Drugstore - Isabel Monteiro blog

---------------------------------------------------------------------- day 1 - The mini-studio is up and running. Spaghetti junction worked out and cables are connected. Found a piece of a broken tambourine and a shaker, which I think was given to me by the guys from band Headswim (?) or some other band we toured with. Will spend the afternoon just playing a few songs, and picking out 1 or 2 to start with, work out a rough pace and key. Spent the last couple of days clearing up the mess I'd created while painting the desk with blackboard paint, which sounded like a fxcking great idea at the time, but quickly turned into yet another mini-diy disaster. it looks good though. This is a good spot - huge windows, no neighbours - I feel I could be in the middle of nowhere. Phone's switched off. I've got coffee, bread and wine and 2 extra packets of marlboro lights.

---------------------------------------------------------------------- INTRO - Follow the process from despair to inspiration, as I gather ideas, demo new songs and plot the new Drugstore album. anatomy - from the Oxford Dictionary: • noun (pl. anatomies) 1 the scientific study of bodily structure. 2 the bodily structure of a person, animal, or plant. 3 a detailed examination or analysis.

I have never lost, even in my darkest hour, the sense of absolute awe, the desire to understand everything that surrounds me, and a profound compassion for it all.

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the past 7 years -

Drugstore went into hibernation and I fell into a music-free coma. Within a couple of years I was lost in the mist, stuck right in the middle of a bad script, set in the desolate landscape of a Cormack McCarthy novel, being shot by Polanski on a very tight budget. Scary. Making music was but a fuzzy memory, and I could not imagine ever having the drive or desire to play guitar again. About a year ago, having ridden out the worst of the storms, I unexpectedly started to write, and out came a bunch of songs, then another, and another. By this point, I had long sold my music gear for a few pounds on Gumtree, and all that remained was a cheap'n'nasty acoustic guitar, which is the one you will hear on these demos. At some point I started filing my ideas in a drawer called Anatomy.

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the demos - I moved to Kew at the beginning of the year, and that brought a much needed sense of normality back to my life (just). I was hoping to start demoing the new songs the same way I've done on the previous album (Songs for the Jetset), taking my time and down to the smallest detail and overdub. With the upcoming Drugstore reunion gig at Dingwalls (07/09/09), I've decided to change gear, and just upload some pretty Rough'n'Ready demos. Once the craziness of the gig passes away, I will go back and start over again, with time at hand, to add all the little dubs/sounds I hear in my head. So, please, keep in mind, the stuff I'll be uploading here are PRE-Demos of the Demos, put down very quickly, and will probably sound very rough. I was never very good at recording to start with. I know nothing about equalization and my new portastudio (kindly donated by r.v.m.) has dozens of buttons and knobs that will forever remain a mystery to me.

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