Dubstar: SOMETHING YOU SHOULD KNOW
Here’s a Dubstar song from the very end of the act’s existence. Something You Should Know (SYSK) was recorded in 2010, developed in 2012, and yet it’s path started a few years earlier.
As with You & Me, SYSK was written by myself and Emma Kirby in South Wales in 2008. In fact, this is the first of a dozen songs that we wrote together. I remember being terribly excited at this result, although I think Emma wasn’t quite so keen. Maybe it was a bit more Steve than Em? I’m not sure, Emma inhabits a very different musical world now and is probably much better off for it. There’s a version we recorded at Peter Gabriel’s Real World Studios somewhere around here too…
Quick story: while Emma and I were eating lunch in the Real World dining room, I overheard a conversation between the drummer of a successful British band (no names, sorry, but they were big in the early to mid-00s and aren’t now) and his producer. You could see that the producer couldn’t believe what he was hearing: they’d been recording this album for nearly two months and needed to go home but the drummer wanted to replace all his drum parts. Every single hit, because they didn’t sound right to him. Maybe do them again, this time in a different room? Was that going to be a problem?
Well, if you’ve ever produced a band, you’ll know that the entire record is built on the drum playing and sound. You can’t simply replace the drums without ruining the feel of everything else. And here he was, asking to scrap it all and start again. I felt for the producer and remembered with relief why I hadn’t been in a band for fifteen years. When the record came out it was panned by the critics too…the drums sounded great though.
The Dubstar version of SYSK was originally similar to the sketch I’d put together for Emma and myself. Pianos and guitars were everywhere, but it was a bit trad…fine, but nothing special. It reminded me of Keane, which is normally a good thing but not in this case, the song never took off. I was quite disappointed with the results and forgot about the song for a year or so.
But as I was putting together the music for Circle Turns (the first new self-penned and released Dubstar song in over a decade), I took another look at the arrangement for SYSK, had a flash of inspiration and updated it for the album. The two songs have a lot in common, there’s the Roland CR-78 drum machine, the Robin Guthrie shimmering guitars, the deep bass notes from my Roland SH-101 and Korg MS-20 and a general sense of floating around in space.
The big difference was that, unlike Circle Turns, SYSK was a proper song written in advance in an actual writing session between two songwriters. Not being a fan of piecing tunes together in the studio (something you can easily hear), I think that writing moment, a singular moment of creation rather than cobbling together ideas makes a big difference to a song. I wonder what you think?
Thinking Back now
SYSK works well but I’m not sure it would have made it onto the finished album. Hearing it now it feels like a B-Side, or maybe a bonus track? That chorus is great though, I still get a shiver of excitement whenever I hear it.
And it fascinates me to revisit the sound of those writing sessions from the 00s. There was something vibrant about that decade, a sense of ‘nothing to lose, so we can do anything we want!’ that I’d missed in the 90s. I’m reminded of these lines from the fabulous Kitchens of Distinction’s song Sand on Fire:
We are so alive, so inspired
When we were young we were careful and prudish
Now we are creased we're trivial and foolish
When we were young we were prayerful and prudish
Now we are wise we're waltzing on fire!
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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