Too Late to Sleep
Monday, July 28th, 2008“Too Late to Sleep” is perfect for your next narcoleptic dance party. It may be the only song in the world to feature both the Stylophone and the Violin-Uke.
This song (but not this recording, which is new and fresh) dates back a decade or more; I recorded an early version on 4-track cassette out at the farm. The drum track is actually from that cassette — it’s a drum machine, recorded on the flipside of the cassette and then flipped back and played backward, and now sampled off the cassette and looped. It’s actually in stereo, with one side offset by half the loop length, but it’s a little hard to tell.
When I originally recorded this song, I made extensive use of a hypnosis record that was kicking around. I’m not sure where it is now, so I decided to make my own. My friend Peter Gunn (not the fictional one) recorded the hypnotist’s voice and I added record pops and keyboard.
There’s also piano (a real one! but, again, looped) and Autoharp, of course, run through a Gibson Skylark tremolo amp. The Violin-Uke (which is neither) shows up in the bridge and the Stylophone appears soon after.
The vocals are recorded through a Copperphone mic,which has a nice old-timey quality to it that I am really enjoying. Words are here.
Warm up some milk and enjoy.