Recording our new Recordalbum and a Historic Offer!
North By Northeast Festival of Music Showcase!
Parlour Steps play The Cameron House (408 Queen Street West, Toronto) Thursday, June 18th at midnight.
While we continue chipping away at this massive granite block stamped "The Next Parlour Steps Album", we have noticed that over our amazing 9 (!) years in this crazy business of making music we've amassed a small treasure of rare and live recordings, b-sides, and curious demos. In writing this next chapter of the P Steps experiment, we've realized an opportunity to provide you with our back story; our prologue up to this point, if you will.
So, we are putting together a little digital ZIP file compilation of our first 3 albums plus a bundle of illuminating goodies that haven't been available until now, plus some embarrassing videos and other P Steps oddities. In two weeks you'll be able to buy it here. Check back!
Get the latest P Steps tweets at
twitter.com/parloursteps
Now we pull back the sheets on our latest recording endeavour...
The sun blazes in the windows down here at Ogre Studios in Vancouver, glazing the live room in glorious orange shafts. This is exceptional in its re-writing of the recording experience, an activity overwhelmingly associated with cave-like structures inhabited by pale-skinned engineers and light adverse, hungover musicians. No, we drink tea and break for sushi on the lawn between takes.
Ogre Studios is tucked away in an industrial workshop row of luthiers and paint splattered artist's studios. It's owned and run by one very amicable John Raham, who administers an excellent mic selection and sagely advice in wrestling with the archaic Ampex tape machine buried in the chest of this place. Approaching a respectable 40 year middle age, the analog 2 inch tape machine is a massive, heavy, heat-sink of a beast, requiring more attention and TLC than an infirm, bed-ridden patient. Instead of full bedpans, this thing, if not watched and stopped after its 16 minute maximum run time, will swiftly spool off your 2 inch tape into a mighty expensive and concerning nest on the machine room floor. This requires a strenuous attention to the clock, how much time we have on the tape, whether this next song would fit, who's turn it is to bound down the stairs and stop the tape machine...
This would be a frustrating and, to an outside observer, ridiculously frivolous and esoteric exercise were it not for the sound coming out of those speakers during playback.
Oh, the sound! Our music, our creations in all their bombastic glory, magnetically imprinted on this discontinued tape stock is like hearing the God of Rock and Roll whispering in our ear. The way the tape embraces our sounds in heavenly and positively recasts the experience. What BALLS! Tape gives our music weight and a physical presence over purely digital, as if we were creating a real imprint in the aural plane, not just some computer representation.
The live room, where we situate Rob to record his drums, fills with his thunderous, jazz-incensed aural exorcisms. You'll hear it in the recordings, a great sense of dimensional space and air - a real drum kit in a real room, pounded on by a real drummer.
Julie lays her grooves down with the drums, unhinging such bounce and drive we feel it moving our nether regions.
Later I will "prepare" the baby grand piano in this room, placing a snare drum on the sounding board, a small cymbal on the larger bass strings, all for the effect of a wonderful "SPACK" sound when hit. I braid loose pieces of paper into the strings to encourage a buzz and resonance.
We amass a covenant of guitars and effects, borrowed and begged for: Gibson Les Paul, Fender Telecaster, Gretsch Nashville, vintage 1960's Fender Stratocaster, Ibanez Artcore... For amplifiers we enlist the valuable technical assistance of one Mike Zobac and the wonderful people at Backline Musician Services, who loan us the ingredients to that ever-elusive guitar sound of our dreams - Orange amp and cab, a vintage Vox AC30, a meticulously maintained Rhodes keyboard... We rattle the walls, shake the floor, startle visitors, and illicit excited expletives from the building's other residents.
Now I find myself nearly naked, robed only in a Brazilian sarong, singing into a crazy expensive microphone in my bedroom. This is where we've continued this project - The K Lab. I overturn the bed's mattress and hang blankets from the walls to try and deaden the horrible flutter that accompanies apartment recording. I'm nearly naked cause a hot spell has hit Vancouver, and I'm a nudist in my own bedroom. If Ryen wasn't threatening to drop by to film some of this, I'd be fully buck, singing with my junk out.
These songs are starting to gel and solidify, becoming real under our hands. They will start to take on life and personality, demanding different things for themselves, developing personality before it's mixdown time in July. Next week we lay some saucy horns on them. Cool.
More later...
Much Love,
Caleb
June 1, 2009
The K Lab, Vancouver
Parlour Steps play The Cameron House (408 Queen Street West, Toronto) Thursday, June 18th at midnight.
While we continue chipping away at this massive granite block stamped "The Next Parlour Steps Album", we have noticed that over our amazing 9 (!) years in this crazy business of making music we've amassed a small treasure of rare and live recordings, b-sides, and curious demos. In writing this next chapter of the P Steps experiment, we've realized an opportunity to provide you with our back story; our prologue up to this point, if you will.
So, we are putting together a little digital ZIP file compilation of our first 3 albums plus a bundle of illuminating goodies that haven't been available until now, plus some embarrassing videos and other P Steps oddities. In two weeks you'll be able to buy it here. Check back!
Get the latest P Steps tweets at
twitter.com/parloursteps
Now we pull back the sheets on our latest recording endeavour...
The sun blazes in the windows down here at Ogre Studios in Vancouver, glazing the live room in glorious orange shafts. This is exceptional in its re-writing of the recording experience, an activity overwhelmingly associated with cave-like structures inhabited by pale-skinned engineers and light adverse, hungover musicians. No, we drink tea and break for sushi on the lawn between takes.
Ogre Studios is tucked away in an industrial workshop row of luthiers and paint splattered artist's studios. It's owned and run by one very amicable John Raham, who administers an excellent mic selection and sagely advice in wrestling with the archaic Ampex tape machine buried in the chest of this place. Approaching a respectable 40 year middle age, the analog 2 inch tape machine is a massive, heavy, heat-sink of a beast, requiring more attention and TLC than an infirm, bed-ridden patient. Instead of full bedpans, this thing, if not watched and stopped after its 16 minute maximum run time, will swiftly spool off your 2 inch tape into a mighty expensive and concerning nest on the machine room floor. This requires a strenuous attention to the clock, how much time we have on the tape, whether this next song would fit, who's turn it is to bound down the stairs and stop the tape machine...
This would be a frustrating and, to an outside observer, ridiculously frivolous and esoteric exercise were it not for the sound coming out of those speakers during playback.
Oh, the sound! Our music, our creations in all their bombastic glory, magnetically imprinted on this discontinued tape stock is like hearing the God of Rock and Roll whispering in our ear. The way the tape embraces our sounds in heavenly and positively recasts the experience. What BALLS! Tape gives our music weight and a physical presence over purely digital, as if we were creating a real imprint in the aural plane, not just some computer representation.
The live room, where we situate Rob to record his drums, fills with his thunderous, jazz-incensed aural exorcisms. You'll hear it in the recordings, a great sense of dimensional space and air - a real drum kit in a real room, pounded on by a real drummer.
Julie lays her grooves down with the drums, unhinging such bounce and drive we feel it moving our nether regions.
Later I will "prepare" the baby grand piano in this room, placing a snare drum on the sounding board, a small cymbal on the larger bass strings, all for the effect of a wonderful "SPACK" sound when hit. I braid loose pieces of paper into the strings to encourage a buzz and resonance.
We amass a covenant of guitars and effects, borrowed and begged for: Gibson Les Paul, Fender Telecaster, Gretsch Nashville, vintage 1960's Fender Stratocaster, Ibanez Artcore... For amplifiers we enlist the valuable technical assistance of one Mike Zobac and the wonderful people at Backline Musician Services, who loan us the ingredients to that ever-elusive guitar sound of our dreams - Orange amp and cab, a vintage Vox AC30, a meticulously maintained Rhodes keyboard... We rattle the walls, shake the floor, startle visitors, and illicit excited expletives from the building's other residents.
Now I find myself nearly naked, robed only in a Brazilian sarong, singing into a crazy expensive microphone in my bedroom. This is where we've continued this project - The K Lab. I overturn the bed's mattress and hang blankets from the walls to try and deaden the horrible flutter that accompanies apartment recording. I'm nearly naked cause a hot spell has hit Vancouver, and I'm a nudist in my own bedroom. If Ryen wasn't threatening to drop by to film some of this, I'd be fully buck, singing with my junk out.
These songs are starting to gel and solidify, becoming real under our hands. They will start to take on life and personality, demanding different things for themselves, developing personality before it's mixdown time in July. Next week we lay some saucy horns on them. Cool.
More later...
Much Love,
Caleb
June 1, 2009
The K Lab, Vancouver
posted by Parlour Steps @ 3:09 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home