I've decided to do a little blog article for each track on the album starting with Animal and working all the way through to God's Front Porch. So without further ado here's Animal!
Out of the ten songs on the album this one's the newest. Before we headed into Half Ton Studios every song existed to a certain degree, either in my head or in basic demo form. This one however only existed as a chord structure that we played through in a rehearsals the weekend before recording commenced. The lyrics were kind of written on the fly but the end result was a catchy little pop song that we thought would be a great opener and a cool debut single.
However, Iâd already planned to put out 'the British IBM' as the debut single and a lot of my time and effort was being spent working on the video for it. Since the clock was ticking and with only so many hours in the day I opted to outsource the video for Animal to an animator going by the name of Jose Cubero (Ridertoons). Jose did an excellent job and even though it may sound tad cheesy he really did capture the essence of the song. The original brief I gave him was only a couple of sentences asking for something with the aesthetics of an 8-bit video game that looked "a bit summery".
Guest Musicians
Cambridge based singer/songwriter Paul Goodwin was kind enough to pop into the studio to do some keyboards and added that organ sound to the track. Good old Goodwin!
Bugs took some time out from the mixing desk to do the hand claps on the chorus.
Equipment
Fender Jagstang
Fender Telecaster
Fender Deville Amp
Fender Jazz Bass
Peavey 115 Combo Bass Amp
Nord Keyboard
Tama Starclassic Drum Kit