Tuesday 18 December 2012

Collider: Paraguay Zero

And so our journey through Collider ends where the Great Men story began: our first ever track.



CW - I’m not interested in football, so when the World Cup approached in 2006 and I realised I’d lose my friends, housemates and living room for the summer, I took action for the positive and decided that when football left me under siege in my room I would have the duration of the match to write, record and mix a track. This project, which has also spanned the 2008 Rugby World Cup and 2010 Football World Cup, is called “Widdleman VS The World Cup”. The very first one I did was “England 1 Paraguay 0”, which a couple of years later became the first song Regan and I would learn to play together.

R-Man - 1st thing ever.  Debuted in my living room to 3 people who I think were honestly expecting us to be pointless noise.  We sure showed them...


CW - For other Widdleman Vs The World Cup victories, check out our Live in London EP, or Shazam session videos, for a couple of tracks that came out of the 2010 World Cup: Spectators at an Execution (England 0 0 Algeria) and Messerschmitt (bits of Uruguay 2 3 Netherlands and Germany 0 1 Spain).


Monday 17 December 2012

Collider: No Fear Of Humans



CW - The heavy riff and guitar solo in this one originally came from a track I did in my room in Lincoln Hall at the University of Nottingham, called ‘Night of the Badger’. It was inspired by a news story about a badger going on a rampage and attacking people; one witness said the badger had “no fear of humans at all”. The commanding bass line is all R-Man, and the post-rock second half was born from jamming in Regan’s living room back in the early days when I used to use his Akai Headrush (long since retired).

R-Man – Heavy, Heavy, Heavy– I remember a friend of ours who was a big fan of Zero 7 telling me the quiet bit in this was their favourite bit.  I felt a bit sick.  The logistics of getting the manual switches for the drum machine right always turned Chris into some form of nodding tap dancer...and...now!


CW - He said Tap dancer.



Sunday 16 December 2012

Collider: Number 6


CW - I wrote the original version of this in 2008, with a whammy bar, slap bass, and samples from superlative 60’s TV series The Prisoner (hence the name). Recording this was great fun; I got a little silly on the solo and looked up to find Benn creased over laughing, which only encouraged me to get sillier (and try not to fall apart whilst recording)!

R-Man – This is a classic example of Chris’ dream of a percussive funk classic being ruined/improved (delete as applicable) by my smearing a kilo of sleaze all over the bass track…


CW - Some years after writing this song, I also watched the recent Battlestar Galactica series. This song hence has no relation to the Number 6 Cylon, and is all about Patrick McGoohan. The Prisoner is a tremendous piece of work that still reverberates through TV now. And the theme tune is one of all my all time favourites.





Saturday 15 December 2012

Collider: Lady Cakes


Track 1 of Collider is Lady Cakes. Here's what Mr Regars and I have to say about it:

CW - I think this might be the finest song we’ve written together. In terms of recycled material, only my clean guitar part comes from a previous composition, everything else was written in the spare room at Regan’s house. I’m especially fond of the guitar solo in this. A friend of mine said the first time he saw us live that when we hit the unison riff in this track, he nearly fell over.

R-Man - It’s not until I’ve tried to explain it that I realise quite how complicated this track is.  It’s doing about 5 different things but always driving.  I couldn’t begin to remember how it came about- the pieces just happened while we were at the height of our powers.  It’s something I’m immensely proud of.


Some time between the recording and the release of Collider, we did a live session for Shazam and Lady Cakes was the only album track we included; here's the video: