Day one saw us heading off to Bellville Studios to meet up with our Producer, South African legend Theo Crous, who rose to fame as the guitarist and founder of the Springbok Nude Girls and is more recently recognised as one of South Africa’s top producers who has recorded platinum albums with the likes of Prime Circle and The Parlotones to name but a very few.

Thanks largely to the GPS we arrived on time, a first for Machine OEM and sat down with Theo to discussed what sort of album we intended on making. By the end of the day we were banging out ideas and the process of pre-production was in full swing.

On the Tuesday a package arrived for Theo that gave him a Christmas smile, turns out it was a new talk-back system that would make his life much easier in studio. In short it allows the musicians in studio to manage their own mix so he would no longer have to put up with complaints that musicians can’t play in time because they can’t hear the click or the drums (the jig is up fellas!).

On the Wednesday two blokes pitched up to install said gear. Hindered only by their mullets, crocs and one hefty pair of moobs (man-boobs) they got to work installing Theos’ new toy. Two hours and all seemed to be ready to rock, Theo powered up the desk and poof, it went tits up!! After two more hours the technical-two decided that it was well buggered and Theos’ Christmas smile turned to jelly.
It turned out the desk would need to go in for repairs and might take a few days to get back up and running. So there we were, all songed up and nowhere to record! Theo generously offered to fly us back to East London for a few days while the desk and new talk back system got sorted and as he was still suffering from chronic toothache had aslo been booked into surgery the next day. I’ve said it before, the man is legend!!

We arrived back in Cape Town the following Tuesday fully re-fuelled and ready to tackle the rest of pre-production and the tracking of the drums. To say we learned a lot through this process would be an understatement, we were forced (some more willing than others) into exploring every possible interpretation of the material until Theo was happy we had worked them out to their fullest potential. Some tracks have stayed very close to the original and others have taken drastic turns for what we feel is a massive improvement on the originals. One song in particular that few of the band members were keen on called ‘Inside Out’ has been given a complete overhaul; we love the direction it has taken. It even brought a genuine tear to Lezs’ eye!

Due to all the delays, pre-prod and drums subsequently bled into one another and before we knew it the week was over and we were heading back to East London for a week while the drums get mixed. The long overnight trip home almost spelled the end for most of Machine OEM as we got caught in the most horrific storm I have personally ever seen. Firstly a large gust of wind tried to blow us off the bridge (shat myself) then an entire tree (yup, the whole thing, roots to branches, (shat myself again) narrowly missed the car as it came hurtling from the heavens at break neck speed. Then we had to dodge all the other timber that was strewn along across the road (queue more shitting myself). The rental took a bit of a beating in the storm, let’s see if we get our deposit back…..

So here we are after a week of cuddling with our significant others, me and my Mrs looking after a new puppy and babysitting three white lion cubs along the way, and its back to the studio once again to begin work on the guitars!

Cheers for now rockers,

Trav

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