The second Detronics album ‘World Goes Bang’ is about to be released on the usual platforms, but here is a preview for anyone interested. It’s the full album and every song contains numerous uses of Arturia plugins, including Mini, Mellotron, Stage 73, ARP, B3, Buchla Easel, CMI, Pigments, Spark and others.
Additionally, Arturia hardware including the KeyStep Pro, KeyLab 49 Mk II, MiniBrute and Microfreak were used.
Hopefully our music will appeal to fans of 70s/80s psychedelic/prog/alternative rock. The influences on this album are too many to mention them all, but include Bowie, Pink Floyd, 70s Genesis and King Crimson.
With that list of influences how could I possibly not listen! You could definitely add Porcupine Tree to the list too.
Listened from start to finish. It’s a great album. Great songwriting, production, musicianship. The title track is , well….I suppose you might say a banger.
Well done guys and thanks for sharing the pre release here.
That’s very kind, Jonnie, thank you! Yep, certainly add Porcupine Tree in there! Interestingly, our last album, All That I Asked For’ was mastered by Jon Astley who has also mastered several PT albums. Sadly, we couldn’t afford to get this one mastered by a third party, so I did it myself (my first time!). Thanks again.
Thank you. I don’t have a full Spotify account so I listened to it on Bandcamp. I hope you take this the right way but at times it sounded like David Bowie had come back to sing !
Well David (Dent, my co-writer) will be delighted with that! It’s been said a few times over the 40+ years we’ve wriitten and recorded together! For the most part, David writes the lyrics and sings, and I write and perform all the music. I also do all the engineering, mixing and (now) mastering and I confess I do try and emulate some of the recording techniques used by Ken Scott and Tony Visconti, so it’s not surprising he ocasionally sounds like the other David Thanks ever so much for listening to the other album as well. That was our first full release and there’s lots I’d love to change about it, but it is what it is.
And it’s also nice to find a similar music partnership to me and my friend Phil. We lost touch for far too long but bumped into each other at a gig two years ago. Both into our sixties now. It’s been a fun and productive year. An album, EP, two singles and a video released. I’ve learned so much. Phil plays guitar. I do the rest using Ableton Live. Your music is much more accomplished and we have no vocals. Still trying to find our sound really.
Who says retirement is carpet slippers and daytime tv!!
Ah, that’s great to hear. I’m 62 and David is 64, but we’re both mentally in our early twenties! Physically, not so much! We’ve remained friends the whole time, and always recorded together, but it was only really in the last five or so years that we thought we should make more of an effort. By the way, I’m really enjoying your Pica Pica project with Phil. Some lovely textures in your sound. He is certainly a MUCH more accomplished guitarist that I am. Am I right in understanding you’re up in the north west? Anywhere near Sedbergh?
We have a similar age gap. I’m 64 and Phil is 67. Also mentally in my twenties but body is beginning to tell me otherwise
Phil is indeed an accomplished guitarist. He’s played in rock bands for the last 40 years but tells me he has found what we’ve done far more rewarding. He’s keen to play live at a low key venue somewhere but I’d need to figure out how to do that (and find the courage). I’m used to giving talks to large groups but I’ve never performed as a musician.
And thank you so much for listening and your kind words about our music. I really appreciate it. We don’t promote our work. For me the joy is in the making. But it’s always nice when someone takes time to listen.
Yes we’re in the north west but nowhere near Sedbergh. I’m about midway between Manchester and Chester. Small town called Northwich. It’s left me well positioned for gigs in Liverpool and Manchester over the years.
I’m curious about how you record drums. Do you play? Drum programming is a steep learning curve for me.
We’re also planning to take our music out for some live shows. Quite daunting! We’d have to re-arrange a lot of it, otherwise we’d need around 8 people to perform it! I hadn’t played live for about 30 years until a few friends from a band I was in during the late 70s performed Anarachy In The UK at a friends funeral! Sad occasion, but I got the bug again . . .
I have a very good friend in Sedbergh, hence the question. I need to pop up some time early in the new year. Maybe I could swing by Northwich for a coffee en route? It’s only a tiny detour off the M6. I used to work a couple of days a week in Warrington so I know the area (and the journey) quite well.
Re drums, I do have an electronic drum kit (Alesis Nitro Mesh) but I’m quite a basic drummer. What I tend to do is to use Superior Drummer (excellent drum software, but not cheap) to flesh a song out. Sometimes I will use grooves from within SD and then modify them heavily. Other times I will play along with my drums, then tidy the midi up after recording. Mostly, I do a combination. On the new album, I played all drums on Make It Up and While You’re Not Here and a mixture of me and SD on The Outer Reach, Imagine This and The Rest of Our Lives. The others are purely prebuilt midi grooves that I’ve heavily tweaked. I also often double up with an instance of Arturia Spark to give another percussive layer (most noticeable on World Goes Bang). And finally, I also have a real acoustic snare drum, which I occasionally use to record live snare - much easier for creating flams etc. I don’t think I did that on this album, but on the first one I did it a lot.
I saw Glen Matlock play at my local music venue a couple of years ago. He had Earl Slick on guitar. It’s a tiny little venue. What a fantastic night. I must confess 1976 was still about prog for me but what was to follow in the new wave was much more interesting and exciting as prog became stale and fell apart.
Yes absolutely drop by in the new year. I’ll send a separate message with my contact details. It would be nice to meet you and it would break your journey. I also worked in Warrington for ten years.
Sounds like although you consider yourself to have limited drumming skills you certainly disguise it well in the finished tracks. They all sound very competent in the drum sounds. There are a small number of tracks that we’ve done that have drums which I’d love to hear with a real drummer.
If you take your music on the road let me know. I could get you a gig here….
I saw them both at the Killerstar gig at the 100 Club earlier this year. Slick was playing, Matlock was watching. Both heroes of mine!
Yes, let’s fix something up for the new year. Look forward to meeting you!
Honestly, my drumming skills are very basic and I have to do a ton of quantising afterwards just to make it listenable! I often record kick and snare, then hihat, then cymbals, then toms, all as separate layers! Being able to trigger samples from Superior Drummer is a fantastic thing. I can sound like I played at Hansa Studios! We do have access to a couple of drummers, but logistics have always got in the way. One is a pit drummer in the West End theatres, the other is Stiff Little Fingers’ drummer, both rather busy chaps!
Do you reckon The Salty Dog knows their link suggests they are in Norwich?! And do you think they could accommodate an 8 piece band
)
Thanks ever so much for listening to the other album as well. That was our first full release and there’s lots I’d love to change about it, but it is what it is.
