The story began some years ago when Byrne got hold of a project album the three men had recorded under the name the Ballistic Bros. "He bought both albums and asked if we would be interested in supporting him on tour," said Diesel. "We explained that we weren’t a band but he said he’d keep in touch. Five years on we were working on a backing track, which sounded a bit ‘80s - and our engineer said it reminded him of Talking Heads. We sent the track across to David Byrne, who loved it, and sent his vocals back as WAV files. It took about a month from there; the first version was stripped right down but there was no piano. We knew we had to get the keyboard perfect because David Byrne had been a hero of ours."
This month, XPress 2 starts work building their new studio in Hammersmith, on account of the fact that Rocky lost most of their old studio rig in a painful divorce settlement. "We want to not only be able to mix the album but set up our turntables, write and finish material there as well," he said. "We need things like a G4 and a lot of software - but our record company, Skint, have been very supportive."
The last album (Musikizum) was recorded at Rollover Studio and their next project will be a collaboration with Dieter Meyer. On tour, they stress the need to play through Stanton Trackmasters on their riders. "But in some instances we would turn up at a venue and they didn't have our favourite Stantons - which was ridiculous," said Rocky. "We love the overall sound and the fact they are so hard-wearing, and so we’ve now done a deal with Lamba to get supplied with MP4 sets, in the flightcases. It’s all about getting great sound, and with the Trackmaster IIs we know we are guaranteed that."
(Lee Baldock)
