I woke up in a tent pitched at Loch Tay, and was driven to Glasgow by my Mum. If I’d been a bit sharper with the directions, just a little less distracted by the excitement of going to my first recording session at Savalas Studios, I might have been on time.  At a mere twenty minutes late I was the first member of Fear Wasabi to arrive; the others were subject to a technological fault. “The bus literally broke down,” explained Andy, arriving with Phil and Tom just as my conversation with the artist Roddy Buchanan had reached the point of running. Thus our first meeting as a group began with several anecdotes concerning the stigma of running as an adult. In our experience, if you aren’t wearing the running uniform you will be marked as suspicious, and this can actually slow you down.

Roddy talked to us about the difficulties in the collaborative process, and elaborated upon his ongoing involvement with the project. We discussed with him our ideas that had been previously presented as sketchy, partial recordings. We played our most up-to-date composition for Lament, and heard Roddy’s comments. Gladly, he was honest about aspects that he thought were inappropriate, and thankfully, these were generally details of the composition which we agreed needed work.

Our initial priority was to record an important aspect of the Lament soundtrack – so the first thing we focused on was clapping. In a flamenco style rhythm, to speed up in time with each other… we did many takes, some approaching the desired effect. It felt good doing this; building a rhythm together. Some takes were just one or two of us, others were all four – with Giles faithfully manning the mixing desk.

Our mentor at the studio, Giles was with us throughout the day, lending us his professional expertise, giving us both advice and encouragement to follow our own ideas. In many ways we were all pretty clear, and agreed, on the approach we were taking to the two pieces; though with Lament there was some doubt over the structure of the composition. We spent time discussing this. There were objectives we felt unable to progress on until the final voice recording was made for this piece. We also realised that the newest cut of the Tattoo video, being significantly longer, would require us to re-record our soundtrack piece for it. Chatting to Giles about the facilities available, as well as the techniques we could use to sculpt or enhance our recordings, we were able to plan what we needed to do in time for the next session at Savalas, and used our last hour or so to record some improvised tangents. The session therefore concluded with a sense of achievement, and as we made our way back to Dundee we firmed our resolutions for the next stage in the plan.