Rise and Shine Album Release
Busy times at Funk Towers. I’ve been remixing, remastering and in some cases finishing the songs which came out of the pilot series (five weeks) of the Rise and Shine songwriting show (more here about the show).
The official release is 11:44am GMT March 20th 2009, which is the exact time of the Spring Equinox.
It’s been a labour of love as well as hard work. Mostly I’m happy after a break to go back to song recordings, and bring them blinking into the light with the aid of cleverness, but in some cases – especially when you’re mixing three per day – it’s a pain. You have to regularly rest your ears, or the mixes sound bad, it’s simple as that.
Funnily enough, the song I most enjoy after all the extra production attention is one which I found difficult to write at the time (wasn’t feeling too well) – Money to Burn, which lambasts our culture of insanely excessive wealth and specifically the Forbes rich list.
The reason I found this song hard to go back to was that it’s a an angry protest song, and while I get the point of such songs, full shout mode isn’t a place I like to inhabit. But, like plenty of people, I love loud, aggressive songs in the right place and time. Rage is a part of the human experience, as is outrage.
Money to Burn is well written, the performances are good, I like the intro by @Langley and it was actually great fun to remix. It’s very much in the style of Beastie Boys hip hop, with trashy guitars, nice beats and samples, and megaphone vocals ripping the piss out of super-rich snobbery.
Now of course with taxpayers money being donated by the truckload to busted bankers, it’s become fashionable to poke the rich with a sharp stick. Back in March 2008, most people still hadn’t quite cottoned on to the appalling state of capitalism.
All the songs will be up and ready for tomorrow’s official launch, and we’ll have a party in London in April to coincide with the physical release of the album.* I’m also looking forward to hearing some remixes – Lagowski is on the case.
