Spring-time for Hinterland

This has been the mildest November I can imagine. Instead of longing for spring or other similar sunny times, I am basking in the warmth of these mild, grey days. Oddly enough, I remember the spring break sessions we did as being a lot colder.

This was our second kick at the can and we had decided as a band to record the next few tracks at my house when my family was away on vacation. As my studio is in the attic anyway, it made sense to track downstairs and then transfer the files to my mac, for overdubbing and mixing. That's just what we did.

It began with renting some mics and pre-amps a monitor board and setting everyone up in my dining room and living room. We recorded on some ADATS I bought used ($200 for two, a sight less expensive than the old blackface I had bought for close to $5,000.00 back in 1994). The idea was to put drums on on machine (tracks 1-8) and then ghost tracks of sax, guitar and vocals on the other.

On Day 1 that system worked pretty well and we were able to track Evil Clocks 1, Klak, and D3. We had guest bassist Keegan Melville on board for a rousing version of D3 (for a lot of reasons, some technical, some stylistic, it never made the cut for the final CD, but we have a great version of it and will post it soon).

The next day was very productive too and also lots of fun. Aaron brought his girl-friend and baby out, Ange stayed over with her husband Rick Barkhouse (keyboardist extraordinaire) and we all had a supper prepared by aaron and myslef. Very hippy-ish communal type thing if perhaps more staid and sober. No matter; it was a blast and we were able to track D1, D2 and parts of Hags (all of these being working titles for the sections contained in The Discovery of Witchcraft).

Unfortunately the next day (day 3 ie) the second ADAT died when I sent a surge of static electricity through it. I blame it on the workboots I was wearing (that and the dry air) and it actually happened later in my studio although not with such drastic results. That meant that the next tracking we did would be limited to one machine (ie 8 tracks). We decided to use a ghost gtr track and 7 tracks of drums. In that manner we limped though Scales and parts of D4.

In the end we only kept Evil Clocks 1, parts of Hags (ie subsections of Discovery of Witchcraft) and Scales. The rest we pitched out (well I actually don't pitch anything out, but we decided not to use it nevertheless).

So...on to the next session, these being with our then new member, Claude Prince and done at Ange's house, where we always rehearsed. More later.