We've finished up basic tracking for the next record at a studio here in Durham. Here are some things about that for tape-op-subscribing geeks like us who care:

-We played live in a giant room with wood floors and fifteen-foot ceilings
-The resulting music was recorded to two-inch Quantegy GP9 tape on a Studer A80 MarkIV.
-Mics used included
-Kick: Heil PR-30 and Audix D6
-Snare: Beyer M201 (top) and Oktava MK219 (bottom)
-Hat: Some Tiny Audix condenser
-Toms: Sennheiser MD421 (top) and Oktava MK219 (bottom)
-Overhead: Neumann U87 (center, above my head, so that I nearly knocked it over several times)
-Room: AKG414, set to figure eight, placed fifteen feet apart and fifteen feet from snare, behind me. Really, we measured. There are pictures.
-Guitar: A Beyer. A 421. Another? I was clearly not over there much. Also a direct signal via a Radial JDV for later re-amping.
-Bass/Baritone: AT 4033, Heil PR-40. Also direct via an ADL tube DI.
- John Koelle engineered, overanalyzed, taunted, encouraged and generally ran things.
- We're listening back to various takes and picking the right ones for vocal overdubs and strange remote recordings. These overdubs and mixing will take place at John's house once we've dumped the tracks to an Alesis HD24. I'm not thrilled about using something from Alesis, having learned to hate them so well last time we recorded, but the thing really sounds OK. The mixing should be done by the end of February, and we'll master then, and so the whole thing looks to be coming out in April-ish.

- It sounds really, really good.