Moving towards something definitive...
How do these things ever start? I guess you just pick up a guitar and play. What comes out comes out.
Cymbals are one of those close-your-eyes-and-push-ahead type deals. Launched on a whim in 2010, the band spent the best part of six months playing house parties, choosing a beat and then letting their minds wander.
Some of them had been in bands before. Some of them hadn't. Those furtive steps resulted in 'Unlearn' which - despite it's obvious imagination - didn't quite hang together as a .
'Sideways, Sometimes' though, very definitely does. Recorded over a five day period in a London studio floating on the Thames, it finds Cymbals fusing those idiosyncratic whims into something definitive.
Out on April 23rd, you can stream 'Sideways, Sometimes' and then read a track by track written by Cymbals themselves.
- - -
1. Untitled #1
Because Unlearn was kind of put together quite haphazardly, we really wanted to make something that fitted together, and one way of doing that was using samples from the songs on the album to make some instrumental or synthetic music, which is the opposite to how everything else was recorded (it was pretty much all done live). Also we listen to a lot of electronic music and have made a bit of it together (we’ve done a few remixes as CYMBALS) – we’ve kind of had an ambivalent relationship with totally electronic music but this kind of embraces it.
2. No Bad Decisions
This song started totally differently, I think it was originally a kind of ambient weird synth thing that Dan sent round which was him rewriting "it's not right but it's ok" by whitney houston from memory, with super high autotune vocals. We tried to kind of copy it as a live band and came up with this. We then wrote the lyrics to match the rhythm of the song, kind of half uplifting and half disturbing. It started off when I read that there’s some research about the fact that our brains are changing shape to cope with social networking sites and the internet generally , and changing the way we relate to each other (http://www.lrb.co.uk/v33/n05/jim-holt/smarter-happier-more-productive). The end bit is sort of doomed gospel song about ‘this storm we call progress’.
3. It Makes Me Seriously
This is something we came up with that week on the boat, and it is about what we were feeling at that time really – the lyrics are kind of self-referential and I sort of regret them, they were written super fast and are a bit earnest, in that way they’re kind of like a one take guitar line, the equivalent of the more post punk guitar lines. If I could do it again the lyrics would be simpler and more repetitive. Also I like the way the song is so square – we were experimenting using a bass guitar and have been wanting to make this kind of slow funk – there’s a band called Change (listen to ‘mutual attraction’) who make perfect late 80s funk songs and we were trying that, but the beat is so square over the top and it just sounds awkward, but that’s the point. I also like how minimal it is, there are really very few elements on here.
4. Candy Bar
This song is kind of trying to capture something visual in some lyrics, it’s sort of escapism. Think of the last scene of the movie Big shown on terrestrial TV in the early 90s. It’s kind of an atmosphere, it’s also pretty innocent and innuendo-ey all at once.
5. Untitled #2
Our favourite part of Candy Bar is Dan’s synth part after the chorus – it’s possibly my favourite part of the whole record. This track is basically made up of that sample chopped up in different ways, and the idea was to make something really non-linear and slow which would stand out against the rest of the record.
6. The Norms
I'm glad I get to explain about this track. A while back, someone said to me that a love of techno is what separates us from the norms with real jobs and regular sleep patterns. We found that pretty funny as we all have day jobs, so we turned it into a chorus line in this song. The biggest misinterpretation could be that we’re making fun of people who have jobs, that would be ridiculous. Putting it in the song wasn’t totally a joke, because it’s kind of what so many people are trying to do, to stand out in some way and separate themselves from everyone else. Even in music, a lot of bands are just doing the same thing, thinking they’re different. Playing this song is pretty escapist, it’s hard not to dance to when we’re playing, and it’s nice to have a scream sometimes while I still can.
7. Intense Kids
I told Sean a story once about how I’d made this mixtape to impress a girl who I was kind of intimidated by, music taste-wise (I ended up marrying her!), so I put a song I thought was super alternative on it, but it ended up just freaking her out because of the lyrics (I won’t tell you what song…). So Sean wrote this song about the sort of things you try to say to each other through mixtapes – they’re kind of oblique messages. Then later they’re kind of like secret scribbled notes that adults can had to each other. In that way some of the songs we’ve written together are like that, messages that we’re saying to each other without anyone saying anything out loud.
8. Untitled #3
We wanted to draw the last song out – there’s a longer instrumental version of this kicking around which samples Sade, that’s for another day…
- - -
'Sideways, Sometimes' is set to be released on April 23rd.
Cymbals are one of those close-your-eyes-and-push-ahead type deals. Launched on a whim in 2010, the band spent the best part of six months playing house parties, choosing a beat and then letting their minds wander.
Some of them had been in bands before. Some of them hadn't. Those furtive steps resulted in 'Unlearn' which - despite it's obvious imagination - didn't quite hang together as a .
'Sideways, Sometimes' though, very definitely does. Recorded over a five day period in a London studio floating on the Thames, it finds Cymbals fusing those idiosyncratic whims into something definitive.
Out on April 23rd, you can stream 'Sideways, Sometimes' and then read a track by track written by Cymbals themselves.
- - -
1. Untitled #1
Because Unlearn was kind of put together quite haphazardly, we really wanted to make something that fitted together, and one way of doing that was using samples from the songs on the album to make some instrumental or synthetic music, which is the opposite to how everything else was recorded (it was pretty much all done live). Also we listen to a lot of electronic music and have made a bit of it together (we’ve done a few remixes as CYMBALS) – we’ve kind of had an ambivalent relationship with totally electronic music but this kind of embraces it.
2. No Bad Decisions
This song started totally differently, I think it was originally a kind of ambient weird synth thing that Dan sent round which was him rewriting "it's not right but it's ok" by whitney houston from memory, with super high autotune vocals. We tried to kind of copy it as a live band and came up with this. We then wrote the lyrics to match the rhythm of the song, kind of half uplifting and half disturbing. It started off when I read that there’s some research about the fact that our brains are changing shape to cope with social networking sites and the internet generally , and changing the way we relate to each other (http://www.lrb.co.uk/v33/n05/jim-holt/smarter-happier-more-productive). The end bit is sort of doomed gospel song about ‘this storm we call progress’.
3. It Makes Me Seriously
This is something we came up with that week on the boat, and it is about what we were feeling at that time really – the lyrics are kind of self-referential and I sort of regret them, they were written super fast and are a bit earnest, in that way they’re kind of like a one take guitar line, the equivalent of the more post punk guitar lines. If I could do it again the lyrics would be simpler and more repetitive. Also I like the way the song is so square – we were experimenting using a bass guitar and have been wanting to make this kind of slow funk – there’s a band called Change (listen to ‘mutual attraction’) who make perfect late 80s funk songs and we were trying that, but the beat is so square over the top and it just sounds awkward, but that’s the point. I also like how minimal it is, there are really very few elements on here.
4. Candy Bar
This song is kind of trying to capture something visual in some lyrics, it’s sort of escapism. Think of the last scene of the movie Big shown on terrestrial TV in the early 90s. It’s kind of an atmosphere, it’s also pretty innocent and innuendo-ey all at once.
5. Untitled #2
Our favourite part of Candy Bar is Dan’s synth part after the chorus – it’s possibly my favourite part of the whole record. This track is basically made up of that sample chopped up in different ways, and the idea was to make something really non-linear and slow which would stand out against the rest of the record.
6. The Norms
I'm glad I get to explain about this track. A while back, someone said to me that a love of techno is what separates us from the norms with real jobs and regular sleep patterns. We found that pretty funny as we all have day jobs, so we turned it into a chorus line in this song. The biggest misinterpretation could be that we’re making fun of people who have jobs, that would be ridiculous. Putting it in the song wasn’t totally a joke, because it’s kind of what so many people are trying to do, to stand out in some way and separate themselves from everyone else. Even in music, a lot of bands are just doing the same thing, thinking they’re different. Playing this song is pretty escapist, it’s hard not to dance to when we’re playing, and it’s nice to have a scream sometimes while I still can.
7. Intense Kids
I told Sean a story once about how I’d made this mixtape to impress a girl who I was kind of intimidated by, music taste-wise (I ended up marrying her!), so I put a song I thought was super alternative on it, but it ended up just freaking her out because of the lyrics (I won’t tell you what song…). So Sean wrote this song about the sort of things you try to say to each other through mixtapes – they’re kind of oblique messages. Then later they’re kind of like secret scribbled notes that adults can had to each other. In that way some of the songs we’ve written together are like that, messages that we’re saying to each other without anyone saying anything out loud.
8. Untitled #3
We wanted to draw the last song out – there’s a longer instrumental version of this kicking around which samples Sade, that’s for another day…
- - -
'Sideways, Sometimes' is set to be released on April 23rd.
