Studio (!) updates

Lee_B

Readin' me posts are ya?
May 16, 2001
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Surbiton. The Posh bit
www.elitistrecords.co.uk
Here's the first one from Tom who's toiling away in Hungary right now :)

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Hi guys,

This is Tom checking in from Hungary. Here's the story so far:

On Monday, Brett (our producer), Julie and I were introduced to what would be our "studio"-space over the next few weeks where we will be recording the drums, guitars and vocals. Owing to us being on the cheap side, we managed to get Akos to wangle a deal with some friends of his who own a bar
to let us use a spare room to record in for free. As far as such rooms go, it's not too bad: a reasonable size, decent enough acoustics, a working electricity supply (well you can never tell), etc. I don't know how these people expect allowing a metal band to record nextdoor to their bar to affect their business, but they haven't complained so far.

Anyway, day one was spent tuning the drums, setting up the mics and basically soundchecking (whilst I fell asleep in a chair in the corner, as Brett's photo gallery will no doubt testify!).

Tuesday - day 2: After more faffing about with mic placements (I guess having such a pernickety producer will bear fruit in the long-run), we started recording the drum parts to "Parfum" in the afternoon. This is a song based on the book "Perfume" by Patrick Suskind. This one is kind of a mini-musical adventure, with many different themes. I think of it as our "musical theatre" piece - Hugo and I wrote the music to be as impressionistic as possible to compliment Julie's lyrics. Probably not the easiest song to start off with though - there are about 10 different tempo changes.

Wednesday - day 3 (today in fact): This morning we made some fine adjustments to Parfum and completed the end section - a tribal affair with menacing multi-layered jungle drums accompanied by trippy sus chord swells on the guitar leading into a Cannibal Corpse-esque ending courtesy of Mr. Barrett. However, our progress was suddenly thwarted by the appearance of rattling in the two floor toms (Akos had been going at it so hard that he'd wrecked the skins). We therefore abandoned recording this afternoon to find some replacement skins. I've been let out into the daylight whilst Brett and Akos set about the task of replacing the skins, retuning and soundchecking. There will be no more recording today, but we hope to get an early start tomorrow. This hiatus so early on is frustrating, but if it means we get a better sound in the long-run then I guess it's worth it.

Wish us luck!

Stay tuned,

Tom and To-mera
 
'Parfum' sounds like it's going to be completely insane! Can we expect Julie to pull out some death vocals for the ending?
 
Lee_B said:
September 11th. Hopefully the album won't be the second disaster to occur on that date...
:lol: :lol:

I read the second update on Myspace just now and I'm a good deal more excited to hear this album. It sounds like it's gonna push the limits on just how much music you can fit into 50+ minutes and still look good doing it.
 
And here is that update :0:

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Here's the latest from the To-mera camp:

Well, I don't have time for a day by day breakdown right now, but in summary, after a shaky start caused by numerous equipment problems, noise complaints from the neighbours (followed by DIY soundproofing), time constraints from the room owners (not to mention the fact that we have to cease recording every other hour to allow them to listen to their thumping techno music at full blast), things are finally gathering momentum.

We've recorded the drum tracks to "Parfum", a song called "Realm of Dreams" (a really long slow mournful one in the vein of Devin Townsend, Anathema, Opeth and Nirvana apparently), the album intro (which will feature a Hungarian folk song by Julie and most likely self-indulgent guitar playing by me), and we've re-recorded the drums to "Dreadful Angel" and "Born of Ashes". They're are now considerably tighter and a bit more interesting than on the demo.

It sounds like it's slow-going but we've now decided to abandon our schedule and just focus on doing one song REALLY well per day (as opposed to two which was the original plan). As a result everyone is feeling a lot more relaxed and Akos is playing better. Fortunately we've allowed ourselves plenty of leeway so there will be no rush.

Tomorrow we will start recording the drums to a song called "Blood" (at least that's what I think it's called - it's had so many name changes [Lee's edit: Yes, it's called "Blood" :)]). It's my personal favourite and I'm very excited to hear Akos' interpretation of it as he has developed the rhythms siginificantly since its inception as a MIDI file on my computer. Suffice to say that this song will feature polyrhythms by the truckload (guitars, drums and keyboards all playing different rhythms which gradually overlap and become one at the end of each loop - think a more melodic version of Meshuggah with ethereal singing rather than shouting), the odd bombastic symphonic section here and there, a HUGE chorus and vocal melodies from Julie that will melt your heart. It will also feature a number of verses with the lyrics in Hungarian (Julie's native language).

OK, gotta run. Till next time!

Tom
 
I only just started listening to To-Mera the other day and this is definately my most anticipated album of the year.

Sounds like it's gonna be great :)
 
Hello Again!

On Monday we finished tracking the drums for the album. Despite my resignation to the fact that we were settling down for the long-haul, Akos put on a sudden burst of industriousness and we did the three hardest songs on the album in two (admittedly long) days.

The first song to be recorded on Sunday was "Blood", the polyrhythmic nightmare I alluded to earlier. The verses have turned out a lot groovier than I imagined it, and so will hopefully be less nightmarish for me when I have to lay down the guitars. Akos pulled a surprise from the bag on the mid-section by playing an inverted rhythm to the bass guitar, which gives it a really interesting groove. Even Brett was nodding his head to it!

The second one was "Phantoms". "Phantoms" is probably the heaviest song on balance. The highlight of this song for me is the transition from a fast black metal stylee chorus to a very mellow jazzy interlude before suddenly descending into some technical brutality followed by some half-time grinding! I expect heads to bang to this one!

The final song was "Obscure Oblivion". This is kind of a song- sandwich, as it features maybe a a minute and a half of song on either side of the most technical sections on the album. A chance for me, Hugo and Akos to show off our chops mainly. For that reason I was surprised that Akos managed to wrap it up in one afternoon. The time changes on this one are a bit of a stinker.

So, what's happening now is that we're taking some time out to catch up on some much needed sunlight. We'll head back to the studio on Thursday to start tracking the guitars. I'm chomping at the bit! :)

Tom
 
Here I am, enjoying the sunny rainstorms (!!!) of Veszprèm with a coke in an internet cafe (where the hostesses are very beautiful but don't speak much english - what an adventure...), and with a bunch of hungarian students playing weird card games next to me. Today is another day-off after 8 days of drums, a well deserved rest if you ask me, haha ;) Yesterday, we went to the zoo, a very nice ride full of cute and funny animals as you can see on this amazing picture, courtesy of Julie K :

zoo.jpg


It is weird, cause even though Lee is very far away from us, there's always some kind of signs that make us think he's kind of amongst us anyway...

lee.jpg


Then we went on Veszprèm's heights, as you can see Tom thinking "Should I jump now or after the recording ?"

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The other night we went to Balaton lake, a really cool place, with this very very huge... well, errrr... lake... I'm posting one picture here, Julie took a lot more of those, much better than mine but I leave her the pride to post them

balaton.jpg


Oh yeah and then yesterday evening Julie and I went to the swimming pool and sauna, but sorry, I don't have pictures of that ! :heh:

Errrr, what ? You don't care about our vacations and want recording pictures ? Raaaaah, okay... Here are a few, not showing too much but I must admit I'm not so good at taking pictures while recording, sorry !

drums1.jpg


drums2.jpg


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Well, I think that's it for now, tonight we celebrate Akos' drums recording completion with what he called an "atomic party" at his place... Can't wait to be there...

Take care and stay tuned for more completely useless pictures from me !

Brett