Sagittarius by gingerjamesfair

The history of pop music is littered with examples of artists who suffered with their ‘difficult second album’. These bands are usually under some form of pressure from an aggressive record label and expected to get creative on demand. I cannot claim to have been under any such pressure whatsoever, but it is fair to say that ‘Sagittarius’ didn’t completely satisfy me as a project.

I had never really stopped writing songs since finishing ‘My Piranha’ so there was plenty of material to work with, but both Larry and I wanted to be a bit more ambitious with the recording process. We set up a makeshift studio in a derelict house and camped in the garden at night. Larry’s recording technology had developed loads from the previous work so we began to overlay multiple tracks constantly. This is immediately apparent in ‘So Alone’, where the voices are all overlaid to create a choral effect, and it carries on throughout the album. The intention of these multiple tracks was to create a fuller sound and a much more professional project, but in hindsight I think we polished the material too much, and perhaps lost some of the character.

Another difference upon ‘Sagittarius’ is the length of the songs, which are noticeably longer. This is largely a result of working in partnership with Larry on some of the song writing, as well as a desire to develop the songs further than the ditties that appear on ‘My Piranha’. Maybe some of the ideas are being pushed too far at these lengths, but I think others benefit from the ambition, especially ‘It Ends Tonight’ and ‘Tikkel’. Bethan Smith also features much more upon this record, largely because we really liked her contribution upon ‘We Both Lost Our Way In The End’ on the previous project.

The professional completion of ‘Sagittarius’ is thanks to the patience and dedication of Larry, who engineered, programmed and performed on many of the tracks. This fundamentally essential contribution perhaps leads to my lack of fulfilment from the project, as it didn’t include many of the imperfections that result from my limited musical ability! Personally it feels a little dislocated from the source material. However, it received more praise from listeners than any other musical endeavour I’ve ever embarked on, so I shouldn’t be too negative about it.

The music shared many of the same influences as ‘My Piranha’, although I wasn’t in the same emotional state when recording the material as when I had written it, except for ‘Balmoral’, which is lifted straight from the demo tapes and left untreated.

I hope you enjoy this record.

James

Just happy to be making and sharing.

jamesfair.co.uk
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