BABY WOODROSE "The title song, Chasing Rainbows, was the last song written for the album and just barely made it in time to be included. The first idea for the lyrics came up during the Copenhagen riots, immediately after the police violently cleared legendary squathouse Ungdomshuset in march 2007. Different support groups kept asking me to play free benefit concerts and I have to admit that I was as angry and pissed off as many of the teenagers who felt inclined to set cars on fire and smash windows in the following months, but instead of doing that I wrote a song about feeling left out and being mistreated." Denmark's Baby Woodrose are back with a new album, called "Chasing Rainbows." Showcasing a more inwardly-rocking heavy psych than their previous two releases, it's probably the band's best album to date. "Chasing Rainbows" draws inspiration from Lorenzo Woodrose's Dragontears project as well as his penchant for mining the psychedelic sounds of the late 60's and mixing them with some unadulterated rock 'n roll [think Chocolate Watch Band meets Strawberry Alarm Clock or 13th Floor Elevators meets Love]. "Chasing Rainbows" has been released through Bad Afro Records. Baby Woodrose are scheduled to play the Friday, April 18th, 2008 Roadburn date alongside The Groundhogs, Danava and Mos Generator amongst others. Words | Lorenzo Woodrose 2007 my most productive year yet -where I wrote more than 50 songs and spent quite a lot of time in the cozy womb of the Black Tornado Studio - resulted in a trilogy of albums, all released this year on Bad Afro. First, there was Dragontears, released in March, which was an experiment in trying to find new ways to record and write [see studio report elsewhere on the Roadburn site] and in many ways an album very different from anything I've done before. Next was the debut album by a new band called The Setting Son, where I produced and played the drums, an album which was done very fast and almost entirely live in the studio, actually an attempt to recapture the sound of the first Baby Woodrose album "Blows Your Mind." This was released very recently. But my personal pride of the bunch is the next Baby Woodrose album "Chasing Rainbows" which will be out October 22nd. People can basically say what they want about this album, but I think it's the best thing I've ever achieved in my musical career. The work on this album started sometime around march 2006. I tried to finish at least one song every week so I ended up having more than 50 to choose from a year later. These were all written within a period of my life where I tried to recover from a breakup from my ex-wife and later met and fell in love with my current girlfriend with all the personal drama, dilemma and change that kind of thing will bring forth. In September I acquired a Studer 8 track 1" machine and started making demos. I picked out the 25 ideas I liked the most for different reasons and started building arrangements starting with a Roland R-66 drum machine, then an acoustic guitar and finally fine-tuning lyrics and recording vocal takes while experimenting with various vibe enhancing dubs or vocal harmonies on the leftover tracks. Much later, in May 2007, we chose the most relevant tracks for a Baby Woodrose album [some were simply too far out] and entered Black Tornado Studio, after carrying the ultra-heavy Studer up two flights of stairs and down the hall from our rehearsal, which is located within the same building. We started recording drums and bass on top of the stripped down skeletons, which more and more resembled actual songs. This process is very different from the way we usually record, which is more or less just rockband-live-in-the-studio-with-vocal- overdubs. I guess the Dragontears project inspired us to not be afraid of finding new methods. The experiment was quite successful, mostly because we managed to get much more ambient sounding drum tracks and also because it took the pressure off of our drummer and he ended up doing his best performance on tape, playing much softer and more controlled than ever before. The bass tracks were done using an old east german Migma hollow-body bass, which we felt had just the right kind of tone. The next two months we took an occasional weekend in the studio now and then, doing various overdubs. We ended up keeping 80% of the original vocal tracks from the demos, because they seemed to hit the spot when it comes to soul and feeling, even though they weren't always totally in beat with the new music dubbed over the sketches. We didn't fiddle around with anything in Amateur Tools [as I call ProTools] and avoided using the plugins during mixing. Instead we used plenty of vintage analog equipment, tube compressors, tape echos and spring reverb machines. As usual, overdubs were done fast [I don't like to redo things too much as I feel it kills the immediate freshness]. I basically just record what I've got - in one, or sometimes two takes - and see how it fits sound-wise. If it doesn't work, we just move on to the next idea. We did a lot of overdubs we haven't tried before, some tablas, sitar and tamboura on "In Your Life", some flute on "Renegade Soul", some cello on "Dark Twin" and some lap-steel guitar on "Lilith." CHASING RAINBOWS > on to the tracks... Someone To Love The opener of the album is one of the lightest and brightest moments on the album. Twelve-string guitar, hammond organ, some backwards sound-effects and a bass line which is lifted from "Tomorrow Never Knows." I find the result quite hypnotic and almost british sounding. I really like how many of these new songs simply keep on repeating the same form or cycle, sometimes it's not necessary to break the arrangement down and often there's an obvious effect in not doing it. The lyrics for this one are very simple, displaying a general human longing and need for love - as a way out of the mess that modern life has increasingly become. I'm Gonna Make You Mine Another of the poppier moments naturally placed at the beginning. Listeners will find that the mood of the songs grow gradually darker and more twisted as the album tracklist progresses. Again, it's some twelvestring and a lot of Farfisa organ. The instrumental theme that keeps repeating this time is actually a very bluesy riff lifted from a Groundhogs track and transformed to a typical Woodrose style hum-along theme. The vocals have been run through a Leslie speaker for a nice watery effect. This lyric is obviously about being in love, but also there's some hinting at darker personal conflicts in the opening lines: "You can ask me if I've taken some chances in my time, while my words might be mistaken, the truth does serve me right..." Let Yourself Go This is almost classic Baby Woodrose and with its sixties inspired garage groove it could easily have been on our debut album, except for the fact that the lyrics aren't about sex or dope like most of those songs were. I think this is about an anxiety attack or an existential fear. About giving in to destiny and going with the flow. It's not yourself you need to let go, it's whatever is keeping you from being yourself. A "mud" metaphor is introduced to make that clear. The guitar solo should have been played by The Hobbit, guitarist in On Trial, but as he was sick that day I plugged in a wah- wah pedal [for the first time ever on a BW record] and tried to play like I was him. The outro is a Roland Space Echo going nuts. Twilight Princess The original demo of this song was a heavy guitar blast, but somehow it changed during the process into a lighter folk song, with an almost mystical vibe. It reminds me of Bobb Trimble and Jethro Tull. The high pitched falsetto vocals have been noticed and commented on by some people. I like these lyrics a lot. The title came from putting together two of my favorite song titles by The Leaves - "Twilight Sanctuary" and "Lemon Princess." Again, it's about struggling with the dark, the mud and personal demons, trying to welcome change and light and embrace truth, hope and love. Lilith This one is clearly inspired by american band Love - listen to the bassline and the beat. The lap-steel and the gregorian choral backing vocals gives it a lighter, hopeful vision of a brighter day, but actually this is a heavy and quite depressing lyric which really encompasses and epitomizes the "darkness" theme. Two of my friends named their firstborn daughter Lilith and I wrote the name down on a scrap of paper as an idea for a song title that rested in my pocket for a month or so before being put to use. They recently told me they're gonna name their second daughter Morgana, so there just might be a song with that title on my next album. There's no electric guitar on this track at all, just acoustic six string and some twelve- string in the theme section. In Your Life This track went through a heavy transformation in the studio as well. The original demo was quite noisy and guitar-based, but after erasing the drum tracks [except for in the outro] and replacing them with Tablas, we agreed to go all the way - eastern psych style. We ended up reversing the guitar solo in the outro and made it fit perfectly to the eastern theme, as it almost sounds like indian strings or some weird out of space instrument. The sitar has been treated with a fuzzbox and there is both a tamboura and an electronic tamboura box in the mix as well as a lot of glockenspiel. This lyric has several layers, on the surface it's about falling in love, but also there's a longing for change, a desperate cry for help and longing for a different way of living which kind of fits the strange and unfamiliar soundscape. Chasing Rainbows The title song was the last song written for the album and just barely made it in time to be included. The first idea for the lyrics came up during the Copenhagen riots, immediately after the police violently cleared legendary squathouse Ungdomshuset in march 2007. Different support groups kept asking me to play free benefit concerts and I have to admit that I was as angry and pissed off as many of the teenagers who felt inclined to set cars on fire and smash windows in the following months, but instead of doing that I wrote a song about feeling left out and being mistreated. There seems to be a lot less room for thinking differently, dreaming differently and living differently in Denmark than there used to, which is a GREAT fucking shame I think. That theme somehow perfectly summed up the concept of the whole album. All electric guitars on this track have been run through a Leslie speaker, which gives the otherwise simple four chord punk song a sunshine/psychedelic and slightly otherworldly vibe. No More Darkness This song is very much inspired by and built on a chord progression lifted from sixties US psych band Ultimate Spinach's song "Your Head Is Reeling". We even added the slightly off choral chanting harmony for an uncomfortable and nerve wrenching effect. Lyrically, possibly the most typical Woodrose song on the album - focusing on the confusion and miscommunication in a relationship between a man and a woman. The guitar solos were played with the Vox Teardrop guitar I used on all of "Blows Your Mind" and run through a VOX AC-30 and a Fender spring reverb unit. Dark Twin Followed by the most untypical Woodrose song ever recorded. This is an almost pretentious ballad about lost love with a floating backing section including marching snare drums galore, thundering tom-toms and a lullaby-like glockenspiel. I like how the sad heartbroken lyrics are counterpointing the anthem sounding fanfare theme and general grandiose production. Some might think this would have fit better on a Dragontears album, but actually it doesn't. The cello on this track is played by danish hippie legend Tømrerclaus who released one of my favorite danish psych albums in the mid seventies, his self- titled debut. The chord progression in this song is slightly reminiscent of Love's "7&7 is", only with a few minors added, changing the mood considerably. Renegade Soul The drums on this track were brilliantly played with clubs instead of sticks giving the bassline and groove an early Pink Floyd-ian [or more appropriately maybe even Them's Tower period] type of feel. When I did the guitar solo, instead of playing the things I would usually play [like whining away up on the fifteenth fret] and to challenge myself a bit, I tried to play like ex-On Trial guitarist and friend Morten Aron did on songs like "Reasons" and "New Day Rising." A sort of eastern scale kept waiting for the time changes before hitting the notes, which gives an almost backwards sounding quality. The lyric is as hopeless and dark as it gets - prophesizing the end of the world, or perhaps just a personal death. I instructed the flute player to hit the wrong notes on purpose and "sound like a raven" to compliment the lyric - which she didn't, but she did do the job perfectly anyway. Madness of Your Own Making This song is the oldest on the record, as it was originally written way back in 1995 and had a slightly different lyric initially. It was then titled WORDS and consisted of a lot of letter rhymes of which the M in "Madness" and "Making" are the only remnants [the original chorus line going something like "Mindlessly Moving Millions Of Masses, Money and Morphine, Madness and More you're Making"]. The altered lyric is slightly inspired by a Spirit song called "Natures Way", centering around the same kind of theme, mother nature getting her revenge in the end. The rainforest sound effects add to this feel. To me, this is the most 13th Floor Elevators sounding production I've ever done and I love how the echoey lead guitars stray off into unknown territory at one point hitting several totally wrong notes. My Outtakes Are Better Than Your Best! I'm currently sitting on the couch in the cozy womb of Black Tornado Studio with a cup of coffee, a cigarette and a laptop. I'm listening to the final mastering of six outtakes from the "Chasing Rainbows" sessions that we've mixed recently and they're sounding fucking great! A few of them have HIT written all over them, others are just kick-ass punk rock songs not unlike stuff we've done before, but just as good or better. We've planned releasing all of these tracks as B-sides and split singles on various labels from around the world during the next months after "Chasing Rainbows" is out. Right now I'm as excited about these tracks as I am about the album itself, so I'm sorry if I'm being an arrogant hard-ass about it, but that's just how I feel. Here's some info on those as well... Information Overload It's a steady riff-rocker with a clear Detroit feeling and great testosterone pumped macho lyrics. The basic message of this one is "shut the fuck up!". We've overdubbed some Leslie effected guitar leads in the intro and middle section, some loose shaking percussion and a Stooges type piano all the way through, but aside from that it's just live rock band to tape. A Good Day To Die "A Good Day To Die" is a fast punk song with world-weary lyrics. Again there's a pumping Stooges type piano and a classic sounding guitar riff. Fuzz Daddy loves his hi-hat closed in the verses. This is one tough motherfucker of a B-side, it just doesn't get much more punk than this: "I've had the same reoccurring dream like a thousand times, a dark shadow with a .44 takes me down from behind and today is a good day to die..." I Feel High "I Feel High" is really different. If it wasn't for the lyrical theme [sex, drugs, rock n' roll] it would have fit well on the Chasing Rainbows album, where I deliberately wanted to go a bit deeper with my subject matter. Acoustic guitar, bass, tambourine and a hauntingly hypnotic Farfisa organ. We actually recorded this as a band, but felt it worked better sounding a bit folky and psychedelic. The intro was later pasted on, consisting of backwards drums and distant fuzz guitar. Coming Round Again This could have been a hit for anybody, except we ended up playing it a bit too fast and adding lots of over the top twangy surf guitar and beeping Farfisa organ that kind of detract from its easy listening qualities. The end result is somewhat bubblegum sounding. Some uplifting lyrics about coming back up after having been down for some time. This one turned out much better than I thought it would during mixing. This was actually considered for the album quite a lot. Making My Time It's a funny track. The lyrics are kind of typical social-outcast-trying-to-deal-with-reality-and-being pissed-off-about- it-as-it goes that I've done several times before. There's a fun 4/4 groove that is almost too stupid for BW and a reverb drenched organ solo sounding like Iron Butterfly on Prozac in the middle section. It ended up sounding quite a lot like The Setting Son for some reason. Maybe because I used his organ and tried to get away with stealing his riffs! Here Today Gone Tomorrow A leftover track from the "Love Comes Down" sessions. This was the nemesis track where we lost all the drum tracks after having worked on it for two days and for no apparent reason other than working in Amateur Tools and not having a spare tape for backup. Maybe the title had something to do with it? Anyway, we found this rough mix recently with the original drum tracks and thought it sounded pretty damn good, so we're gonna beef this one up in the mastering and it is intended for a split single with great swedish band Dollhouse, which will be out on Bad Afro sometime early next year.