‘Hold On’ b/w ‘Pennies’ Home Demo released
As work continues to complete the new 4-track EP ‘Soundbites’ due for release in late October/early November, Paul is set to release two new demos this month - ‘Hold On’ and ‘Pennies’. With completely contrasting styles, Paul wants to take listeners on a journey through his writing process by pre-releasing two new tracks written, recorded and produced by Paul at home earlier this year.
“Up until the release of the single ‘Faith’, all my songs have been written and recorded at home,” says Paul. “I only use a simple set up with GarageBand/Logic Pro, a recording mic, a midi-keyboard and a small 2-channel interface; I think will give people a unique insight into where I get the songs to before I go to Charlie and we refine them for official release. In fact, a lot of the guitars on ‘Faith’ were kept from my original 2020 demo and we added to them and re-recorded where we needed to, so I try to keep it as spontaneous as possible.”
HOLD ON : “IT BUILDS FROM THE BOTTOM UP & JUST KEEPS GETTING BIGGER”
‘Hold On’ starts light with acoustic guitar, punctuated with bass, and a piano part that only appears on the intro, building gradually throughout with lush strings and guitars. “I didn’t set out with this in mind but as I added strings and melodies I kind of thought about Biffy Clyro’s ‘Many Of Horror’ and the way the strings come in and it just gradually crescendos and gets bigger the longer it plays out. So I thought I’d see if I could apply that logic to ‘Hold On’ and, for a demo, it’s worked out really well. When we take this into the studio and get real rather than midi-drums on it and work harder on the string sounds and overall sound production and vocals, it’ll be epic.
I did the vocals in one or two takes reading the lyrics I’d only just written off a bit of paper, so I will work harder on a better take for those, as I think the song deserves it. So on the demo it’s warts and all with no eq’ing on the vocals or any of the other parts. It’s pretty much as I played it in the moment and the parts I came up with as I was recording it.”
PENNIES : “I WANTED THE SIMPLICITY OF JUST AN ACOUSTIC GUITAR & VOICE”
Whilst working on ‘Hold On’ Paul was conscious of the production values and multiple layers and how that would work live, so he set about writing a song with a much simpler, paired back structure. ‘Pennies’ was the result. “In the last year I picked up a midi-keyboard and started adding strings, brass, piano, keyboards and sounds, which has opened up lots of sonic horizons for me to get demos to reflect what I’m hearing as I write. But as I was doing ‘Hold On’ I wanted to do something that was the polar opposite of that…just acoustic guitar and vocals. The kind of thing The Beatles did on The White Album where there’s lots of complex production and then comes Blackbird with just an acoustic guitar, voice and foot tapping.”
With lots of ideas and bits of song ideas on his phone, ‘Pennies’ came about after going through some recordings, which Charlie and wife Katya happened to hear. “I was at Charlie’s doing work on the EP and I was just going through my phone recordings and this came on - just a few bars which is all I had with the opening line “Give me a penny for your thoughts, maybe a tenner for your time”. Charlie and Katya said to play it again and they really liked it. I said “Really?”! To be honest I couldn’t even remember recording it on my phone. So when I thought of an acoustic ballad I went back to it and developed in in an evening or two to get it to where it is now. I just kept going back to it over several weeks to improve the playing and vocals, and to add a bit of sound to the middle section to pop it out a bit. Then I left it, so what you’ll here is where I’m at with it.”
Paul will release the demos on SoundCloud this month.