FFA UPDATE

Faux Faux Amis played at You Are Here on Friday.  It was the perfect forum to launch Faux Faux Amis 2.0 – now with singers Melanie Twidale and Catherine James.  

With Naomi Milthorpe, Mel and I founded The Bluffhearts.  We’ve been wanting to play together again ever since (side note: my one time playing bass was as fill-in for Mel’s punk group The Cannibal Tads – the Tads said I sucked at bass, but looked good doing so ).  Mel also drums for PROM.  In contrast, this was Catherine’s first time on stage – I’ve been encouraging/hassling Catherine to do more music for years (she owns the same drum machine I use in Babyfreeze, and the first video I ever made was for one of her songs. We nearly started a dancehall project together in 2012 before she confessed she doesn’t actually like dancehall music).  It’s a joy to have them in the band and to be playing alongside two of my favourite people. 

 

It’s unclear who’s idea it actually was to have Mel and Catherine join – I think it was their idea, but they’re convinced it was mine (alcohol was involved).  Either way, it’s brilliant, so I’m happy to take credit for it.  We are working towards something unique in the pop landscape – I can’t recount another garage-punk band with “shoop shoop” singers (Mel’s term) – maybe as a studio afterthought, but not as full and integral members. 

 

Mel and Catherine are writing their own vocal arrangements, which is really the only way it could work.  Still, like Nick’s experience with Nickamc, it’s scary to relinquish control.  And again like Nick’s experience, I was nervous before hearing what they would come up with… but elated afterwards.  All their ideas were like better versions of my own – I can’t wait to write some songs that capitalize on our new sound.

I also pushed to get them integrated into our current projection.   

 

The sound mix was the best we’d had, rendering us so slick, no less an authority than Dave Finnigan described us as ‘party rock’.  My work colleague Steve Boardman was also moved enough to write his first rock review.

 

For Projet de Producteur, we’ve got a couple of things brewing over the next three months. 

 

·         Back in January, we recorded a version of Holiday Inn at Nick McCorriston’s studio.  Paul Heslin and I (under our ‘schizophilliac’ moniker) will now be remixing it.  In May, Lou and I will shoot a video for the remix on location in New York.  We were also delighted to have The Blade Winner cover Holiday Inn on LocalNLive the other week – I’ll share some audio of it shortly.

 

·         Our next show will likely be our cassingle launch of 50/50.  The cassettes have been stamped and will be dubbed in the next fortnight (I got the master dubbed by tape king Coolio Desgracias).  Fittingly, we’ve made fifty.  Also on-theme, we’ve placed the same song on both sides of a dual coloured cassette.