Transfection

Released : October 1997

 

Personnel

Peter Nuttall - Music/Lyrics/Vocals
Douglas Hunter - Lyrics/Vocals
Ian Forbes - Lyrics
Nadia Al-ani - Lyrics

What strikes me about the 'Transfection' and 'Magic' albums is how much character they have. They're both filled with songs that have their own personalities.  'Boom!' and 'World for our Children' for example; they're the kids at the back of the classroom the others look to, wondering what they're going to get up to next.

1996's 'Magic' was an album about meeting people, missing people, spending time with people, falling in and out of love, staring at the night sky in the silence, sitting by the sea and watching a storm approach, writing to people you've never met then meeting them face to face and having a completely different dynamic, working together and feeling that shared elation, enjoying your own company, being yourself, enjoying others being themselves and seeing those parts of people you'd never see otherwise.

1997's 'Transfection' was the exact opposite. It was filled with anger and frustration, hatred, watching sandcastles crumble into the sea - unable to save a single grain, neglect, self-doubt, defeat, acceptance and letting go. It was a painful album to record at times but it was balanced quite nicely with a few songs of hope; a childish naive kind of hope. However, both albums stand together as monuments to the very heart and soul of what made Urban Fox what it was pre-1998.

"There's some gorgeous songs on this album with rich mythology and good origin stories.  It's so full of very powerful postive and negative emotions, it's like screaming at people and well, that's not what people want to hear. It's what I had to write though - without this album, I doubt I would have been able to make any sense of what was going on in my world that year.

This was the last album in Urban  Fox  Phase 1 and signalled a creative dearth which lasted for at least 2 years (which was about four albums in those days).  The title 'Transfection' is a gene-splicing term - I thought it sounded like the 'transfer of affection' which is what summed up the theme of the album.

Song by Song

1. Transfection

This was the first angry rant on the album directed at one person in particular who I didn't get on with at work; it's a bit over the top actually but it's how I felt at the time and she never heard it and she never knew it was about her so it's done no harm.  We actually made-up a few months after I wrote this song so it's all good.

2. I will be there

This was the obvious single and after we hawked that about a bit we got offered a few gigs on the back of it.  It's quite vacuous even though the lyrics are again quite desperate and bit obsessive. Mariah Carey, The Jacksons, The Four Tops and Urban Fox. I knew it was a cliche, which we tried to avoid like the plague, especially when you look at songs like 'West end' and 'Chapter IV' trying to be something nobody else was doing - but 'I'll will be there' was a love song - one in which the protagonist is a bit conceited but with their heart in the right place. It's just pop music really.

3. Autumn (I sing)

This was written in the same session as 'I will be there' and was the last song of Phase 1. It's the answer to 'I will be there's' call. Once the protagonist is 'there' for that person, 'then comes the rain'. It's the ultimate cynical voice of pessimism and reality. Saying that being there sounds all well and good, but when  you're finally together after so many months of back and forth, it's just going to rain anyway, metaphorically. There are decisions made in this song - choices and decisions to be made and the song 'Mistakes' laments the choices and the possibilities lost through fear and apathy.  It was also autumn 1997 when I wrote it, so that's were the title came from.

4. World for our Children

A little shift in tone here - and out of kilter with the album's heart but I couldn't ignore what was another Douglas Hunter gem. A play on the nursery rhymes we all grew up with but with a dark urban decay grounded in the underside of society. It's a lyric that Tupac or someone would have won a grammy for. They don't give them to people from Gateshead though.  The bass and drum lines were sequenced on a Yamaha PSR-90 which had three 2-bar custom rhythm banks, one for the intro/outro, one for the chorus and one for the verse. I ran the PSS-790 (with all the other bits sequenced into the memory) into a four-channel rack, and with the PSR-90 running into the other two channels, flipped between the three sequenced drum-bass parts live. It's why they sound a little clipped in parts. No such issues with the re-recording though.

The chorus of this song owes a lot to Mansun's 'Wide open space' which I was obsessed with at the time - unconsciously nicking the embellishment at the end of the chorus.

5. Mistakes

Probably the most personal song I've ever written. The original and the re-recording which slows it right down both have their merits - both carry the message quite well.

'Monk's Head' was a joke title I came up with after seeing U2 in their Pop Mart tour in Leeds. I was agog at the quality of musicianship, songwriting and performance I'd just witnessed and thought it would be funny if Bono said '...and now, a song that's been very good to us over the years... Monk's Head'.  It stuck though and it went on to represent those moments you just want to gaze at your feet and not speak to anyone.

'Return to Magic' was a bit of a reference to the 'Magic' album, a dark brooding number with the same pipe organ as the song of the same name.  It was about the amount of change I'd been through in just a year since writing it.  There was humour too, which had been lacking in the previous few years with lyrics like 'you know where you are with an atlas'. 'West End (my best friend)' was a lyric Ian had written about his Student digs in Nottingham, all about dogs making noise next door and people stealing cars.  It was abstract and that wasn't something we'd done much of - especially as we'd just gotten a 4-track tape machine and were able to overdub and double track.

'Chapter IV' took on a life of its own - it was a simple jam with me on picked guitar, Ian on bass and then Ian again with overdubbed lead guitar.  The lyrics had been scribbled down during a particularly difficult day - one during which I also wrote 'Transfection'.  It's so raw - we've re-recorded it a few times and it's always felt bitter. It's great.

 

Swerve and Swarm was a lyric a friend wrote - unintentionally I think. The original line was 'The wall stood there so swerve and swarm'.  I loved it and we developed it together - it's a bit of nonesense really, but it's what we were all about then.  'On the face of it' is another song ranting about someone I wasn't a big fan of at the time and  yes, I attempted a Prince song as a cover.  I apologise.'

 'North-East of Eden' is Doug's homage to Newcastle - being away from it for periods of time when he was at university.

'The theme from transfection' - was written after I'd transcribed the Danny Elfman 'Batman' theme for a project I was involved in.  It was my attempt at a kind of film score. 'No regrets' started with a pipe organ version of 'Ignore Me' because I'd just been listening to George Michael's 'Faith' which starts with a church organ version of the Wham! song 'Freedom'.

- Peter