Studio Diary: Monday, 31st August; Day 37

And so it comes, the last day of August. It is quite depressing since this process will be coming to an end soon. When I leave, I entrust the making of the cover and mastering to the guys since I won't be here. Then we send them off.

I was meant to arrive at Denis' at 10, but got here at 11; alcohol, bad times. I actually woke at 8 to take my nan to the supermarket to buy a kettle. Literally there for an hour, was death. Then I had to go pay the electricity bill, so slept for an hour before goin Denis'. I arrived and we polished Ashley up a bit, then I went to sleep for an hour again. On awaking we went to the bakery and bought sausage rolls, doughnuts, cereal. Came back and watched some American Dad before beginining work on Ochre.

We broke for lunchand came back around 6 - 7pm. Mario koined us and we sat with our laptops, pcs and so on like a bunch of geeks. Music is sounding better all the time. Mario said the screams sound like a 'dying fetus'. I found out that Mario said if we don't get anywhere different by January he will take us all out for the BIGGEST meal of our lives in the most expensive place; this is his way of saying we are going to do it... He got paid for his work yesterday but at this moment in time it's a cheque; 'I got a 703 euro cheque I can't do fuck with'. At times during mixing I get a little bored and rifle through Denis' possessions. Today I struck GOLD. I found a Metallica song book, with tabs for their biggest hits! Boo yah! I vow to learn it completely by the time the album is done. I now know the beginnings to Master of Puppets and One. Will keep you updated on my progress;
'Where's Lars Ulrich from?'
'Denmark?'
'That's CRAZY'
'Yeah, I know right, Denmark has people?!?!'
Denis wants to point out that our music is best listened to on earphones, to fully enjoy the abuse of left and right. He then pointed out that 'Theo sounds like an ocean and [he] sounds like an owl'. On asking how long till we're done I was told we are still doing the 'janitorial work' of the mixing process. Win.

We left at 12ish, and as soon as I got home collapsed onto my bed since we have 8am tomorrow.
xx

Studio Diary: Sunday, 30th August; Day 36

If you put all the days together, we've pretty much been working on these tracks for over a month now. Intense. Today we decided to take a little break from mixing and worked on some of the video footage for the next DVD promo.

The DVD will not be out for a while yet, since its going to take forever and much needs to be done, so hopefully these promos will tide you over for the time being. Also when the album is completed it will not be out for awhile since we are going label hunting, but like the promos we will put a couple songs up for you to get a taster!

Website is pretty much designed, but since my Dreamweaver has crashed, I am unable to finish it. Going to fix my laptop over the next few days and hopefully the site should be up in a months time? maybe sooner. Then you can listen to us and watch the promos on our actual site as opposed to myspace.

The promo looks good, and will have a rough mix of Ashley over it I think, only a small section though. Don't wanna ruin it for you. It is basically the recording of the album chapter, with us larking around and looking all serious.

Studio Diary: 25th - 27th, August; Day 33 - 35

Three days of doing things, yet I cannot recall any of it.
We have listed out all our songs and we work on each one for sometime, then draw a tiny star next to the name of the song before moving onto the next. We have about 4 stars now on each song. Some are near done some still need work. Its a tidious process, but sound is really good! Especially vocals. I'm hoping we'll be finished by Sunday 6th? We will see.

xx

Studio Dairy: Monday, 24th August; Day 32

Denis’; 5pm. We are working on Ashley. We cut out all the crap piling the good stuff at the end! We worked on singing vocals before heading to the screams. We can hear Theo’s dog tags every now and again clinking on the tracks…watch out for that! Theo does loads of deep vocals on the track sounding just like Tom Jones making the song sound damn sexy. Denis copied a track: ‘Jesus Denis, you’re like a magician’ - Mario. ‘People that don’t like screaming can go suck it’ – Denis; Mario thrilled he’s not the asshole of the band anymore. Mario thought one bit of the song sounded like a Christmas carol. We then started Song 2 (no name yet) Theo’s vocals sound lush. ‘Will I look weird if I go out in a jacket?’, ‘yeah! People will think your shooting up’. Denis is living on his own for a month and claims ‘it’s lucky he’s even wearing clothes right now’. I leave and they continue. I come home to find out they finished ALL the songs!! And played Nazi Zombies.



And people are already getting married omfg omfg

Studio Diary: Sunday, 23rd August; Day 31

I arrived in Zigi at around 11ish listening to Interpol the whole way. We had two songs left, however Theo was incapable of screaming on them because his voice was messed up. He then spent the next two hours worrying over whether he could ever sing again and googling throat problems. He then figured if his voice had not got any better after 5 days, he would go doctors. I looked through all the tracks and added whatever I felt I could. We then watched Ferris Bueller’s Day Off until Mario and Denis arrived around 3 – 4pm. We then headed, all packed in Theo’s vehicle to a fish restaurant in Zigi. We had a meze and discussed song names. We left the restaurant, with two new song names. Song 1 is now called Ashley. Rice is now called Ochre. We all then left for home, taking the scenic route along the coast, feeling full and pleased that vocals had been finished! Monday we would begin sorting them out.

Studio Diary: 14th - 20th August?; Days 26 - 30?

I’m making up for a lot of days now; if my calculations are correct, like 5. So this blog will be a recap of all those days, in short, in pictures. We began with clean vocals nailing all the songs. Then we moved onto screaming and shouting. When this is finished it’s back to Denis’ to work through all the recordings once more before heading to Fishbone Records.

Along this road:

We played copious amounts of Wipeout, Star Wars Lego, Call of Duty.

We slept a great deal, on uncomfortable furniture.

Had to relaunche Ableton over a 100 times, no joke.Rearranged the furniture

Ate crisps, croissants and cereal.

Drank water and whiskey.

Failed to light a shisha pipe.

Mario came.

The air conditioning unit would switch off every half hour.

Come Hither by Walter De LA Mare.

Theo’s parents would come home with sandwiches, chips, burgers and nuggets.

That’s it in a nutshell. There was lots of jokes and talking as well, nothing which sticks. Theo had to keep postponing his screaming, since he would get an agonising pain in his head each time. He was too afraid to go to the doctors and say ‘it happens when I scream’. Besides this, vocals sessions went down great without any disruption and sound really good. Saturday will be our last day, where Theo will finish off his screams and then we will go for a celebratory fish meze. We’ve decided to make this routine every time we do something in zigi, since we did this at xmas when we practicing for a gig. Until then;

Studio Diary: Wednesday, 12th August; Day 25

Need to catch up! Today we were to meet at denis’ to leave for zigi at 8. We were heading to zigi to record vocals. Zigi is a quaint little village by the sea and Theo has a house there in the hills in the middle of nowhere; which means we can be as loud as we like without the cops ‘busting our asses’. It’s also a well cool atmosphere, chilled out, sun, sea, scenic nature, silence and so on and so forth.
We left Denis at 10am since we still had to render tracks. On arriving we scouted the house for a location to record. We used the utility room as the vocal room, passing cables out the window to the room next door, which would be the control room. The setup was genius. We began going through tracks, I left a bit earlier and I think we got 4-5 tracks done just clean vocals first and only Denis and Theo since I have tonsillitis. We took a break at one point and acoustic-ed it up in the swimming pool room, since the reverb is wonderful, and Theo did percussion with the water.

A highly amusing point during recording: Denis was singing and about a minute in, Theo says ‘talk’. Denis says ‘I am’. Theo says ‘no sing’. Denis says ‘what do u think I’m doing’. I think that was it, maybe I don’t get it and was laughing at something else cos right now it doesn’t seem funny.

Studio Diary: Monday + Tuseday, 10th + 11th August; Day 23 +24

These days involved fixing up Batt so that it was ready for vocals come Wednesday. I was not present since I had flu over the weekend and now have tonsillitis; my body obviously seems to find it amusing to screw me over at this point in time. I know these sessions at Denis’ involved Mario doing bass and Theo doing a guitar.

Monday night Blynd and Quadraphonic played at DMC club in Larnaca, which we weren’t able to attend but word of mouth claims it to be a show of complete and utter perfection. Awesome bands to watch and play with!

Tuesday night we saw Life Plan Set, after we had blown the fuck out of some Nazi Zombies in Call of Duty. During the game we saw the words ‘you must ascend from darkness’ in blood (obviously) and on the wall (again, where else would it be) and Denis thought it would be a good name for a song. I see a pattern emerging here, anyone?

Life Plan Set (ex Ikon) put on an amazing show; covers of TV on the Radio, Grizzly Bear, SSLYBY. We left afterwards, the guys to go swimming and me to go home, since the smoke in the venue was destroying my throat and constantly felt like I was eating dick.

Studio Diary: Friday, 7th August; Day 22

I arrive at Denis’ and this time I brought Emilio along to visit. I recorded my last bits for Batt while they played Nazi Zombies. Then Denis and I traded. It was an enjoyable chilled out session, not much went down and I can’t recall any superb quotations or incidents worth mentioning!

Studio Diary: Thursday, 6th August; Day 21

Something brutal went down but again to far into the past for me to recall! It mainly involved me recording all my bits for Batt whilst Theo and Denis playing PS3; then me having to leave fast since I had to go home and get ready for Harry Fucking Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. Oh. Yes.

Studio Diary: Sunday, 2nd August; Day 20

Drums for 'Batt' are looking good. We've spent most of the day on getting them right and working on the intro which is very Pokemon. We came up for another music video involving pokemon dressed in clothes, working day jobs like the rest of us (ahem) and coming home to their spouses or whatever, lighting up, watching TV, deep bags under their eyes and stubble, before hiting the hay to go work the next day.
We stopped for lunch and sleep, and met up just me and Denis to continue the drums for this song befor calling it a day around 6pm.

Studio Diary: Saturday, 1st August; Day 19

I literally cannot remember anything from today!
We began early, like 9 - 10am. It was just Theo, Denis and I.
I myself was so tired. They day involved eating, watching MTV Dance, watching a Converge DVD, and recording Theo's new song (working title: 'Batt' for no apparent reason. Though the two 't's are crucial). We got rough guitars done as a driver for creating drums. Drums sound lush. Guitar needs work; goes without saying.