The latest R#42 blog has sparked media interest this week with the news that Ash frontman Tim Wheeler joined Coldplay's recording sessions, as well as news on their 'metal band' approach to songwriting which was also included in the latest blog...
The TourDates website followed the storyline that Coldplay had been approaching new songs "as though they are a metal band" and experimented with playing sessions in different ways, with often surprising results: "Chris suggests playing a gorgeous melody as though they are a metal band. The first stab at this is predictably (and intentionally) comedic. They pursue it though, playing one section over and over in a loop, varying the dynamic from pin drop quiet to aggressive and bolshy. They move through the transitions as one unit, as though someone is pressing their foot smoothly on some huge gas pedal somewhere."
And Ash frontman Tim Wheeler has been working with Coldplay, writes The Sun on an as-yet unnamed track; They say: "Coldplay have been labouring intensely in their north London HQ on the follow-up to their hugely successful 2009 collection Viva La Vida since last summer. And their efforts have recently been bolstered by the axeman from Northern Ireland. A source said: 'Chris has always had a soft spot for Ash. They were quite close in the early days and have shared a number of bills over the years. He admires Tim as a songwriter, especially his brilliant way with melodies, so he didn't think twice about asking him to get involved.'"
Ash had a string of hits in the mid to late Nineties with tracks including Girl From Mars and Kung Fu. They've failed to do much in the charts since but have still been plugging away. With arch experimenter Brian Eno still supervising Coldplay sessions and Wheeler on board, it's anyone's guess what the new tracks will sound like.
R#42 explained: "Tim straps on a guitar and jumps into the day's tune. He's fiddling around at the top of the neck, looking for melodies, just throwing out streams of notes. Chris starts to call over the mic 'What was that?'. He sings a tiny snippet of something that Tim played only once - almost as something to just get his fingers moving. It's such a tiny cluster of notes that for a while it's unclear where they should fall in the chord sequence until finally they drop into place and twinkle like they've been there all along, just waiting to be discovered."
New pictures of Coldplay with fans at the Beehive (31st January - 3rd February 2011): [thanks to bRITAnka & fauo_1995]
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