10.01.05 ORSUS FINAL MIX AT LEOPARD

Spent a couple of weekends in September doing the final mix tweaks for the upcoming ORSUS full-length debut release "The Pulse of Shadows and Machines". Our last night of mix tweakage ended with me burning last minute CDRs in the car on my laptop as I drove Orsus members Tommy and Gary from Stone Ridge to New Paltz to catch the last midnight bus back to NYC. With the final assembly completed we will soon be toasting a fantastic album. First it's off to mastering, which will no doubt add that critical finishing touch. I've contacted several of my top-choice mastering houses for rates and availability. No point in skimping now! As soon as pressing is under way we'll announce the final release date, and of course the CD release party!

08.15.2005 SWAMP MUD MASTERING AT LEOPARD

Jimmy Goodman of LEOPARD STUDIO called me in to tweak some mixes and then master a project he recorded there in ProTools. The band, SWAMP MUD is a New York City based blues-rock band, and the 13 songs I worked on will comprise their debut release. Singer-songwriter Eddie Lee Priest has penned some poignant and catchy songs, and his voice reminds me of a well-pitched Joe Strummer. Lead guitarist Seth Goldart has great tones and licks, and adds a jam-band like feeling to many of the middle-eight solo sections. The rhythym section (Eli Wagner on bass and Roy Luchesse on drums) holds down a really solid foundation of driving rock beats, funky grooves, Texas swing, and mournful ballads. All the basic tracking was recorded live by Jimmy Goodman, with only vocals and solos being overdubbed, all during a four day tracking and mixing session. I made a few small alterations to the bass and drum tones and some of the vocal levels, and added some over-all EQ and compressor-limiter plug-ins to the mixes to get them more crisp and punchy. As a final step we added the Vintage Warmer plug-in, which is really a fantastic tool. The band left with duplication masters, which will soon go out for pressing. Check their site www.swampmud.com for release and concert dates.

08.08.2005 SPLURGE 25th ANNIVERSARY RECORDING AT LEOPARD STUDIO

25 years ago my buddies and I began a tradition of live recorded jams, which we called "Splurge". Essentially these are unplanned, un-rehearsed spontaneous performances recorded live. Over the years we have taken liberties with the process, occasionally overdubbing a few tracks, but the spirit of spontaneity remains intact by limiting overdubs to "one per person" and "you only get one take".

So this past weekend we celebrated our 25th anniversary by booking 2 days at Leopard Studio.

Joining me in the studio were Bill, Bob, Emory and his brothers Fred and Sean, and Kane. We spent most of the first day laying down literally hours of percussion jams. Fred and Sean are both trained and experienced Jazz musicians and this was a powerful influence on the direction of these live performances.

We also did some completely live recordings of the "full band" with Fred on drums, Sean on sax and clarinet, Emory on bongos, Bob on violin, myself on guitar and bass, and Bill and Kane on vocals. Here are some images. Recordings to be made available soon!

Umour Ritual Splurge Recording at Leopard available here:

ritual splurge session at leopard

08.02.2005 SCRATCHING ASS?!?!?

OK. People have been asking me "what's up with the ass-scratching picture?!?!?" I guess the story deserves to be told. ORSUS has been doing some tracking at home on their own...some backing vocal parts, digital guitar effects, some keyboards and such. During a mix session they brought in a percussion track, this rhythmical scratching sound; not like DJ style record scratching, more like a cabasa part except it sounded like ass. I mean it literally sounded like fingernails on denim. I pointed this out, acted it out, and they caught it on camera. When I saw that they had posted the footage on their site I had to snatch it. So there it is.

7.15.2005 ORSUS MIX AT LEOPARD

Mixing with ORSUS has commenced and thus far we have completed four of the twelve songs in the project. Three of these mixes will be pre-released as a promotional disc. As always, Leopard Studio has proved to be a great place to work. We expect to complete the project there in August.

Mixing in ProTools is a bit slow without a control surface, but the mixes sound great once they're done. We are still considering the possibillity of running them through a large format console once they are all completed in ProTools, time and dollars permitting.

05.26.2005 LOGS & TAPES & ANALOG TAPES

Spent a couple of days with my folks, transferring some of their reel tapes. They had a company that produced corporate communications events for large corporations. These shows were big multi-media extravaganzas featuring original music, sometimes with a live orchestra, a live cast of actors and sometimes dancers, slide and film projection and of course the requisite corporate talking heads. Their productions won many industry awards and they were a leader in the "industrial shows" industry for decades. It was a wonderful walk down memory lane for us, and we "digitized" a good overview of the best of the company's original songs.

I had not worked with analog tape in quite some time, but I guess it's like riding a bicycle... I was quick to repair the broken splices, and was still adept at cleaning the heads and transport mechanisms, which needed to be done frequently as some of the tapes were so old that they were shedding their oxide. Alas, a few tapes were so badly deteriorated that they couldn't be played, and one which was stored as a "pancake" (sans the reel flanges) had fallen off the hub and was a jumble inside the box. In the end we were able to transfer almost everything that my parents were hoping to save, thanks to well-logged and documented reels and proper climate controlled storage for all these years. Now that we have the music in ProTools I will process and tweak the audio, and burn CDs. As an interesting side note, a local college radio station recently spun a track from one of their productions, which had been pressed to vinyl. The show was for Coca-Cola and the song was called "That Big Bottling Plant Up In The Sky". Look for it in the WFMU archives at this link:

Black Ops Archive

04.30.2005 LIVE RECORDING AT "THE BARN"

I've been doing some live stereo recording at The Barn in Cold Spring NY for IGF ENTERTAINMENT. So far I've recorded sets by MELODROME, a rock trio from the Boston area, and KATHLEEN PEMBLE, a folk-pop singer-songwriter from the Mid Hudson Valley. Both performed excellent sets. For both recordings I used my iBook/Mbox rig and a stereo pair of Oktava MK-012 (s) in an "X-Y" pattern from the "hay loft" above the audience. I set ProTools to record in AIFF format at 16 bit, 44.1khz so that the resulting audio files could be burned strait to CDs for the artists to take home. Kathleen Pemble later asked me to edit and master her recording.

 The Barn is a fabulous acoustic enviroment, and I'm planning on bringing the mobile rig for more live stereo recordings of the acts IGF brings in. The space is very comfortable and there is an office area in the "hay loft" that can serve as a makeshift control room. When appropriate I could also bring a larger ProTools rig for multi-tracking. In addition to the audio recordings, I made some animations with my friends "Loudmouth Bill" and Kane. You can see this and other films and photography on our new multi-media art site at UMOUR.ORG The animation is titled "Where Are The People".