Dubstar: DON'T ASK

By the end of 2010 a few things about the Dubstar comeback were becoming obvious:

1. We had too many new songs

2. I hadn't finished enough of them

3. We needed to play live. A lot, as soon as possible. And…

4. We needed to introduce fresh youthful blood into the process

Why was playing live so important? It was and remains fundamental for the success of an act. You can tell when you hear an album has been assembled in the studio. The songs often sound incomplete and half-baked.

So playing a new song to an audience is a crucial step in its writing. There’s a feedback loop between you the writer, you the performer and the audience. You take your new creation out to the world, and how it unfolds in a live setting enables you to return to the song and improve it. It’s not about the response of the audience per se, but how YOU feel about the material now that it's 'alive'.

This is why comedians do warm-up tours, DJs test-run their new tunes in the clubs. It’s also why bands include new songs in their live set before recording them.

But if you don’t play live in many ways your song is incomplete, lifeless. Anyone can put tunes up on the internet or get some vinyl pressed. But if you’re not out there playing your work live ‘you’re not serious people’ as the late Logan Roy would put it.

So we had to do it. And we did, but that wouldn't solve the fresh blood problem. That fell upon the shoulders of my old friend Dex Lush. He'd already put us in touch with South Central (who mixed I’m In Love WIth A German Film Star). This time it was one of their friends, Maltese producer Daren Taliana.

Tim Mason, Daren’s alter-ego

Going SOUTH

Daren would add some pizzaz to my existing production and avoid the new Dubstar material sounding like it was made on a laptop.

We’d had sessions at Gavin’s BASE HQ studio in Newcastle and plenty in my place in Hove. But it had been four years, and I’d already written and produced dozens of songs for the Dubstar comeback. We needed to exceed our previous sonic limitations. What we needed now was a refresh and collaboration with a third party. Like we’d had with Graeme Robinson all the way back in the Disgraceful era.

Daren Taliana pre-swim

So Daren spiced the sound up by adding a contemporary, dancefloor-friendly shine to the existing arrangements. The results from his work in Brighton sounded great. The plan was to finish the sessions in Temple Studios, Malta in the late summer of 2011.

Chris and Sarah were absent from the production process as had been the case for the previous three albums, but this time I made the mistake of being absent too. I’d been gigging and wasn’t able to fly down to Malta until Sunday night. By the time I arrived, we only had a couple of days left in the studio to complete the mixes. Rookie mistake!

Despite this the results were great. Daren had mixed like a true professional, his hard work shines a very different and bright light on the songs that were proposed for the second attempt at United States of Being. Grazzzi!

Thinking Back now

And yet these mixes weren’t released. Collaborating with Daren was a terrific move, the problem was Dubstar wasn't moving. Somehow even at this late stage there was still no agreed plan to relaunch the act, only to get some recordings finished. And still no plans for playing live. I’ve written this before, but I can’t overstate how difficult it is to be in an act where the three members live in different cities hundreds of miles away from each other.

So despite all this great work, the lack of a plan meant momentum was lost again. Later that year I holed up and completed the work on the United States of Being songs alone.

This article includes excerpts from DUBSTAR.COM. Want more? You can find the story behind every Dubstar song ever recorded including dozens of unreleased songs right here at Dubstar.com

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