Dubstar: Wide Awake DEMO

This is a Dubstar song I’ve been meaning to share for a long time.

I’d set up my new Apple Mac G3 computer in the basement of The Mill, a beautiful house in Wantage, Oxfordshire and started writing the third Dubstar album. But the songs weren’t coming. I’ve explained why this is the case before, but here it is again: after we’d released I Will Be Your Girlfriend in February 1998, the record company picked up the option for a third Dubstar album and suggested we go on a writing retreat. An opportunity to relax, regroup and write some hits together.

The problem was that Dubstar never wrote together, that’s not how the magic worked. So putting the three of us, who had been living in each other’s pockets for years, into an isolated but beautiful building in the Cotswolds was a recipe for…initially nothing, latterly disaster. I would suggest that writing trip was the catalyst that led to the break up of the act sometime later.

However, it wasn’t a total waste of time, we did get two songs from the session. This one, and ‘You’re Better Off Without Me’, both feature toplines (lyrics and vocal melody) from Sarah. This is a rarity in the Dubstar canon, in fact I think there are only those two, Just A Girl and Circle Turns where that is the case.

Wide Awake came together on that trip and features interesting musical moments we only occasionally hear in a Dubstar song. Firstly, there’s no bassline, and that feels great. So much space for the vocals and guitar to shine. I think that sustained note in the chorus is a sample of Films by Gary Numan pitched down in Logic, but I’m not sure. Secondly, I was in my very brief Speed Garage phase so the drum part features a cut-up and pitched-up Amen Break, very much in the style of Lockdown 187’s Kung-Fu. Finally, there’s a dash of anger in Sarah’s voice which we hadn’t heard before. A sign of vocals to come?

EXTRA PRODUCTION IN 2024?

There was a whole load of shoutingIn the demo that was submitted to Food Records later that year. This sounded great at the time, and even listening to it now, it’s quite fun and clearly an expression of the very particular sense of humour that we had, particularly between Chris and myself. It didn’t fit with the music though, was in marginally poor taste and relegated the song to the cutting room floor, a fate that befell a handful of songs from this time for the same reason.

Normally I wouldn’t think twice about showing the workings of music from the dim and distant past, but it’s possible for behaviour to be misunderstood, misinterpreted. This is a demo recording, an intimate moment where ideas are being worked out and ‘appropriateness’ is a lesser consideration. I mainly work with much younger musicians who have grown up in a very different cultural environment of what’s funny, what’s a bi old-fashioned and what’s unacceptable. Conseqeuntly I’m aware that what could be interpreted thirty years ago as naughty and weird in a surreal way, like VIZ comic humour, today could be entirely misinterpreted.

And most importantly, humour without context is always tricky. So, with the miracle of modern production tools I’ve been able to remove all that stuff while retaining the sonic and musical integrity of the original demo. I must point out that there was nothing horrible in the shouting, nothing racist, sexist, homophobic or anything like that. It was just a bit silly in a Graham Chapman way, jokes that I know we wouldn’t want to be out in the wild today. It was 1998, a different time in every sense.

THINKING BACK NOW

Should Wide Awake have made it on to Make It Better? I think so. It sounds to me like a bridge between Goodbye and Make It Better. Again, I think you can hear the beginnings of the character Sarah would become on the Technique and Client records. I think you can hear the production moving away from the Boys Own influenced Dubstar sound to the much more angular late 1990s sound. But is it a good song? I don’t know, I always enjoy the choruses. Wide Awake actually grooves, in a way that few Dubstar songs ever do. So that’s nice.

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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