- The Roots and the Stones (Original Valle Crucis Demo)
- The Farewell Dance (Original Valle Crucis Demo)
- The Roots and the Stones / The Farewell Dance (Live in Budapest)
Its not often you will see these two songs apart from each other, The Roots and the Stones, and The Farewell Dance first appeared on a Valle Crucis 4 Track Cassette Demo back in1998 or so, recorded by Sean and Kev in Wales. It wasn’t played live ever by Valle Crucis though, and it wasn’t until 2004 when Leafblade first played live that these two songs first got heard by more than a few people.
The live version here was recorded by Sean and Danny in 2005 in Budapest, Hungary.
Even though Leafblade arn’t playing these songs live much anymore, they have been re-recorded for the long awaited “Beyond Beyond” album, Leafblade’s debut studio effort.
Many years back, Sean and Pete used to jam out on our electric guitars (before Leafblade was conceived), as Pete was interested in a lot of Sean’s earlier metal-ish pieces. one day they recorded the guitar parts for “The Sorrowing” on an old Tascam 4 Track, just for fun.
For quite a few years Pete mentioned to Sean that he should put down the vocals on the track (so at least he knew what they were meant to sound like), but they never quite got round to it until about 2006 or so.
Sean recorded a 1 track vocal line for me, and allowed Pete to experiment (for fun) on his track to see what he came up with. Pete’s influences came in to play here, drawing ideas from the likes of Devin Townsend, Queen, Alice in Chains, and a few other bands he respects a lot for their vocal work.
This is a fairly cosmic sounding song! Sean and Pete had a lot of fun making it, Sean provided the guitar parts and vocals on this recording, and Pete helped with bass parts and production. They added an accapella of some later vocals at the beginning of the song, which stetched and already long track even more. Leafblade are a big fan of long tracks!
This is an old recording! It was recorded using an old studio program called “Digital Orchestra Plus” which has long since ceased exisiting in that form.
Sean and Pete had just started using computers for recording instead of my old 4 track recorder, so they could have more control over what was recorded. Previous to this track, they had only recorded demos for Beneath a Woodland Moon, Valle Crucis and Once Upon a Dawn using a computer, so it was a time of fun and experimentation.
Sean had played this track to me a few times, and Pete knew it had potential to be quite massive in sound. On this track, Sean played the main guitar part and sung the main vocal line. We had errors in the guitar recording (due to the computer being very old and the software being buggy) about half way through. It would have taken absolutly ages to re-record them, so Pete decided to try editing guitar parts to create a loop which would replace the faulty part. Pete had never tried “copypasta” up till that point, and I must say it worked well for us here and the guitar part was mended.
Sean had gone for a lengthy holiday in the Czech Republic at the time, leaving Pete to see what he could come up with around the framework of the track. A lot of feedback sounds were added and vocal drones for a wall of sound effect, and experiments with guitar parts that had a different time signature and even different key to the main parts were added (Pete had been listening to a lot of Tool at that stage of his life, so the influences were starting to shine through a bit).
Trivia
One piece of trivia about this track : The main guitar used to rise a note, rather than dip a note. This was changed when Kev (Murphy - Bassist for Valle Crucis and Leafblade) pointed out it was the same notes as The End by the Doors. It was, but neither Sean or Pete had noticed! heheh!
What can we say about this track? I know one thing… When our good friend Vincent Cavanagh heard it for the first time, he jokingly said “Shit! I’m in the wrong fucking band!” Hehe! I guess he liked it then!
So did Danny. We all did. Thats why we included it on our To The Moonlight Ep.
Sean and Pete were aware that our demos lacked a lot without a drumkit, so we used some old keyboard to provide us with a sound as close to tympani as we could get. (and then they were altered on the computer to be even lower.)
This was a fun track to work on, and I think a fun track to listen to. Imagine that the guitar parts are actually bagpipes, and you can see where we want to go with this.
The original Valle Crucis version was recorded back in 1995 for the Garden of Versus album.
The other various live versions were recorded by Sean, Pete and Danny, except for budapest, where it was just Sean and Danny, but Pete made up for it by doing a parody like sped up version on his own. Aww..
- Venuzian Poets Horizon (Original Valle Crucis Demo)
- Venuzian Poets Horizon (Live in Athens)
This song was originally recorded by Sean and Kev on a 4 track recorder back in 1997 (ish). It was recorded along with 3 other tracks to complete the Valle Crucis 4 track demo tape.
The second version was recorded in Greece, Athens, at the an club on September 23rd 2007 by Sean Pete and Danny.
Trivia
The original demo was recorded in a caravan in 1997, before Pete had met Sean or Kev.
Pete met them both in 1998, when they lived in Wales.
This song has been around now for a while, and has always been a favourate to jam for Leafblade. These two recordings show how it has evolved as a song, The first of which was recorded on a 4 track tape cassette recorder back in 2003 (ish) by Sean and Pete in Pete’s flat. The second recording was taken in Greece, Athens, on the 23rd September 2007 at the an club with Sean, Pete and Danny playing guitars.
Trivia :
The original one was recorded on D tuned guitars and the live one was recorded in E tuned guitars.
Leafblade switched to E tuning as standard when Sean realised his voice was suited to the higher notes.
O that I may overwhelm myself in poetry for the next ten years. — John Keats, Venuzian Poets Horizon
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This post also has a thread in the forum.
I just popped it's cherry!
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