I sat down and talked with Aaron Archer (my extremely talented guitarist and friend) about the next Red State Soundsystem record (the next LP, not the Sophia Sessions EP of acoustic versions of Ghosts In A Burning City songs that I’m recording right now), and what it’s going to sound like. I told him I wanted to make a three in the morning dive bar record; music for drunk brokenhearted dudes who read Nietzsche and sultry girls in cocktail dresses with whiskey voices. A velvet and black leather record, a red and black record. I may have mentioned Greg Dulli and Mark Lanegan several times, and also Paul Westerburg.
The long and short is this: I’m moving away from the sound of the last record. This new record is going to be more aggressive, a bit more rock and roll…though I’m not abandoning the ambience and electronica entirely. I told him I wanted to make an Afghan Whigs record as produced by Brian Eno. The album’s also going to be a bit less…eclectic…than the first one. Aaron’s going to be working with me a lot more on the arrangements, and I want the songs to have a unified sound. Which is not to say that all the songs will sound alike, but that they’ll probably jump around a bit less than the last one.
And I want it to be fucking noisy.
I have almost the entire record written, at least in terms of lyrics and chord progressions, and in the next couple of months Aaron and I are going to start the actual recording. I’ll probably drop rough mixes of a couple of the tracks, as we go.
So there’s that.