Yes, here it is - the spectacular update I was promising.
I am very pleased to announce that I have been hired to record & mix the 5th album by Swedens premiere bitterness squadron; SWITCHBLADE.
Recordings will commence on April 24th at one of Swedens finest recording facilities; Studio Gröndahl.
The release date is set for September 9th, 2009 on Trust No One Recordings.
It is going to be one devastatingly bleak, bitter & heavy record.
Wednesday, March 18, 2009
Sunday, March 8, 2009
Don't worry, it's coming
Updates have been few and far apart, but I promise you, there's an update of major sweetness on the way.
Stay tuned and stay in school.
Stay tuned and stay in school.
Tuesday, December 30, 2008
Best albums of 2008
The moment you've all been waiting for is here.
In my humble opinion, here are the best releases of 2008:
01] Bohren & Der Club Of Gore - Dolores
02] Portishead - Third
03] Satyricon - The Age Of Nero
04] Melvins - Nude With Boots
05] Woven Hand - Ten Stones
06] I Are Droid - I Are Debut
07] Disfear - Live The Storm
08] Nine Inch Nails - Ghosts I-IV
09] Earth - The Bees Made Honey In The Lion's Skull
10] Black Mountain - In The Future
Honorable mentions:
+ Torche - Meanderthal
+ Meshuggah - obZen
+ Opeth - Watershed
+ Zozobra - Bird Of Prey
+ The Haunted - Versus
+ Mike Patton - A Perfect Place [OST]
I know the blog's been pretty slow lately. I'm currently mixing an album of post-rock goodness featuring Erik of A Swarm Of The Sun and Anders of Come Sleep. Expect a summary of the recording & mix to appear within the next few weeks.
Erik laying down the mad guitarz.
Stay hard.
In my humble opinion, here are the best releases of 2008:
01] Bohren & Der Club Of Gore - Dolores
02] Portishead - Third
03] Satyricon - The Age Of Nero
04] Melvins - Nude With Boots
05] Woven Hand - Ten Stones
06] I Are Droid - I Are Debut
07] Disfear - Live The Storm
08] Nine Inch Nails - Ghosts I-IV
09] Earth - The Bees Made Honey In The Lion's Skull
10] Black Mountain - In The Future
Honorable mentions:
+ Torche - Meanderthal
+ Meshuggah - obZen
+ Opeth - Watershed
+ Zozobra - Bird Of Prey
+ The Haunted - Versus
+ Mike Patton - A Perfect Place [OST]
I know the blog's been pretty slow lately. I'm currently mixing an album of post-rock goodness featuring Erik of A Swarm Of The Sun and Anders of Come Sleep. Expect a summary of the recording & mix to appear within the next few weeks.
Erik laying down the mad guitarz.
Stay hard.
Tuesday, September 16, 2008
A SWARM OF THE SUN - drum performance.
Since about mid-2007 I've been helping my friends' band A SWARM OF THE SUN out by performing drums for them during recording sessions (since they are a duo sans drummer) and this past weekend it was finally time to start recording what will be their debut full-length - titled "Zenith", and let me tell you, these kids (okay, they're the same age as me) are going places. The material is just crazy strong and I'm proud to have been a part of it. I just know the record is going to slay. It's everything from minimalistic and frail to bombastic and crushing.
The sessions were/are held at Erik Nilsson's (guitars/keyboards) own Version Studio located in Stockholm, Sweden. Erik is also the guy who has graced my own "band" (well, it's just me) VAKA's album "Kappa Delta Phi" with both guitars & vocals on several tracks.
Anyway, we started out friday evening setting up drums and mics and we started recording shortly thereafter. I was actually not engineering this session which was pretty nice - being able to just concentrate on playing drums (and it's also the reason this blog entry is pretty short & straight to the point). Gave up for the day around midnight and continued mid-day on saturday and again kept at it til around midnight. On sunday we took it pretty easy since only 2 tracks remained. So lots of breaks, fart jokes (and other high-end comedy material), eating embarrassing amounts of snacks, summarizes sunday pretty well.
So that's it. I highly recommend you check out A SWARM OF THE SUN on MySpace and listen to a few tunes of their "The King Of Everything" EP - it's good stuff I tells ya! And the album is going to be even better. :) "Zenith" is due for release early 2009.
Saturday, July 26, 2008
DOZER - "Beyond Colossal" - COMPLETED!
Yes, the album is finally 100% done on my part. To celebrate, an ice-cold Corona with a twist of lime was thoroughly enjoyed in the scorching heat that is now over Sweden. M-MMM! I think I deserved it.
The only thing that remains before "Beyond Colossal" is ready to be unveiled before the public is mastering, which will be done by John Golden of Golden Mastering.
It's been looong long days in the studio recording, and loooong long days in the studio mixing, but I am really proud of the end result.
The sound is just MASSIVE. I can't wait for you all to hear it.
Release is set for early November on Small Stone Recordings.
Time for another Corona.
Wednesday, July 16, 2008
DOZER - "Beyond Colossal" - Mix-a-roo
Dear diary,
For those of you still following this thing I can inform that I'm about 70% done with the mix. So if nothing disastrous happens (great, I just jinxed the whole thing) getting it off to mastering on time shouldn't be a problem.
It's taken a lot of time but in the end I think it'll be a sweet sounding album.
For those curious about the general vibe/feel of the album soundwise I can say that, for me, the aim was to have a very "full" and natural sounding album, meaning warmth in the guitars (and not just cutting everything under 100Hz), lots of natural ambience on the drums and getting a mix with some impact to it. So far I think I've succeded.
Back to mixing.
For those of you still following this thing I can inform that I'm about 70% done with the mix. So if nothing disastrous happens (great, I just jinxed the whole thing) getting it off to mastering on time shouldn't be a problem.
It's taken a lot of time but in the end I think it'll be a sweet sounding album.
For those curious about the general vibe/feel of the album soundwise I can say that, for me, the aim was to have a very "full" and natural sounding album, meaning warmth in the guitars (and not just cutting everything under 100Hz), lots of natural ambience on the drums and getting a mix with some impact to it. So far I think I've succeded.
Back to mixing.
Tuesday, July 1, 2008
DOZER - "Beyond Colossal" - Yada yada
Yes - finally.
I know updates have been non-existent the last weeks or so, but I actually have a pretty good excuse and that is that I was hospitalized for 4 days (and went back & forth to the hospital preceeding days). Got home two weeks ago but have been feeling so-so, so last week was when I first felt I could get some work done.
I don't know how interesting going into nerd detail on the mixing process is to read about. Something tells me very few will find "added 5.4dB @ 80Hz with a Q of 1.4 to the U47FET kick" interesting, so I'll write as if talking to ones grandma.
Started off as usual with the drums. The kit utilized for this recording was a Ludwig Superclassic with 26" bass drum, 14" rack and 16" floor tom. Most people go "26" bass drum! Fuckin' a!" but few realise that in a dense thick mix where EVERYTHING is supposed to be fat, heavy and rich in low end, getting a 26" bass drum to cut through - and sound good, mind you - is not easy.
When we recorded "Through The Eyes Of Heathens" I had brought both my 22" and 26" bass drums with me and the 22" actually sounded bigger than the 26". Go figure.
If you're making a drumsolo album, or one where the bass & guitars don't occupy so much room in the mix, then it's definetely easier to get a 26" to actually sound like a 26". The bigger the drum - the less attack/impact you get (if it's not tuned waaay down but then all you get is a clicky bass drum).
But it looks cool, and we all know that's all that matters.
Next up was bass and I found a good sound pretty fast. Being meticulous when placing mics pays off. Same with the guitars. Ended up using only the Revox 3500 and Fat-Head ribbon mic for 90% of the guitars and the API preamp provided perfect punch/bite. I had a SM57 up as well "just because" and I seriously cannot fathom how it gets so much use on electric guitars. It sounds like a complete and utter turd.
Vocals is definetely what's taking the longest as there's a lot of harmonies going on. Way more than ever before.
There's also less dubbed vocals since it gives the vocals kind of a robotic feel. It can sound cool here n' there (and there are dubs), but dubbing everything as a rule (which we did a lot in the past) is gone. I guess harmonies has taken that role until we get tired of that and go back to just dubbing everything again, mwoaha.
And I'm (again) happy we got a hold of a Neumann U87 to use for the vocals - not a sign of sibilance/harshness even when adding distortion. Just all around aural sweetness. Yay!
Neil Fallon, metal pup, Tommi, Fredrik, Beef cake.
Yes, that is indeed Neil Fallon of Clutch fame. He graces the album with 2 vocal performances, and I'm telling you, it's goosebumps galore. He re-eeeally hits the spot.
I was amazed how incredibly tight his performance was. The dubs are just insanely tight in both pitch and timing. It really makes the vocals cut through like a hot knife through butter. And this was like on the third take (with the first two being mainly for me to set mic pre gain), mind you. I don't mean to sound like Mr. Fan-boy Deluxé, but seriously, he just totally slayed. All of us were smiling from ear to ear. You just wait - creaming of pants is guaranteed.
I know updates have been non-existent the last weeks or so, but I actually have a pretty good excuse and that is that I was hospitalized for 4 days (and went back & forth to the hospital preceeding days). Got home two weeks ago but have been feeling so-so, so last week was when I first felt I could get some work done.
I don't know how interesting going into nerd detail on the mixing process is to read about. Something tells me very few will find "added 5.4dB @ 80Hz with a Q of 1.4 to the U47FET kick" interesting, so I'll write as if talking to ones grandma.
Started off as usual with the drums. The kit utilized for this recording was a Ludwig Superclassic with 26" bass drum, 14" rack and 16" floor tom. Most people go "26" bass drum! Fuckin' a!" but few realise that in a dense thick mix where EVERYTHING is supposed to be fat, heavy and rich in low end, getting a 26" bass drum to cut through - and sound good, mind you - is not easy.
When we recorded "Through The Eyes Of Heathens" I had brought both my 22" and 26" bass drums with me and the 22" actually sounded bigger than the 26". Go figure.
If you're making a drumsolo album, or one where the bass & guitars don't occupy so much room in the mix, then it's definetely easier to get a 26" to actually sound like a 26". The bigger the drum - the less attack/impact you get (if it's not tuned waaay down but then all you get is a clicky bass drum).
But it looks cool, and we all know that's all that matters.
Next up was bass and I found a good sound pretty fast. Being meticulous when placing mics pays off. Same with the guitars. Ended up using only the Revox 3500 and Fat-Head ribbon mic for 90% of the guitars and the API preamp provided perfect punch/bite. I had a SM57 up as well "just because" and I seriously cannot fathom how it gets so much use on electric guitars. It sounds like a complete and utter turd.
Vocals is definetely what's taking the longest as there's a lot of harmonies going on. Way more than ever before.
There's also less dubbed vocals since it gives the vocals kind of a robotic feel. It can sound cool here n' there (and there are dubs), but dubbing everything as a rule (which we did a lot in the past) is gone. I guess harmonies has taken that role until we get tired of that and go back to just dubbing everything again, mwoaha.
And I'm (again) happy we got a hold of a Neumann U87 to use for the vocals - not a sign of sibilance/harshness even when adding distortion. Just all around aural sweetness. Yay!
Neil Fallon, metal pup, Tommi, Fredrik, Beef cake.
Yes, that is indeed Neil Fallon of Clutch fame. He graces the album with 2 vocal performances, and I'm telling you, it's goosebumps galore. He re-eeeally hits the spot.
I was amazed how incredibly tight his performance was. The dubs are just insanely tight in both pitch and timing. It really makes the vocals cut through like a hot knife through butter. And this was like on the third take (with the first two being mainly for me to set mic pre gain), mind you. I don't mean to sound like Mr. Fan-boy Deluxé, but seriously, he just totally slayed. All of us were smiling from ear to ear. You just wait - creaming of pants is guaranteed.
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