bipolar christmas
The Single
What were we thinking?
The very beginnings of the idea for the single started on a radio show Alex and Natt were on in Christmas 2012. We were asked by the DJ, Will if we would ever record a Christmas single, we said we'd never really thought about it but like with most things in Atombuzz; never say never. We chatted about covering one of the classics from Cliff or Mariah or we could write and record a new classic that would get people singing every December.
These conversations kept rumbling for a couple of months after Christmas and during early spring 2013, Ian had started to formulate lyrical ideas for a song and Alex started writing various tunes for the single.
After a while Ian had the lyrical basis for 2 songs that would become the A and B sides and Alex had the main parts to the song more or less complete. Over the summer Alex tweaked the music and Ian edited the lyrics until he was happy with them. The remainder of the summer was spent rehearsing the songs and coming up with various ideas for the recording. Although the A side was written and rehearsed there was no music for the B side and after what seemed like an eternity trying to force a tune out, Alex hit upon the tune for the B, a straight forward, no nonsense 1 minute punk song, sorted!
Late summer was spent fine tuning both songs until they were ready to record. To record we went back to Soundbyte Studios and spent 3 nights in darkest October to record the songs. Night 1 was spent recording drums and bass tracks. Night 2 was spent on guitars then vocals and night 3 was spent finishing vocals, recording the choir and adding all the extras like Christmas bells, sleigh bells, and violins (sadly the violins didn't make the final mix).
Special thanks has to go to Russell Plowman for bearing with us and making sure he got the best out of us during the recording. He also played the sleigh bells on the single. Once it was all recorded, Russ spent the next couple of weeks mixing and mastering the songs until he and we were happy with the results.
Once we had the song we started to record the videos. A few long nights were spent in Ian's cabin recording various scenes in front of green screens which we then edited during even longer nights into the videos you now see on YouTube. We then set about starting all the promo work, radio, TV, local press and getting the songs onto digital platforms for download. All that was left was to release it, which we did in early December 2013. So, all in all it took a whole year from the formulation of the idea to the release of the single. What a year it was though and it was all worth it.
Thank you to everyone for buying, downloading, spreading the word, re-tweeting, sharing, liking and generally being awesome during our quest to dominate the charts at Christmas. Unfortunately we didn't break the top 40, 60 or 100, but we did keep the in top 20 on the Amazon MP3 rock charts all week up till Christmas, and we were the number 3 best new release on Amazon all week, so we are all pretty chuffed with this, and it is all down to you so thank you. We raised £125 from downloads and donations.