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Sunlight's Haven demo was recorded, mixed and mastered over two days in 1992.
We could only afford 12 hours in an 8-track studio and had been lured to The Sound Station in the
Scottish Borders by engineer Tommy Roseburgh
who I had worked with before at various gigs and trusted to help us through our first studio experience.
He and his partner-in-crime
Dottle held our hands and helped us put together a pretty good tape.
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We had decided on the three songs for the demo from a short-list of six or seven. We were all sad to lose the rough, punky Tired (too rough and punky) and the lazy, meandering Hippy Song (too lazy and meandering).
The final three summed up the band as well as any mere three songs could. We tended to change songs constantly. We'd re-arrange them, change the lyrics or the tempo. There wouldn't be time to play around in the studio though so we had developed 'studio' versions of the songs to rehearse.
The two days in the studio were a frantic blur.
We jammed each song a couple of times and would then fix any dodgy bits and, time permitting, re-record guitar and vocal tracks, backing vocals and solos. We were so used to playing live that we would often need to stay in the live room and mime our parts while someone recorded their track in order to give them unconsious visual cues.
Time was of the essence as we only had three hours to record and mix each song. Originally there were only to be three songs on the demo but we somehow managed to write, record and mix Everything Inside while we were doing the other three songs. Not bad going for a bunch of hippies powered solely by caffeine and nicotine.
Phil could do incredible things with a simple four-track recorder and we used a lot of guitar effects but we were a pretty low-tech band and loved having all the toys in the studio to play with. We had barely even seen a sequencer before and couldn't resist the urge to add some timpani and gongs to a couple of the drum tracks. I had an electric kit to play with and Phil had fun with the fretless bass and assortment of strange instruments. Phil ended up singing in harmony with himself on Everything Inside as the rest of us discovered we had
- ahem - "limited vocal talents".
All in all I'm still pleased with my drumming on the demo.
I was using an electric kit for the first time. The idea was to save time getting the drum sound right and save me setting up my kit but I really missed my Premier APK live kit with twin bass drums. I didn't really settle into using the electric kit or the double-kick pedal used to simulate two bass drums. I still managed a lot of tricky stuff with the bass drum lines but it is largely smothered by the bass guitar in the mix. I wish we had had the cash to buy the master 8-track tape at the time but we didn't; once it was mixed it was mixed for good.
Anyway..the songs..
Track 1 - Judas Kiss We decided to kick off the tape with this pacy, guitar-driven track. One of the first songs we played together as a band it is played some three times faster on the demo than at that original jam. The lyrics talk about the anger, defience, sadness and loss generated by an intimate betrayal. We recorded this one pretty much 'live' - jamming it as a band a few times and using the best tracks of each instrument.
Track 2 - Haven This was the newest song on the demo. Phil's lyrics were inspired by a day out at Edinburgh's Botanical Gardens with his girlfriend. The song tried to capture the difference in mood between the stress of city life and the peace found in any safe, beautiful place. Ross and Keith's guitars complement and contrast with each other beautifully. There is a lot of distortion used in this song but wherever Sunlight went distortion pedals followed, we ran everything through them - mics, guitars, basses - even my drums on one occasion.
Track 3 - T.A.P. This song was basically a piss-take punk song. A bouncy, furious three-chord sprint we played for fun. We had used various lyrics with this song but settled for a dark and chilling tale about the aftermath of a gruesome murder as a counterpoint for the upbeat music. Some people were surprised by the dark tone of the demo but the name Sunlight was always intended to be ironic. Despite the mafia connotations of 'a double tap to the head' the title T.A.P. actually refers our original name for the song whatever lyrics we used - 'Teenage. Art. Punks.'
Track 4 - Everything Inside We wrote this song from scratch while recording the other three songs for the demo and snuck it in. It rounds out the demo nicely and ends it on a positive note, balancing the darker songs nicely. We planned the demo for tape and wanted each side to start with a bang and end with a slow-building cresendo and this song fitted perfectly. We abandoned the 'live' ethos and had a ball adding overdubs and extra vocal tracks. Considering it was written by accident it's probably the best song on the demo.
download the songs as mp3 files.
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