latest band rehearsal

After such a peculiar day yesterday, rehearsing was like locking oneself into a bubble; we seemed very far indeed from reality. The distraction was welcome.

Although Assistant haven't played live in four months or so, we've been building up quite a collection of new songs; 'Known To Run', 'Sixteen Months', 'Anything For You', 'Getting Away With It' and 'Nothing Else'. Musically, they're amongst the best things we've done, I think; generally quite short, melodic and interesting. Having played them repeatedly for a few months we're at the stage where we know them well enough to start experimenting with the song-structures a bit; 'Anything For You' now ends with a surprising slowed down section which threatens to speed back up then collapses. It sounds great. My secret is that, having written it and played it loads, I still can't quite get the hang of the strange rhythm, but no-one else has noticed so perhaps I shouldn't mention it.

To this roster of songs we added two new ones yesterday. The first (and best), 'Criticism' is built around a shifting, dissonant loop that me and Andrew BB created a few weeks ago, although it's mellowed and evened out to a dislocated, housey beat and a few disembodied notes (we're re-creating it, rather than playing along). Over the top of which I play a quite simple three chord guitar riff which runs throughout the verse and chorus. It developed really nicely with a quite peculiar beat and some fantastic snare drum exclamation marks on the final chorus. It's certainly the oddest thing we've done in a long time. I'll stick the demo up on the blog sometime.

The second song is pretty weird too, and not quite together yet; it's called 'Breathe In' and features a contrasting verse and chorus; the latter a strong, guitary focal point and the verses a bass and synth heavy churn with a slightly counter-intuitive beat. So far we can play the verse and the chorus, just not together - there's something about the time signature that's not quite right. Still, we'll get there.

I reckon we're getting close to a new batch of gigs and recordings.