Mix, May 2002: Difference between revisions
(add transcribed text) |
(add remaining transcribed text and tags and remove Category:Transcription needed) |
||
Line 39: | Line 39: | ||
There are songs on the album like “45,” “Alibi” and “Tear off Your Own Head (It’s a Doll Revolution)” that are vintage-rocking Costello: stuttering, slamming, distorted guitar, jungle drums and the almost tongue-in-cheek bounce of Steve Naïve’s keyboards. But as Costello intended, ''When I Was Cruel'' also takes him into some new territory, such as on the album’s sultry, complex title track, which even contains a sample (!). | There are songs on the album like “45,” “Alibi” and “Tear off Your Own Head (It’s a Doll Revolution)” that are vintage-rocking Costello: stuttering, slamming, distorted guitar, jungle drums and the almost tongue-in-cheek bounce of Steve Naïve’s keyboards. But as Costello intended, ''When I Was Cruel'' also takes him into some new territory, such as on the album’s sultry, complex title track, which even contains a sample (!). | ||
“It started with a ‘60s Italian pop record by Mina,” Costello explains, “and it’s a two-bar loop that’s just put through this little kind of kids’ sampler, and there’s a little bit of backward bass that’s also on that, and me sort of humming a little Serpentine melody, which, again, is sort of switched backward, and then I play my Ferrington baritone guitar through a couple of distortion effects, and a Fender bass direct in across that, which is kind of playing the timpani line. And to that we added a little clip of Steve playing a little French Impressionist kind of piano and Bill Ware of the Jazz Passengers playing vibraphone.” | |||
The vibes were recorded at a separate session that took place in New York at Avatar Studios last September. Engineer/producer Kevin Killen, a longtime friend of Costello’s, was recruited to record the vibes and a horn section that included Roy Nathanson on alto sax, Jay Rodriguez on tenor sax, Curtis Foulkes, on trombone, and Frank Lacy on trumpet and trombone. | |||
“An unusual thing that happened,” Costello says, “was that I had invited Frank Lacy to play trombone on ‘Spooky Girlfriend,’ and his agent said when I made the booking, ‘You know, Frank plays trumpet,’ which I didn’t know. I said, ‘Well, maybe he could bring the trumpet,’ because I really hadn’t thought of having trumpet in this section, but that turned out to be the wild card. It brought some kind of raw sound to it that I’d never heard before on the trumpet, and I love the way it sounds. It’s exactly the sound I had in mind, and I didn’t know I was missing the trumpet line till it was there… Some of those lines, particularly on the song ’15 Petals,’ have a little East African, Arabic kind of feel to them. It’s sort of slurred; rude is the only word I can think of to accurately describe it.” | |||
Killen miked the horns with Neumann U87s and 67s. He recorded to a Studer A800 MkIV 2-inch machine, locked to a Pro Tools session of the tracks that Costello and his bandmates had recorded back in Dublin. For longer projects, Killen usually brings along quite a lot of his own outboard gear, and his own ProAc monitors, but in this case, time and vibe were of the essence. “I brought four Hardy M1s,” he says, “and I used the [SSL 9000 J] console mic pre’s and those. This was such a fun-filled session – and we literally only had the horn section for about three hours – that I thought I should probably just make sure everything is working, and Avatar is a really good studio; they’ve got great maintenance there, and I know the rooms sound really good too.” | |||
One factor that definitely affected the vibe of these sessions was the strong emotions in the studio not two weeks after September 11. “It was an odd atmosphere in the town,” Costello says, “In fact, Bill Ware had to go inside the disaster zone to retrieve his vibes from The Knitting Factory and we very nearly didn’t make the session, because the police originally weren’t going to let him take the van in there. I was really delighted to see everybody. Some other musician friends of ours came, too, and it was a fabulous session.” | |||
“We had discussed at length as to whether the session would ever happen in New York,” Killen recalls. “He had planned it prior to September 11, and when that happened, he obviously had some second thoughts as to whether to come over and whether the musicians would be available or anybody would be up for playing a session. But we talked it out and came to the same conclusion that it would be great for everybody to immerse ourselves back into music again. When people showed up that day, everybody was really happy to play and to do something constructive.” | |||
Costello brought the horn and vibe tracks back to Dublin to mix with his co-producers on the Neve at Windmill Lane. “We had gone digital to sort out arrangements and whatnot, but we didn’t do a lot of mixing in the digital domain,” Pearson says, “We came straight back [from Pro Tools] out to the Neve console. When you’re using keyboards in certain places, and atmospherics, it’s really easy for it to sound crappy through digital, you know?” | |||
“Most of the distortion came from Leo’s guitar pedals,” Lynch adds. | |||
During the mix, varying amounts of reverb was added with one of the studio’s EMT plates. The engineers also employed some AMS delay, the Line 6 DL4 and one of their favourite pieces of gear, the SPL Transient Designer. | |||
“We occasionally put [the Transient Designer] across the vocal,” Cahill says. “It sounds really interesting. It will add or subtract 15dBs of attack to the sound, or add or subtract 24 dBs of sustain, so you can make a rock drum kit sound like a hip hop drum machine.” | |||
“All hail the Transient Designer!” Pearson exclaims. | |||
Also during the mix, one of the album’s longest songs was split into two separate tracks. “The two ‘Dust’ songs started off as one song,” Lynch says, “and the band jammed on a basic groove, and then when we listed to that, Pete had been drumming a swing pattern over a straight pattern and decided to do a swing version of the song as well. Both versions were used as one song, but then, eventually, it was split up into two separate versions of the song.” | |||
The last song to be mixed was a hybrid of the two versions of “Dust”; that’s the song that became the memorial to Costello’s dearly departed guitar collection. It will be used as a B-side to the single version of “45,” which is actually a single about singles (among other things). | |||
“The other important thing [about the mixing process],” Lynch points out, “was not worrying about spill. If something was going down that was passionate and had a vibe and had emotion and carried the message or idea of the music, that’s more important.” | |||
“Definitely, in the mixing phase,” Pearson says, “there were other mixes of tracks that were more sonically correct but that just didn’t have the same vibe to them. And we want to tip our hat to Elvis for hammering that home.” | |||
{{cx}} | |||
{{tags}}[[When I Was Cruel]] {{-}} [[Dust 2...|The Imposter vs. the Water Tide]] {{-}} [[The Attractions]] {{-}} [[Ciaran Cahill]] {{-}} [[Kieran Lynch]] {{-}} [[Leo Pearson]] {{-}} [[U2]] {{-}} [[Pete Thomas]] {{-}} [[Davey Faragher]] {{-}} [[Steve Nieve]] {{-}} [[Bob Dylan]] {{-}} [[All This Useless Beauty]] {{-}} [[R.E.M.]] {{-}} [[45]] {{-}} [[Alibi]] {{-}} [[Tear Off Your Own Head (It's A Doll Revolution)]] {{-}} [[Un Bacio È Troppo Poco]] {{-}} [[Mina]] {{-}} [[Bill Ware]] {{-}} [[The Jazz Passengers]] {{-}} [[Roy Nathanson]] {{-}} [[Jay Rodriguez]] {{-}} [[Curtis Fowlkes]] {{-}} [[Ku-umba Frank Lacy|Frank Lacy]] {{-}} [[Spooky Girlfriend]] {{-}} [[15 Petals]] {{-}} [[...Dust]] | |||
{{cx}} | |||
{{Bibliography notes header}} | {{Bibliography notes header}} | ||
Line 101: | Line 124: | ||
[[Category:Interviews]] | [[Category:Interviews]] | ||
[[Category:2002 interviews]] | [[Category:2002 interviews]] | ||
Latest revision as of 13:13, 10 June 2024
|