Matthew/Simon has had many different musical projects, he’s very talented. One was, and I’m not so good at categorising music, a club/electro/pop thing which he had Lisa sing on. To be honest, it wasn’t my favourite of all of his creations. He had written a couple of songs, ‘Body Heat’ being the title of one, and wanted to shoot some promotional pictures. I can't remember who the photographer was.
He had found a great location for the shoot with Limehouse Town Hall. It was semi derelict, being used as studio space for artists, and had an amazing sense of faded austerity. The whole building was deserted except for us and Rory, with whom Matt/Simon had made the arrangements in order to use the place and who, today, is a successful conceptual artist. We stood chatting for a while in a huge central hall surrounded by manikins that were in the process of becoming someone’s installation before Simon/Matt and Lisa got to work. I looked on as the band were tied up with rope, back to back, sitting on wooden chairs, at the foot of a sweeping staircase, complete with masking tape over their mouths perhaps (or this might be my imagination at work) to evoke a story line of kidnap.
The following year the band that I played guitar in, and do mostly all of the organisation for, The Projects, had to find a space in which to record our first LP. Amanda from the band Saloon had a portable mixing desk and her and Adam were to do the production once we had found a location. I thought of Limehouse Town Hall, I got Rory’s telephone number from Matthew/Simon and ended up leaving a message on an answerphone. He got back to me a week later, saying that it wouldn’t be appropriate.
In the end we used a rehearsal studio in New Cross that had once been a public library. The building was beautiful, sun streaming into the main room, making the wood panelling and wood inlay that adorned the place glow. The recording took a week, and throughout that week there was a heat wave and it was incredibly hot in the rehearsal rooms. We would have fans running constantly, switch them off for a take and then all be waiting for the recording to be complete in order to switch them back on again as quickly as possible. Just sitting in there forced you to drip with sweat.
It sounded great though I think, Amanda and Adam did a great job and we had the record mixed by Matthew/Simon.
In Spring 2004, the year following our recording and two years after Matt/Simon and Lisa’s photoshoot, I was walking home, crossing Aldgate triangle. A girl stopped me and gave me a flyer, it looked interesting, it was for an online art project, so I took it home. Months and months later I stumbled across it in my coat pocket, I was sitting at my computer so I entered the address written on the paper and was taken to a page with hundreds of tiny, clickable numbers on it, arranged in a square. It took me a few seconds to work out what was going on when I clicked on one of those numbers. From the speakers came, after the sound of an answer phone beep, my own voice saying ‘Hi Rory,’ explaining that I played in a band, that we needed a space to record in and that the town hall would be ideal. Goodness! Of all of the numbers, of all the messages I could have clicked on..
He had found a great location for the shoot with Limehouse Town Hall. It was semi derelict, being used as studio space for artists, and had an amazing sense of faded austerity. The whole building was deserted except for us and Rory, with whom Matt/Simon had made the arrangements in order to use the place and who, today, is a successful conceptual artist. We stood chatting for a while in a huge central hall surrounded by manikins that were in the process of becoming someone’s installation before Simon/Matt and Lisa got to work. I looked on as the band were tied up with rope, back to back, sitting on wooden chairs, at the foot of a sweeping staircase, complete with masking tape over their mouths perhaps (or this might be my imagination at work) to evoke a story line of kidnap.
The following year the band that I played guitar in, and do mostly all of the organisation for, The Projects, had to find a space in which to record our first LP. Amanda from the band Saloon had a portable mixing desk and her and Adam were to do the production once we had found a location. I thought of Limehouse Town Hall, I got Rory’s telephone number from Matthew/Simon and ended up leaving a message on an answerphone. He got back to me a week later, saying that it wouldn’t be appropriate.
In the end we used a rehearsal studio in New Cross that had once been a public library. The building was beautiful, sun streaming into the main room, making the wood panelling and wood inlay that adorned the place glow. The recording took a week, and throughout that week there was a heat wave and it was incredibly hot in the rehearsal rooms. We would have fans running constantly, switch them off for a take and then all be waiting for the recording to be complete in order to switch them back on again as quickly as possible. Just sitting in there forced you to drip with sweat.
It sounded great though I think, Amanda and Adam did a great job and we had the record mixed by Matthew/Simon.
In Spring 2004, the year following our recording and two years after Matt/Simon and Lisa’s photoshoot, I was walking home, crossing Aldgate triangle. A girl stopped me and gave me a flyer, it looked interesting, it was for an online art project, so I took it home. Months and months later I stumbled across it in my coat pocket, I was sitting at my computer so I entered the address written on the paper and was taken to a page with hundreds of tiny, clickable numbers on it, arranged in a square. It took me a few seconds to work out what was going on when I clicked on one of those numbers. From the speakers came, after the sound of an answer phone beep, my own voice saying ‘Hi Rory,’ explaining that I played in a band, that we needed a space to record in and that the town hall would be ideal. Goodness! Of all of the numbers, of all the messages I could have clicked on..
"Body Heat", oh dear. I can only say in my defense that it was the Electroclash era and everyone was doing it.
ReplyDelete