It’s Good Friday and what gooder way to spend it than with my favourite Leeds/Manchester/North East/Weston-super-Mare/Wyvern Way Costco (I made up the last two) band - Committee of Sleep! This time we have a special mission. And for the first time, I made the exception to record a demo of a cover for SuperCrush Zine @supercrush.zine - Blank Generation by Richard Hell.

This time it wasn’t an unnamed studio, it was a named studio we visited - called The Monomyth Room at Eiger, you might know it by now. I greet Ollie with a coffee filled handshake, as I’d spilled it trying to lug all my gear in one go from the car. The last time we recorded together, I came away with a bit of a breakthrough on drums. I figured out how to effectively use the effects loop, giving us the big echoey drum sound from Jack I’d carry into later sessions. Well I got a bit sick of that and it happened again. My Nobels overdrive pedal and my line 6 dl4 on a really decaying delay and no effects on the rest of the kit. Three words. Guided. By. Voices.

The more we added, the less we heard the delay, but Jenny's bass is something you can’t contain. It doesn’t matter what amp you put it through, it’s always gonna have this Kim deal twang apparently. Who’d complain about that though? Sam’s guitar with the low rumble too, very much the anchor of the song to let everyone else the chance to romp and run riot.  Ollie throws into the mix a smorgasbord of sounds and feedback, even some metal sounding dive bombs. The solo he plays in the break too really reminds me of something from Propeller (More GBV talk, you guys must get so sick of me).

By now you’re probably realising that this doesn’t sound much like the ‘blank generation’ you might know. Darker, switched and swapped lyrics, much closer to Smashing Pumpkins. With cover, much like a karaoke session, I think it’s important to embody the character. Ollie is a wizard at that. Despite the more wide eyed optimism of ‘Everyday’, he channels a much more unpredictable beast here on Good Friday. I was shocked that his top remained on at the end of the take, he was ready to take smarmy to the next level. 

So that’s track number two with the Committee of Sleep. One of my favourite bands, they just understand Lofi, despite their ability to mould themselves into lots of different genres, I think it’s all rooted in Lofi.  They’re playing a festival in Manchester in June called ‘Manchester Popfest’. The lineup is ridiculous, all the best upcoming Lofi bands are there - ‘The Good Flying Birds’, ‘Rainy Day Cafe’, even ‘Tony Jay’ and ‘April Magazine’ from San Francisco’s Paisley Shirt Records - one of my big influences to start this project. You’ve got to be there, I know I will be.