Studio diary: day 1

Here we go again. We're finally back in the studio for what it looks will be our fifth record to date (temptatively called Album Five, how original). The place: D&S Tonstudio in Berlin. The date: December 8, 2009. The involved parties: Daniel Strobel as the main engineer, Tobi on the drums and yours truly sort of watching it all and taking care of tiny details such as which songs are we recording. Not really producing, just annoying people.

So this is it, another project under way, let's hope this time it won't take too long to come out as is usual with this little band of ours. Only this time we've been making up songs real quick and after one or two rehearsals, we're putting them to tape. Most don't have lyrics yet, some not even a name, but I guess that makes it all a little less studied than previous times, more like The Beatles used to do back then, write a song, rehearse once, record the next day. Only they made fucking classic songs in the process, we're still happy to get a decent tune here and there.

As for the recording itself: we gather in the evening at Daniel's studio, a basement in the Berlin district of Weissensee. Outside it's cold, damp and completely dark, so it's great to go downstairs where it's, well, cold, damp and dark too. Until we turn on the rock'n roll machines to warm up and light a bulb here and there. Ah, much better now.

Waiting for Tobi to arrive (as usual) I make a list of the songs we'll be recording, and I panic when I notice there's one missing. I've gone completely blank. One, two, three... I keep counting the song titles and still cannot remember the one missing. It's either I'm getting too old or we have too many songs. Probably both. While I'm in the middle of a crisis with myself for failing to remember all the songs, our drummer happily arrives, tunes his drumkit, bangs the shit out of it for a few minutes, retunes it again, rebangs, re-retunes and loudly announces to the world "I'm ready".

And boy, is he. By 23.30 we have six full drum tracks in the can. Some of them are done quite easily, some take a few more takes, but while I'm in the control room tracking reference guitar and vocals for our drummer and having a laugh with Daniel, Tobi manages to execute enough perfect takes for all of us to go home with the feling of having done a good day's work.

And today, more to come.

Songs recorded (Dec 8):

Seattle Girl: drums

Cosmonaut: drums

The Wounds Inside: drums

Don't Lose Your Head: drums

Twelve Years (working title): drums

Uno, Otro (working title): drums