A moderate week

On Tuesday I did a mix of the HOTL tracks.  Mastered it yesterday. Needs some tweaks, but I feel like it's 80% there. Feeling strong.

Tracked more vocals with Chris of Invitational last night. We got two leads down, with doubles for that "Dave Grohl" lead vocal texture. Every time I listen to this, I long for an empty warehouse of my own. ::sigh:: How I love giant drum sounds.

I also met the dudes from SweatLife, whose record I will be mixing and mastering this summer. Funtime summertime ska jamz for all you Sexy Babies out there.

Phase I complete

We have wrapped tracking for these HOTLoad songs!  Brent killed it last night, even getting a sweet fake 12 string acoustic on disk. Next up.....mixing!

July is going to be busy. Hivebent the first weekend, Lotus Fucker the second, and then my band Caestles plays Ratscape the third weekend. If you're looking to book time, I hope you were thinking August.

Brentocaster

Started tracking Brent's guitar for the HOTL project last night. Neither of us is entirely satisfied with the tone. Research continues. That is all.

This week's work thus far

Monday: guitar tracking with Scott of Heaviness Of The Load. Got an awesome tone, got some sweet takes. Layering of distortion continues apace.

Thursday: Vocals with Chris of Invitational. Ended up choosing a large ribbon mic over the others. Looking forward to really digging in to these songs.

Saturday, more HOTload guitars. FUZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ

HOTL "dress rehearsal session" one.

On Saturday June 9 at 4pm, Heaviness Of The Load and I officially broke the seal on the new Audio Esoterica headquarters, located inside the lavish. Bambou Entertainment complex in west Baltimore (next door to Studio 14). In 8 hours, we tracked drums and bass for 4 reasonably long songs. Drums were done together with a scratch guitar, bass overdubbed. Scott worked the hardest, as captured below.

The new studio sounds sah-weeeeeet! With the curtains and reiforcement panels up, it's tight and punchy and focused.....perfect for HOTL's percussion assault. Stoked to put guitars down on Monday! I believe some Soundcloud samples will have to follow.

Moving In

No pics yet, sorry. Too busy MOVING INTO THE NEW STUDIO!  Re-ran the cable snake to the live room last night, did some test tracking with Orvil and James. Silly times were had. Tonight we cleared out the live room, set up the headphone preamps, put in some power, and acoustically treated the space. So long, flutter echo! I'm super stoked to do my "dress rehearsal" session with Heaviness Of The Load this Saturday. Pictures, and hopfully video, to follow. In the past week I've also remixed and remastered the Mary Christ 7" (much improved), seen several milliseconds into the quantum future, and received the second worst sunburn of my life at Playa Del Fuego Spring 2012. A solid start to Summer 2012.

Deplorable at updates 5/13/2012

Had a great meeting Friday night. On to step two, and then.....?

I spent Saturday recording the talented ladies of Mary Christ. Their guitar player Diana likes old thrash, fuzz pedals, and scifi. We're besties now. Great nasty fuzzy tones all around; We biamped Diana's Fender/FuzzWar with my Silvertone/SwollenPickle and miced each with one of a pair of Nady ribbon mics I seem to under-utilize.

We did four songs, all tracked and maybe half to three-quarters mixed. They played tight as fuck, and I had an awesome time hanging out with them, so much so that I took zero pictures. My B. Hopefully they did and I can score some.

Mix and master tweaking continues apace on the Extermination Angel record. The final notes of this revision are ringing out right now, and it's the best so far. I'm off to make sure it passes the loudness test....this is due to Joe at Black Mess Records on Tuesday, for a rush pressing to meet DeathFest. No time to waste!

Busy-ness

This week, I did the vinyl master for the Extermination Angel LP, the mix & master for the Mary Christ 7", and the mix & master for the two Lotus Fucker tracks bound for a MaximumRockNRoll comp. Awesome.

I'm also finalizing my move into the new studio digs. I'll be working out of a studio in the Baltimore Bambou entertainment complex in West Baltimore. Details and pics to follow. VERY EXCITING!

Soon, I can start booking sessions for the summer, and around that, work on incorporating the newest member of Caestles into her vocalist role.

The good times keep rollin'.