Over the next two years, Baptism Of Uzi tinkered with those initial recordings, editing, overdubbing and refining the songs. “We’d play the song live and new melodies would come out, and we’d overdub that to the song we’d recorded, so there was this constant process, and trying out new sounds,” Stojanov says.
It would take the best part of two years for Baptism Of Uzi to finish what would be eventually released as the Stray Currents EP. Stojanov says Baptism Of Uzi was conscious of trying to separate the constituent musical elements in the band’s music, an aspect he feels is occasionally missing from the band’s live show. “On this record, everyone is playing at the same time, so each of the elements is clear, which is what we felt was our problem some times, both playing live and recording,” Stojanov says.
The title track on the record, a perennial live favourite and a classic pop track to boot, dates back to the band’s earliest recordings. “The first version was maybe more than three years ago, and that was just me playing an electric guitar into an echo box, and taping directly onto a cassette with a drum machine and another track with the same echo – you can hear that track on Dictaphonia,” Stojanov says.
Stray Current represents Baptism Of Uzi’s perpetual quandary – how to marry its studio experimentations with its live indulgence. “We tried to record that version of Stray Current as a band, and we keep adding more parts to it. We recorded it on our first EP, but there were things I still wanted on it – like in the original version there’s this amazing bit when the snare echoes,” Stojanov says. “We tried to do that in the studio, but we couldn’t get it. So this time we could spend a whole day trying to get the space echo parameters right, so we could get that sound. But then the question becomes – how do you get that live?”
In the course of finishing off the EP, Baptism of Uzi’s had undergone a transformative experience, with the departure of the band’s keyboard player. Stojanov says there is a thematic progression running through the record – though it’s not a story in the grand indulgent prog-rock tradition. “It’s not necessarily a story, but more of a progression of sounds,” Stojanov says. “You come into the intro, and it’s like walking around in a forest or looking into the universe or whatever, and then Carnal Need comes in, which is like passion, then you have the wig out with Fire Penguin, which is like an intense night out when you’re all hyped up, and then later on, it’s later on in the night and you’re with friends and you want to play something more relaxed, like Fleetwood Mac, and then it all builds up to the big pop song, Stray Current, the big satisfaction, sun coming up thing.”
Stojanov goes so far as to liken the record to the ‘90s television show, Sliders, in which the characters entered a different world each episode by means of a portal. “What that I thought of this record was that every song is a hit – basically I saw all these songs as different dimensions from Sliders, when you come through the portal,” Stojanov says.
BY PATRICK EMERY
