few to shine though.
I come back to this idea in my songs once in a while, as well as voicing the exact opposite idea in other songs, it's fun to bounce around conceptual spaces, language, especially, allows for multiple meanings within the same sentence, and that's awesome (in my humble opinion).
Emotionally life can be a rollercoaster (I think someone might have already said that in song form), and acknowledging our weaknesses as well as our strengths helps us grow and develop, sometimes that ego needs a bit of bruising, even if it hurts.
The built in irony here is that my ego feels warm and fuzzy when someone else gets something from this song, it heals a bit more of the bruising. This song was not attempted at band rehearsals for it's very electronic nature, but it felt necessary to include it on the album.
Retroactively I worked out an acoustic version of 'My Bruised Ego', and it was recording in the great acoustic jamboree earlier this year. Happy times.
The collection of tracks I had given Macey back in that whimsical summer of 2015 didn't really have many singles in it, with 'Given Half a Dance' already used up, working out what song to release next was tough. There was one song that Macey had been strongly draw to, which was one of the more experimental pieces, to say the least, and as it grew in stature, it became clear it would be the next thing we could release...step up to the plate 'Lucky Lampshade'.
This is a song of contrasts, it's a bit of an angry rant, feet stompy, but a bit non committal as well, pretty much given up in the fight, wants it all to be over, but might still have a tiny slither of rebellion to hand should an uprising occur. Not the best description of a 3 minute song ever, but it's what you are getting I'm afraid.
A visual representation of life inside an ultraviolet kiln
Musically the drums made this song shine, and the build up and drop out nature of the whole thing keeps it interesting (I think so anyway, you may very well disagree). This was one of the songs that worked nicely in the band setting, and Macey ultimately used some of the band jam to construct this song sandwich, the vocal was shaped in the rehearsal rooms, giving it that screamy edge and energy that was lacking from the original demo.
This song got chopped and changed a bit to work. From the electronica pieces that I originally handed Macey, this one needed building up, there are a lot of vocal layers swirling around right there.
With the lyric to Kiln, I was going for a need for repair vibe, via the use of fire and brimstone, the hot ovens to burn out the rebel in us all, to harden us to the harsh world, mould us to societies whim, and be damned whatever we ourselves may want. That's a bit depressing and bleak, sorry about that (there are other songs coming that are more optimistic I promise).
Just a quick aside, when I came to putting together these video's to go with the songs, I used an online video making tool called biteable (which ironically it isn't). It's a good little tool, they update its content frequently, and you can sign up to use a trial version before forking out your hard earned cash to support your online video editing habit. Okay, back to the blog...
Many of the songs on '7 Billion' were completely electronica in nature, not a real instrument anywhere near them, which fundamentally was not a problem, but when we came to try and work them in a live room setting, many of them would not translate. We had many attempts to make 'Given Half a Dance' work for a band, but we could never get it to sound good, something was always not quite working about it. 'Kiln' never had this problem, it was one of the best sounding in the live environment, like it was born there (which, it kinda was).
Check back for Part 4 where my ego is going to get a bruising,
Peace and infinite biscuits
Andy Jackson (Cosmic Bos)
Buy a copy of '7 Billion' for someone on Earth that doesn't yet have one
Based around a guitar riff of mine that I had been playing for a few years, and married to a Massive Attack style drum beat and bass, the recorded version of this song had one foot firmly in electronica (which is odd because songs don't have feet!). While we were doing the band style rehearsal sessions this song became a rock anthem, hitting hard and big. The bass line Paul came up with made it to the album, and the vocals were also shaped in those sessions.
A visual representation of a warp-zone,
made with love and photo editing software
The lyrics are about the chaos of life filtered through computer game metaphors (mainly 2D side-scrolling Italian plumber mascot based ones) and electronic robot logic. I am a big fan of the imagery of retro gaming (having grown up with it), the simplistic A to B logic and crippling difficulty of early gaming. The main element from Mario that inspired this the most was of course the green warp-zone pipes, you know the ones, they lead to secret little rooms with treasure and a couple of guard turtles. Sometimes they have tiny 'Audrey 2's spitting fire at you (just bop those bad boys on the head and down the warp-zone pipe you go).
I guess I wanted to use that odd imagery to construct a metaphor for life's strange twists and turns, the ones you can't plan for, but hopefully you can fight off the mini boss and come out flashing with star power. Strange metaphor for life, sure, but somehow relatable? Maybe?
Originally this was going to be much later in the running order of the album, but it found a warp-zone of it's own and jumped the queue right to number 2, lucky little biscuit. Macey played around with this one lots, mixing the sounds around, trying to give it more of the punch of the live full band version, and he did a damn fine job wouldn't you agree? (Please agree in comment form)
As this had been a riff I had played on guitar wandering around our flat, it only seemed fitting to try and do an acoustic version of it, so that's what we did, and would you ruddy believe it! It's right here! On this blog about Cosmic Bos music? Yes, look, it's just underneath these very words you are reading right now...press that play button, go on, you know you want to (winky face)
From the live rehearsal sessions Warp-zones changed more then any other song, we never recorded the rocky heavier version as it didn't fit with the template Macey was working off of. A song that did take some nice juicy rocking up was Kiln.
But that's a story for another blog (the next one in fact)
The first song to blossom out of the bunch was Given Half a Dance
PART 1: GIVEN HALF A DANCE
The original version of Given Half a Dance was well over 5 minutes long, with a minute and a half long introduction full of 'oooo's, it was decided a couple of minutes could be sliced off of it so it would be more single worthy and possibly played on the radio (which it hasn't really been).
The song is about building our own path/dance from what we have been given, using a rising number structure in the verses as a nod to the 8 circuit model of the brain (as popularised by the Cosmic 'Robert Anton Wilson' in his book 'Prometheus Rising'). I am a fan of the idea that we build our own fate by the choices we make, and it is totally possible to stop, make changes and try a different dance if we need to, life is full of choices, we get what we are given and have to make up the rest for ourselves.
As this was going to be the first song we released as Cosmic Bos, we felt it important to make a special video to go with it. To that end, we took a trip in October 2015 to Avebury, a whole team of us in a van. It was on that very video trip that 'Treeman Productions' got it's name (Macey plays the Treeman in the video). We went at the perfect time, just as autumnal colour shifting was gracing the forrest, as you can see in the video, the trees were displaying vividly.
Nick Jackson shot the video, a few weeks before he went off travelling around the World for 6 months. Macey and I continued to work on the album.
I recorded a little acoustic version of this song while doing the little acoustic session that I did. Here it is in video form.
We started doing rehearsal sessions with Charlie Gibbs on drums and Paul Bradley on Bass (both from Meta-Cassette fame). From these rehearsal some of the Cosmic Bos songs started to come to the forefront, one such one was 'Where the Warp-zones Are'.
