Author Archives: Antikrish

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About Antikrish

For answers to all the questions you didn't know you had! www.antikrish.com

Ramblings during a very wet lunchtime break.

I’m currently on lunch at work, rather short of money (given that it’s all now in Dollars for my forthcoming trip), and also because we’re having a rather nasty bout of weather in England.  So, I am sitting at my desk, looking out the window and pondering the greater mysteries of life.  Namely:

1)  In Microsoft word you can highlight a full stop (period), change the font to a value of 1638 but not above.  Why 1638?  Having looked for ‘1638’ on google I decided to have a mooch on Wikipedia.  Strangely enough, there is nothing on there to suggest Bill Gates had a ‘LOST’ moment and decided to subtely link a relationship between the maximum font value in Word and the year 1638.  Having looked, wasn’t 1638 a bloody boring year?!  The only thing I could come up with is that 50% of 1638 is 819, and when you multiply 819 by 2 you get 1638.  Wow!?!

2)  My mind really began to wander at this point.  I began to ponder if anyone was actually REALLY called Kenny Lingus?.  So I decided to google it.  Up popped a link to a fairly established ‘Dr Kenny Lingus – Oral doctors play outfit’ product but no Kenny Lingus.  I had intended on writing to him but could not find an address or e mail contact.  I’ve decided therefore that this is now a personal mission, I must find Kenny Lingus.  Should you enjoy the company of Kenny Lingus, or be able to offer any insights into Kenny Lingus please leave me a comment on this thread.

3)  The last thing I pondered today is that suspended ceiling tiles are really rather boring?  Seriously.  Aren’t they??!   Why hasn’t a company gotten into this market and decided to provide a mosaic ceiling tile service?  “Have your favourite picture broken down into separate tiles and suspended above your very head?!?  Yes, YOUR head?  Only £999.99“.  It’s brilliant?!  Just imagine how trippy it would be if you had a picture of a giant pommegranate?  The seeds….the seeds….they’re taking me away from this extremely boring and grey mundane office environment!

Bugger, time to go back to work.

Kill me?

Idea in progress – ‘Haven’

I sat playing the acoustic last night, just practicing some chords. Groovy.

I’ve really been focusing on my chords because I enjoyed the simplicity of ‘COME ON’ and want to make sure that area of my playing is up to a decent standard (obviously). A good portion of my favourite songs are technically ‘simple’ with a catchy chord based riff. ‘Can’t explain’ by The Who for example. Pete “I didn’t look at it, honest!!” Townsend is someone I admire as a guitarist a great deal.

Anyway, after about 25 minutes I came up with a basic idea for a song whilst playing open chords, a bit of muting using my strumming hand et voila! L’idée simple!!!!! I generally avoid describing music in words, but the main bit is 3 chords, ascending and descending. That’s it. Simple.

After a brief chat with Al on the phone and having played the rough melody over the speakerphone a couple of times, we both decided it was workable. Al suggested a nice variation in tempo to add onto it and now I’ve got something to stick down on the Tascam before I go away Saturday week.

This weekend (amongst the multitude of overtime I’ve got to do in order to pay for my toof) I am determined to record the basic acoustic rhythm of this idea, tentatively entitled ‘Haven’.

I’m a big fan of acoustic guitar supremo Richie Haven (who has the worlds biggest MONSTER thumb) and I was messing around playing the chords at high speed, trying to do something of a parody of a track he did at Woodstock called ‘Freedom’.

I’m also desperate to get the ascending guitar tracks put onto ‘Give a Little Help’ take 4 because I’ve been so busy doing work and stuff. Oh yes, and I’m going to be bouncing tracks on it to allow for vocals, bass and something else. Dooiiiiing, doiiiiiing!

Either way, I’m determined to pop some more audio up on the site before I go away on my hols. So watch this space!

Happy birthday Dad.

(Edit by Alex) – Happy birthday Mr K.

Stoopid toof!

How quickly ones fortunes can change? 

Last Thursday I was biting into my dinner when ‘POP’, the tooth next to my canine (upper 4 left for all you dental enthusiasts out there) broke.  The tooth in question was a root canal filling and for some reason it decided to go when I was eating, of all bloody things, the salad from my kebab.  Unbelievable.  A piece of cunty cucumber, no lie!

After quite a scramble I eventually managed to find an emergency dental surgery (British Healthcare is in quite a state, or ‘two and eight’ as is commonly known in the East-end of london) and sat down into the dentist chair to be told I’d need to consider having the tooth removed entirely or have a dental implant to the tune of £1000.  Why replacement of a dental implant required a tune is beyond me, perhaps I could get a discount being in the ‘Biz’?  Sort of.

Anyway, the very nice man eventually found that the remainder of my tooth was ok and that I’d require a Crown (£400) to provide a long term solution.  I felt quite annoyed to say the least but that’s the way a calcium-defficient bone crumbles non?

Working for my employers I am entitled to profit related pay if I meet specific criteria.  Due to recent results I was due to get around 2 weeks wages.  Brill.  I planned on paying a good splurge of this on some remaining debt for some musical equipment but alas I have to pay for this smegging tooth.  THEN I find out this week that I am not elligable for the PRP bonus so I am now faced with said tooth bill.  Huzzah.

So, I’ve been getting into work at 7am each morning to do some overtime, I’m faced with doing 10 hours on both Saturday and Sunday of this weekend, then another week of morning overtime before I eventually go away.  AND I’ve got to have all my wisdom teeth out within the next 3 months at hospital.

BLIMEY!?!?  HOW POXY IS MY LUCK!!!?  I MEAN COME ON!!?! 

Said equipment costs will be taken care of, I’ve also lobied an official appeal so keep your fingers crossed ladies and gents. 

So what, you may ask, is the moral of this story? 

“Brush your teeth more often and don’t eat salad because it’s fucking bad for your teeth!”

Come On!!!! – 1st take

CLICK TO PLAY

This is a very roughly recorded snippet of COME ON which Alex wrote last week before we did our recording sesh on the 15th Feb.

It’s a punky number and I literally learned the chords during the warm up that morning, Alex similarly put together the drums and I am only slightly disappointed that we never recorded the early takes of it because it was full of such amazing energy.

Playing this really knackered us out. Anyway, this is definately one for the future and I can’t wait to get my teeth stuck into it properly.

Friday 15th February 2008

Good god I’m exhausted!

After a great deal of anticipation on both our parts it turns out that the recording session at Alex’s today was extremely inspiring and encouraging. This was the first time we’d attempted to do a full days song writing and recording session this millenium (the jam we recorded in November 2007 didn’t count), originally we had only planned to put down a completely new take of ‘Give a little Help – Rock version’ and rewrite an old Absurds (old Antikrish project) song now entitled ‘Boy Trouble’. Things didn’t strictly go to plan but the end result was much better than we expected.

As with our usual tradition we sauntered off to the local convenience shop at the beginning of the sesh because I personally can’t do any music without food in the tank. I grabbed some bits, scoffed them down and then had a practice with El Baldie to warm up. The difference to our jam back in November was astounding, everything was much tighter (in time), cleaner and more energetic than before and I was so incredibly chuffed to learn a track Alex has written this month called ‘Come on’.

‘Come on’ is an extremely energetic and punky rock tune which I thankfully picked up the basics of almost straight away; when Al first played it to me I was concerned with my lack of chord practice to accommodate it!. Al also ad libbed the drums and it was a shame we didn’t record the early warm up because it was almost perfect in places and we were too knackered to perform it after doing everything else during the main session. I can’t be arsed to mix it down now, but we recorded a little bit of ‘Come on’ and I may post it over the weekend if it sounds OK.

Boy trouble was a bit of a non-start, the drums are pretty demanding and I also need to tighten up my knowledge of the track so I recorded a guide guitar for later used and we’ve shelved that temporarily. Saying that the jam run through we had was again encouraging and I think it’ll be a lot fun when we get it sorted.

‘Give a Little Help’ on the other hand went very well indeed. I began by putting my Danelectro through the Marshall and then straight into the desk with slight distortion. I double tracked the same riff guitar for good measure. Afterwards I put a new acoustic down using Alex’s 70’s Yamaha and then Alex put down the drums (godly snare control today I might add). It’s amazing the drum sound we got using the AKG microphone as an ambient and the SM57 just on the bass drum.

During the jam I finished a practice of ‘Give a Little Help’ by going into a riff of a much older song written by Al and it merged perfectly. After the energy of the main song the added splice from the other tune brought things down into a lazy and almost hypnotic mantra. I came up with an ascending guitar to go with the added guitar (which I’m extremely pleased with) using the Electro Harmonix Polyphase pedal through the Marshall, and again double tracked it.

Sadly the whole session had taken it’s toll and by 3pm Alex was dozing off slumped up against the studio wall, and I personally was too tired to try and remember how to ‘bounce’ tracks down to free up some space on the Tascam to allow Alex to record a vocal and backing, plus any bass guitar we wanted to add (or call on the services of Dan Murr, bassist extraordinaire). So at that point we called it a day. I spent most of the evening with my feet up by Al’s very funky fire chatting about various things and reminiscing about the old days and how they’ve very much come full circle of late.

So all in all, very encouraging and 3 songs were greatly developed and 1 recorded into. I’m working Saturday but imagine I’ll get a few samples from the session on here at some point!!!

Watch this space!

Give A Little Help – Rock Version (rough take 3)

CLICK TO PLAY

Following my post of Give a Little Helps new arrangement a couple of days ago I’ve been fiddling about on the desk listening to the track and chatting with Alex at great length about getting our first complete track up on the site for people to download. Our goal is to have a track up, hopefully, before I go away to the States in March.

The one thing we both love about the original rock version of Give a Little Help was the main guitar riff. We both decided to kick out the pick guitar for now because it muddles up the track and detracts from the simple formula of the song. The bass stays out (this was the bass from the Ragtime version of old and didn’t go) and just focus on drums, acoustic and main lead guitar for now.

I have also edited down several versions of the track for Alex to practice drums and vocals for; this is in view to our planned recording session scheduled for Friday the 15th February 2008.

So here we go, below is the latest take of the song and essentially will be the guide track for what will be used to make the final master for the song.

There’s a few surprises in store for this track, one of which I’m personally very much looking forward to, purely for the ROCK factor, and also because I think it’ll give a really good edge to the song.

Give A Little Help – Rock Version (rough take 2)

CLICK TO PLAY

To prepare for my imminent visit to the States I’ve been doing a fair bit of overtime during the last 3-4 weeks. That along with doing my usual comics business it’s really taken it’s toll. Working from seven to eleven every night. It really makes life a drag, I don’t think that’s right. Ahem.

Anyroad, I finally found myself relatively free this weekend so I decided to do some music at home around my nephew Kai’s 10th birthday which involved a sleepover of three hyper 10 year olds (I got dragged into lots of lightsaber fighting, football, Wii-ing etc).

Alex and I are gearing up to a days recording midweek sometime in February because I have one days holiday to take before I zip off Stateside. So to prepare I thought I’d have a bit of practice on the Tascam.

Dan Murr (sometime session bassist and founding member of rock group Mary’s Dog) is a work colleague and mate of mine who recommended I use the drum software Beatcraft by Accoustica.

tn_beatcraftIt’s very simple to use and has tons of samples of all kinds of kits which you can eventually make a backing tracking from by adding beats and measures a bar at a time. That doesn’t take as long as you’d think as you just edit several patterns and then throw them into a built in sequencer. You can also layer effects on each sample i.e. put distortion on the snare, reverb on the hi hat etc. I’d really recommend it for all you budding John Bonhams out there.

I put the drums down onto the desk on Saturday along with a guide acoustic track thanks to the Ovation electro-acoustic’s input which I plugged straight into the desk. I initially put the main guitar riff down with the Danelectro (again Direct Input or DI) but the guitar effects built into the Tascam are not the best; Alex likened my first take as similar sounding to Gary Moore (which isn’t good folks, too much reveeerrrbbbbbb). The good thing that came from the first take was an overdubbed pick guitar track that I put on the final verse.

The kids eventually cleared off Sunday morning and I had an empty house at my disposal. Ha ha neighbours, suck my plums! I cranked up the fender twin amp, plugged in the Danelectro along with my Marshall Bluesbreaker pedal to get a nice fat tone for the main heavy riff. After that I again used the Fender twin with Marshall pedal and Danelectro to get the pick guitar sound on the final verse.

I did put down a bass guitar track but it was too busy and made the mix even muddier so I decided to leave it out for now.

Fairytale

Just a very quick snip of me sodding about with my Danelectro through the Fender twin reverb ampalong with an original MXR phase 100 pedal for the sheer hell of it during the second bit of the video.

I’m just playing the main verse of a track called Fairytale which Alex put together in the late 90’s, I like it a lot and imagine we might do a new version to stick up on the site soon.

Lost in Nostalgia.

Hmmmmm just listening to some fairly old tracks from yesteryear (snippets of which will be posted soon)………I fancy some cherry pie and vanilla ice cream. The good old days.

Chocolate sauce anyone!?!