Ta-da
♪ Walking all day with my mind on fire ♪
♪ I can't stop thinking of you ♪
♪ Walking all day with my mind on fire ♪
♪ That's what I've gotta do ♪
♪ I can't stop thinking of you ♪
It's kind of crazy to me that I recorded the stuff
for 'The End of the F***ing World' here.
Recording has always been a sort of
miraculous thing to me anyway
it's always been my favourite things
but the whole idea that you can actually
do it in your spare room
I still can't get over how amazing that is actually.
Well yeah, 'The End Of The F***ing World'
starts out with this boy who seems like a kind of a
dispassionate and cruel kind of lad
teenager, schoolboy
and he meets this girl who seems
totally despondent as well.
They both have home lives that
they're not particularly happy with
and they go on a sort of a crazy
road trip
with many twists and turns
many dark moments, many comic moments
many touching moments
and so off they go.
Well I wasn't really asked to do
anything specific to start with
but I was kind of inspired so I did
make a few pieces just on my own anyway
before we had any proper meetings
and a lot of it was
quite "un Graham Coxon like" I suppose
which was a mistake because
they wanted to hire me
because it would be Graham Coxon ish
not so it would be sounding like something else
so after we had a meeting I got back on track
and of course in TV shows and things like that
they always put a temporary song in
where they want some music
and that's the sort of atmosphere
they're trying to get across so
I would be inspired by whatever sound that had
or whatever emotion that had.
I quite liked working to a brief so
maybe they'd had a scene where
they wanted something a bit sad and acoustic
then I'd spend maybe one or two days
just writing something around that
four or five or six songs that could fit that bill
but they were all slightly varying.
'Walking All Day' wasn't really a brief
it just sort of came out of
watching the episode.
I think where it appears in the program is when they're
walking through some woods
and it's kind of a nice image
I don't think James has a top on for some reason
I can't remember why he hasn't
but they've been sort of
failing to have any kind of a relationship
or any kind of chemistry as
far as I could see
but I was trying to get a little further into the sort of
emotional blockage going on there.
I kind of like that sort of country blues
sort of genre and that sort of finger picking
it's very fertile ground for melody.
You know a topless lad in a pair of jeans in the
woods for me, it's just a bit like
[imitating country music]
It could be you know
Deliverance kind of stuff.
So some kind of country-folk thing
that may have a slight American influence.
The lyrics would have been improvised.
I would have started singing something
to get some sort of melody
and it quite quickly
became apparent that
it was gonna be 'walking all day'
it was gonna be kind of repetitive
and then there was going to be
some part of their body that was going to be on fire
and there was going to be a reason for that.
I wanted it to be sort of jaunty.
I did have a couple of goes actually
there is a really fast version of it
which isn't very good and didn't really develop
so it didn't have a middle-8 and solo sections and
and all of those sorts of things.
So I wanted it to have a good sort of shape
and a good build
and that for me is what's interesting about songs
is what happens on the journey through the song
you know if it's just a verse-chorus-verse-chorus
and then it ends it's a bit
it's very, it's odd you know
I like songs to have
have a journey and a dynamic.
I didn't want everything to get
too heavy and serious because
as an English person I can't sit in that
world for too long without making a joke
you know so you gotta
lighten it up
lighten it up a bit.
So I will always start with
acoustic guitar
and I'd just be
playing around a little chord sequence
as simple as I can
and then I'd record that
condenser mic, that far away from
what do they say
12th or 14th fret
where the neck meets the body.
I suppose I just went with that really.
I really wanted that sort of old-fashioned
[imitates swing drums]
sort of
what do they call it - mixing bowl
sort of slight swingy drums
and I can't really do that here
so I have a cajon down there
and I'd never miked a cajon before
I don't even know if I'm saying it right
but that one has a bit of a boom to it
so that's umm
I don't know I suppose I was about
that far away from the back.
I kind of like old-fashioned recordings
not at all perfect, quite loose
although I was working to a sort of a metronome
I was loosely keeping time.
But I don't really know how to play the cajon
so I just did my best going
[imitates playing cajon]
and then I kind of wanted
a sort of an upright kind of bass sound
so I used an old Fender VI Bass
which has six strings
and that's from the 60s
I don't know whether the strings
have been actually changed.
They were old when I bought the guitar
the strings, so they
may not have been changed for thirty years.
So pretty dead old strings.
You know that kind of 'tea-chest' bass
to get that sort of atmosphere you know
there's the tambourine
and just things coming in
being introduced after each sort of verse
something new coming in
drums come in, then the maracas coming in
and also there's the vocal
♪ walking all day with my mouth on fire ♪
♪ trying to get talking to you ♪
♪ walking all day with my mouth on fire ♪
♪ that's what I've gotta do ♪
♪ trying to get talking to you... ♪
I wanted there to be
parts that were girl and boy singing
obviously because it was a kind of about
this relationship that was
starting or maybe not starting.
You know I don't have a backing vocalist sort of
lounging around all the time
so on most of the songs
and this this one included
I just pitched my vocal up to get
a girlish kind of vocal.
♪ Murder me ♪
♪ make me happy ♪
♪ talk to me
♪ it's so crappy ♪
The one that went out on the TV show
as you watch it is the one
before I got a proper female backing vocalist on
but I think with a
a bit of reverb and balancing in you know
you don't really notice it
It just sounds like a girl
♪ ...over me ♪
♪ what's this power ♪
♪ gonna tell you once more ♪
And then I wanted to introduce a few slides
I'm not very good at slide guitar either
and none of the guitars that I use are
particularly set up for it
so there's a lot of clonking you know so...
I build it with different sort of slide
lead parts until it just sort of
finishes in
I think quite clumsy way.
[sings ending]
So it's kind of a pretty rough
woozy recording
but I guess it has a sort of charm.
I like that imperfection of it
because I was recording it quite quickly
it's almost as if there are
four or five blokes who
are playing it live because they're
not exactly tight all the time
they're following each other.
I'm not a great engineer
I'm a bit EQ-phobic
and all the rest of it but I like
a bit of compression
I like a little bit of a spring reverb you know
to make it sound a bit old
and a touch of that on everything really
and that was it and if it sounded okay
that'd be it!
So when I was like
sending all the audio files off
and you know I like that thing of anticipating
the reply to the email
"Yeah this is good but..."
or you know, or
"Hmmm, great but can you do another one..."
or something like that or this was just
"Wow you know this is fantastic"
So it's great to get the sort of
feedback and encouragement
I was lucky because the people who worked on it
were always encouraging you know
and I did send them something pretty
mad stuff but I thought if I send them
some stuff and they really liked
I can afford to send them something that was
really ridiculous that was a sort of a risk
and they'd just ignore it.
So a few
a few mad songs didn't make it.
But I definitely would like to
carry on learning more about soundtracks
do some more soundtracks.
I definitely stay excited about recording
and anything that helps
getting ideas musically
onto something that you can play back
and listen to so
I'm up for more yeah