I think it’s fair to say that it’s been a rather slow All Night Chemists year, although we did start with the intention – and indeed the reality – of doing some recording. As we may possibly occasionally mention, stocks of our cassette EP, Young, Free & Simple, ran out some time ago (1989, in Belize, to be precise), so it’s about time we got back on the studio horse.
Of course, quite a few things have changed since then in the recording world, and Rich in particular is keen to utilise some of the more modern techniques available – not least because spending days singing guide vocals whilst everyone tries to record acceptable “rhythm tracks” is not only tedious, but also means that one isn’t exactly in tip-top vocal form by the time one gets to do the proper recording of those. (This may possibly have been particularly true with the last seven tracks of Twisted’s Peace Through Superior Firepower, but hey, let’s not point fingers 😉 )
Anyway, as those of you who saw us at the Brasenose Fringe in the summer of ’21 will know, we’re not actually short of material, and thankfully bands have mainly stopped trying to fill as much of a CD as possible, and reverted to more meaningful albums clocking in at around 45 minutes. Rich therefore has a grand plan (yes, we all know what generally happens to those…) to record not one but two All Night Chemists albums! One will feature mainly older material – and indeed songs mainly written by Al, such as Peace and Stranger, although he’s also keen to include our cover of Chronologic (from Also Eden’s [REDACTED]) – whilst the second will largely feature material such as Altitude, Elevation and Russian Dolls, that Rich wrote and even had tracked out for what would have been a fifth full-length Also Eden album, provisionally entitled Contours.
It’ll be great to finally get all of this material down onto (not actually) tape, so watch this space 🙂