The Tired Drummer
This post is being written by a very tired drummer – which in itself probably sounds ridiculous because we recorded the drums last month and all I've done this weekend is watch Aidy work on guitar parts. But sometimes it is exhausting just watching a musician and producer create appropriate sounds because they are working so hard and it takes it out of you even being a studio spectator.
The album is sounding great, Dave nailed all of his funky bass lines a couple weeks back and I think rhythmically it gels really nicely, so the last couple of days have been focussed on finding 'that' perfect guitar sound that compliments the songwriting perfectly. I think it's very clear that this certainly isn't a slapdash project, it's no longer a case of just playing the songs and recording them with a decent enough sound, this is a produced effort and attention to detail is pivotal if we are to create an album we are all proud of – and not just on release, but something we can listen back to in five, ten, twenty years time and still feel a sense of achievement. As you can imagine, this can take bloody ages, but it's really taking shape nicely and a majority of it sounds really brilliant already.
Typically in these situations my role is to simply support, banter where necessarily, and eat lots of snacks. During the recording the same song is obviously played over and over and over again, but perhaps the most satisfying thing of all is that I'm still very excited by all of them.
R.E.M. are, in my humble opinion, the greatest band ever to grace planet Earth and in light of their recent split and my emotional purchase of their last ever full studio album ‘Collapse into Now’ I’ve decided to dedicate a cheeky blog post to them. Let’s kick off with a Worther’s Original style flash back to how I first discovered that R.E.M. are indeed the best band in the world.
However, for this album, Aidy made the decision to go with producer Neil James 'Bugs' Rogers at Half Ton Studios in Cambridge and neither Dave or I disagreed given the studio's impeccable track record. As a producer, Bugs is widely regarded as one of the top guys to work with, and one of his most recent projects was the Travis Waltons debut release which we're all a big fan of.