Journey To Hear

You Are Here: Track 3: Journey To Hear

9 days to go to the release of You Are Here, and we’re continuing our sneaky peek at the writing and recording of the album. Today, we’re looking at the third track on the album, Journey To Hear.

Although all our tracks are credited as having been written by the whole band, some originate from the fingers, pens or minds of one or other of us, before they are introduced to the band and fundamentally changed beyond recognition.

Journey to Hear is one such track. When the band slipped into a hiatus around 2002, Jeff made midi recordings of several ideas for songs, most of which were unfinished. He always says that he never expected these doodles to see the light of day, but he hesitantly shared them with the newly reformed band in 2018. Journey wasn’t originally intended to be an instrumental. Jeff fully intended it to be sung and even had lyrics ready to go. But the band works on a democratic basis and Martin and Mark reached a deal with Jeff, after lengthy discussions, that he could sing the lead vocal on condition that it was an instrumental. Everybody was happy and, with that agreed, recording could begin.

It wasn’t called Journey To Hear until it came to the end of the recording process. The working title for this piece was Tuna Surprise. This arose from a rough recording in the early stages, where Jeff calls out “Tuner please” at the beginning of the recording.

It’s unique amongst the tracks on You Are Here, as it is the only song in which Jeff and Martin share guitar duties. The guitar solo is Jeff’s work and it is the only point on the album where he is allowed to use more than 4 strings at one time.

We felt that it was a perfect fit for the album musically and concept wise, as it represents a mechanical, industrial rhythm with it’s constant riff, in contrast to the previous track’s free-form structure.

So there you have it. Journey To Hear, the song with no words.

With Jeff on lead vocals.

You Are Here is released on 1st July 2019 on digital platforms worldwide and is also available on CD from www.finesoftday.bandcamp.com.