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).

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.

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.

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:

Collider: MSP

CW says - The riff that comes in halfway through the track is one that I wrote in my university room sometime in 2002/2003. 6 or 7 years later I played it in Regan’s living room and he told me it sounded like Manic Street Preachers. I was abhorred; as a former teenage metaller I had catalogued the Manics (based on ‘Design For Life’ and ‘If You Tolerate This...’) under “wuss music”. After being thrust a copy of their Holy Bible album, I was forced to recant any previous opinions: Holy Bible is now one of my all time top albums. MSP is also the airport code for Minneapolis-St Paul.

R-Man - THAT riff is a super pop hook, and sure fire million seller.  We’re just a bland vocal and a dodgy haircut away from never having to work again.

There is a moment after the intro where we had a choice of which guitar track to use...if you listen carefully you can hear some string buzz on the one we chose.  A little organic garnish on a bed of machine mash!

CW - Oh yeah, since I’ve not mentioned the dweebery yet, the guitars on the whole album are my Gibson SG Special and Squier Classic Vibe Telecaster (the ‘Black Lodge’ Tele with my custom paint job, but before we rewired it I think), basically just into a Rat into a Vox AC30. For pretty much the whole album there’s just one track of each guitar, playing the same thing, however Benn decided to mix it!

Collider: Riots

This week you get not only myself and R-man's liner notes for the track Riots, but also a brand new exclusive video from award winning directors the Turrell Brothers!


C-bomb - This has its roots in a track of mine called Hot Riots, but is rawer and heavier. I really love the interplay between the guitar and bass in the middle section, it’s one of our most beautiful bits as a duo I think. Benn and Regan did the first mix of this without me and to my surprise and delight they’d gone for a “space bass” sound in the mid-section (a hallmark of my solo work that is usually shot down well before it makes it onto a GM track!).

R-Man – The unmistakable sound of small arms fire; this highlights the mixture of inspiration and mundane practicatility that goes into creating a GM track. We used to listen to a lot of Thelonius Monk who was famous for a stop/start technique with really heavy percussive attack. Riots reminds me of this, but i think its sound actually lies in my sloppy playing.  When I was a kid I listened to and learned to play along to  Reggae and Dub and so in Chris’ ears I was coming in “late” (or “right” as I was concerned) I recall having to really exaggerate the on beat in songs to get out of the habit, with this as prime example.  The middle section is pure Jah Wobble of course...

Collider: Hot Meat

Continuing our meandering journey through Collider, here's some insider info on Track 5, Hot Meat.


CW says - This is a descendant of a track I did a few years ago called OHM In A Storm. For the first guitar “solo” I had the idea of rigging up a Marshall cab as an extension to the Vox AC30 we were using throughout, and boxing me in between the two on my knees so I could get a bit silly with feedback without disturbing the mics on the Vox. We called it the Feedback Den, and an early favourite title for the album (from me anyway) was Postcards From The Feedback Den, until the Manic Street Preachers pipped us to the post with Postcards From A Young Man. Here's a photo of the action...

R-Man - Ridiculous name, stupid solo.  I Laugh my head off every time I hear it remembering C-Bomb scrabbling around on the floor like some shredding mole-man. The name was cheerfully stolen from the starter of a curry we had while breaking from the writing sessions this came from.  We tend to end live shows with this, by which point I’m reduced to shouting “ Hot Meat Hot Meat Hot Meat!” like a crazed restaurant owner/ bordello pimp.