June 24, 2010

Mixing Blog #1

It has come down to this. 11 days in Montreal to complete an album that has taken a year and a half. Funny – when Marcus first arrived in Winnipeg I had grand plans of banging out this record in a couple weeks and being onto record #2 by now. It was going to be a live, edgy, spirited affair – which it still is, just slightly more evolved. But our methodical and calculated mad-scientist brains have since gone to work on it.

And you know, I think it was the right decision. These songs were still young and naive and have benefited from re-arrangements and new parts and multiple attempts at singing them. We’ve all learnt a lot from the process, and hopefully it’ll enable record #2 to eventually come together quicker.

Record #2 is pretty much written already, by the way. There are 7 or 8 new songs that we’ve started fleshing out now and then and we’ll start demo’ing them later this summer. I’ve got a feeling it will be quite different than this one (piano songs, echos of Sonic Youth and the poppiest damn pop song ever). But that seems to be what I always feel.

I digress. We’re in a big-time studio. The kind you see in magazines, with a 96 channel SSL console and all the bad-ass outboard compressors a man could dream of. There’s a tv monitor to see down to the recording floor, which is actually on the level beneath the control room. We're running vocals through the Leslie. Its like driving a spaceship. The recording geek in me is loving it. Pretty great espresso machine in the kitchen too.

I've started taking pics and videos and promise to upload them soon. Maybe even... tomorrow!