Having a Moment: ifightdragons/blog/?p=621 Hey guys, it’s time for one of those Brian-getting-emotional blog posts again. Yesterday was our first full day with the new masters, and it was an emotional day for the whole band. We all listened multiple times and were texting each other nonstop with our reactions, our joy, finally releasing all of the anxiety built up over the past year about what this album should and shouldn’t be. It certainly made me reflect on the past year, and on the insane journey that it’s taken to get from June 1, 2013 (the day the Kickstarter ended) to May 20, 2014 (almost exactly a year later, the day the masters were finished). It’s no secret that we weren’t a great fit in the major label system. We came out of there with some significant bruises and scars. In fact, the approach when we first hit the studio late last summer was still informed in many ways by our experiences in that system: We hired a very talented, well known producer who normally works with labels, and we gave ourselves 6 weeks of working at a breakneck pace to go from start to finish. This is how it’s almost always done with labels, they pay the producer a flat fee and you get a chunk of his time to make the album, then you’re done. Ultimately his job is to deliver the best possible album to the label, a consideration which often trumps intra-band creativity, debate, and process in the name of time, since in a setup like this you’re always looking nervously at your watch and sweating at how little time you have. In hindsight, we set ourselves up to fail. Ok let’s be honest, I set us up to fail, since I’m the leader and I made the calls I have to take responsibility for that. It wasn’t the band’s fault, it wasn’t the producer’s fault, it was mine. It may seem like it’s taken forever since then, but now that we’re standing at the musical finish line I can tell you that every minute of the last 8 months was incredibly well spent. A mere week or two after the explosion last September, we hit the practice space hard. We spent 4 full months in pre-production, just the 4 of us, debating the nuances of every last drum fill, bass lick, guitar line, build, transition, and 7/8 measure (yep, there’s several of those). We took out 2 songs entirely from side two and switched them out for 2 different ones. We hit the studio February 1, and over the course of almost another 4 full months, we did about 40 days of recording with a talented young engineer / producer, in an arrangement that was the essence of a co-production between he and the band. Interestingly, if you add up the days, that’s equivalent to about 6 weeks of non-stop work. But it was hugely different. First of all, we had spent 4 months poring over this material, and we knew in our bones the motivations and reasons behind every musical choice. Second of all, we were still working our asses off for the next four months of recording, but we had time to live with each of the recording choices we were making and understand how the entire album was coming together in ways that informed each successive recording session. It felt much more like sculpting. Ok honestly I’m not a sculptor, so this probably isn’t how sculpting actually works but I’ve always pictured a bearded sculptor standing in front of a block of marble with a chisel, chipping away, then pulling back to look at what he’s done. Then chipping some more, then pulling back and looking to see how it fits, then chipping some more, again and again, until finally it’s no longer a block of marble, it’s a person. That’s how this process felt. And that’s how this album feels. It’s gone from a block of marble to a living thing. It’s a person. And I truly can’t wait for you to meet her :) -Brian
Posted on: Thu, 22 May 2014 12:41:16 +0000
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