Reprise

Artists

Album Info

Release Date: 2009-12-06

Label: Make Mine Music

Recorded at home during 1998 and 1999 and transferred to DAT at V/Vm.

Album info:
"Reprise" was recorded gradually over a period of months, without the aim of recording an album, for the most part. The majority of the tracks were already recorded by the time I met Rachel, who I remembered from being the singer in an otherwise dodgy local goth band a few years before, and persuading her to have a go at singing on some of them. Most of the vocals were done very quickly, often first or second takes, and usually under the influence of several glasses of red wine to ease our respective nerves. I'd previously tried to do the vocals myself, but I'm not a singer by any stretch of the imagination (of which more later). Incidentally, a few months before I met Rachel, I had placed an advert in a record shop in Birmingham, looking for a female singer. Although no-one replied, Antony of July Skies later told me that he'd seen the advert and taken down my phone number. He never made the call, though, what with being male and all.

"Reprise" was recorded at home in Stafford, UK, to Tascam 414 4-track cassette portastudio and mixed to Sony minidisc. Mastered at Abbey Road Studios, London.

Track notes:
Selene
– I'd borrowed an old Roland monosynth from a friend for a couple of days, and wrote this track around a droning bass synth line that I'd come up with. The noisy guitar at the end was achieved by plugging my guitar into my hi-fi, and then sending the output through several effects pedals, before leaning the guitar on top of one of the speakers. It sounded great, but I don't think my hi-fi was ever the same again afterwards.

Second Thought
– Named after a track on OMD's first album, for no other reason than I liked it and wanted to pay tribute to their influence. This later became something of a Portal tradition. Rachel's vocal on this track was the first she recorded for Portal, if memory serves me well.

Arc
– Considerably enhanced by Jon of Yellow6, who added an extra bass line and the 'gliding' guitar part. Many of these early tracks have very simple drum machine parts because the Roland machine I was using at the time couldn't be programmed properly and I had to change the patterns over by hand. The other drum machine I owned I'd had since I was 11, and it used to speed up on its own. Bloody useless.

After Tomorrow
– My attempt at writing a folk song. We really should have re-recorded the vocals on this one, done as they were under the influence of far too much red wine (again, the start of something of a Portal tradition). Oh, the regrets.

Shifting
– A very early Portal track, but one that I still rather like. I was listening to Roy Montgomery's "Two Trajectories" 7" a lot at the time and I think it probably shows.

Tundra
– I don't remember too much about this track, other than it features the aforementioned broken Boss drum machine, and I really liked the sound of the wah-wah/white noise guitar part. This track was later remixed into far darker and scarier form by V/Vm, much to my approval.

Falling
– Quite possibly John Peel's favourite Portal song, having been played a good number of times on his BBC radio show. As is often the case, the best songs are those written and recorded very quickly. The music was literally written and recorded whilst I was at home on my lunch break from work, while the words had been hanging around for a few months waiting for the right music to come along.

Lost
– Remixed version of the track from the B-side of the "July" 7". I can't remember exactly how it differs, but I think it's quite subtle. EQ and some extra reverb and delay, probably.

Before the Storm
– The recording of the thunderstorm on this track was made whilst hanging a microphone and metal boom stand, connected to a minidisc recorder, out of my bedsit window. This is possibly not the safest or sanest thing that I've ever done in my life. "Before the Storm" was recently used as the soundtrack to a short film documenting a piece of environmental art by Ian Boyle as part of the "East to West, West to East" exhibition in Tauranga, New Zealand.

Last Goodbye
– I really like the chords in this song to this day, and the words were something of an exorcism, although the person the song was written about has probably never heard it. But then some people still write to Elvis, apparently. The track was not named after the Jeff Buckley song, by the way.

Free download from:
http://portal-archive.blogspot.com/