Lunch Habit

The recording in Calcutta with Cassini’s Division is almost at an end, and as usual there is a new sense of urgency to get everything finished, more importantly because we are a 12 hour flight away from each other and not just up the road!
The recording has been very fruitful and I believe the Cassini’s existing fans will be pleasantly surprised.

I kept the recording as live as possible, and implemented the techniques I have come to be known for such as creative use of mics and spaces combined with amps (though not a full selection) as opposed to music from a box of chips and resistors. Snobby! I know! But surely real is better, in anything you care to mention.

Ideally, it would have been great to have a Vox Ac30, a Marshall 4×12 etc at hand, but you work with what you have got! What we did have is a great studio space and a nice selection of all the usual mics, and, most importantly, creative ideas and the will to use them!

I will be mixing in London before unleashing this monster on the world! So for now, here are some nice pictures.

Si xx

Edit, edit ...edit

Rumble guitar

The studio floor

A couple of years ago I was music production manager for a TV show called SUTASI, and on my journey at that time I came across Cassinis’ Division. My boss, Colleen Zulian had seen them while checking out some hot tips in India with the legendary Simon Napier Bell. Colleen sent me to Kolkata immediately to do a 4 day recording with the band to record some rough studio versions of their new material.

Fast forward to the present day when I received  a phone call from the band telling me they had signed a deal with HMV (Saregama) the biggest label in India and wished for me to return and continue what we started.

Below is the bands performance on Sutasi, and this is the track we will be recording today. We are at the halfway point now and the album is sounding really good. The band are playing a massive MTV show on my last day here and have asked me to join them, so more news later.

Si xx

Please visit the boys website for more info, this band are gonna be HUGE!!

Cassinis’ Division

Shem McCaully wrote: Hi Simon, Hope you are well. Where are you now? Hows it going? If I read your blog right, you are in London. Man, you get around….. Slacker album update…..Slacker album update……We are now looking for artwork. A pic for the front cover. See my email below to creative friends, and if you have any ideas, let me know. I spent a day on flickr and found some ones that were promising, but nothing so far screams out USE ME! Cheers ears! Shem

Simon: This is a good friend of mine who I mixed and edited for just before leaving Bangkok for LA. I love this album and expect it to do very well for years to come. So here is an opportunity to help with the cover, over to you mr. Shem…

Creative friends,

I want an image. You might be able to help.

My album is called “Start A New Life”.
Another idea for the album tiltle was, “Home”.
Below are the track titles.
It’s kinda trip hop/mid tempo stuff, think DJ Shadow meets Moby meets Groove Armada.
It’s kinda organic, funky, sample-based, journey-like, atmospheric, thoughtful, warm. And not too serious.

We are looking for a photo to put on the front cover.
We want something that kind of sums up me and my new life, here in Thailand.
Got any pics?! Any pics you saw on the net which might apply? Any thoughts?

Ideas so far are something nightlife bangkok style: a shot of the big city, from above or street level, lights, maybe people or cars blurred, could be a bit messy or chaotic. Or a market – maybe a night market, mad, rushy, trippy. A time lapse picture.

But all other ideas welcome. I have a picture of a passport page full of thai immigration stamps. I have a pile of papers I got from customs when I shipped a case into the country – was thinking of laying them all out and taking a pic of them.

Cheers!
Shem

Slacker – “Start A New Life”

StartANewLife
IHaveNoMemory
WhenIWasAChild
California
JustAsIAm
SeeTheWorld
BlueArmy
HelpMeHere
SkittlesAndMalteasers
ANewDay’sDawn
ComeBackHome
WhatADream
KidsIdeas
AMillionDreams
Lately

Slacker album updatehttp://myspace.com/slackershem

jukeboxinthesky.co.uk

The other studio was called ‘Mono Valley’ and Brian May had just finished his solo album there when we took it over.

We were using two 24 track Otari machines at Rockfield, but at Mono Valley they only had one 24 track, so we had made up some ‘slave’ mixes as guide tracks on one tape for those sessions. We mixed down all the drums to two tracks, had a mix of the keyboards, and another stereo pair of all the guitars. We the used the remaining 15 or so tracks to do the real tracking.

So, we were now back at Rockfield to finish the alum. Gus suggested that we erase the guide tracks from the second reel as they were no longer needed and just confused things while we were trying to mix.

With the track sheet in front of me and a copy in front of Gus, we both called out the tracks to the engineer that he could safely ‘arm’ for recording. It kind of went a bit like this ‘track ten, track ten, ok, check, track ten, track eleven, track eleven, ok, check track eleven’ and so on. After we had checked and double checked that these were the tracks to be erased, we put the machine into record and went for a cup of tea.

We cleaned two reels of 2 inch in the same way, the whole album!

The first proper job of the day was to fly in some vocal samples from the sampler.

So Dave, the engineer, put track 1 into record enable and we started ‘punching in’ these various vocal bits and pieces.

Upon hitting the record button the second machine started to spin out of control. Dave jumped up and stopped it manually. I gazed over to the ‘VU meters’ and saw that track 24 was armed, NOT track 1. When I announced this we all looked at the mixing desk where Dave was arming the machine and saw track 1 flashing, then looked back at the VU meter on the machine and saw it was still flashing on track 24.

Dave enabled track 24 on the mixer but the machine flashed up track 1. We found out that the second machine had returned from maintenance the previous day, and the multi core had been plugged in upside down. One would think that they would design the cable to only plug in one way wouldn’t you? No such luck here.

Track 24 is really track one, track 2 is really track 23 and so on.

So we had been recording on the SMPTE code track which was track 24.

Small holes in the SMPTE code were not a big problem, but the fact that we had erased at least 8 tracks for the whole album that we not guide tracks at all was a NIGHTMARE thing to have done.

We had erased main vocals, Sax solos, guitar solos, backing vocals this was a complete disaster!! Kingsley, the owner, brought the maintenance guy in, bent him over, and told me and Gus to literally ‘kick his ass’, it was just like a scene from ‘Spinal Tap’. He wanted to fire the guy, but settled for a good arse kicking instead. I gave it a little token boot and so did Gus to satisfy Kingsley, not that it helped the situation.

Kingsley said ‘I am lucky you guys are here on a production deal and not here record company money or I’d get sued’ this didn’t make us feel any better. ‘Oh well!’ Gus said ‘Down the pub then’ he continued.