Track By Track: Trailer Trash Tracys on Althaea

Smoked Silver

"Smoked Silver" is the name of a cocktail from the book The Savoy Cocktail by Harry Craddock written in the 1930s. We came across this book when meeting a Filipino bartender who would often say ‘enhance ya dance with my smoked silver’. Musically, the track uses sampled de-tuned strings and marimba improvisations by percussionist Bei Bei Wang.

Eden Machine

At the time we were reading Logan’s Run and the title was inspired by this book. It’s the perfect title for a dystopian book or film. Most dystopian works present a world with oppressive societal control masked in the illusion of a perfect society, and "Eden Machine" captures this. The intro riff is an Asian radio siren and an alarm we sampled but then morphed into our own 7/8 time signature motif. There is a wonky feel to the track, party because of the pitch-shifted toms that steer the track to the left, away from any generic disco comparisons.

Gong Gardens

A friend of ours living in the outskirts of Brighton has an oriental garden with a collection of large gongs set up all around it. We recorded some tracks there but it didn’t quite work out. We only kept the memories and title of the project and scrapped the recordings. In the track itself we shadow programmed music to a B-side track by Sakamoto/Sylvian, then layered it with live drums. The vocals suited a more monotone vibe, and the lyrics were inspired by a short Oscar Wilde story.

Siebenkäs

We had this epic hero synth riff in the vein of Jan Hammer's "Crockett’s Theme" in Miami Vice, and combined it with a rhythm taken from a Congolese record we liked. Lyrics were inspired by the German novel Siebenkäs, about a married man who faked his own death to be with the woman he loved. The term 'doppelgänger' was born in this book.

Money For Moondogs

We had to sell a collection of rare Moondog records that we vowed to never sell. At the time, we were not working, and needed to buy a half decent microphone and a pre-amp to finish off the record. It was a symbolic moment; street musician records sold for a high price, to fund musicians 70 years later. Of course the track is in 5/4 snake time.

Betty’s Cavatina

A 3/4 waltz track is something we always want to feature on our albums. Betty’s Cavatina is a cafe near our humble studio, Bangalan. Its a greasy spoon, a place with a vintage arcade, photos of The Everly Brothers, and exotic banana cake. Whilst putting the record together, it was one of the few places where we could take our mind off things. It‘s open 24 hours and run by a Romanian family.

Casadora

We took a gamble and de-fretted Jimmy [Lee]'s Fender guitar, to make it fretless, to see what kind of sound we could produce from it. It was tricky at first to play, but we managed to get the sort of warble effects that features on this track. It might sound like a straight forward pop song at first but it's thrown off by being in 7/8 which is an awkward time signature and the fretless sounds does bring an unnerving edge to the whole track.

Singdrome

The ‘ballad’ of the album. We used tropical percussions on this track, and the choral sound was from an old synth we had lying around. The choral sweeps were meant to emulate crashing waves onto a beach. Lyrically it’s unashamedly referencing traditional romantic ideas from poetry books we had scattered around in our studio.

Kalesa

"Kalesa" is a tribute to cruise ship workers. Jimmy has family who work in this industry. His cousin worked on a cruise ship as a porter, and lost 50% of his hearing because his room was next to the engine. Musically, we listened to a lot of cruise ship music, the trick was to balance the naff elements to give the music more of an eerie sound; this was achieved with a call and response technique of a manic choral group and the main vocal line.

100 Aspects of the Moon

The moon has always fascinated us, it actually features in our video "Siebenkäs". Whilst looking for suitable album art for the record, we found a series of 100 prints published in 1885-92 by Akiyama Buemon, titled 100 Aspects Of The Moon. Musically, we sampled birds and ocean waves and put this in the mix. A Hawaiian guitar was used for the main riff.