Broken Brains

Random thoughts from Love, in October

Madness in the studio May 11, 2010

Dear world,

I’m sorry for being a bastard and not keeping up on my bloging responsibilities. But rest assured, I have good reason for it. So it’s been about two weeks since we left Toronto and Chemical Sound studio. I thought I’d give a little recap of what took place.

The plan was to track 8 songs in 4 days. Quite a task for any band. Most bands do 1 song per day or sometimes even slower. But being broke and Swedish, we have to work within our means to make it happen…and we did. The first day we spent about 5 hours setting up before we even played a note. All songs were to be tracked live, some to a click, some just full blown rocking out to each other with no care or consideration for time. We started with a song called Dangerous Animals which involved some epic tom overdubs (see “Tom Magic” video) and did 2 songs the first day. The second day was a marathon. We did 3 songs that day and I did a ton of guitar over dubs on the songs. Many of the songs we’ve written don’t have traditional rythm/lead guitar parts….or even a complete guitar parts through the whole song. Most of the songs are tiny little pieces of a puzzle that individually don’t make sense at all, but if you connect them you get a beautiful picture of Betty White playing poker with a bunch of dogs.

On Thursday we did two songs. There was only one song that we didn’t do live. It just didn’t sound right or perhaps it wasn’t tight enough live. Anywho we did all the instrument separate on that one. In general I prefer the live approach…it just sound way more “real”. We did some piano and vibraphone overdubs this day as well.

On Friday we did the final song “Do You Love Me” and Tiffany flew in from NYC to lay down some vocals on the songs. As expected she did an awesome job. Friday was a long day and we ended up going to 1am  trying to finish all the little bits and pieces. So we played Toronto Fashion Week on Saturday which was wicked, and we tried our skills as models (see the pic above) but failed to sign on with any modeling agencies. Those Canadians don’t know what they’re missing out on.

So we’re back in Chicago now and I’ve been overdubbing synths and vocals for two weeks. Most of the songs are 90% finished and they just need some vocals and special effects here and there. Kent and I are going to enter Engine Studios here in Chicago in a week to record a little diddy called “rubix cube”. After that it’s more writing. We have 4-5 dance songs that need to be fine tuned. So that’s what’s on the horizon. I have a bunch of studio footage on my camera I need to sift through and post here for you guys. Maybe I’ll get  a rainy day to do that on soon. In the mean time…cheerio!

P.S. I saw Shout Out Louds last night at Lincoln Hall and I was in the front row! It was super awesome. It felt like they were playing a private concert just for me…magic! Super good show…exciting and inspirational. Check out thier new album “Work” if you haven’t already.

 

Tom Magic April 22, 2010

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Studio Tour!!! April 21, 2010

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Out of the Studio – Early Report January 14, 2010

Yo Yo Hey Hey,

“Oh it’s good to be one of us…”, we’ve emerged from the studio bowels with another song below our belts. Actually, it’s not 100% finished, I still need to go back and overdub vocals. But other than that it’s a done deal. We’re going to post a few videos of the ordeal, but I wanted to give you an early report.

We tracked Desperate at I.V. Lab studio in Chicago on Tuesday. We did things really differently than our normal approach, we tracked the whole song live as a band old school style to analog tape! It was super fun. The downside with this method is that it takes a long time to setup. We spent about 4 hours moving mics around and connecting cables before we even played a note! I produced the recording but shared engineering responsibilities with studio owner/engineer Manny. I tried lots of new mics including my new favourite tom mic, the Josephson e-22…it’s so nice…and Steve Albini uses it, so it must be legit. The studio also houses my favorite mixing console, the API 1608. Sorry if things are getting a little to geeky for you here.

All the hardcore practicing really paid off. We ended up keeping about 99% of the final take we did. After we got “the take” we did some synth and minor guitar overdubs. I think my favorite part about the recording is that it sounds a lot like my favorite band Bob Hund in that the song is very “live” and has a metric-ton of feel and subtle tempo shifts (the good kind). I think this will be the best LiO recording to date.

Manny also enlightened us with some good studio stories about artists he’s worked with, like Smashing Pumkins, Plain White Tee’s (Yes, he recorded ‘Hey there Delighla’), The Hush Sound, and Fall Out Boy. I’m not sure if I can spill the beans here so I better keep them to myself. ;) Sorry for the tease…

I’ll try to get some video up here later today. We have tons of footage so it might take a while to sift through.  Stay tuned…

 

 
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