These Truly Are End Times – An Album By So Cow

 

Recording – May and June 06

Mixing – September 06

Mastering – November 06

Manufacture – January 07

Release – February 07

 

All instruments played by so cow. Recorded at Ping Pong Sound, Hapjeong, Seoul, South Korea (Ping Pong Sound is no more) between 12am and 6am on varying nights. Recorded through a Mackie mixer (eight channels), through a Layla external soundcard unit to Nuendo 3. Mixed on Sennheiser earphones (16 euros) and a 5.1 stereo DVD audio unit got free with my internet subscription. Mastered using T-Racks…on Sae Bom’s computer, borrowed for a few weeks. Manufactured at Copycopymedia in Yeoungdeunpo, Seoul. 500 CDs printed. Art work by Yan Yin AKA Yang Jung Hwan. Photography also.

 

Track-by-Track guide

 

Amature’s Introduction – The man heard speaking is Amature Amplifier. He is speaking in the bar he used to manage. He has released two albums himself, one self-released and the other on the now-defunct Ping Pong Sound label. I gather he’s describing how upset and morose So Cow will make the listener, but that chins should be kept up. Keep fighting. Casio VL-Tone keyboard makes its one and only appearance on the album. I vomited on the keyboard in November 06. I won’t bore you with the lurid details. The Disco music heard faint in the background was the track playing at the bar while I recorded him. I’m more than willing to admit that I’m not responsible for it, and that I’ll lose millions in copyright court somewhere down the line.

 

Casablanca – Mixed in part by Choi Sae Bom. Three guitars. Three voices. Bass used is a copy of one of those basses that Paul McCartney used to play in the Beatles. You know the one. Casablanca was the film I watched on my first date with my last girlfriend. I went nuts for it at the time but, over time, came to lose interest. Metaphors, similes, all that.

 

So Cow Vs. The Future – Casio CZ-100 for the synth noises. A kick drum makes its first appearance ( Casablanca drums were recorded before I really knew how to operate the mixer properly…mistakes were made, don’t doubt it). Self-doubt, confusion, a solo. The coda…has striking similarities to the theme tune to Channel 4’s sitcom Black Books. This was not intentional. All guitar solos on this album were improvised on the spot, so blame deep-seated memory, nothing more.

 

Ja Ju Ah Pa Yo – Re-recorded, original version from “unofficial” debut album (shush). Korean phrases taken from a tourist phrase book. The joys of Reverb. Pronunciation maybe not what it could be. Big with Koreans, who consider it a comedy number.

 

The League of Impressionable Teens – Oldest song on the album (not counting unlisted final track of which more later). Recently, I realised the beat was, if not a blatant steal, then at least an uncomfortable approximation of another tune, but I’ve forgotten what it was. Lyrically…hmmm. I’m going to aim a healthy number of songs at people who dress up as though it’s 60s New York or 20s Paris or something. Seriously, fuck off. Irony as a pastime. That kind of shite. Professional revellers. Party people. Some people prefer the original version of this. It was slower. Each beat took three seconds. That’s progress.

 

Government Complex, Gwacheon – Named after a Subway station on Line 4 in Seoul . It’s where the government people work and play football on the only grass pitches for miles. There’s a KFC. Lyrics written while sitting in a large public park in a Sonic Youth t-shirt and Nike shorts, watching couples running through fountains and imagining how lovely it would be to get pissed wet with a girl in love. Where the punk came from, I’m not sure. Oh, actually, that riff was one of four abandoned songs I wrote for my old band The Accidents, before our demise. One third of The Accidents is now in the fantastic The Terribles, the other lives happily with family just outside of San Francisco . I gave an early version of this album to a Korean girl, who just happened to live at Government Complex, Gwacheon. I felt a bit silly.

 

One Careful Owner – Any time I play this live, I forget the lyrics fifty per cent of the way in and the music 80 per cent of the way in, so it becomes an entirely new, albeit torrid, song. I’d been listening to a lot of Beat Happening when this got wrote, so the lyrics tap that same well of twee romanticism. First So Cow song with a harmonica. Can you imagine that.

 

First Language – The piano part (which is 80% of the song, I guess) was written while I taught at a Kindergarten. I would play this for the children (and also for my co-workers in order to encourage one of them to come to the cinema or café with me on a date). It never found its audience there. The lyrics concern my suspicion that, given any more encouragement, I’d probably become an alcoholic. Not so much that I drink a whole lot, just that I have that switch in my brain that one day, when flicked, will land me sleeping under a currach with a shirt pocket full of sand.

 

Guilty of Being Cute – One evening, I was out for dinner in Beomgye, which is about 45 minutes south of Seoul , and about 10 minutes south of the aforementioned Government Complex Gwacheon. I was out with three female co-workers and a male co-worker, a tall and bland-hearted Canadian. At one point in the course of the evening, I excused myself and went to the bathroom. On my return, I was greeted with a wild smattering of giggles. I asked why and was told that it had been decided…The Canadian was handsome, and I was cute. I demanded to know on what grounds the decision had been made, and was given no satisfactory answer. What exactly is cute? It’s a minefield. Great minds have failed. To the three or so people so far who have questioned my ego on the basis of this song…calm it down. I saw myself in the mirror an hour ago and it was far from lovely. The drums were recorded with a single AKG microphone in a windowless box room. The noise at the end is the Casio CZ-100 through about 5 distortion pedals.

 

Jesus H Christ – Originally written for the Best Vacation Ever! EP released on Rusted Rail Records. I found out today that this is my mother’s favourite song. Which means she has listened to the album…which means I’ll have to apologize at some stage for all the toilet mouth lyrics.

 

Moon Geun Young – Moon Geun Young is a teenage superstar in Korea. She has a clean cut image and as such is a godsend to advertisers who use her to hawk phones, mp3 players, pizzas, parliamentary elections and whatever else needs selling in Korea. It’s not uncommon to see her appear in three consecutive ads on TV. She currently studies Humanities at a good level of University in Seoul, so I assume she’s had some sort of a life. The song isn’t about her. It’s about having a blazing row with a girl one night, her walking off and leaving me to fume at the bus stop. In the midst of all this madness, Moon Geun Young looked down at us from an advertisement hoarding, wearing a multi-colored crash helmet and a manic grin. In her hand, a Samsung cellphone. Again, metaphors, similes, etc. The song was written on the drums.

 

Ping Pong Rock – The big production number. 30 tracks used in Nuendo. About 6 different guitar sounds, five vocal tracks, three for admittedly ineffectual handclaps and several more for percussions and synths and what not. It’s hard to write a love song without sounding like someone else who has already written one, so writing about them writing songs makes it a little easier. The guitar used for the noise at the end was purchased for 15 euro in a flea market and, except for this one moment of heroic noisy glory, is a piece of absolute shit.

 

It’s Over – An original version utilised Casios, drum machines and the weediest vocal stylings since time kicked in. This version was recorded very, very late one evening. The vocals sound it. Re-do them? Go for perfection? Madness. This song was written for a girl back in the day. Animal whimsy and Oops Vicar! innuendo is only endearing for so long.

 

Five Months, Out In The Wilderness – Originally the second track on the album and originally an instrumental. I gave a first draft of the album to a friend of mine who told me it was a very bad idea to include this song as it was. I thank him. I went away for a while, thinking it over. I came back, wrote lyrics about time, Christ and love, and threw it on side 2. That friend has been away since and hasn’t heard the finished version of the album. Hopefully I don’t get a severe bollocking over it. The “oh fuck, shit” part before the loud part came about because I sat on the remote control while recording vocals and took CNN off mute. Listen very carefully and you can hear a snippet of ‘Late Edition with Wolf Blitzer’.

 

Yan Yin Says – Title from a discussion with Yan Yin about Velvet Underground song titles where a girl says something. It’s a little folk song. It was a little too short though, so I attacked it with a Korg noisemaker that was lying around.

 

The Last Big Thing – Lyrically inspired after reading a biography of The Smiths, principally the part which details how it all went to shit legally. Recorded when I had a sinus infection, hence the slightly out-of-tune bass. The longest song I’ve ever done, although I gather many people don’t count the final minute, and most haven’t made it to the last 15 seconds.

 

To Do List – A decision was made the night before pressing the album in late January 2007 to include this. Recorded and mixed in about 30 minutes in November, after everything else had been mastered. This song is about 7 years old. Originally featured on The Accidents LP as a full band song. Written for a girl back in the day. I have no emotional attachment to that side of the song anymore, it’s just jaunty fun to sing.

 

And that’s the album pretty much. Specific questions and inquiries can be sent to iamsocow@gmail.com