i'm fred and this is jed from the band
spectre we're here today to record
some of the sounds of soho and try and
turn it into a kind of piece of music
we both grew up in london and soho in
particular was where our musical
upbringing really took place from the
first guitars we bought to our first
club nights to our first experiences in
dodgy rehearsal rooms it all started
here
soho's responsible for so much of
england's musical heritage and used to
be london's nightlife capital now all it
really represents is corporate
redevelopment in the same chain shops
and restaurants you see in every high
street in the uk kind of heartbreaking
we're outside madame jojo's a place
that's responsible for a million great
memories and yet another key part of the
landscape that's being taken away
there are people down there
it's really weird music we recorded the
sound of
of emptiness and the dying atmosphere
that sums up the area but then i put the
um microphone through the letterbox and
it genuinely you could hear quite fun
party music and it sounds like there's
still people down there having
a good time maybe it's just the ghosts
we're in a legendary guitar spot hank's
guitars on denmark street and we're with
a guitar legend my dad philip cullen
you can't even go and pick up a
pregnancy test in central london without
bumping into the harry krishnas
always a life-fulfilling experience
we got the full george harrison
experience i followed them down the
street for a bit where they've gone to
continue spreading the love general
positive attitude
food for the homeless people and really
a very catchy tune
now we're going to go to the coaching
horses to meet our keyboard player danny
and our new mate magic betty who's
keeping the tradition of pub sing-alongs
well and truly alive
piano and since a big part of our sound
is we start most of our songs at home
with just a laptop and midi keyboard
usually before we even get dressed in
the morning
it's the end of the day our
central london
sound collage is almost complete but
we're going to stop by a karaoke bar in
the back of a bookshop on the way home
and try and record some vocals there's
something about the reverbs and delays
in karaoke rooms that i love you can go
to a studio and use really expensive
effects and it never ends up sounding as
good as when you're drunk seeing fix you
by coldplay with a bunch of mates what
good a lips if i can't kiss you
what good arise if i can't see you
what good am i from now with you cool so
i started by um
taking your dad's
rhythm guitar and uh pitching it down
and cutting it up to make a kind of
rhythm part
there's a bit of a buzz so i put a
filter on to take the buzz out
then put it through an amp to give it
more yeah bit harsher sound so that kind
of you could use that as a rhythmic
basis for the track oh one two three
four
you've got betty counting in and here
danny one two three four so i thought
you could have them both counting in the
track together
and here i've got some
of the harry krishna percussion
which i pitched up to make sound like a
high hat
come in the b so you've got one two
three four
when we write i find it easier to come
up with lyrics when there's an idea of
where a song set geographically i guess
we wrote a lot of our new record on the
way home from miserable evenings out so
there's a lot of fragments and memories
of central london nightlife in there
it's great when songs are vocal sense of
atmosphere time and place
makes me sad thinking that when soho's
finally all been sold or bulldozed down
we won't only lost a big part of
london's character but someone which
could have inspired countless
generations to
why come lips if i can't kiss you
what could arise if i can see you
what good am i if i'm not with you
oh i don't know