HOW.

Today we are having a day off.

I thought I'd would have a go at explaining how we are making this album.
We have 18 days to play with, 12 for recording and 8 for mixing and final overdubs.

Last sunday night mr eringa travelled down to Reading with james with a van load of gear, this was quickly merged into the set up at the studio through the night ready for when we turned up at midday on Monday.

The drum room was decorated and lit and then James, Jess and Gra were set up with their instruments in the room with Andy and their amps in other sealed romms/cupboards.. and hundreds of ambient microphones thankfully there is loads of space in the studio to do this. We then recorded up to four songs a day recording all of the performances and changing the drum sounds/mic set up depending on the song. This ended Thursday night for us. Dave then set up a wall of of amps in one room and a row of cabs in another in which to record the guitar and bass sounds back through..this took over 4 hours and and looked complex, we had tea..gra then returned until 4am to re-amp the bass back through the amps and get the perfect sounds for each of the songs with the performances that had already been recorded. Friday lunchtime james and Jess began guitars and the plan is to do two songs each day with me putting down vocals for those songs each night. Dave then sends us home and stays up putting it all together..the man doesn't sleep!

His attitude is that he wants us all to be fresh to perform and and he does all the rest, so I've been spending alot more time at home than I thought.. Its been such a fun experience and its great not sitting around in a studio all day long getting cabin fever.In fact yesterday Andy was banned from the studio because he had a cold

The vocal stuff has been an eye opener too..all about the performance/performer.
Another live room is all lit up with a little stage to stand in, totally seperate from the others..incredibly personal, he gets a perfect mix in the headphones and then passes them over then gets me to sing the song through about 4/5 times and then thats it. I've not even heard any of my vocals played back yet but the others seem excited and he is a perfectionist so i trust him. He then stays on at the studio and puts them all together ready for the next day. I don't know how he stays so focussed for hours on end but we are loving it. Mr Newton from our label came down yesterday and contributed well to us thundering through a few more crosswords. We like him too.