Hello!
Firstly, just to point out the recording and general band blog is moving!! You can now find our random nerdy musical musings over
here. An archive of the recording diary of our last EP, single and album can be found there.
Secondly, we're very late in expressing our sadness that Road Records in Dublin is closing. We grew up going to Road. I discovered a wealth of amazing bands through this shop, including loads of great Irish bands from past and present. We, like most other bands in Dublin, are donating all proceeds from any remaining stock (and indeed any stock we've sold there over the last year) to Dave and Julie. Dublin will be a much worse place without Road Records.
We're playing some gigs to celebrate the end of the album, including one in Dublin (supporting the mighty Wintersleep from Canada) and one in Galway (supporting the mighty Oxford Collapse from Brooklyn, NY). Without further a do, the last album recording blog, which will be updated a bit over the next while.
Stay tuned for a big announcement..
DAY ONE
Wowza. Its been a while. We've been on a rather long hiatus from this album business. Its actually been rather healthy though.. If you're doing an album over the course of a year and a half, theres a big danger of getting a bit lost in it. The temptation to listen and relisten to works in progress could get a bit too much. So we made the decision when we started the album, to not listen to any rough mixes when we're not recording. As a result, I think we've had quite a bit of healthy objectivity, which is nice.
Today we began by working on a song called 'baby steps' which somehow has been left behind thorugh all this album lark. It was a really good song to start with as it was a bit of a blank canvas. Recorded some nice swelly guitars for the intro and some nice keyboard bits and bobs. After the day the song had really taken shape, a wee bit of guitar on the chorus and it'll be done.
DAY TWO
Finished all the guitars on 'Baby Steps' and proceeded to have a listen to the other songs to access what was left to do. For some reason we had thought that this session was going to be really tough going as we thought we had A LOT to do. Turns out we were wrong. As we listened back we realised that the songs were a lot closer to being finished than we thought. Score!
We powered though the main guitar parts of a few tunes and re-recorded some guitars on 'Anchors & Kites' as noted in the last diary, there was some pretty major tuning problems going on with my guitar. With tuning problems solved we flew through stuff today. Jolly good. We also discovered the controversial 'Boasters' biscuits: ginger and dark chocolate, three packets for one euro. Beware though, its not as great a deal as we had originally thought...theres only 8 biscuits per pack. Hooligans.
DAY THREE
Today I tripped over a heater and went straight in to daryl's large amp. Ouch. We then spent (when I say we, I of course mean Ciaran) an hour or so fixing the heater after this incident. And before you ask, yes the amp is fine...
I think I'm in love with Royer ribbon mics. Unfortunately for me, this is a forbidden love as I will never be able to afford one. Sniff sniff.
On the music front we finished guitars on 'Violent Sea' and the song currently known as 'Vocalsample' (not for too much longer, we hope..). The latter is probably the closest thing to a Subplots prog-rock tune. I like to think of it as our salute to Yes. Which is apt considering Daryl now has a bonified keyboard corner and is putting the finishing touches to a cape. We're still waiting for his debut appearance on Countdown's dictionary corner though.
DAY FOUR
We've finished recording guitar for the album. Huzah!
Dave from amble-gloom boy band Halves came over this evening to 'shred' some violin for violent sea. Its sounding only gorgeous.
DAY FIVE
Discovered fridges are very noisy beasts and covered it up with a big duvet whilst singing 'broken household appliance' (2nd grandaddy reference of this post). All sorts of bits and bobs recorded today. Some roomy vocals, percussion and most importantly cello.
Tully from the Chapters came by to 'wail' on some kirk hammett style cello for us. It added a HUGE amount to the two songs he played on.
We are currently in talks with a Hollywood production company for the film adaptation of Violent Sea, starring Steven Seagal.
"One man, One Sea and a love that lasts an eternity."
And....we're done! Well..this chapter is done. Onwards to the vocals!
VOCAL RECORDING
Over the last few days I've been recording vocals. Throughout recording we busied ourselves with listening to old David Bowie singles and coming up with sentences derived from some book on engineering that made me sound like I knew what i was talking about. The winning sentence was 'Just whack this bad boy through an M6K and do a vocal down then we're out of here'.
I managed to find time to do some singing too. Highlights include singing up the stairs for 'baby steps' and singing through a cardboard box for 'call to arms'. The recording finished in a flurry of backing vocals, glockenspiels, autoharps and with one last clunk of Ciaran's vintage mustang, it was over. Very surreal, in a good way. Our first album recorded.
Today (the 2nd of february) we start mixing. Huzah!!
UPDATE:
Stick a fork in it, our first album is done. You can expect to hear the details of whats on it, what its called and when its out pretty soon!. We'll leave you with a video of Ciaran busy working his magic (with a sneak preview of a song from the album...)