In the studio with The Distant Seconds and AWA
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09:32:32 am on May 19, 2008 | # |
Austin band, The Distant Seconds, came up for a 4-day session last week. We tracked 12 songs, finishing everything but a few lead vocals and an overdub or two. They’ll be back at the end of the month to finish tracking, then mixing.
This was my first full project done on ATR Magnetics 2″ tape. (I’d previously used their 1/2″ on Shearwater’s Rook album.) Suffice to say, I’m very happy with the performance: no shedding or sticky residue like the recent RMG stock, and it handles well in the transport. Despite the expense ($289/reel, about double what we paid for Quantegy or Emtec before the plant closures) I couldn’t be happier.
We still have a few reels of 2″ Emtec 900 in stock (replacements for Shearwater’s failed reels), and 8 reels of 1/4″ Emtec 911 that actually seem fine — the 2″ will be relegated to rental reels for bands without the budget for tape. Otherwise, all new sessions are getting ATR, and once the 1/4″ stock runs out, I’ll get cases of ATR 1/4″ too.
Finally this past weekend, we put the final touches on and mixed American Werewolf Academy’s new album. This has been a long time coming, and I’m not ever sure how many days we ended up spending in the studio on this. The band tracked all drums and some other stuff on 1/4″ 8-track in their shed, then we did tons and tons of overdubs in the studio. Howard is all over some of these songs, adding reverse, treated piano, lap steel, organ, and a full box of percussion. The guys are going to sit with the mixes this week, then we’ll print everything to 1/4″ next weekend and ship the reels off to Carl Saff or John Golden for mastering, most likely.
In between these two sessions, I started sorting through piles of broken equipment in our storage area. I repaired a bunch of cables and headphones, and starting boxing broken mics up to be sent off for repair. This week I’ll be going through discarded rack gear and finally getting that stuff up on eBay.
Will have more coming soon, including details on The New Year’s upcoming tour.
