The lyrics on this are loosely about Facebook, that should be pretty clear really. 

 I tried to put into practice all the crap I'm always banging on about with regard to songwriting. 

 I went crazy with double tracks on this. 

 I didn't want to do an entire song of talky vocals again so I added some sing-songy bits after the first verse. I made the decision to try and play to my own vocal abilities and make the vocals sound like Depeche Mode song. 

 I did another one of my big solos which are increasingly at risk of becoming 'signature'. 

 If it wasn't immediately obvious, the new NIN song 'Came Back Haunted' was a pretty big influence on the song. 

 The artwork source was stolen from cupofjacksquat.com I think the photographer is called Kristina Slade. The photo is from the Berlin Holocaust Memorial.

Erasing Faces

I've been messing with this song for over a year. I finally added some extra parts to the most recent version, enough to make the thing feel finished. It's very similar to the Demo 2 version, but I can't really bring myself to take that down since it's all pure and minimal whilst this is more layered.
I promise I'll leave this song well alone now.

Jolene

Here's a new song. Sort of. It's a new version of Out of View. The first version was too slow so at the very least I wanted a faster version with a beat. Ironically, one of the things I wanted to do on the original was write a slow song. Progress, progress, right?

I've been working on this song on and off for quite a while but it was only during this week that I made a real effort to finish it.

Out Of View

This began life as an attempt to rip off 'At The Heart Of It All'. When that fell through I just let it go off in whatever direction it ended up going.

Second Nature

I attempted doing 'a song in a day' here and largely failed because the majority of the song took two days to complete with another half day of mixing and fiddling around with the vocals. 
 I've been listening a lot to Gary Numan and Berlin-era Bowie lately and wanted to try and get some of that fragmented storytelling into my song. I've recently discovered (via an Amazing Chrysta Bell concert) a cool band called Candy Says and along with Minute Taker (also discovered via Chrysta Bell) I listened to them for some inspiration although there's not really much to tell of it besides the clapping at the end and maybe the vocal harmonies.

Nothing's Left

I was trying to prove to myself on this song that I can still write a metal song. I think the mission was largely a success. The overall sound quickly settled on 'sort of like Rob Zombie' and then I realised it also sounded like the stuff Sonic Mayhem did for the Quake 2 soundtrack. Yes, you should Google that, right now. 

 Unusually, I had a kind of plan for what I wanted to do with this before embarking on trying to record it. 

 It was hard work writing the lyrics for this. It's mostly about my experience of working at the shittest job ever.

Straw Man

This song is based around the weird rhythm track which was achieved by sending a drum machine through the vocoder on my Micro Korg. It's a trick I've used before but not for quite a while. The end result was a song noticeably slower than most of the other songs on the album, but it adds some contrast so I was happy to include it despite my earlier intention to avoid slow songs altogether.

Victim

I don't particularly know why I decided to cover this song and the less said about the decision the better.

I was quite pleased with how the guitar tone turned out on this. I just wish I could get it that easily all the time.

Initially I tried to do a serious version of it, but that quickly proved to be a ridiculous venture so I went with the Ian McCellan/Simon Armitidge lounge metal disaster.

Bring Da Ruckus

Here's a new song called 'From Outside'. It's another track to neatly slot into place on Erasing Faces, which is now shaping up to be a pretty banging album. You should download it from Bandcamp. IT'S FREE. This song explores similar themes to Straw Man, but is less Metal Up Your Ass and more Weird Synth Patches Up Your Ass.

As with the last song, the kernel of this song is the weird rhythm track, this time using Fruityloops. Yep, it's been a while since I used Fruityloops, but it's something I can still run on my old recording PC.

From Outside

I recorded a Metallica cover, if that makes me a bad person then so be it. It's a cover of 'The Thing That Should Not Be', which I've always enjoyed playing. I also appreciate the H. P. Lovecraft subject matter. I did this first in 2007. Hopefully you can hear six(!) years progress in there.

The Thing That Should Not Be

In another fevered bout of originality I recorded another version of Jolene.

This one was done in a similarly speedy way (an hour, tops) hence the reason I've called it a 'demo'. This one is 'completely' 'accoustic'. It's a simple two-track, one with main vocals and main guitars, another with 'lead' twiddling and backing vocals. It's rough. Maybe you like it that way, whatever you do in the privacy of your own home is your business. At some point I'll probably do a 'proper' version of this. Or maybe not.

Jolene (Demo 2)

Extar is the output for my home recordings. I record and play all the instruments myself with varying degrees of competence and to varying degrees of success. Most of my stuff is faintly industrial since I'm limited to using a drum machine and I have a massive appreciation for Nine Inch Nails and various other industrial bands. I also like metal, so you'll hear a lot of that too. Anything that goes up on here also goes up on my website www.extarscube.com

Extar

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