Madrid Day 6

We're in Madrid this week recording at Mr. Soul Estudio in the Barrio de la Concepcion.

Sunday was Gin and Nathan's last day in the studio so we spent the morning finishing and refining any guitar and bass overdubs. We also added group handclaps to one of the songs, which involved standing round a microphone and counting. In the end we finished all the instruments for one more song than we originally thought we'd get done, which is a bonus.

In the evening we tried going out to what we'd heard was "the Dalston of Madrid", Lavapieds, and was busy on a Sunday night. But there was nobody about, and in fact, most of the bars were closing by the time we got there, but we had a curry and a few beers anyway. BRITS ABROAD.

Madrid Day 5

We're in Madrid this week recording at Mr. Soul Estudio in the Barrio de la Concepcion. 

We started the morning recording David's Hammond organ which he mended overnight. It was hooked up to a Leslie cabinet which gave it the magic oscillating sound. We recorded organ on two of the songs, and then I sat down at the piano and put a ridiculously jaunty piano part on another song.

It's great to be in a studio where we can have access to so many different, good quality instruments and bits of equipment. Having everything together in one place makes recording simple, so we can focus on getting good takes and sorting out the arrangement. David's equipment has taken years to collect from second hand shops, eBay, friends of friends and other places, and a lot of it he has fixed and restored himself. A really noticeable thing about using some of the gear he has is that we get better results from it in less time; putting one of his valve Neumanns next to something and recording it through a Neve channel strip means you can skip a lot of the extra recording and processing that you need to make decent sounds with cheaper equipment. There's also an element of unpredictability and grittiness to antique analogue gear, but you can also push things like microphones harder without any nasty distortion. It's been interesting to use these things.

Madrid Day 4

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.

Madrid Day 2

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.

Today was our first day tracking. We spent the morning selecting equipment, ending up with a mixture of 60s and 70s gear that sounds much fuller and richer than a lot of the stuff we can personally afford.

We set up so that we all played in the live room, but placed the amps around the studio for separation - bass amp in the vocal booth, guitar amps in a stairwell and a utility room, and drums behind a heavy door. There was very little bleed between any of the individual elements which allows us to cut or overdub later if we need to. And probably we will need to.

It was a long day. We started around 10am and finished about 9, and after around 3 o'clock we were doing solid live takes. We changed the key of the song halfway through, after I recorded a guide vocal; and then pushed through fatigue to get a useable take that would provide a solid base for overdubs and vocals. It was exhausting, and after a while it was hard to tell good takes from bad anymore; but being exhausted also sometimes tricks you into going into a kind of trance where the work flows naturally and it less about concentration and effort than instinct. With live recording you are constantly aiming to be somewhere between conscious effort and unconscious effortlessness; not too far to the former that you play like a robot, and not too far the other way that you are sloppy.

Afterwards, it was still just light enough for us to go for a beer with David, our producer / engineer / studio owner. It was very nice to sit down exhausted on a plastic chair at a plastic table on the street and order up beers and tapas from a small cafe. We walked home and bought a bottle of wine. Tomorrow we're back in the studio to do it again.

Madrid Day 1

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.

We had an early start at Joe's house, where we'd slept on sofas and floors, and piled in to the back of Joe's mini. It was a bit too early, and we'd had a bit too little sleep, to be excited yet. Last night we'd practised til late and then spent the best part of an hour working out the best way to pack a crash cymbal in a hold bag. It was around 6am and there was a damp chill in the air that condensed on car windows.

After the usual tedious check-in queues at the airport we sat in the Wetherspoons in departures, in the section that turned out to be reserved for the West Ham youth squad, and had an early morning pint just for the hell of it. It was probably the first pint I've had before 8am in the morning when I haven't just been up all night. Good for the nerves too. I've never really gotten used to flying.

The flight was uncomfortable on Ryanair; I read Hemingway's 'The Dangerous Summer' to get me in the mood. Mainly it made me hungry. That man can certainly write about food. I drifted off for a while but couldn't really sleep with my legs crushed together. Looking down the aisle to the window, I could see Spain, black, sand and white, spread out below us.

We landed and walked into the dry heat of Madrid, lugging our baggage through the Metro to the Barrio de la Concepcion. After a quick lunch of Ham, salad, calamari and chips we headed to meet David, Joe's cousin, at the studio.

The amount of great vintage gear David has is incredible. He has Neumann 67 mics, a Nagra tape deck, a Studer 24 Track tape console, a Fender Rhodes, a Hammond Organ with Leslie speaker, several other vintage keyboards, untold vintage amps, guitars and basses, and drumkits, as well as a good amount of outboard gear for processing things on the way in and out. All the tools are there for some great recordings, and now we just have to use them in the right way.

We sat with David and talked about the Spanish music scene. He told us that there are a lot of good musicians in Spain but they tend not to get together and work on projects, rather they play as session guys or go as sidemen on pop tours. He did show us one of his friends, a musician called Diego Garcia, playing on Spanish TV, which pretty much finished off four sleepy guys:

We're gonna spend the evening watching The Simpsons in Spanish.