Blogs

A quick little note that our recent woes with the bad weather made it into local mag the Brighton Source. The full (although it's pretty short) story is available here: http://www.brightonsource.co.uk/news/1-latest-news/690-news-february-2010, and is hopefully in the print edition too (let us know if you've seen it yet).

We did of course eventually manage to shoot the video for Big Ideas, which you can see here: http://www.acitizenabovesuspicion.co.uk/video/big-ideas.

The new issue's just landed and this month's Inside Track features Mark 'Spike' Stent explaining the mix for Muse's "Uprising" - some interesting insights and a few little tips to integrate into the workflow.
 
Speaking of which, this week we've been finishing off the tracking for the next new song – currently only has a working title so can't give the name yet. Ross did some excellent vocals at the weekend, so we're down to finalising keyboards/synths before moving on to the mix. It's good that we seem to be hitting some kind of stride at last in terms of cranking out the new material at a decent rate!
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You may be wondering why we've not yet posted a video for the latest song, Big Ideas. Well, our big idea to shoot said video has been scuppered by the snow - twice. First, we were due to shoot in the week prior to Xmas but the weather meant postponing until tomorrow... but the big white bastard has struck again. As I can't even get the car out of our street I'm thinking we're going to be very lucky indeed at this rate. Fingers crossed. Fuck you snow, I've had enough now! 

Another step towards getting the next track out for Christmas...we spent most of yesterday re-recording the vocals for Big Ideas. Im glad we did it as the old takes were from 4 years ago and were a bit rough around the edges. However, the song isn't an easy one to sing over and over it was one hell of a slog (sorry Paul)! The new keyboard lines Steve layed down last week are sounding good, now its over to Paul to get all the guitars and mixing finished, theres a lot to be done!

Meanwhile I've got a couple of weeks to get a video together...

Big Ideas vocals

...to release the next new track in time for Xmas. Not sure if we'll make it but we're going to try!
 
Ross and I will be recording the vocals to the song tomorrow and then there'll be just under 2 weeks to record all the whizz bang extra bits (bass, drums, keys and some guitars done already), mix and master it. It all hinges on nailing the vocals quickly tomorrow, so I'm off to bed.

So you've already probably seen this by now - yes, over 345,000 people (probably way more than that by the time I've finished typing this) are intent on stopping whichever X-Factor puppet wins this year from scoring the default Christmas number one, by buying Rage Against The Machine's Killing in the Name on Sunday. Sounds pretty funny, particularly since the song contains about 16 'fuck's. Read more »

Ahh the English countryside, the rolling hills and beautiful views... or the pissing rain and murky skies of a wet Sunday afternoon in Alfriston. Yes, the filming of the Green Scenery video was somewhat of a battle against the elements, luck was certainly not on our side that day in late September.

The mixing of the Green Scenery audio was nearing completion, but we had run out of time to get some of our grand video ideas into action, so we agreed that something more simple to fit with the track was required if we were to maintain a steady release of material from the new album. In the weeks leading up to the day of filming, the weather had been amazing, lovely long shadows on the ground, leaves starting to fall and a bright, low, autumn sunshine. So, it seemed a perfect time to get out and shoot some nice shots of the band outdoors for a change, as this was surely the most fitting track for such an excursion. Read more »

Inspired by the NME's list from earlier today, I've put together my own personal top 10 of noughties albums. Read more »