The Monoculaires [USA / UK]

Al 'One-Eye' Edelist
voices

Rebecca Phipps
tenor and baritone saxes

RC: When One-Eye rang from LA to say he fancied doing Robert's Box in a rock'n'roll rhythm, and growled a dotted bassline down the 'phone, it sounded like an interesting challenge. My briskly-cobbled-together demo arrangement went out by mp3 the same afternoon.

Soon One-Eye recorded his own vocal – a very 'free' reading of my proposal – in LA. Meanwhile I wrote charts based on my synth reed-busking: thanks to Ellice (two altos) and Becci (six tenors / three baritones) for making sense of notes that real saxophones had never been expected to play.

The demo included some terrible falsetto BVs (I'm no Roy Wood) but One-Eye admired the feel and pressed me not to re-record them. 'Twas a dream, bumping into two amenable Americans who were able to replicate that feel and sing in tune, at the end of a party; we'd credit Kat and J-Lou in full if they'd revealed their surnames.

We did retain the original demo's bass and 'drums' (mostly an old rhythm-machine preset), and One-Eye insisted on some organ, which meant re-doing the piano in verse one (the rest of it still features unwanted grunting and key-rattle, since I'd accidentally left a mic open when recording the original track).

Meanwhile, on a flying visit to Bristol, One-Eye re-did the vocal(s) to the pattern  of the demo; Mrs One-Eye sorted out the sax levels by trans-Atlantic call; and so the track was done.

Roland Clare, piano, organ,
bass, percussion programming

Ellice Dow, alto sax

Katrina and J-Lou
backing voices

Girls' backing-vocals recorded with the assistance of Jack Daniels (thanks, Jack)

Tracklisting