BIC FLASHBACK #9 - 'The Delicate Balance Of All Things' ft. Wayne Hussey
As ‘beauty re-envisioned’ was off to press, I was getting antsy to record some new songs… especially since the lion’s share of the remix record fell on others. I had been listening to some of the ‘darker side’ of my record collection and wanted to do something that was a bit more ‘linear’ and darker musically on the next BIC release. Also since both of our previous records where a long listen … I set out with the idea of this one being an EP. I spent a few days with my guitar, lots of pedals and a drum machine blasting thru a bass amp. Yes, there was a tad of red wine too! I came out of that with three ideas that Michael Rozon and I fleshed out. I asked Wayne if he would consider being on another track, and got Wayne’s response of along the lines of ‘I am out of words… but send them over and I’ll see what happens’. So I did just that.
I was busy preparing for my mammoth solo European Salad Daze tour and didn’t think I’d have time and, to be frank, I did feel ‘collaborated’ out…..if I was to work on new music, I figured, it should be new material of my own rather than someone else’s. The tracks arrived. First one up - whilst I was thought it was okay it didn’t really grab me. Same for the next one. And then the third. I immediately started humming along, I liked this one. Despite the piece of music being very angular and broken into essentially 3 sections - all in different keys - the challenge for me was finding a vocal melody that sounds like it stays in the same key. I rose to the challenge. I had the title of ‘the delicate balance of all things’ previously and was considering even possibly using it as an album title at some point (may still do) but it seemed to fit perfectly for this new tune of Michael’s. I scrabbled some lyrics together and recorded a vocal and sent it to Michael. He wasn’t, at first, sure about it because of the low register that I sang the song in - I think he prefers it when I’m straining at the top of my range - but this music was dark and heavy and I just loved the juxtaposition of a more laid back vocal against that noisy background. I stood my ground and insisted that it would work. Eventually Michael, and his creative partner Michael Rozon, deferred to my persuasive argument. I have to say that of the 5 tracks I’ve been involved in with BIC this new one is my favourite, being closer to my spiritual home. And Michael plays some great guitar on the outro and there ain’t a chug to be heard…. Wayne Hussey
So fast forward to the video. Wayne was in town to shoot ‘20th Century Boy’ and ‘The Long Goodbye’ videos. When we wrapped the ‘beach scenes’ for TLG, Wayne suggested we go back to SAINTinLA Studio and shoot a bit of him singing ‘The Delicate Balance Of All Things’ (the song was not yet finished, but we did have his vocals and a rough mix of the music to work with), Vicente shot Wayne in the make shift vocal booth running thru the song a few times. So I knew we had this footage.
‘The Storm Before The Calm’ was scheduled for a late February release, but we had some major studio tech issue with our computer and ProTools. Having to make the hard decision of delaying the release, I felt we should release a video/single ASAP. At first I was concerned about the ‘Wayne Hussey trifecta’ (ie: three videos in a row featuring Mr. H) but in the end I thought that was not a bad ‘problem’ to have! Now we had to just work around the studio footage we had of Wayne singing. Looking at Wayne’s lyrics, I thought it could work playing off his lyrical back and forth … so Vicente, Tish and I sketched out a few ideas to intercut. We also found a bit of stock footage to intercut (clocks, sands thru hour glass, etc) to help move it along. The outro was a blast to shoot. We wanted total chaos, as the song’s ending evokes. We shot this inside the metal paint booth at Schecter Guitar (you can even see the big metal door that Ashton opens to the outside world in ‘Storm’). Basically Tish, Dirk and I just played dress up! We used smoke and moving lights to reflect off of the metal walls and ceiling to create a cool effect. I then worked with Leslie Gladney on the edit … and feel we managed to ‘cobble’ together a cool video with a bit of a story line.
Check out the video below and some behind-the-scenes photos!
MC X
beach scene from ‘The Long Goodbye’
SCRABLE PIECES!