i recorded this album on my return from overseas... when i came back i was suffering from culture shock... london to dunedin... or actually mosgiel... which is exactly 13 kilometres out of dunedin... a lot of people go to mosgiel to retire... my mum is one of them... i felt out of place and at home all at the same time... most of this record is recorded at her house... in the living room... in my bedroom... 'i am rock'n'roll' was recorded in the room where mum kept her sewing machine... i was screaming that song so loud that day and hitting my broken snare drum really hard... the rest was going through the 4-track like most of the electric guitars on my albums... it must have sounded like someone was getting attacked to anyone passing by or listening from behind their fence... i have not really used amps much in my recordings... only on the demi whores recordings really... but yeah, recording a song like that at my mums house just seems really cool and ironic to me... 'i am rock'n'roll' but here comes mum calling me out to take a break to have some home baking... but i did manage to capture some sort of weird dunedin vibe on some of the songs... 'the swimmer' and 'when i fall from the sky' really have that weird little seaside town at the bottom of the world thing going on i think... maybe it's the out-of-tune violins... 'the swimmer' is one of the darkest songs i've ever written... it was the first song the demi whores ever played live together... i have this thing about drowning... like i have drowned in a previous life or something... like i almost know what it feels like to feel that utter panic and then to just be floating with all you body filled with water... there is a movie i saw once called 'zentopa' and at the end the guy drowns... i have never forgotten that final scene... it's a unfogettable ending to a really amazing movie...