Alex,
who was a manager, saw us and dropped us a line asking if we
had any demos and of course we didn't. What we did have though
was a mate who was going down to Maidervale at the BBC to do
some stuff on engineer downtime. While we were there we launched
a charm offensive on the engineers and they gave us a day for
nothing, which I think could have cost us close to a thousand
pounds. We handed the tapes to Alex and within about three months
he got us a deal. We were stunned we had no idea it was coming."
"Suddenly we had to re-evaluate our lives, give up our
jobs, fold the company up. It's was hard to get used to,"
announces Ben.
"I actual remember doing bits at the studio and returning
to the office to finish off jobs," says Jason rather seriously.
"I remember going in to finish off a 'Simply Red' book
(he laughs). Diabolical."
They both were happy to listen to other music while they recorded
their third album 'Ten Songs About You'. With Ben he noticed
that he started to listen more to the production of the bands,
rather than their music. "I think that I realized that
I had to learn how songs are put together in a studio and what
made a good song even better production wise. I was listening
to the 'Eels' and 'Elliott Smith' a lot, particularly Elliott's
'XO' at the beginning of the recording of the album and then
'Figure 8' towards the end with the live band sound but then
there were all these little quirks."
Ben admits that they were pleased with the recording of the
album but did it come from experience? "I think we learnt
how to enjoy it more, definitely when compared to the other
two albums where we worked our nuts off and worked stupid hours.
We took it easy this time finishing it in the middle of last
year. Then we realized the album wasn't right so we went back
and got somebody else to mix it. Having someone else come in
with a fresh pair of ears, working on the old songs suddenly
breathed fresh life into the album.
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