These have been a quiet few months from my side, but as with all things Fireantmusic there’s a very simple reason behind it: Been busy as hell.
I’ve had to chance to work alongside some great musicians/people/bands/acts on a couple of intense recording/mixing/residency sessions, as well as doing a few awesome off shows… Here’s a quick listing from a couple of those projects (Obviously incomplete, there’s too much music & not enough words!):
– 13. – 17. of january, recorded Red Kunz at the Romandie in Lausanne
This was quite the session to begin the year with: The two guys from Kunz (Luc & Louis, also from Coilguns, Ex-The Ocean, etc.) had invited Aaron & John from the mighty Red Fang to the Romandie in Lausanne, as to jam on a few riffs & tunes, record it while it was still warm, and then play a show on the last day to present all of this to a live audience. The acoustics of the club were a bit challenging, but the sexyness-factor of the tracks well made up for it. Tracked on fewer channels than I would have liked to, but it made the result all the more focused. Mixing was done in a mere two days during march, the mastering duties of the final were handed off to the mighty Raph Bovey. Should be out during the summer or beginng of the fall, will keep you posted!
– 02. – 04. of march, residency with Toronaut at the Bad Bonn in Düdingen
Did a quick residency with Toronaut at the Bad Bonn, mostly to figure out how to make the intricate arrangemets of the album work in a live environment and obviously fine tune the sounds. Didn’t get to do the whole set as much I would have liked to, but everybody came out of these few days with a lot more confidence. Looking forward to doing live shows with this band!
– 25. – 29. of march, recording The Leaving at the Fri-Son in Fribourg
The Leaving is the solo project of the mighty Zatokrev’s singer and mainman, Fredy. He’s been doing his own thing for quite a while now, and this will become his second album. We managed to get a few live basics done with former Zatokrev drummer Silvio, and then started to track guitars, cello and vocals. Sadly, due to one of the weirdest digital fuck ups I’ve ever seen, a massive part of these sessions got lost in the never ending world of zeros and ones, we basically had to redo most of it at the beginning of may (By now the recording has been completed, and all is well!). We managed to get a few interesting things going: the sounds are incredibly authentic due to the great backline available at La Fonderie, but also due to a bit of tinkering on our side – We even got to reamp a few vocals through on old fender twin, that particular song now makes me want to open my veins… In a good way!
– 01. – 04. of april, residency with The Burden Remains at Fri-Son in Fribourg
Got to set up a special project with these guys: We had been wondering for a while where we could go with their new album in a live setting, so for this release-show we prepared a quadrophonic setting where the band was split up on four risers, facing each other, and the crowd would be in the middle/between the musicians. We heavily relied on the great gear of Fri-Son for this, thanks to their Adamson line array, the old Turbosound TMS as stereo backfire pair, and one of the Digico SD8 desks. One of the main issues for sound was the placement of vocal mics and the treatment of both front of house and the monitor-lines with eq, as we had them positioned in front (!) of the speakers, due to the positioning of the risers.
The result was quite overwhelming though, and well worth the work we put into this. Much props also to the great Patrick Häberli for running the lights on this one… Pretty sure we kicked major ass those few days.
– 20. – 24. of april, recording Darius at the Bikini Test in La Chaux-De-Fonds
This was gonna be a fun project – Tracking bands live has sort of become a special interest for me… There’s simply so much more magic in the room, than overdubbing ever could create. The band had already arrived and rehearsed two days before my arrival, so we pretty much immediately got to set up and start recording. Got to try out a few things I was never able to before, and we made quite a couple of bold decisions with the band- and mic-placement, that would heavily influence the outlines of the mix. Basically this means no turning back for everybody involved, which was a great experience. Smooth tracking from there, we managed to cram about sixty minutes worth of instrumental post rock in the following days, plus a nice reamping session with some gear courtesy of Coilguns/Jona. Can’t wait to mix that one!
– 28. of april to 3rd of may, recording drums/reamping bass for Kruger at La Fonderie in Fribourg
Not much to reveal here, it was basically two sound geeks locked in there for two weeks. I had worked with those guys before, so we pretty much knew what we were looking for in these sessions. Tried out a few interesting things again with mic placement regarding typical metal-issues (Cymbal spill, etc.), but also made sure to capture the rooms great sound properly. Raph, the drummer (Who’s also the man behind great albums such as Abraham, Zatokrev, Impure Wilhelmina & Co.) luckily is a talented skin beater, and rather than getting the performance to a usable level, we got well past that point and managed to try out different feels, fills and sounds, which sadly has become quite the luxury these days.
The whole last day we devoted to reamping the bass tracks, and here too we got to add a bit of local backline to the already sweet sounding original rig, to make sure there’s plenty of great choices in the mixing sessions – This one’s gonna be done by the great Magnus from Cult Of Luna fame, so the result should be gritty just the way we love it.
Additionally to all of these projects, I also managed to squeeze in a few other studio projects (Tracking, editing, and so on) for Calcined, Anachronism & Co, and did off shows with Kruger, Cortez, Abraham, Disparaged and a couple of other bands. The list is longer than I have time, but a few highlights deserve a mention: Inferno Festival/Oslo with Kruger was fun, and Beyond The Redshift/London with Abraham will undoubtedly go down in my best of for this year.
Now onward to new things, the music is already making my fingers itch… Until soon!
FIREANTMUSIC 