The Electromud Orchestra

In the autumn/winter of 2011/2012 I made the acquaintance of Matt Upchuck, a chap who used to be in an 'oi' punk band - not a style with which I've ever been overly enamoured.

His ad mentioned two (of many) loves of mine: surf music and The Melvins, so despite my reservations we began dating. After writing and recording a five track ep together with Lizzy Bradley I decided that my initial reservations were perhaps correct; that Matt and I had different ideas about what we wanted to do and that Electromud wasn't a band I was keen to continue with.

Nevertheless I leave behind an ep that I'm quite proud of. We recorded it in three sessions; the drums first in Studio 284 via a selection of budget mics hastily assembled and going into a Korg 8 track recorder in a practice room; the guitars we DI'd into the same machine a week or two later (bad idea that); and the bass and vocals one afternoon in a big empty room in City College, Brighton. I mixed it in Cubase 5 (with emails from Matt and Lizzy making suggestions) and Matt mastered it in Wavelab.

We took a leaf out of the Residents' Commercial Album (though not to the same extent) where anything extraneous was cut out - verses and choruses and breaks are a brief as they need to be and not repeated unnecessarily.

I left Electromud on the best of terms with both Matt and Lizzy and wished them well for the future. Until, that is, I saw they'd advertised for a new drummer in his 20s. Cheeky fuckers.

The free to download ep is here: