The contents of the "Urban Names" CD is essentialy the same as in the tape version, but some tracks has been edited and remixed, and the order of the tracks is also different. The artwork for the CD is different from that on the tape, but both are based on the same ideas.
The Artwork:
The CD´s artwork is based in the tape´s cover. I don´t remember how we conceived the ideas for the tape´s artwork, but I tried to put a number of images together to represent the many things we find in a city. The central theme is the contradiction between the hard, aggresive and merciless environment (represented by the always present brick wall) and the hope and beauty (represented by the blue sky, the flowers and the birds). In the booklet, the images are closely related to the lyrics and the subjects of the different pieces.
The History:
Urban Names is much related with the previous tape of the band, The World Jones Made, as both deals with the isolation and loneliness of the human being, but instead of dealing with these topics from a inner, subjetive view point, Urban Names approach is from an external point of view. Initially, the whole work was structured around the idea of different encounters or histories that develope in an urban environment. Nevertheless this is not a conceptual work, but a work in which al the pieces are staged in the same landscape.
Xtra: Strangely enought, the first track in the CD was the last to be conceived and recorded. It wan not until the full recording was done, that Daniel came to me and told me with the idea of making an intro track essentially based on some effects. The next day Dani came to the studio with a written monologue and some effects CD, and we spent the full day selecting which effects we were to use. Later that evening we recorded the guitar and the voice, and the next day I added the keyboards and effects and mixed the whole thing.
Xtra is just an introduction for The Quick and the Death. It sets the mood and the scene for the following track.
The Quick and the Death: This piece has a very interesting story. it began as a piano part for Urban Names. We were writing Urban Names, and I wanted to add an instrumental part, so I began to work in a piano part. When I played it for Dani the first time, he thought it would be a very good piece by itself, and we began to develope it as a separate piece. By then I had been thinking about writing a piece about urban violence and innocent victims for this album. The original piano part ended up being the main theme of the piece. The developement of the track was very straightforwarded and fluid, and it was surprisingly easy to complete it.
The Quick and the Death is about mindless (urban) violence, and in particular about terrorism. It has a lot of pain and suffering in it. It is about all the victims of this mindles violence, and also about the doers.
The Harvest: The history of this piece can be tracked back a few years. Back in 1990 I bought one of my first synthesizers, a Casio CZ-3000 (which BTW I still use today). One of the preset sounds was a sort of motorcycle starting-up sound. If payed with short pulses, it had a very strange and menacing sound. One day, I was playing with the new toy, and I began to play that persistent rhythm: tata-tata-tata-tata tata tata. Then, whithout having prepared it previously, Dani began to sing, and we had a new song. We played The Harvest in all our concerts until the departure of Pedro Cordoba; then for some unknown reason, we forgot the song. Some time later, when we were recording for The World Jones Made, Dani had to go out from Spain for two months, and I had a lot of studio time for me. I began to make new arrangements of old tracks, and one of them was The Harvest. The vesion of The Harvest featured in Urban Names is very different from the original one (you will not hear the motor sound here).
The Harvest is about the darkest side of the human nature, and about all those things that makes us scare. As we use to say, "the man is a wolf for a man".
Hope: Originally Hope was not intended to be included in Urban Names; it was just an experiment. When we were working in Rupture, I wrote the ending section from a chord structure I had been working from some time. As we wrote the arrangements, and began to ask myself how that part could be with a radically different arrangements, and then began to work in a sort of ochestration with string synthesizers. It was both an experiment on textures and a test for me. Later I went to record the new peice and I was quite satisfied with it, so we decided that it would be a nice addition to the Urban Names projects, giving a sort of balance with the more dense and complex compositions.
Hope has not an underlying idea. I entitled it because of the beautiful, peaceful mood it had in it.
Urban Names: The title track of the CD was written by Dani some time ago. The original version had no name, no lyrics, and emcompased only about the first third of the whole piece (up to the organ solo). I loved that music from the first time I heard it, and I think it is probably the very best thing that Dani has ever written. I wrote some draft lyrics, and then we both began to build up the piece from what was already made. When the whole piece was already finished and we were just about to record it, Dani came with the bizarre idea of including a celt-like tune. We wrote and arranged it from a simple tune I played in a whistle, and it worked surprisingly well. We also changed the arrangements of the ending section to add some choirs and an organ with a deep leslie effect.
Urban Names speaks about the isolation in which we are forced to live in the modern cities, and how we are progressively loosing our human nature as the result of the pressures and the hostility that lie all arround.
November: November is the oldest of the bunch. I wrote it back in 1995, and I have played it with at least three different bands (Aurora, Llewellyn and Mascarada). It is a simple tune with simple arrangements, and it has not changed much across the years. In the early days of Mascarada I added the intro section, with the melody played by the bass, but aside of this, the arrangements are substantially the same as it was played by Llewellyn.
November tells a story indeen. This is the story of a leave-taking, in a heavy rainy day in the darkest November. I wrote it in one night, and it is probably our most well known piece.
Rupture (the preacher and the hooker): This track has also a curious story. Initially it was written to be included in The World Jones Made, forming a sort of trilogy with the other two long tracks (The Whisperer of Truths and The House of Dolls), but in the end The World... was much too long, and we had to take out some pieces, and Rupture was one of them. When we was preparing the material for Urban Names, we thought that Rupture was a good piece to be included, and as it was already finished, we only had to redo some of the arrangements and record it again. Rupture is the most difficult piece to play in the whole CD.
Rupture tells a story about the meeting between a deeply intolerant preacher and a prostitute. He reproaches her the life she lives, and she accuses him of being too cynical and hypocrite. Finally each one follows his own way, convinced that the other is the only one to blame.
Tres Hermanos: This is the only track singed in Spanish. I wanted from the start to includ a track in Spanish in Urban Names, and I initially thought in The Harvest (which already had Spanish lyrics). Tres Hermanos (Three Brothers), started as a simple tune and some samples, and evolved into a heavy ethnic-influenced piece. I knew from the start what I wanted the lyrics to speak about, but for some reason I was not able to write anything minimally interesting in English (probably because it was something to personal to be expressed in a foreighn language), so I turned to Spanish, and everything when easy then.
Tres Hermanos is about three friends that meet again after being appart for a very long time, only to find that they still have most in common, and they still love each other as much as always.
Wherever...: Most of Wherever... (all the sung parts) was written by Dani, and he then played it to me with an acoustic guitar as the only accompaniment. I t reduced me to tears. It made me thing abut some things I don´t want to think about. We kept the arrangements as simple as possible most of the time, and only in the last section we introduced the whole sound (with guitars, bass and percussion) to add a dramatic effect. My only apportation was the synthesizers solos and the opening section (which BTW is called Eternal Traveller), and of course, the lyrics.
Wherever,,, is about the search of trascendence, and the desire of inmortality. I think the lyrics are very clear and autoexplicative.
Juan Mares.
Madrid, January 12th, 1999