We're in Madrid recording this week at Mr. Soul studios in the Barrio de la Concepcion district. The studio has a lot of vintage gear from the 60s and 70s.
In the morning we were back in the studio to record acoustic guitars. Gin recorded a Framus acoustic with unwound strings and I used a 60s Martin D3 which sounded like the kind of harps that angels play.
Then we started percussion, adding shaker, tambourine, vibraslap, bongos and triangle. Don't underrate the triangle. Percussion took an unexpectedly long time to do. But that's the way it goes when you're writing parts as you're recording them.
At lunchtime we walked to the Plaza de Toros, or bullring, to find out when the fight was. It turned out there was a big fight that evening so we agreed we'd watch it if we finished recording in time. It was one of the first times we'd been out in the middle of the day in Madrid and the heat and brightness of the sun was intense. I got back to the studio feeling dazed.
We tried to use the Hammond organ after lunch, but one of the tubes in the Leslie speaker was ringing, so we decided to wait a day, as David said he could fix it that evening. So I recorded the rest of my distorted guitars whilst the others eventually went to see the bullfight. I used some fuzz pedals for one of the first times. It was good to make some really ugly noise. I also laid down my first recorded guitar solo to date. So that's something to tell my grandchildren about.
When I was done with recording I went to join the others at the bullring. After the intense concentration of the studio it wasn't really a change of scene; the bullfight was very intense, even though we were sitting high up in the cheap seats. What surprised me most was how it didn't seem totally exploitative; the bulls were obviously deadly, and it never really seemed like an unfair fight. In fact one of the matadors was caught by the bull in the upper thigh, inches away from his balls. After staggering away he returned to finish the fight, to general adoration from the crowd, who waved white handkerchiefs when he eventually killed his bull.
As a performer myself I recognised a lot of the process of the bullfight; a mixture of skill and showmanship, but with enough danger, or the possibility of something spontaneous happening, to be thrilling. The viscerality of watching death in that kind of environment is strange -- it's almost as casual as a football match, with men coming round selling crisps and beer, and the crowd shouting insults at bad picadors, but also there is the reality of the animal dying. Even though it seems normalised by the surroundings, when a bull takes five minutes to die, coughing blood from its mouth, you feel moved by it. I came away from the bullfight thinking, in general, that sometimes it's pretty arbitrary how you fight and how you die. Some of the bulls fell and died instantly. One bled for five minutes and had to be stabbed three times before it eventually collapsed and was killed. What was different? The skill of the matador, the spirit of the bull, the heat, the time of day, or just everything?
I feel when I am working on recordings that somehow I am trying to provide a balance to that kind of arbitrariness. Working so hard on every detail, re-doing things until they are perfect, is a way to stand up to the arbitrariness of much of experience; even home, work, money, pubs, what happens on a night out, who you meet, whether you get employed for an entry-level job. It often seems arbitrary who succeeds and who doesn't; but crafting something like a recording is a way to avoid being arbitrary and to make something definite, and, well, at least, if nothing else, there's that. Except for the fact that the instruments and microphones you use are limited by the studio you're in, and often, due to the constraints of affordability, the studio you're in is kind of arbitrary... I spose I'm working towards things in my work and my life being less arbitrary.
In the evening we went out to the "tourist" bit of Madrid. The area here where the studio is, which is also where we're staying, is more of a residential area. It was around 1am, and the tourist area seemed fairly busy to me, but apparently was quite quiet for that kind of time. Everyone was on holiday. Still, it was nice to go out for a few beers, and then come home and collapse and sleep a bit before another day in the studio.
