One of Manchester newest bands, the shoegaze & post-punk inspired Control Of The Going recently released ‘Wild Flower’. To provide us, the listeners with the inside track on writing and recording the song, the band has graciously provided exclusive liner notes…
You can listen (and more importantly buy!) ‘Wild Flower’ right here.
Watch a live performance right here.
(Liam Hart – Guitar/Vocals, Ashley Hart – 12 String Guitar, Alex Reid – Drums, Matt Byrne – Guitar, Tom Sillitoe – Bass, Minesh Mistry – Synth/Keys)
Inspired and encouraged with the release of our first EP, Epilepsy Bus Ride, and our recent show at Night and Day Cafe, we were excited to get back into the studio. ‘Wild Flower’ developed in this creative harmony.
On the 15th July, we were in the studio working on a track that wasn’t really going anywhere and we received a call from a close friend of the band, John Hall. John informed us that there may be an opportunity for us to provide a song for a documentary on wild flowers. On a hunch, he called us to see if we had anything in our repertoire. At that time, we had a few ideas, but nothing which would suite the floral sense which we were aiming for.
However, I had something in mind. From time to time, I wake up in the night with catchy guitar riffs in my head. I reached over for my phone, which I keep right next to my bed and mumbled the riff I had in my head, went back to sleep and forgot about it.
When John called us up in the studio, this riff reappeared, playing in my head. I checked my recordings to get it exactly how I imagined, sat down and began playing it. Matt picked it up right away and developed the rhythm. Alex gave us a nice little beat, while Minesh worked away in the background with the synth. Crucial to the main riff though, is what Ashley developed, the incessant backing riff which just seemed to hook everyone in. The guitar work is semi-inspired by ‘Fingertips’, a track from the Brian Jonestown Massacre demo, Pol Pot’s Pleasure Penthouse. The floating, mesmeric guitar work is sheer genius; its musical bliss.
To add to this dreamy carefree sound, the synth in the background is equally important to the Control of the Going sound. Minesh explains:
‘Wild Flower’ leaves a never-ending feeling of being in a large field surrounded by free flowing flowers and rays of sunshine zipping through my mind as the drums and bass start to flow, this feeling is followed by the sharp lead rift from Liam and the strings start to pour down on the flowers along with the guitars that follow into a beautiful rhythm.
With us all hooked on this new song, all we needed was to get Tom in, finish the bass, for me to write this into a song and to record it. We arranged for us to record it 4 days later.
When I got home that night, I began writing the lyrics for what was going to be ‘Wild Flower’. At the time though, I was planning on calling it ‘Freedom’. The lyrics of ‘Wild Flower’ explore life and death through the use of a metaphor. I began writing with how life begins, how it rises and grows in stature. This theme is followed through even in death. With death comes new life and all organisms come from the ground, when we die, we return to the ground and from that new life grows. It is a subject which people find it hard to talk about, but it is something we all have to deal with. When you look at it this way, it is sad yet beautiful in some aspects. The lyrics combined with the shimmering guitars and flowing rhythm section all contributed to a song which is romantically juxtaposed and poetic in its nature. It became something more than I ever imagined when I dreamt it.
Days later on the 19th we were in the studio, all 6 of us and we recorded it in one take. Unfortunately due to a faulty cable, recording was delayed for 3 hours. This led to Control of the Going taking an hour break at the local KFC. When it finally came to recording again, we did it again in one take. To go beside ‘Wild Flower’, we chose ‘In Line’ as the B side. We chose this as it was already a fan favourite and it was similar in nature to how ‘Wild Flower’ sounded. Ashley describes the development of ‘In Line’ as an attempt at capturing a Spacemen 3 style song with elements of the Dandy Warhols and Lush. Coincidently, ‘In Line’ is Tom’s favourite… He says he always gets a kick from it! ‘In Line’ was wrapped up in a manner of minutes and the days work was done.
We received the master back from Sam at Egg Studios a few days later on the 23rd and it was promptly put up for pre purchase, with an eventual full release on the 1st August. Immediately, people began downloading it and the positive reviews poured in. I am personally very proud of ‘Wild Flower’, and I am very happy that people on the whole feel the same way about it!
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