Paul's Cakeflap page (+ goodies)

Story

Cakeflap was a one-off band project, featuring me on keyboards, Dan Roythorne (bass), Alex Wilson (drums and percussion) and Hywel Bennett (guitar). This is my page about it, because, well, it's nice to document stuff, lest we forget!

Like a production company created for a single film, the transient Cakeflap was born with the sole goal of entering a neoclassical metal band into the Warwick Uni Bandsoc Battle of the Bands.

Almost immediately, the "neoclassical" and "metal" aspects went out the window, as the sound devolved into what I termed simply "bad fusion", becoming no less offensive, but considerably more accessible.

Between its inception in October 2006 and the competition in February 2007, we wrote our 18 minute minorum opus, and with the assistance of Charles Gill (our new-found PowerPoint puppetmaster) and the hire of a data projector, it seems we inadvertently created something resembling audio-visual performance art, which many people were quite taken with!

We ended up coming 3rd out of 30 bands, playing in the final to around 500 people, and recording a CD we'll cherish forever, or at least until the cheap recordable media degrades.

The final sound was described by Ashley Lawrence (DJ and BOTB Final judge) as "unbearable" and "essentially nonsense". I prefer to call it progressive rock/jazz fusion :-)

Listen

Cakeflap - The Bakery Is Open (MP3, 33.8MB)
(or here's a FLAC (118MB) if you like that sort of thing. I do.)

This track was recorded at Complete Sound in Leamington Spa, where we owe owner Mike Scott for doing a sterling job setting up the drum mikes and the desk, and then leaving his studio in our clumsy hands overnight! It was my first time behind a mixing desk in a proper control room/live room setup, and it was loads of fun. We did the drums in one long night, and the guitar and bass in one equally long day. The following two days I spent non-stop recording extra keyboards and mixing far more audio tracks than my PC could comfortably cope with, while Dan painstakingly removed buzz from his bass tracks.

A day later, with Danielle Stewart's delightfully subversive artwork (created with that renowned art package Microsoft PowerPoint, naturally) and Charles's video antics for a bonus feature, we had our (very) rushed, very limited edition CD!

Goodies

Most of the following are MP3s. Some of those were sequenced in Cubase, some are actual recordings, and the rest are a combination of both.

Sections that made it

These are demos of ideas that survived the crypto-Darwinian Cakeflap writing process. They're listed in the order they appear on the final track.

Thing 2007 (Nemesis) - I got carried away with drum loops.

Cake to Spatula transition - Links the new with the old in the cheesiest way possible.

Crowbar (Moo) - Alex's original demo. I never did learn that crazy synth line!

Straight Outta Metheny - A tribute to my fusion hero...

Unused material!

Cake's End - Dan and I had an initial go at taking the Metheny theme to some kind of conclusion.

Spyro's Head - We were going to reprise Nemesis shortly before Deck the Halls, but we ran out of time.

Spyro's Head Melody - To accompany Spyro's Head. I like this one, it was spontaneous and deranged.

cakeflap2 - Guitar Pro file containing early versions of some of the final stuff, and a whole load of sections (by Dan, I think) that we never used. Maybe in Cakeflap Zero!

arpeggiothing - A vapid keyboardy thing I wrote a while ago. We learnt to play it and were going to shoehorn or crowbar it into Cakeflap, but didn't. It's probably for the best!

Really early stuff (new!)

Flap Ideas - Live keys/guitar/bass demo of three surviving sections, and one forgotten one.

Cake - Alex's demo of some long-lost sections, and of what later became Moo.

Trivia

The Bakery Is Open refers to The Old Bakery in Kenilworth.

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