News

Dark Company have joined Twitter, so you can read all of the latest gossip directly from the band themselves by becoming a follower. You can send tweets to them @Dark_Company and see the ten latest tweets at their homepage here (see the link to the left). So far the band have been posting updates regularly.

Expert lensman Phil Vee again photographed Dark Company earlier today down by the river Exe. It was a lot of fun and the shoot was made more unusual by Pete gushing blood from his nose and upper lip where he’d had an accident with his razor and George gushing blood from his thumb after he tripped and fell over in comedy fashion. Despite their wounds, the shoot was a success and we hope to have some photos up in a week or so.

Meanwhile, back in the studio, the band have been hard at work. The song Knowing, We Are from the Bad Habits collection is nearing completion after sorting out all of its layers, re-recording all of George’s guitar tracks and introducing a new compression system to Studio 1, which is simply fabulous.

Due to a poorly Atari in Studio 2, Pete has managed to record the voices for five songs we were not expecting to do this week. They were Mister Dream from the Alien Heat collection and We All Lite Up, Zero Heroes, Spiritual Remission and Exstacy from the Can of Worms collection. There are only two more songs needing vocal parts recording on the Alien Heat collection (Traveller and Dancin’ in the Dark) before we can start mixing it.

We may not have finished working on Dark Company’s Bad Habits album, but it is time to announce their 11th collection of songs. The newest album of songs by Dark Company will be titled Noir and we plan to have it ready by late 2010.

We have 18 song titles for you as well: Alarm Clock, All Tomorrow’s Parties, Cable Guy, Change the Light, Code Red, Coloured Drum, Dead Young, FBI, Mainstream Man, Meat Grinder, Mirror Mirror on the Wall, Now or Never, Please Try Later!, Right Turn, Sailor, Those Like Us, Tilt and Up West.

To tease you further, we have published the lyrics to these songs over at Explicit Music if you would like to read any of them. We may publish some demos and out-takes of these at some point soon. The title Noir came from the film genre of the same name and the dark, dark feel of the new material.

Due to a poorly computer in Studio 2, Pete today recorded some vocal parts to some of the oldest of old Alien Heat songs as that collection develops further. Easy Street and Wonderlust were the songs he recorded and it was fun to do them again after nearly 20 years since their last outing. There are only three more songs on that collection still in need of vocals to be recorded.

Meanwhile, our boffins are grappling with the assortment of intangibilities and imponderables that make up Knowing, We Are from the Bad Habits album. Brian Eno, producer of U2’s Joshua Tree, once described the engineering of the opening track Where the Streets Have No Name as “… a nightmare of screwdriver work.” Knowing, We Are is another song that seems to fit into that particular category.

Dark Company also plan to do another photoshoot. Pete tried out his somewhat frightening hair dye the other day. It may yet look cool. More news on this will follow shortly.

It seems as if Andy’s finger doesn’t need surgery after all. It means he has to wear his cast for another month. Meanwhile the set is improving and we hope there will be some live performances sometime around the end of October.

Days Like These, the sixth track on Dark Company’s Bad Habits collection, has now been uploaded. It is a light-hearted pop-rock ditty hoping for some future change. It sounds as if the lead guitar causes the universe to be destroyed at the end, and the snare drum is so nailed by Sven that we could have sworn he played the drums using sledgehammers rather than sticks. We hope you like the new version.

It looks as if Mr Lijkkes of The Bastard Sons of Dennis will be going under the knife at the end of the month. His tendon will be reattached and at some point thereafter the contraption holding his finger in place will be able to be removed and he will return to normal. Meantime, the set of Blue Oyster Cult songs is coming along very nicely indeed and the duo are looking into adding Dominance and Submission and OD’d on Life Itself to the set.

We’ve uploaded the new mix of Nightshifters to Dark Company’s Bad Habits collection. We hope you like the new version with its beautifully filthy guitars, the ten imperial tons of mean and dirty bass hanging in mid-air like a single vast flawless slab of iron, and all the lovely twinkly ethereal keys. This song is a lyrical favourite of the team overflowing with Pete’s magical evocative imagery. It is a kind of visionary space-metal proclamation with a hint of Evanescence and a tang of Kraftwerk about it.

Dark Company have also been busy working on material new and old. Much of the Alien Heat collection is progressing, as is the Can of Worms collection.

All the demos of their 11th album have been mixed into one solid lump of guitars, voices, basses and drums which we are calling Wooden Wires. It has a very pleasing sound indeed and we’re looking forward very much to hearing the finished product! We anticipate that work on the Wooden Wires material will begin in earnest around the end of this year or early next year.