DRAGONTEARS "It's always very hard to recreate a song in the studio that you're used to playing live, so except from a few older song ideas that I had lying around and thought we MIGHT use, we didn't have any idea what the album was gonna sound like when we first started recording. This meant a whole lot of freedom for us - suddenly instead of feeling that people expected something from us, like another ass-kicking rock album, another bunch of P3 friendly radio hit singles or whatever, we could do exactly whatever we wanted." Dragontears is a project featuring members [and ex-members] of Baby Woodrose and On Trial. Six songs were recorded during a mind-blowing week in the Black Tornado studio in Copenhagen, and these resulted in the band's debut album, "2000 Micorgrams From Home." All the songs are linked together by sound effect interludes [from vintage tape echo machines], and are embellished with a wide array of instruments like glockenspiel, autoharp, and bubbly wahwah guitars, all manipulated for maximum weirdness. Not surprisingly, the record takes the listener on a hypnotic journey through the center of the mind. Although there's no official website or band pics, Lorenzo Woodroose talks to Roadburn about the hazy origins of the album. "2000 Micrograms From Home" is slated for a March release through Bad Afro Records. Words | Lorenzo I don't keep diaries of my recordings so I don't know the dates of the different elements that were recorded. Also, the very hazy circumstances surrounding the process of this particular very hazy album recording makes it really difficult to remember what the hell happened at all. What I do remember is this: When my band Baby Woodrose finally finished the recording of our latest album 'Love Comes Down', we were quite tired of the damn thing -easily the most expensive album I've ever done and also easily the longest time I've ever spent on an album, we felt it was time to do something completely different. Due to some annoying technical problems involving tedious modern recording techniques, [like entire drum tracks suddenly missing!] side-project and due to never-ending re-re-recording of guitar sounds that didn't seem to make any particular difference to our ears, we decided to do a side-project with a much more simple concept. We thought it would be fun to involve some people from my old band On Trial, namely guitarists Hobbitten and Aron. We thought we would try and record an entire album within a very limited time, 7 studio days exactly, including all of the recording, editing, mixing and mastering. We also thought we shouldn't prepare ourselves too much... or even at all. It's always very hard to recreate a song in the studio that you're used to playing live, so except from a few older song ideas that I had lying around and thought we MIGHT use, we didn't have any idea what the album was gonna sound like when we first started recording. This meant a whole lot of freedom for us - suddenly instead of feeling that people expected something from us, like another ass-kicking rock album, another bunch of P3 friendly radio hit singles or whatever, we could do exactly whatever we wanted. Oh, yeah -we also weren't afraid to have our fun during the sessions, so there's a reason why the recording of this particular album is a bit more of a hazy memory in my mind than it usually is. We simply started out recording a series of improvised jam sessions on the first night, I think there were about five total. These turned into the two [actually three including the intro snippet] tracks on side 2 of the album, plus the track Doubtstains, which had the working title CODA, which is exactly the function it has on side 1 of the album. Another improvised bit wasn't used but had a great riff that we might actually use later, I think that one had a working title of Electric Knüdel Soup, ha-ha! That was sort of a kraut / spacerock / surf instrumental crossover that broke down in the middle, but had a really good vibe for about two minutes and then went nowhere. That sort of thing always seem to happen when you jam in the studio for some reason. We also recorded the basic tracks for Microdot, which was just an acoustic guitar and a cue vocal. At this point we still didn't really know what to do with the album, I remember we spent a lot of time discussing it, getting loaded while listening and overdubbing stuff almost at random. The great breakthrough for me came later when we worked on a track that ended up being called Borderline. A vintage drum machine [Roland TR-66 Rhythm Arranger] was recorded for a few minutes, then we did a simple two chord bass riff on a Farfisa Organ and a banjo instead of rhythm guitar. Then we started fooling around with different weird sounds on the computer, looping them, turning them backwards, adding echo and otherwise manipulating them. When Hobbitten did that echoed "Swoooop!" and we copied and pasted it all the way through the track, it really started to make sense. At this point I was thinking of different references for the production of this song. Fans of Baby Woodrose will probably assume that's how we work quite often, going for a certain reference, making it sound like a certain sixties band or song we all know and like -and they would be absolutely right! The reference for this song came from The Deep: Psychedelic Moods LP called Color Dreams. Both the two chord riff and the glockenspiel [should have been vibes but we didn't have any] point in this direction. The banjo was clearly a hint at The Monks, although the track doesn't have much in common with them as it sounds on the record, while the overall sound of the drum machine, organ bass and those strange backwards guitar noises makes me think of early electronic bands like Devo, Silver Apples and Fifty Foot Hose. The lyrics for this song needs a chapter of their own, they were done very quickly when I came home from the studio and in a very stream of consciousness kind of way. A truly psychedelic comment on the state of the world. I'm very proud of this track. This strange collage of looped sounds and weird snippets recorded on different occasions really inspired us to work more creatively with some of the jams we did on the first session. The idea of a long hypnotic track started to emerge. We found what we thought was the best spot in the recording - a good four bars of very groovy drums, bass and guitar and starting looping that endlessly. Then we overdubbed some tambourine, tamboura and this little funny recording of Terence Mckenna reading from his book True Hallucinations and some lyrics mostly chanting the same lines over and over - everything just seemed to fit. Later on, when we did the mix, we basically just let the loop run and arranged the song while mixing, throwing in vocals, backwards guitar, echo effects and the Mckenna sounds at random. The end result is quite hypnotic and monotonous, but in a very psychedelic way! When we mastered the record we edited this 16 minute long piece together with two other little improvised bits from the first jam session, an intro and an outro and together these form side 2 of the album. Another track with an interesting story is the one sung in danish. Hobbittens Drøm [Dream Of The Hobbit] was originally written back in 2000 and meant for the album I did with songs in danish under the name Spids Nøgenhat - En Mærkelig Kop Te. This was a collection of songs inspired by living together with the On Trial guitarist with that particular nickname, in his psychedelically enhanced flat, his lifestyle and musical taste [mostly danish hippie era bands like Furekåben and Alrune Rod] clearly took that particular period somewhere else for me. There was a whole little batch of songs like Hobbittens Flyvetur [Flight Of The Hobbit] and Det Psykedeliske Tapet [The Psychedelic Wallpaper] that circled around this guy's tendency to play with vintage tape machines, ancient vinyl and homemade psychedelic light shows. The song was recorded very much like it would have sounded if the band Spids Nøgenhat had played it back then. Just a lot of wobbling echo guitars basically. I seriously think the making of this album has taught me something -a lot more, I might add, than the recording of Love Comes Down. I also seriously think that this production will influence the way we work in the future and might even change the sound of the next Baby Woodrose album considerably. It's important to play around with ideas and concepts in the studio, you can't just treat recording like a routine. The more you change your focus the more interesting places you'll go. I don't wanna do the same thing, let's all try and evolve, people. You'll find much more info as well as some sound on Myspace and Lorenzowoodrose.