Tag Archives: blues

Movin’ On – Full Version

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The lyrics to ‘Movin’ On’ were written on a lunchbreak whilst I was working at Boots, I seem to recall Alex being on hols or something because he wasn’t in at the time. I remember rushing over to his after my shift had finished rather excited with what I’d written.

I’ve always loved the blues and it’s Delta origins, Howlin’ Wolf, John Lee Hooker and Elmore James are huge influences of mine; and the daddy of them all would have to be Willie Dixon; the most prolific blues songwriter ever. Sorry, geeky hero worship moment over.

We recorded this in Alex’s front room, both of us on chairs with the AKG microphone on a stand. Alex clapped and sang, I played the simple blues bar chords on my very first acoustic guitar made by Encore (sold by Argos). I loved that guitar and carried it everywhere with me; which is probably why it warped. Halfway through the song you can begin to hear it go out of tune (around 2 minutes or so in).

That said, I love the tone of the guitar and how old it sounds. Alex’s vocals are nice and raw; both of us end up singing the gospel/humming type thing at the end which is pure gold.

Oh yes, and Alex’s guitar solo overdub rocks.

Hot off the press – Blick

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Antikrish are proud to present a very basic working demo of ‘Blick’ which was recorded using the Tascam a couple of months ago by Al and I; It represents the first of our new material and marks the first time we have recorded together since the new millenium kicked in.

Blick was always one of our favourite tracks to jam with because it’s one of those tracks that sounded reasonably good no matter how we were playing at the time given our familiarity of the song. From my personal perspective I (Kev) could stick to the basics if playing a bit rough, or improvise my nuts off if I’m feeling confident on a good day (rough translation = put in a few bendy twangs). This particular take is played with a much quicker tempo than normal (in an attempt to brighten things up and change the sound a little).

From memory, the song was originally written by Alex to try and write a track purely starting with the bass guitar first; which when you think about it, is pretty unorthadox and something I always really liked about the song. Over the years we fiddled with the track, put in some extra bits and it changed from a slow latin rock track to a progressive blues rock number.

I decided to add a bassline to the live recording in order to give a rough idea of how it would sound with a little more depth and I have to say I’m really happy with it after mixing down (I put the mixed master through Sony Soundforge Editing Suite to brighten things up a bit).

I would like to also point out that today saw me (Kev) play the bass properly for the first time in years; I now have a blister about the size of an M&M sweet located on both tips of my index fingers. If I were to describe the tight sensation on my fingers, I’d have to liken it to the feeling you get when you try and glue an airfix model airplane as a kid using superglue, get your thumb and index stuck together and then after you prize them free THAT is how my finger feels at the moment*.

More work in progress to follow shortly.

*Please do not try this at home. Antikrish.com does not accept any liability for people who ruin a promising career as a pianist by bonding their digits together with glue.

The Otherside

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This track originally started out with a few lines of verse I’d penciled whilst at Boots when thinking about my godfather who passed away a couple of years beforehand (think we’re talking about 1994-1995 here), until then I think I’d only really written joke songs or cover versions of famous songs with a twist of profanity so I was somewhat lifted that I could at least put some feelings down on paper. I distinctly remember getting to Alex’s totally absorbed by the song with him eventually adding a few lines of lyric along with my favourite part in the first verse. This snippet of the track is really just the play out on the 2nd version (much heavier than the original accoustic blues stomp), the harmonica played through a Electro Harmonix Polyphase is definately my favourite thing about this version.