It's 11.30am Friday morning and I'm sat in the control room of Moles Studio with Dan and Nick (who is engineering the session). Dan has got a sticker on his back that says something offensive that Nick stuck on there as a joke this morning. Here is a picture of Dan taken a few years ago, in front of an amp he was paid to say nice things about.
The other three are still asleep.
We're recording three tracks over seven days - 'Figure 8's', 'Undertows' and 'The Man Who Mapped The Oceans'. All the recording has been done - drums first, then bass, then my guitars, vocals and lastly Nathan's "sounds-like-a-plane-taking-off" guitars. Every band who has ever been into a studio will, at some point in their time recording, utter any of the following combinations:
"It sounds like a level up"
"It sounds BIG"
"Listen to that kick drum!"
and we are no different, huddled around our early evening pints of Bath ales in the bar over the road talking about how and when we can get these tracks released. One of them sounds like Nine Inch Nails which I never expected to say, and 'Undertows' sounds like it would have fitted nicely on the Edward Scissorhands soundtrack. Dan's production - he's worked with Doves, Cherry Ghost, Biffy Clyro etc - is in keeping with our ethic of sounding massive, and of being unashamed of sounding like the end of the world. Here are some facts about recording this EP for you.
- All the guitars were recorded through an Orange Rockerverb amp and then split into Dan's Audio Kitchen amp which is in the picture above. That amp has got Dan's name inscribed on the circuitry.
- The session is being recorded on Doves' rig which makes me remember when I was about to walk my dog all those years ago and Lamacq played 'Cedar Room' as the last song on his show, I couldn't believe what I'd heard.
- There are hidden messages on 'The Man Who Mapped The Oceans' from phone messages that Dan left on my answerphone. The track is being referred to as the 'serial killer' track.
- We are living in a flat which is 9 storeys above Bath and every morning I sit at the dangerously big open window and drink my cup of coffee looking down at all the people running around or looking over the rooftops across the city.
- Last night we sat up in the bar underneath our flat and drank with the bar staff from Moles after hours. One of them was a massive Queen fan, which matters to James ("I can go b-side deep"), and one of them didn't utter a single word all night and then stood up, pointed at me and shouted "JOHN MARTYN" at me, which I found weird because how did the guy know I was a fan huh?
- We played these guitars guitars: a Fender Telecaster Thinline Deluxe, a Fender Telecaster Deluxe, a Fylde Alchemist acoustic and a Fender Stratocaster.
- I recorded all my vocals over two nights singing through a Neumann 149 microphone which Dan just told me costs £5000. There was me thinking I would pick one up for home but I've changed my mind although my girlfriend just said "it's something to work towards" on the phone which made me laugh.
The 'Red Square EP' - which comes out in September: incidentally, the vinyls turned up during recording and we spent a day hand numbering them with a custom stamp, so one of the live rooms has got 300 vinyls on the floor, picture to follow - was such a labour of love, and was surrounded by a lot of pathetic bullshit from outside the band, that to be doing something that sounds so fresh is such a relief, and to be working with Dan Austin, who is near enough the most talented person I've ever come across, has injected our band and our music with a bit of self-belief which has been lacking lately. We've heard a lot of people say 'no' over the last few years, and it's nice to hear the sound of your own voice(s) saying 'yes' sometimes. This has probably been the most fun I've ever had in a band, and that counts for more than anything.
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