Nothing to say was the first track I wrote with Erik. We had just met and was trying to figure out what kind of music we should do together. We both liked electroclash and figured we should write a pop song with some edge and attitude.
We started by programming a baseline and some drums in Reason. In fact a lot of our early songs are programmed solely in Reason. It's only the vocals that are done in Cubase. The music came along very easy and it only took a couple of hours to write and programme. But when it came to the lyrics we got stuck and had no idea in what direction we wanted to go.
I had this idea that we should stay away from love themes. Probably thought it was easy to get into cliches, and wanted to do something different. I remember that we took a break from the studio and went for pizza. While eating we came up with the idea of trying to write lyrics about something that annoyed and angered us (wixh has become a formula for Batch ID). We pitched a lot of different ideas before we started to talk about stuff that currently was on TV.
We both despised reality television and docusoaps where young people got famous for being drunk and doing stupid stuff. We both seemed to have a particular disgust for the show The Simple life with Paris Hilton and Nicole Richie. Rich girls that seemed to get famous for being obnoxious and stupid and really detached from everyday life. Girls with absolutely nothing to say. With that topic in mind it was very easy to come up with the lyrics and I think we recorded the vocals the very same day.
We had absolutely no clues about production when we started the band. We only used EQ on the master and on the vocals. The other sounds is mostly raw from the synths in Reason. We had some rudimentary knowledge about reverb and delays, but other then that, it is not many effects in the production.
So we kind of picked sounds that we thought fit in different places in the soundscape. That is why the sound of the songs sometimes are a bit flat and lacks a bit in punch and depth. But considering the lack of knowledge I am surprised that the songs sounds as good as they do. It could have been much worse.
Johan