Part 2 - The making of ILLUSIONS, ELEMENTS & PORTRAITS

LUTZ

Pete Marshall and Paul Anthony already had 20 or so tracks of music recorded when Alex Love was introduced.

The tracks were destined for hardcore/alternative rock/industrial project LUTZ something that Pete Marshall and Paul Anthony had been working on since 2018.

LUTZ was inspired to a certain extent by Public Service Broadcasting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_Service_Broadcasting_(band) and their use of samples from old public information films, archive footage and propaganda material.

LUTZ comprised Pete Marshall on guitars / engineering & production and lyric writing, Paul Anthony on bass guitar and Leigh Westbrook on vocals. All three had previously worked together in punk band NANCY JOHNSON (later transforming into WHO KILLED NANCY JOHNSON? With a completely new line-up). https://www.wknancyj.com/

The brutal guitar and fuzzy bass sound on LUTZ tracks was complimented by heavily distorted, shouted vocals and sampling. LUTZ released two albums “Nowherebound” in 2018, and a remixed album, “The Buzz Mixes” in early 2020.

At this point LUTZ had amassed a huge backlog of recorded tracks but Pete Marshall was struggling to find new subjects to write about.

(https://open.spotify.com/album/7qhq1vpk1m2t9zfqqsrD0e?si=R2duCNDISte1X92T5zoq3A and https://open.spotify.com/album/78Vv7TIvMPRs8QKR9VMuyq?si=-4f8_BQnQ5-m57RvTB8e4Q),

Enter Alex Love

The introduction of Alex Love to a new project meant that Pete Marshall could concentrate on the music side, with Alex Love writing all lyrics and performing all vocals.

During this time Leigh Westbrook had committed to work and family, and moved away from the area, making it more difficult to record. The pause to the LUTZ project was amicable.

The unfinished LUTZ backlog was handed to Alex and he was invited to take his pick.

COLONEL SUN (September 2020)

The first track for which Alex Love wrote lyrics and sing vocals on was to become COLONEL SUN.

It was Paul Anthony’s idea to try and write a James Bond-style theme tune.

Pete Marshall suggested the title after reading that Colonel Sun, a novel by Kingsley Amis, was the first James Bond continuation novel published after Ian Fleming's 1964 death.

Alex: ‘When I first heard the backing track to Colonel Sun I was amazed at the drama and immensity of the sound.   As a lyricist I could immediately imagine scenes of females and smoking guns and danger.

Bond always has a lady who loves him, but often they are the ones who bring him deception and possible death.  The “Coming through the trees” section is action packed in my view and increases the heart rate.

Anyway, we did a fantastic job on an introductory musical project.   That got us going.…”

The Mixing and Mastering Process

With the UK in Covid-19 lockdown, recordings were done remotely. Rough mixes of the music tracks were handed to Alex Love via a file sharing website, Alex would write lyrics and record vocals and then return the isolated dry vocals for final merging, editing and mixing. Draft mixers would be reviewed and tweaked before mastering.

The making of ILLUSIONS-ELEMENTS-PORTRAITS

During the period September 2020 to February 2021 Alex Love wrote and recorded the vocals for the complete backlog of 36 songs. With Pete mixing each track as it was passed back from Alex.

Alex’s long time music producer David A. England was brought in to master the tracks for release.

These tracks would be released as a set of three albums, ILLUSIONS (March 2021), ELEMENTS (early April 2021) and PORTRAITS (end April 2021).

Alex ‘After the completion of “Colonel Sun”, I was literally bombarded with dozens of tracks that Pete and Paul had built up over some time and every single one of them excited me and energised my inspiration like no other music I had heard before.  The first album we put together became entitled ILLUSIONS.  The tracks for me that push the envelope are “Messing With My Head”, and “Looking For The Madman”, a song about Denis Neilson the serial killer and my time rehearsing in the house next door where he committed his crimes.

The songs are challenging, inspired by some hard guitar work and angular lines which are colourful and made me stretch my writing and singing styles as never before. The album is full of different musical concepts and subject matters’ and still does through all our music.  We never take the easy riff or soft sounds.   Especially on the first three albums.  One song though, called “Rid of Her”, on the second album, ELEMENTS, is a rare love song in our catalogue.  But is a song of loss, not joy.

ELEMENTS is full of anger and cynical staring at the state of politics and religion and the power of self-reflection.  The song that could be a single is “Crisis”.  Powerfully driven with a thumping Bassline and a guitar sound from hell.  A reflection on the state of the planet.   A subject which is referred to over a few of our songs.  “Dancing On My Own Grave” is funny, dark and deep.  New Order may spring to mind but with fierce guitar sounds.

By the third album, PORTRAITS, the music was developing into more precise punk influences but balanced with the occasional surprising more ambient side to Pete’s writing.   “Sunrise In Zagreb” is a darkly moving piece about war just before dawn.  A departure from hard angular punk indeed. 

The single on that album is “Spillover”.  A vitriolic letter to the world.  Punk music at its best.

“Big Trombone” is a fabulous new development and shows a side to us that is more than just being angry with guitars.”

It was during the mastering of the ILLUSION-ELEMENTS-PORTRAITS project that musical difference began to manifest between Paul and, Alex and Pete. 

Paul was keen to perpetuate the “blow the needles off the VU meters” loudness of the LUTZ releases. Alex and Pete felt that the Lizard Sweets compositions were more subtle and didn’t need the explosiveness of high dB’s.  

Paul would leave LIZARD SWEETS during the recording of follow-up album, CHRONICLES.