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Listen: Tubelord - R O M A N C E

We've a double treat in store for DIY readers, and Tubelord fans: a track by track, and album stream.

Posted 3rd October 2011, 3:01pm in Track by Track
 
We've a double treat in store for DIY readers, and Tubelord fans, today: not only have the band talked us through their forthcoming new album 'R O M A N C E', track by track, but they've also given us a stream of the entire thing, so you can have a listen to it a week pre-release (it's due out 10th October). So, without further ado, here they are:

In the first few lines of ‘Over In Brooklyn’, the listener can hear the line "tear apart the writer" being sung, which could be said to be the theme of the album as a whole. The entirety of the album is collaged words. I was interested in whether gender could be defined by the voice of the poet without knowing the poet’s sex. I collaged words from a book made up of only female poets only to see how much these words depend on gender to uphold meaning. I combined the lines from the poems with my own writing when necessary and certain words could not be located in the selected poems.
 
Over In Brooklyn
If you were to listen to the last song from 'Our First American Friends', you would notice the end is abruptly cut off, 'Over In Brooklyn' is the other side to that metaphorical bridge between the two records. The introduction was written in quite a literal sense, introducing the listener to the concept behind the lyrics they are about to hear, the rest of the song was pieced together by accident, pretending to be the band mew and writing a riff my uncle might enjoy listening to.
 
Never Washboard
The lyrics were pieced together in the back of the van whilst on tour in yoorup, February ’11. I wanted to write about a man running out of his family from the perspective of one of the children and luckily found suitable words to piece this idea together. Yet in a similar vein to the music being fragments stuck together to form a whole, there are other more personal anecdotes amongst the child’s decision to skin, stuff and roast the wrong-doer.
 
4T3
I had demo’d this song when it seemed impossible to imagine it ever being playable in what was Tubelord’s three-piece setup. Over time it was buried under a molehill of synth-based demo’s, forgotten due to Tubelord being unable to rehearse it live. Not until the addition of James did the impossible synth-based batch of demos begun to unearth themselves and '4t3' came to life. The first and only Tubelord song to date without a guitar being utilised.
 
Charms
Was the final demo I sent to Dave, James and Tom and was written on a broken acoustic guitar which meant the guitar is in some kind of dropped tuning I’m unsure of. The song was originally titled this is a until we finished recording and realised it was probably the most irritating title for a song ever.
 
Here Is Nothing
Is about the space between yourself and everything else. The idea was to attempt in portraying matter as nothing, this would be due to once having arrived at a place or with an object in hand, if stripped of language and signified relevance, once again, you are left with nothing. Everything is nothing, you can be everything to one person and nothing to another, here is something, to someone, somewhere, this thing is nothing. Here is nothing.
 
Go Old
In December 2010 I was returning to London from Marseilles after having spent two weeks interning for a batshit-crazy screenprinting house, worried about not being able to bring back to London the additional luggage I had picked up throughout the stay, I decided to arrive at the airport early, presuming I may encounter a few problems with baggage control. But luckily for me, no problems occurred. So I spent a really fun eight hours watching families and people snack away and play with boredom, waiting to board their planes whilst I waited for mine to leave Stanstead, fly to Marseilles, land, refuel and then allow me to board. In this time I wrote the lyrics to 'Go Old'. I took zero inspiration from my surroundings when piecing together the words for the lyrics and there is definitely no allegory for airport terminals to be found within the song. Sometimes I like to remember peculiar, yet very mundane situations and what you did whilst enduring them.
 
My First Castle
James organised with a friend of ours (Katie Malco – brilliant singer songwriter) to record in an octagonal studio for the real piano sounds and choir-like vocals we were hoping to add to certain songs on the record. In the midst of orchestrating a group of twenty-something friends (credits can be read in the vinyl artwork for 'Romance') to clap and woop and generally make a joyous racket to a song they had never heard of before, I realised this was nothing compared to watching them look at me for guidance when I had no idea what they were supposed to be doing.
 
Ignatz
I remember reading somewhere that circus animals never grow old but are slaughtered after having giving birth to the next generation of circus animals. I recall having felt quite unsettled by that fact. I wondered how difficult it’d be to write a song that was filled with signifiers open to making the listener feel as the above fact, be it by using dissonant guitar stabs in the verse, awkward syncopation between bass, synth and the drums or the vocal timbre. But then I scrapped all that and just enjoyed trying to write a circus song.
 
Waterworld
One weekend last year I set myself a task to write and demo three songs over three nights and two days. One of the songs from this spree turned into 'Waterworld'. The other two songs created in the spree were sold to adidas for their upcoming winter jacket campaign, and will be released on a limited batch of 300 vinyls only available from the Banquet Records shop inside the Juno Spacecraft, which is currently in the early stages of its five year trip to Jupiter.
 
In Greenland
I was in the midst of writing demos for the reckurd and thought now (as in then) would be suitable to visit some close friends living in falmouth. After having failed to get a job in the local chip shop I wanted to go to stroll on the beach but it was raining and grey so I borrowed a friends guitar and finished piecing a demo together that I was in the middle of writing. Being surrounded by friends living, working and do-ing in this harbour town inspired me to attempt to recreate the artificial sand of the man-made beach up the road. I think I spectacularly failed. 
 
Tidy Diggs
Was a demo I used to listen to in my headphones when we were touring the UK a couple years ago, just after the release of 'Our First American Friends'. I remember at the time imagining the final section in the song could work as a soundtrack to the melodramatic scenery of repetitive countryside and from this I imagined Tubelord one day being able to perform this live in a room, yet realising that with only the three of us sat in that van at the time, it just wouldn’t be possible. The song then became something I could freely listen to whenever I wanted to but never think about playing. It was in my hands yet so very far away from being real, yet it was currently background music to my current reality at the time.

Tubelord's new album 'R O M A N C E' will be released on 10th October. Pre-order the album from pinkmist.bigcartel.com.

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