Travis Finish Recording Sixth Album
Thursday March 20, 2008 @ 05:30 PM
By: ChartAttack.com Staff

Travis

Scottish rock group Travis have completed work on their sixth studio album after wrapping up a two-week recording session at London, England's RAK studios.

The band played a handful of British shows earlier this year to road-test some of the songs, which bassist Dougie Payne says helped the group. Payne also says on the band's website that they decided to use "old school technology" for the album by recording it on a "rather large 16-track machine (actually two 8-tracks stuck together) from 1968.

"The joy of this kind of recording is that it's all about capturing a band performance rather than sitting around a computer shuffling little chunks of music around," Payne wrote in a Feb. 19 diary entry. "Also it limits the number of overdubs we can do as we only have 16 tracks to play with, and means we can't really drop in to fix any mistakes. So have to get a great take from everyone. It's all very exciting."

Song titles for the follow-up to last year's The Boy With No Name include "Chinese Blues," "Long Way Down," "Friends," "Before You Were Young" "Quite Free," "Something Anything," "J. Smith," "Broken Mirror" and "Last Words," which includes a string quartet. Another song titled "Get Up" is described as "a big loud tune." Travis also worked on a Bruce Springsteen-like cut called "Song To Self" and "Music For Bus Stops," which Payne calls a "quick Eno-inspired ambient jam."

There's no release date yet for the as-yet untitled effort, but Travis have confirmed some festival appearances in Britain this summer, including the V Festival in Staffordshire and Chelmsford in mid-August.

—Jason MacNeil