Posts Tagged ‘Debut Album’

Greetings bastards, agents, Visage’s and all members of our rainbow nation along with the rest of the world!

Thursday saw us continuing to lay down lead guitar and vocals, the day was very long with so much left to do and only two days to do it in we worked late into the night and made some solid progress on the remaining tracks. We finally left the studio around 10:30 in the evening all feeling a little frayed around the edges. Red Bull is a fantastic thing though thankfully!!!

On Friday afternoon Mark Haze from <a href=”http://www.12thavenueband.com/”>12th Avenue</a> joined us in studio to do some backing vocals for us on two tracks. 12th Avenue have for a long time been one of our favourite SA bands and Mark is a killer vocalist so we were stoked to have him working on the album. He laid down some insane backing on a track called Still Loving You and another one titled Erase You. By the end of the day tracking was done and spirits were high.

Theo took us out to a local restaurant to celebrate and proceeded to pretty much ordered everything on the menu including a few (welcome) stiff shooters for Lez and myself. Clint was driving so he focused is attentions on the food, something he excels at, (the boy can eat) while Lez and I killed a few worms at the bottom of tequila glasses.

So tracking is done and now we sit and wait for the first mixes to come though, the album is far from done but we are so exited about the way it sounds that we are busting at the seems to get it our there! (Patience son!)

We had a fantastic time tracking the album at Bellville studios and would like to extend a warm thanks to the Crous family for being so accommodating and making us feel like we where home away from home and especially to Michelle for making sure that the Grumpy Green Giant remained well fed at all times! Things go pear shaped if he fails to eats 14 times a day….

Over the coming weeks we will be showing you guys some concepts for the album artwork. So stay in touch to have your and have you say.

Cheers for now rockers and remember to touch your fellow man on their studio!

Trav

(Oh, one last thing: If you ever run into the chicken lady of Camps bay, run away like a girl!!)

Greetings from the trenches rockers! Rest assured I’ve issued myself a stiff klap across the tit for not updating this blog often enough!
Things have been a bit hectic over the last few days and catching up when so much is going on is becoming increasingly difficult. Luckily Lez arrived on Sunday to begin recording his vocals so after I laid down some acoustic guitar this morning I’m left with some free time to catch up with guys.

Since our last blog we spend the rest of the week finishing up the rhythm and Bass guitars. All went off without a hitch and Steve laid down all his bass parts and surprised us all my sailing though what ever we threw at him, well done my boy!

By the end of the week all the rhythm guitars along with the bass was done and Steve, Clint and myself were looking forward to a weekend of R&R that included going large on Friday night by hitting *** ***** ** ***** *** *** ****** ******** **** ***** ****** ****** ** ** ******* **** ** ***** ******* *****!!!!! **** **** ** * ***** ****we finally got home at 3am, what a night and what an epic hangover!

The next day saw us throwing Steve onto a buss bound for East London. Clint and I spent the rest of the weekend getting over Friday night with a bit of light CD shopping at the waterfront and some killer seafood to keep us entertained. Last night we also took a few minutes off to catch our mates from 12 Avenue live at ROAR’s Noisefest, as usual the guys put on a killer show!

So here we are, day one of vocals and so far so good! Sitting here listening to Lez sing in the booth just a few meters away from me reminds me of way back when we started the band and I heard him sing for the first time. I’m as blown away now as I was back then. We have come so far since then and overcome so much just keeping this monster going that I can’t help but feel blind optimism for the future.

Anyway enough sentimental crap from me, there’s work to be done. Many vocal takes lie ahead and Clint and I have our lead guitar parts still to do!

Cheers 4 now,
Trav

(Steve we miss your coffee mate!)

We left East London by car at 5am on Sunday, all was smooth sailing except for the part where we almost ran out of fuel in the middle of nowhere, driving around on fumes trying to find a gas station. The trusty ol’ GPS directed us to an abandoned tractor garage that looked like something out of “Deliverance” (Cue duelling Banjos), on some dodgy back road with four fuel pumps outside which clearly no longer worked (the cobwebs were a dead giveaway), much to our (mostly MY, it was my car) horror. Anyway, we eventually figured out that we would’ve found a filling station with functional petrol pumps (!) about 17km down the road. Facepalm. Anyhoo, we eventually arrived at about 6pm without further incident, only to find that the accommodation we’d arranged had fallen through, so after another 2 hours of driving around, phoning and general panicking, we finally managed to find a couch to crash on at my friend Keren’s place (thanks Keren, you saved our lives!!).

First day in the studio was WAY better than the trip up and our subsequent accommodation woes; Charles, Theo’s assistant had done an awesome job editing the drum tracks which had been recorded the previous week and we were ready to get cracking with the rhythm guitar and bass tracks starting with “Fuelled”, an oldie but a goodie. We managed to find a killer guitar tone almost instantly and after trying a couple of the guitars lying around the studio, I finally settled on a ’60 Les Paul Goldtop (which I’ve been trying to convince Theo ever since to trade me for my Epiphone LP Standard, but so far no luck..haha) for the song. Most of the kinks in this song as well as the next song we put down tracks for, a relatively new one called “Erase You”, had been worked out in pre-production so we managed to breeze through both relatively quickly. A few of Steve’s bass parts were tweaked a little so that they work better with the drum tracks, other than that, the songs were left pretty much unchanged.

Today we worked on “Inside Out”, a song that we’ve reworked a bunch of times but have never really been happy with until now. Theo got us to up the tempo and write a new bridge, the idea for which Lez mailed though to us earlier this morning and which is sounding uber kickass now! Next up was “Lift Me Up”, which has changed quite a bit from the original idea; the tempo has been kicked up a few notches and most of the song was re-arranged to make it more appealing to a radio audience. Both songs are potential singles so we’re very keen to hear how they turn out. Finally we took a crack at one of Trav’s new songs, a raunchy rocker called “A Little Bit Of Something”; finished the rhythm guitars before we decided to call it a day, tomorrow El Stevo will tackle the bass before we move onto the next 2 or 3 songs.

It’s 19:20 now and I’m already keen to hit the hay, this Rock ‘n Roll stuff is hard freakin’ work!! Laters, boys and girls, our toasted sammiches are ready…

-Clint

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