November Studio Blog

Every year in November the AES convention alternates between coasts to host the show. This year was the 129th Audio Engineering Society Convention in San Francisco.


Must have been the year end hustle, but this month was crazy busy. The week before leaving I had constant recording and mixing sessions at both studios right up until the minute I left. I was actually worried I might not make the trip.
Luckily my session at House of Blues Studios in Encino finished on time. I drove an hour east to Seahorse, packed my gear, said goodbye to Comet and Walter and drove to meet Dusty from Mojave Audio in Burbank. Its funny how driving seems much faster when making the trip from Los Angeles to San Francisco. It is also a good buffer to wind down between cities.

I find much of the time that recording audio is on the better side of synchronicity. 

I saw this at a truck stop on the way. Thanks Chatter Telephone, I would have never remembered you.

We got to SF around 7pm and drove immediately to the Moscone Convention Center to sign in. The convention center was already a mad house. Actually, it's pretty entertaining to watch all the major pro audio companies in a pile of gear and cable trying to set up while jet lagged.


I ran out of there as soon as I could over a few blocks to my hotel room. Thinking I was incredibly late, I rushed and packed my equipment to play the first show of the trip. I was pretty stoked to find out the venue was only 2 blocks from my hotel on Market Street. Cool.

the luggage store gallery

I did mostly drone sets, using 3 sound sources:


1) pencil sharpener
2) broken slide projector
3) modified record player w/ fork and metal disc


Thanks to Rent Romus, the other performers, and the audience for the kind words and hospitality. It's a really great sounding space and you should check it out if your stuck on Market street. They have something going on most nights.

The next day was the opening of the convention...

I have never been to one, but i always likened the AES convention to a similarly geeky convention...

This is a picture of a Star Trek Convention.... not too much different right?

I headed over to the Mojave Audio booth. Mojave Audio makes really wicked tube mics, all designed by microphone genius David Royer. I do a fair bit of beta testing and application reviews for new Mojave models, and since they sound awesome it's always a pleasure.


I spent the day answering questions about the microphones and sharing some of sound recordings and mixes that I used the mics on. Everyone really dug the sounds, but honestly those mics make it easy. Check them out, they aren't too expensive either considering how they sound.


That night I had a fun time over at KUSF 90.3fm with Dj Cactus, who is a total badass and just a nice dude. I did a short live set and talked a bit about few recordings coming out soon. Cactus also played some selections that highlight the field recordings, compositions and improvised ensemble work i've done this year with Conscious Summary. Thanks to Dj Cactus and Momo for being rad 24 hours a day.

setup for the radio show on Defeat Sleep

The last day of AES was a blast, which ended with some super spicy indian food and a rad show

in Oakland with my friends from Nerfbau. Check them out and what they have going on up there.

I felt really luck to see alot of missed friends up there. Also want to wish Lee Tusman well on his vision quest and thank him for the good company. He has a neat label (Jewish Noise) and is putting out a 7" comp featuring a Conscious Summary track.

 

oakland. november 2010.

*****

The next day I drove back in time to prepare for DYSTROPHIC's cd release show with Murder Construct. The band got together and spent the night cutting, burning, stamping and assembling for the first run of our EP. Death Metal Martha Stewarts we are. Maybe less sweaty.

         

        

Here are a few random session pictures from this month at Seahorse Sound and House of Blues Studios in North Hollywood.

Angel and Steve from Condemned  -listening to some tracks before they leave for their tour in Switzerland. 

Kim and Rob from Her Majesty and the Whale, a side project of the Pussycat Dolls. 

Writing a new single

Nick from The Strokes laying down some percussion during a mix session at the HOB.

camera war with PAC DIV @ Paramount Studios, Hollywood

fun tracking session with Kirk Whalum (Whitney Houston, Bodyguard sax solo, Boyz in the Hood)

and Rob Chiarelli for artist Keiko Matsui.  Hidden in the back is Derek Nakamoto, a killer string arranger and producer. @ HOB

keeping it simple for Gucci Mane @ Serenity Sound in Hollywood.

Years almost over, make it good!

Now in the Studio: CONDEMNED!!!

CONDEMNED (Unique Leader) have entered the studio and are currently in the process of recording the much anticipated debut "REALMS OF THE UNGODLY" . These guys have a great following in Europe and the UK and this album wont disappoint. Even while still in pre-production these songs were already brutal as hell. Gonna be heavy!! I'll post more details as they progress.

Here is the press release:

At long last! We bring to you the face of the new Condemned album. Along with an all new updated layout! Here is the official statement posted on the Unique Leader Web..

Condemned is pleased to finally unveil the next chapter of their second full length album "Realms of the Ungodly". With the offerings they bring to you from the demiurgic artist "Jon Zig". They release his unholy creation for the face of the new album. With guest vocals by AJ Magana / Matti Way (ex. disgorge) and Obie Flett (Inherit Disease).In late June, they start recording the album at Seahorse Sound, and is then to be mastered by Alan Douches of West West Side Music. Who's collaborated w/ well known artists such as (Nile, Mastodon, Converge, The Dillinger Escape Plan & more). Condemned will announce a release date and new song when samples are ready.

Bedlam Of Cacophony-Neuroleptic coming soon!

Just a few days ago i received the test masters back from Scott Hull and they sound amazing! I'll post more details when the album is released, but it sounds killer so far and i'm pretty excited for this release, its utterly insane.

The album features guest vocals by Travis Ryan (Cattle Decapitation, Murder Construct), Big Chocolate (The Faceless), Ramon Mercado (Pencil Lead Syringe) and myself on vocals and sound design. I made a few instruments/sound generators especially for this album to achieve the sound we had imagined.

Here is a "studio diary" they made while tracking:



Actually, while your at it watch Inherit Disease's too:



Me and Lee took a lil road trip down to San Diego to record Travis Ryan at his place. I put together a mobile rig of my usual vocal chain. I found out what mic Travis liked: a Shure Sm-7 and brought my usual standbys: a Neve type mic pre (in this case a Vintech 1272 clone), Distressor, and a headphone amp.

                                                               First we had to get tacos.

That's it for now, stay tuned for BEDLAM OF CACOPHONY's "Neuroleptic" debut album soon.

LANTVRN . Not Enough Light EP

LANTVRN plays super dark, sludged-out psychedelic rock thats heavily black metal inspired. Sound neat? Its badass. These sessions are a bit hazy for me, but im pretty sure we all had fun. Ahhhh, rock n roll. The band tracked all the basics live and did most the songs in one or a few takes. Even the lead vocal that made it on the album was the original live one. It was really heartfelt and powerful and could not be replaced. Fuck yea. Thats how its supposed to go.

Now in the hands of producer Bron Tieman (CROOKED COWBOY and THE FRESHWATER INDIANS) - The rest was a whirlwind of overdubs and running effects thru pedals, amps and whatever we could fuck up sounds with. I remember running around like a mad man re-amping things, printing time based effects, mixing and sub-mixing tracks while the band worked out ideas in the next room or took a break. There was alot of creative energy in the air, so i made sure the tracking rooms were always ready to go. This album was originally supposed to be done on a 1" 16 track Tascam machine that Bron rescued from abandon. Poor dude spent an entire day driving up and down California to get the machine in time for the session. When I inspected and cleaned the tape machine, I found out that the capstan was really funky and the whole motor assembly needed major work. So we ended up doing everything in Pro-Tools but had an extremely analog workflow, if you will. At the end of the day Pro-Tools and magnetic tape are just the medium to capture the recording. Having a calculated work flow with minimal distractions and committing to ideas is usually the easiest way to capture the music and vibe, which is the important part, i think ha! Bron sorta has a saying thats pretty fun; when everyone agrees on something, such as a take being good etc, he will say "Stamp It!" Meaning its good, and lets move on. Bron has a great way of working with bands. He keeps their spirits high and manages to trim away all the fat, leaving only the good stuff and usually adding on some needed extra spice. In the end, I am glad we used Pro-Tools. Our track count was around 49 by the time I mixed, and the automation was just insane.

Another badass thing is synth wizard Neil Schuh (Crooked Cowboy, Jeffertittti's Nile, Dazzler) played some wicked synths and keyboard tracks back at his apartment (which i like to call Neil's Emporium of Awesome Shit) and sent them back them over the web. Meanwhile at the studio, I set Cameron up with his vocal track and a vintage Yamaha 1010 delay straight into the console to play with his vocal, riding the delay in and out and oscillating the feedback. Cameron also added a couple layers of sound through various pedals and effects. When I threw all the tracks together and smoothed out all the transitions and dynamics, the songs got sent into another dimension.

I really like the drum sound i got on "Sleeper/Awaken". 98% of the drum sound is coming from that mic in front of the kick drum about knee high, a Mojave MA-201fet thru a Distressor set to "fucked up". You can really hear the live room complimenting the groove on the second half of the song.

In another iso room was a sweet snake-skin Selmer amp (woo! tongue twister!), I threw on a prototype Ma-101fet and a Royer 121 for good measure. The Ma-101fet gave me a little clarity and bite while the 121 gave me a lot of girth, so i didn't really use any eq except for some filters on the low end. Oh, this is kind of interesting, Bron requested to have the guitar thinned out to match some surf records he really digs. It was a great sound but i was worried that if i committed to such a drastic eq, i might be screwed later when mixing. I quickly remembered what the sound was like when i was testing phase between the mics, so i flipped the polarity on one of the mics, and presto! there was Bron's sound. Now if we wanted a thicker sound in the guitar later during mixing, all i had to do was flip it back...which i think we ended up doing!

Here is a funny clip of me walking around wondering what room i should use for the next overdub session, you can kind of hear me mumble "i gotta clear this shit out.." Ha!!

 LANTVRN's ep was just released and featured in Amoeba Hollywood's Pick of the month. Check it out here

There is a limited edition cassette version available here.

A neat video for one of the songs:

Cryptic Gallbladder Splatter-groove, grindcore and gore, what else starts with a "G"? Oh yea, Great!

Recently finished Cryptic Gallbladder Splatter's latest album: "Giving Gore Grind its Groove Back".  CGS is from Orange County and has been together for almost 8 years. With super catchy songs, members with classical  training and one of the gnarliest vocalists in California, their latest is really killer... and pretty disturbing, check out some of their song titles!

I first thing I noticed about the band was alot of the quick, seemingly random changes into odd meters and very different genres of music. My first intuition was NO triggers and lots of dynamics (yes, even for a grind album). Luckily the band was very rehearsed and knew what they wanted, which left time for experimenting with sounds and making jokes.

Around the time of this album i was really getting sick of endless editing and triggering samples. Luckily the jazzy tunes allowed me to make an organic sounding album that still crushes your head in. We mixed the songs over the course of a couple weeks and then sent the master to Scott Hull where he did his mastering job at his own Visceral Sound. The albums sounds killer, check them out.

Cryptic Gallbladder Splatter

  

  

wrapping up DYSTROPHIC's new ep

after one long year, Dystrophic's ep is now done. im printing the final mixes now, and will send them over Scott Hull (pig destroyer, agoraphobic noisebleed, anal cunt, relapse records, etc).

what a long process, a fricken year and its only a demo..it took a year mostly because this band has been put on hold so many times due to the studio being busy. literally every time i did an album the band would be on hold for months-with only tiny amounts of spare time to work on it, also being so spread out never really helps, long gone are the days when you get to make music with all friends who live in the same neighborhood. to top it off we were still writing as we were recording, working out parts and months later changing them again. sound familiar anyone?

of course after hearing sounds for over a year, i grew to hate the sound of the whole thing and even hired another mixer to give a try while i mixed the Bedlam of Cacophony record, nope. This recording refused to stop pissing me off. if i could count the times i tryed to talk the band into re-recording everything... hey whats wrong with 6 months of pre-production?!

while definitely not being the most sonically impressive recording ive done, the results are still pretty crushing. some really intense and catchy parts, and some really gnarly vocals that get me a little excited... excited to get on and move forward. woo! to say the least... here is the press release:

Dystrophic's debut EP is a cosmically violent formation of ultra brutal technical death/grind and mind melting noise compositions played at light speed. Featuring members scattered across Southern California, an area rich in up and coming death metal, Dystrophic delivers utter violent intensity skillfully controlled into a conceptual offering no less bizarre than existence itself.

Laced with a complete barrage of noise and no bullshit groove-grind sections, this mixture of insanity and catchy intensity will surely not leave your stereo for quite some time!

Lyrically and musically a conceptual project with a nod to the outer realms of the massive unknown universe, inadequacy of humans, and the bizarre order of space-time, consider it a vessel to a great forthcoming

                               Check out DYSTROPHIC: myspace, facebook, youtube

As i mentioned earlier, Scott Hull has been great to work with lately, i highly recommend him as a mastering engineer. He recently mastered my work on the BEDLAM OF CACOPHONY upcoming album "Neuroleptic" and CRYPTIC GALLBLADDER SPLATTER's debut album "Giving Gore-Grind its Groove Back" which it certainly does.