..and the low budget video, that took 12 months to make.
Senseless was a song written at 2 in the morning, and quite a number of years ago.
The bass line which underpinned the mood of the song was what came to me in those early hours, waking me up from a deep slumber. I picked up the bass and there it was. Some of the lyrics I had already penned, my writing style has always been a combination of putting already scrawled lyrical or poetic ideas to guitar riffs, or experimental accidents whilst exploring a guitar, keyboard or bass. In no time the lyrics were complete and the song was born. The songs arrangement was subsequently worked on, and gigged with my band at the time Electric Sunroof.
Electric Sunroof were, and still are having reformed last year for a handful of gigs, a powerful progressive rock outfit with a lot of drive and a keen ear for melody and catchy riffs, which influenced the songs direction significantly. And whilst i've played it with many different line ups over the years, and indeed it has been covered by a few friends of mine's bands, the simple riff that underpins the tone of the track is key to it's appeal, to me at least, whether played on whichever instrument but particularly the bass. We (as Electric Sunroof) did record a version of the song in an old chapel in Old Colwyn, on our still as yet unfinished debut album 'An Island'.
The album had a whole host of great tracks on it, and Senseless did make it as song of the week on Radio Wales (c/o Adam Walton) once released. Though i was never quite 100% satisfied with that particular recorded version, as it tended to drag a little, the progressive element of the band influencing that quite heavily. I did go on to record it again with another line up most of whom feature on this particular version for the video. A filmmaker and friend of mine Paul Higginson, having heard me perform and enjoyed the song greatly, suggested we make a video for the song. So initially Paul filmed me playing the track solo, just me and guitar, in a different friends chapel in Deiniolen, also in North Wales. The quality came out well but we both instantly wanted to do more with it. We set about filming one or two shots in the nearby Llanberis quarries on cold winter days with snow dusting the distant Snowdonia hills an mountains.