I'm sitting at a computer caddy-corner to the console at Great Western Record Recorders in Tolono, IL (15 minutes south of Champaign). Aaron is performing vocals for the 10th song on our record and Chris Walla is recording said vocals. Matt Talbot, studio owner and former member of Hum, is in the corner soldering some shit or something. Norm and Griffin are in the apartment that lives above the studio, probably drinking coffee and watching Barack Obama tear it up in the primaries.
It's the end of day two, which is the last day we have here. We spent all of yesterday working on sounds and rehearsing. The live tracking was done early this afternoon, keyboard and bass overdubs a bit later, vocals being done as I type and guitar fixes/overdubs in the late night/early morning hours I assume. Then we drive back to Edwardsville tonight, for Norm has a 6 AM blood draw at Gateway Medical Research.
Matt and Chris keep talking about gear, and while I'm a budding recording engineer, I haven't known what the hell they're talking about for about 3 hours.
I'm pretty proud of this song, very very glad we threw out the bastard track that ruined our lives 3 months ago. This is the longest song we've ever done, clocking in at 6 and a half minutes long (our longest to date was "let's move mountains", the last track on Flashlights, which was really just 2 songs put together into one track). I guess it's inspired by Beck, Yes, and Weezer. Nerd stuff: mic under snare drum near kick drum beater running through Whammy pedal set to an octave down. Floor tom mic running into an amp with a ton of reverb facing the kick drum mic. Casio sampling keyboard using a string glissando patch that's turned backwards.
Selective words from this song:
The fault line slipped
The fault line slipped
The fault line slipped
And my knees keep shaking
The seismic waves
The seismic waves
Are crashing into
The surface breaking
The plates collide
The plates collide
And we're all just
Fossils in the making
The Arch collapsed
The Arch collapsed
But I still see its shadow
Cast over the river
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3 comments:
oh tolono, illinois. the forgotten illegitimate child of champaign and urbana.
Lyrics remind me: Dynamos Blind Karaoke! You promised! (sort of!)
Matt Talbot?! Amazing, I would give anything for another Hum reunion/album, however implausible that may be.
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