Been spending a lot of time working on music for Atomic Brother. There’s so much going on in the studio, it seems that there is no end! Here’s what’s been going on.
Winter Studio Sessions
In December, Atomic Brother vocalist/guitarist James and I got together at his place on Long Island to do some recording. I got off the plane from sunny, Austin, TX to be greeted by “Blizzard-o-rama ’09” (or whatever stupid name they gave the snow storm!). For the next 5 days we transformed James’ place into our recording studio. These sessions featured the songs “Uninvited,” “All Scarred and Alone,” and “One of Those Days.” The drums for these songs were performed and recorded by Pat Aeby in Switzerland and I did the bass in my Austin studio. During this week we recorded James’ guitar and lead vocals, and a couple live acoustic songs. After we finished up these tracks, I headed back to ATX, and James headed into the studio later in December to oversee Robert C. Kelly recording drums on 3 more songs, “When It’s Over,” “The Blindness” and “Better Day.”
Mixing Update
Spring 2010 brings us back in studio for more recording and more mixing. I spent most of March mixing the 6 songs we worked on in the September and December sessions. We were back at 5th Street Studios in Austin for the mixing with Craig Sadler behind the board. The mixing sessions were a little crazy thanks to the studio making changes while we were in the middle of the project. The studio owner thought it would be a good idea to change out the D/A converters and get rid of the ProTools HD hardware right in the middle of the session, which caused some major problems and delays. But, Craig worked with the studio to get everything back in order. Despite the various wrenches in the works, the mixes came out great. These songs will be released on 2 Eps – one in the Spring and another in the Fall.
April Studio Session
On Thursday, April 1st, James came out to Austin, TX, for 5 days to record the guitars and lead vocals for the 3 songs Robert C. Kelly played drums on in December. This was the first recording session at my new home studio in Austin. And like the recording sessions at my old recording studio, these were broadcast live over the internet. Because of airline restrictions, and luggage limitations, James came armed only with his 1986 Les Paul Custom Black Beauty, so we rented a guitar amp – a JCM 900 head with a JCM 800 cabinet – from David Marshall at Fast Horse Studios. Also, instead of the usual combination of Les Paul and Strat, we used my 2008 Les Paul Standard for the second guitar. We also ended up using my Fender Deluxe 90 for clean guitar sounds and some solos. We wrapped the week of recording in our usual way; recording live studio versions of out songs for extras. With James’ Martin acoustic in New York he had to make do with my 1993 Takamine and 1970s Kay acoustics, and I got to record with my newly acquired (unknown model) upright bass. These songs will be edited, comped and mixed sometime in the summer for inclusion on the Winter Ep. Before I get to those, I have to wrap up mastering and overseeing the artwork for the Spring Ep, so we can make a late April release.