The songs on my second long-player, ’Pure Zen, Ken?’ were mostly written between Summer 2015 and Springtime 2018 whilst living in Dumfries, Scotland. 'Better Man', is a bit older having been written and demo’d in Foshan, China in 2013. Also, if I’m being totally accurate (who cares right!?) the first half of 'My Lucky Stars' was cooked up way back in 2009 or thereabouts, with Le Reno Amps.

Given that as I write this, there's nowhere to go and nothing to be done about it, self-isolating lends itself to a Spring clean. So, much like I did with 'Braw Powered Down', I've trawled my digital archives and compiled all the 4-track demos of the songs that made up 'Pure Zen, Ken?' and entitled it, 'Pure Rough, Ken?'.

A big difference between this record and the first one is that this time round, the Zen Men were in tow. Having a live band really affects your writing. Not necessarily in a practical sense. I still wrote almost exclusively on acoustic guitar and more often than not was led by the melody and the rhythm, but you can write with your band in mind because you're aware of their styles and individual personality. As a writer this can take you on a different route as you feel your way through a composition. In my case, it pushed me to write what I consider as my most ambitious collection of songs. Hard to imagine that I would've wrote 'A Lesson Learned' or 'Aye Peckin'' not knowing that the Zen Men would get their teeth into them.

Having a band also spun my method of writing, demoing, re-writing around a bit and as such there is no 4-Track demo of 'Weighing a Pig'. As soon as it was ready, we worked it up in a rehearsal room (what you hear here) and that was that. Others like 'Pure Zen, Ken?' were jammed up and then I took them home and turned them into a song.

And then of course some things like 'Disco Ball', without a doubt wouldn't have been written without messing about with the band - hence the inclusion of the 'rehearsal' version here. 'You Matter' doesn't even have a rehearsal recording, we knocked that together in the studio. To make up for its absence, I've included the 4-Track version of live favourite, 'Lah Di Dah', the studio version of which was included as an extra track on the 'Here Comes The Feelings' single.

So there you have it, most of these 4-Track demos were knocked together and sent to the band prior to rehearsals. They were never intended for public consumption, so apologies for the varying quality, peaking, muffly bits and general shambolics.

All the love,
Yip
x