Recording the new album - Day Five

A new day, a new week, the same little band. Day five of the recording, today just Timo and me there. After a wonderful and way too healthy lunchtime salad we were all really grateful for, it was time to continue the good work. I took along the Explorer guitar, so it was crunchtime for some killer riffs in drop D. Metal mania! “Peaches” was the first to be slaughtered. It’s a fucking fast punk number that I’m glad just lasts one and a half minutes. Otherwise I couldn’t make it. It went really fast, just two takes and in the can.

“Stitch The Memories” came straight after, as it had the same guitar tuning and similar sound and feel. But I was especially looking forward to recording this one all the time. It’s got a fat bluesy riff going most of the time in three different parts of the stereo panoramic and then a totally melodic chorus in the middle before it becomes a screamer at the end. Explorer deep into a Mesa/Boogie running through two different cabinets and there was the sound, exactly as imagined. Loud, fat, dirty and mean. Groovy… Then after some overdubs with the Les Paul we had it ready for the vocals, which can be quite fun to do in this song. When we do them later on, I mean, for now we’re rather concentrating on the guitars and shit.



And as we had the mighty Explorer at hand, we decided to finish up with “If You Only”, for which we already had recorded some guitars last week, but was left incomplete waiting for some extra guitar double-tracking with a different sound. I think we got it pretty well.

By the time we had done these three, the body (and especially the ears!) needed a little bit of a slowdown. After discussing a bit which song would be next and which guitars and amps would be used, we decided to start recording some acoustic guitars. It was not exactly early (rather fucking late already) and it was the right moment for a more mellow approach before going home for the day.

After testing several tube microphones which looked like spiders from outer space (they probably were, too), we started doing some rhythm tracks for “What’s The Voltage William?”, just for the sake of having that extra crispy percussive sound going in the background. Together with the overdriven ones, the song is simply killer, looks like we have an opener already. Yuhu!



Change of microphones again, and into a rather speedy version of “Scent”, where acoustics have more weight (they carry the whole song actually) and then some bits of “Stroboscope”. I was simply amazed at how cool those bloody tube mics sound when heard through headphones, they pick up every single minimal noise and nuance of the guitar… I just didn’t want to stop. But as it was already half past late and if we arrive later than midnight we lose the crystal shoe and our cars turn back into pumpkins, we decided to call it a day. A night rather. And off we went. Goodnight.

Songs done:
“Peaches”: all guitars
“Stitch The Memories”: all guitars
“If You Only”: guitar
“What’s The Voltage William?”: acoustic guitars
“Scent”: acoustic guitars
“Stroboscope”: acoustic guitars