Les Fat Jones are particularly good at one thing: rehearsing. I think we played a total of four shows in 2013, but we still meet every Tuesday evening like clockwork to shuffle down into a basement in Bellvitges to bang out some rock and roll. As a result, we have a bunch of new songs, so we decided it was time to make
another album.
Local musician Joan Colomo came on board to produce. A veteran of the local scene, he's made a name for himself in recent years as a singer/songwriter. He's got loads of charisma and talent, which we hoped would seep into our recording.
With him locked down, we set out to find a studio, and man, did we ever find one. I don't know how your past few weekends have been (I mean I hope they've been good, because I'm not a dick most of the time) but mine have been pretty fantastic.
We drove out into Catalan wine country, about an hour from Barcelona, to
Cal Pau, an old house sitting in the middle of vineyards that has been converted into a recording studio. It seemed like the sort of self indulgence that Bono or Anthony Kiedis would embrace, but fuck, if you're gonna play rock star, might as well play it right.
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| Rock and roll with a view |
Part of the building has bedrooms, bathrooms, a kitchen and all the stuff you'd find in a normal country house. Also vintage motorcycles. The place is full of them. Restored, possibly functional. We weren't able to actually check.
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| Not that we didn't try |
Meanwhile, the back part (of the building, not the bikes) has been outfitted with a recording studio. Here we toiled away. Over the course of three intensive weekends, we put nine songs to tape. (Not actual tape. I mean we didn't go all retro and stuff. Cubase it was.)
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| Joan surprised by his own technical acumen at the board |
Our rehearsing paid off. We were able to lay our tracks down quickly, giving us time to experiment a little. Obviously, not Smile levels of experimentation, as we didn't have Brian Wilson amounts of time or drugs, but enough to throw some ideas against the wall to see if they stuck. Some did, and some slithered to the floor to lie in a puddle of their own decomposing corpses. Such is the process of creation.
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| Poke on the drums |
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| Amiel on the bass, Noah on the iPhone |
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| Victor on guitar |
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| Lost in thought or mouth breathing? |
Drums and bass were finished in the first weekend, much faster than we expected. This gave us the rest of the time to record guitars (awesome) keyboards (fun - they had a Rhodes lying around. can a large electric piano lie around?) and vocals. Ah vocals. Now, I'm not a strong singer, just an enthusiastic one. My childhood was spent ignoring the pleas of others to stop it, or at least find the right key. I have improved slightly since then, but my range could generously be described as limited. As such, recording vocals is a weird experience. I love being in the booth, but I'm always wary of the results. I feel like as a band, we put together a tasty cake, and then I smeared some shit on it as icing. It looks like chocolate and hopefully nobody will notice the smell.
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| Singing selfie (not actually singing. fucking selfies) |
Well, it's all done now, we've moved on to mixing, the fun stage where everybody in the band realises what each song needs is more of them.
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| Apparently iPhone consultation is an inherent part of recording |
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| see above |
More updates will come soon, hopefully followed by (gasp!) some concerts.
Watch this space.
