“’Mayday Mayday’ began as an opportunity we were given to record a track with Bernard Butler at Abbey Road”, starts James McGregor, one-fourth of the Galway-born and London-based band The Clockworks. “We needed absolutely no convincing and jumped in with a new demo we’d been working on. This became Mayday Mayday, and the experience led to us recording our entire album with Bernard on production, and returning to Abbey Road for a large chunk of the recording,” he shares. “Mayday Mayday” is also the latest release of Abbey Road Studios Lock-In series, where artists are invited into the studios for an unexpected collaboration, or to record a new interpretation of an existing song, using only the mix of vintage instruments and future tech provided by Abbey Road.
The encounter sounded just like a first date off to a good match. “I was excited by the lock-in experiment. I chose to listen to nothing ahead of the session and work ‘blind’ on the day”, says Bernard Butler. He shares that there was no long-term plan for the album, since he’s never seen the band performing and had little idea of how their other songs sounded. “I wanted to see how the musicians responded individually and collectively to our instincts by posing questions to decisions they had already made within the mechanics and emotional flow of the song. How thrilling it could be to turn these responses into sound”. The process proved to be effective. “The band were more than willing to throw their song into the ring, deconstruct and listen through the ears of someone listening for the first time, for that is exactly what happens when they are trying to attract any new listener to their music”, he finishes.
Abbey Road’s Head of Brand & Communications, Mark Robertson, says that the track combines the driving intensity that has become synonymous with The Clockworks, with more nuanced, emotive moments and some brilliant textures courtesy of Bernard’s production and mix. “We’re thrilled that our Lock-In session was the starting point for a creative partnership between the band and Bernard on their debut album, and that they returned to Abbey Road to film the video as the companion piece to our Lock-In documentary”, he says.