I've been reading this amazing book Mitch has lying around the control room- Julian Cope's survey of Kraut rock. Includes extensive discussions of Can, Amon Duul I and II, Tangerine Dream, As Ra Temple and Faust, among others. Perfect companion during a recording session. I just looked for a copy on amazon. Apparently it's out of print and going for a cool $225. Bummer.

DM

Day 2

Last night ran late. We got some good stuff down, concentrating on rhythym tracks. I got to play a beautiful Ric bass of Mitch's, quite a change of pace from the P-bass I normally play. Then we sat up late watching the Shreds series on youtube. We're getting an earlier start today as most of the set up is already in place


We're making some good progress today- experimenting with different tape machines, altering playback speeds, slicing and splicing and the like.


As with our last session here at The Fidelitorium, we'll be keeping the computers turned off (well, in the studio at least) and working only with tape. Anyone who has burned their eyes out staring at the cold colors of pro-tools for hours on end can appreciate what a relief this is.

Fidelitorium Photos 1

Here are some photos for your enjoyment (and mine). SN

Dis for da BASS!

Mitch has this sweet Vistalite Bicentennial Kit that came out in 1976. Totally crunk.


Pedals

some background....

I'll skip the usual band bio crap as it's available elsewhere and of little interest to anyone but the hacks. Suffice to say our first record came out in 2007, we toured the US and Europe, released an EP and went back on the road. We spent most of spring and summer 08 on the road, almost four months straight. We got home in July and took a month off. When we reconvened in August we started from scratch on a new batch of songs. There were a few demos circulating of songs one of the other of us had been working on but the bulk of the material was developed out of whole cloth during extended improv sessions. Since we had pretty much finished touring for the year there was no need to rehearse the older material. In any case, we had pounded those songs thoroughly into the ground and needed to get away from them for a while. At practice we would just play. There were no vamps, no riffs, not really even any discussion at all. The music would just start without anyone even saying go. We'd generally play in 20-30 minute blocks; sometimes on a single theme, sometimes cycling through several. We recorded everything on a Panasonic RQ-340 handheld cassette recorder that somehow managed to capture all the necessary elements in the room. We made edits from sections of these tapes and put them to cd and slowly parsed them into songs. We then demo'd the living shit out of everything. And now, for our next trick.....

DM

Why Guitar Center SUCKS

As if you needed a reason. While we are waiting for the 4 track machine to get calibrated and whatnot, I will take this opportunity to deflower this blog with a rant about why I hate Guitar Center. Not to get into too much detail (and it's my own fault for dealing with them anyway) but I ordered something from them last Thursday to be sent here (Kernersville). I actually drove to the store in Greensboro and paid "Jimmy" my hard earned cash to have the thing delivered here today. Needless to say this plan did not work. I was told it was coming from Georgia but in fact it came from Maryland. After making a stop at a store in Virginia it is now in Raleigh of all places.

I called them to get a tracking number and after getting tossed around from guitar dude to keyboard dude to keytar dude, I finally end up with a guy who tells me "Jimmy's off today. Man, if you were friends with him I'd talk shit about him, but...uh, sorry."

Eat shit and die, Guitar Center.

Whatever man, whatever. Only positive blogs from now on.

SN

abecedarian

This blog is set up to document the making of the as-yet untitled 2nd Birds of Avalon LP. The tracking will be done here at the Fidelitorium in Kernersville, NC with Mitch Easter. The songs we're working on were written in the late summer and early fall of 2008. Today, 11/24, is the first day of the sessions which will run through the better part of the next three weeks. None of us are particularly seasoned bloggers so we'll just have to see how this goes.

DM