Monthly Archives: June 2012

one-take cover #1: ‘i’m confused’

david ding - 'i'm confused'

As my Last.fm overall album listening stats will confirm, I’ve been pretty obsessed with Handsome Furs over the last couple of years.

About this time last year, I recorded a cover of a song from their first album. But it’s really their second, Face Control, that has held a steadfast grip on me during this time.  So, it’s about time I had a crack at one of its tracks. (I’ll get around to discussing the album more in the Top Ten of the 2000s thread soon enough…)

Regrettably, this comes a month after the band announced their split. So, this kind of doubles as my tribute to the band. Thanks for the tunes Dan and Alexei!

The cover is very basic – acoustic guitar and vocals, recorded together in one take. My aim is to try and do more covers in this vein, just to keep myself musically active, since I seem to have once again fallen into a bit of a songwriting stupor. (Suggestions welcome!)

Anyway, for now, here’s me doing ‘I’m Confused’ by Handsome Furs (whose original version you can enjoy herewise) -

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

[download 'i'm confused' mp3]

new single: cut me up

Late into this year’s RPM Challenge, running out of time, I abandoned plans to record elaborate, multi-instrument arrangements of the songs I had written – and instead just laid down very basic acoustic guitar + vocal versions. The result was the demonstration blues album (which, listening back to it now for the first time in a while, didn’t turn out too bad, if I do say so myself).

At that point, there were two “fully-arranged” recordings near completion. But these were cast aside when the simplistic, “demo-y” direction was chosen. One, I was very happy to leave behind, as it wasn’t going anywhere. But the other one had some potential.

The acoustic version of ‘cut me up’ that ended up on the album was pretty strong, I thought. But I still felt the abandoned version deserved an airing.

So, I eventually (only three-and-a-half months later), got around to sorting that out. Here it is:

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

[download 'cut me up' mp3]