Diary of the recordings of the Wuthering Heights album, "The Shadow Cabinet"
25.05.06: Rhythm guitars, Erik´s leadguitars, bass and choirs are recorded!
Hello everybody! I´m back now from almost two weeks of recordings in
Sweden. We´ve used our dear bassplayer Uncle Teddy´s studio Blueflame
Productions in Uppsala, Sweden for the recording of guitars, bass and
backing vocals. We´ve managed to come up with some really heavy
sounding stuff for you. I think we´re producing a monster here...!
Here´s a quick overlook on the proceedings for you.
Cheers!
ERIK
Tuesday, 09.05.06
I took the plane to Stockholm in beautiful flying weather. It´s a lot
quicker and also cheaper than taking the train, eventhough it prevents
me from bringing more than one guitar. But Teddy´s got a house full of
gear, so we´ll sort it out anyway. Teddy and his assistant engineer
(i.e. studio slave) Simon met me at Arlanda Airport in Stockholm, and
it was then a relatively short drive to Uppsala and Gråmunkehöga, where
Teddy and four generations of his family resides. It´s real Swedish
countryside, just like the Swedish television of my childhood - or the
novels of Astrid Lindgren - simply wonderful. And perfect surroundings
for the creations of a new WH piece. Second engineer Niklas Kupper
arrived and we starting setting up the sound for the rhythm guitars.
We´re using a Peavey JSX top through a Marshall cabinet. We didn´t
quite reach the desired sound this evening, though.
Wednesday, 10.05.06
Another hot, beautiful day. We continued working on the sound. Teddy
got the crazy idea of opening the door to the room where the cabinet
was placed and putting a microphone outside the room. This proved to be
brilliant. We almost instantly got the sort of natural, woody sound, we
were looking for. It might be more of a rock´n´roll sound in principle,
but it sounds really heavy when you play those deep folkmetal riffs.
Really cool. Teddy and Niklas think it´s probably the best guitar sound
they´ve done so far. The first song to record was "Demon Desire", which
is quite tough, some very fast heavy riffing in the chorus parts. But
it turned out good. Next up was "Beautifool", which was a bit easier.
We soon developed the term "involuntary jazz" for wrong notes or chords
:-) And then it was time to crash. How time flies...
Thursday, 11.05.06
Seems the summer decided not to arrive yet anyway. So this day we
played through rain and thunder. Cool to record heavy metal with live
thunder! Maybe we should have stuck a microphone outside and caught it
on tape (or disk). Anyway, I fought on, recording "The Raven", "Faith",
"Envy" - which proved something of a challenge, it doesn´t really sound
difficult, but it´s quite tricky - and one rhythm track on "Snow". On
some songs we use four layers of rhythm guitars this time, for those
extra heavy viking riffs. It sounds awesome. We kept one particular
part in "Envy" for later, since it requires that we move the cabinet
around to obtain feedback.
Friday, 12.05.06
We finished off "Snow" and then continued with "Sleep". Most of it is
relatively relaxed, but the chorus parts are a bit faster. Nothing too
difficult though. We also did one rhythm track for "I Shall Not Yield",
which is more difficult. Not much more of interest happened this day.
When the studio is closed you´re really left in the middle of nowhere
here. I rather enjoy that though, being used to deal with larger
amounts of stress. So just drinking coffee, watching DVD´s or simply
doing nothing is really nice for a change.
Saturday, 13.05.06
More stormy weather today as I struggle on with "I Shall Not Yield".
This have some heavy chordwork on the deep strings, which in theory is
easy, but very hard to pull of precisely and without too much noise. It
has an insane reappearing riff, but I guess I can only blame myself for
that :-) It gets done though, only to bring me to another difficult
song, "Seize The Night". We didn´t do the ending for this song yet,
since it again requires some noisy guitarwork that will probably ruin
the balance of the setup, so we keep that for last. Anyway, by this
time, Teddy had decided that since it was Saturday, we needed to have a
party. So while I kept working on with Niklas, he carried in supplies
(mostly in the form of alcohol) and a few more people arrived. While
they were having fun in the bar downstairs we managed to record two
more songs, as the stinking proffesionals we are (??). "Midnight Song"
and "Shadow Of A Gipsy" were finished without much trouble. As the main
part of the guitars was now recorded, we joined in the festivities and
had a few beers. I went to sleep relatively early though, in the middle
of people drinking and playing King Diamond at full volume - but hey,
I´ve slept in the weirdest of places over the years, when playing with
this band.
Sunday, 14.05.06
This day started a bit slow, obviously. But we eventually got around to
working on the bass sound. Two channels were recorded, through two
different cabinets, and then mixed into one track. It took a while to
get the bass sound to really come alive. But I think we´ve managed to
get a cool sound, that´s both clear and heavy. I think Teddy was a bit
suprised at just how complex the basslines are, but he struggled on in
good spirit. This day we finished off "Demon Desire" and "Beautifool",
both of which is quite tough on the bass.
Monday, 15.05.06
This day Teddy and I started recording additional guitars. It´s easier
for Teddy to record the bass, when Niklas is also there to engineer it,
and he can´t arrive until later in the day. So, off we went with
various melody lines and other additional guitarstuff. We managed to
get most of it done, before Niklas arrived and we could continue with
the bass. We did "The Raven" and "Faith", where Teddy came up with some
cool arpeggios.
Tuesday, 16.05.06
We started working on my leadguitar sound. But we didn´t really seem to
get anywhere. It all sounded a bit thin for my taste. The sound was
basically OK, but it didn´t really come out of the speakers. Teddy
called up a friend to borrow a different microphone, in hope that this
could solve the problem. Since Niklas could pick up the microphone on
his way here, we decided to skip the leadguitar for now and continue
with the bass. Teddy did the bass for "Envy" and "Snow". Niklas arrived
with the new microphone, and that was indeed the solution - now we had
hole through! Anyway, the day was coming to an end, so we had to stop
now, but at least we were feeling better now about getting the desired
sound.
Wednesday, 17.05.06
Since Teddy had to leave on Friday, he wanted to get the bass done as
soon as possible. And he in fact managed to finish it all this day.
Starting with "Sleep", which was easy - by WH standards - he continued
with "I Shall Not Yield", which was tough, but the bassdude seemed to
be really rocking now. "Seize The Night", "Midnight Song" and "Shadow
Of A Gipsy" was done in great style as well. You may have noted that we
all record the songs in the same order. It´s not really something we´ve
talked about or thought much about, I think. But it´s the order that we
think will be on the album, and somehow it just feels right to record
the album from start to finish. It´s like we all undertake the same
journey that way. This had been a long day, especially for our dear
bassist, who looked a bit worn out, I thought :-) So he at least
deserved a good rest now. Anyway, Teddy has proven that besides being
an outstanding drummer, guitarist and singer, he´s also an exceptional
bassplayer - good job, mate! What a bonus to have such a guy in the
band, and how I hate people who are that talented (NOT!)
Thursday, 18.05.06
The first part of the day was spend editing and cleaning up all the
basstracks. We then went to town for some lunch, after all we hadn´t
seen much else than trees and guitars for a long time. Thus refreshed
we headed home to start recording my solos, which can always be a
little intimidating at first. But I got off to a pretty good start, and
without too much trouble I finished all my leadguitars, except for the
solo in "Shadow Of A Gipsy". A few parts I had to make up as I went
along, but they turned out pretty good. And all in all I´m pretty happy
with my solos, especially some of the more slow, emotional ones turned
out great. Some tricky parts - and a lot of "involuntary jazz" - but
all in all a positive recording experience. Actually I played the solo
in "Midnight Song" differently than I had prepared - I guess my fingers
got ahead of my brain, but it turned out better that what I had thought
of playing. These are the little things that you can´t plan and which
always add to the life of a recording.
Friday, 19.05.06
We started with the
solo for "Shadow Of A Gipsy", for which I use an e-bow. It´s an old
hippie gadget, so it fits well with this song, I guess. We recorded
three tracks, and together it sounds really beautiful in a weird way.
Teddy had to leave for Copenhagen now to attend the wedding of our dear
manager Lars F(ucking) Larsen. So I had some time off, before Niklas
arrived. Once again I had dinner with Teddy´s huge family. Today the
menu was reindeer and mushrooms - after all, this is Sweden - great! We
then continued with recording a few clean guitarparts, before finishing
off those few noisy parts we had kept for last. So quite fittingly I
ended my recordings in a blaze of screaming guitars - it´s always great
to just let it rip and be loud and obnoxious! I celebrated by having
one (albeit strong) Finnish beer. After so many days of hard work and
virtually no other stimuli than coffee, I would probably be totally
plastered if I had more.
Saturday, 20.05.06
With guitars and bass done we had one day to do some backing vocals and
choir parts. Too bad Teddy wasn´t here. However, we made up a great
choir of Teddy´s sister Tina, Niklas Kupper and myself. Recording on
multiple channels we got some big sounding choruses. We also did a few
other assorted shouts and stuff. You always feel somewhat silly singing
separate voices and such stuff, that doesn´t really make sense until
you hear it all together. And singing several people together someone
is almost bound to make a mistake. So we had a very funny day. We
finished just in time to watch Lordi perform in the Eurovision
songcontest! Appropriately, I celebrated the end of the recordings with
one more Finnish beer.
Sunday, 21.05.06
Niklas arrived pretty early to edit and backup the files. And he, of
course brought the news of Lordi´s crushing victory in the Eurovision
and the uproar it had caused. This must be the funniest thing that has
happened so far this year - Hail Suomi!! Anyway, our work here was
done, and Niklas drove me to the airport so I could get back to
Copenhagen and prepare for the next recording session that will take
place from the 29th of May in Tommy Hansen´s Jailhouse Studios in
Horsens, Denmark. More about that later.
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