liars demos
http://www.mute.biz/liars/downloads/
register yourself to the system and download demos of songs included on the new liars album, "liars".
i helped to record some of the basics (drums, guitars, bass, keyboards, etc, mostly drums i suppose). my career is all over the place. i could be recording engineer, backline tech, a&r, webmaster, psuedo manager, interpreter/translator, office worker, dish washer, sex slave. i've done them all.
the demos. yup, that's what they are. i think they've been mastered a bit, but that's not really relevant at all.
the songs were pretty much mapped out before the proper recordings (which is where i came in and left).
i think these demos were done around nov/dec 2006. i am not involved in the demos at all.
i think co producer jeremy and i discussed what gear to rent via email and skype. jan/feb 2007. mostly from tokyo.
before berlin, i was in london for a bit. saw some old friends, did some meetings. got to visit 429 harrow road before it got demolished. mute records were one of my earliest musical influences around 1980 to 1982 (before that it was all abba, beatles, grease, saturday night fever and regular stuff), and the first album i ever bought with my own money was speak and spell (which i still have).
yeah, i had to send a whole suitcase full of gear via airmail ems from narita airport to london, because virgin were going to charge me like $1,500 overweight (i think the postage was around $300?). i did some prior research, but it turns out that berlin/germany does not have much in terms of recording equipment rental. so most of it was shipped from london and i brought some things (mics, a couple of api mic pre's we never used, guitar pedals) and jeremy had a few things too.
the demos. jeremy gave me the demos upon arrival to berlin. i loaded them onto my ipod and walked around berlin, keep forgetting the name of the neighbourhood, but it's former east berlin, where a lot of musos are based, not kreuzburg, not mitte, where twisted robot are based (hey fitz! no, i still don't know ghosts). late night, around 3am or something, listening to the songs (i might be wrong, but i think i hadn't heard a single note before that). i remember the streets of berlin having a very high resonance in pitch. stoned pavements. not concrete or asphalt. these things do make a difference you know. txt'd a friend about this resonance in sound, because it was something i hadn't heard in a while. went to bed.
next day, walked around town with jeremy and talked about approach. bought some junk gear, microphones. went to an electronics place, conrad, i think it's called, got some extras for sessions.
i still don't know what the song titles are, i am really bad with names. every recrording i've worked on, doesn't matter which band, i usually give a song my own working title. with liars, i think i kept saying "techno saviour" on the song with the pitch shifted guitar intro. jeremy gave me a scribbly note with song titles but i never read them, titles don't mean much to me, probably never will.
once in the studio, things went really quickly. some of the drums were done really quickly, in a matter of minutes. if you know the studio process, "minutes" is not a often used term in getting a recording done. "takes" yes, but not "minutes". i don't remember how many takes, it was that quick.