Having a concrete production process established through the sessions with Cherimoya, I was now ready to approach more bands/musicians who may require similar services.
About two months after the end of my course at SAE, I met the post grunge/sludge metal band Seppuku through a mutual friend (Chris). In the past Chris had mentioned to me about a band he met at a skate park who were keen to record and mix their debut EP. I urged him to utilize the studio time we were given by our college and bring the band in to have a chat and to do a trial recording. If they liked the trial, I was planning to ask them to let us record, mix and master their EP. After attending their live shows, hearing a few demos recorded on their phone and listening to certain references that they provided (and that I thought may work for their sound) helped in carefully planning a setup that would justify their sound.
To get things started, we needed to schedule suitable times to to record based on everyone’s availability and make it happen. In total, it took us about six to seven days to record 5 songs which involved re-recording some instruments as we were all not completely satisfied with some takes or sometimes the recording itself.
http://bucktalesproductions.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/SEPPUKU-SNIPPET.mp4#t=4
My role as the lead engineer and producer involved such activities along with scheduling and booking sessions, planning microphone and mixing console layouts for each session as each session was unique.As every session took place in a different studio room at Bankstock studios which meant working with different mixing desks and outboard gear, we generally had different session plans. Every session had a complicated setup and required advance planning of the setup and sometimes even involved decisions about mixing. I usually prefer to get the record sounding good in the studio without any EQ adjustments (before the mixing stage). I try to add more things but sparingly to see what works in terms of adding cooll effects or some analogue warmth through nice preamps. This often means using outboard gear to polish the sound at the source and taking copies of the signals in case you want to revert back to the source signal. Bankstock studios was usually packed when we were booking sessions. So sometimes, we just had to go with the flow and take what’s available at times.
In some sessions we rcorded full songs but there were also re-recording sessions for one instrument for example the guuitars in Flower Man Dead at 45 and the drums in Microdosing were both re-recorded and took an entire day to get it right based on our indiviudal tastes. As studio time was limited, we tried a bunch of techniques in re-recording hoping to make something work by keeping different option and making notes of what was done on each re-recording. I later comped all such re-recordings after I identified what I felt were their best performances in the studio. We used the Neve C75, SSL G+, AWS 900 and Neve VR console preamps to record into Pro tools and occasionally used some nice analogue reverbs like the Lexicon or Bricasti.
Bankstock studios being a part of our Uni Studios was the place where students go to work on their Uni Projects due to which it was almost always packed. This also meant students booked out a lot of microphones which we had planned (in our sessions plans) to book out. That sometimes screws up all our session plans and then we don’t have a choice but to go with the next best available microphone which sometimes maybe not be of the same caliber but someitmes could also lead to something unexpectedly exiciting. For this reason, I tend to include backup microphones in my session plan for eactly such scenarios depending on how booked the studios look. But I take it on as a challenge to work within limitations and make the best out the situation.
After hearing their music, I felt like a suitable reference for this production was something that would be a cross between hard rock, noise rock and sludge metal (check the above clip recorded with my phone of Seppuku performing live in London). The first song Seppuku played for us (in the studio) was Flower Man Dead at 45 which to me had a very minor resemblance with the band Deftones’ general vibe due to its emo nature and heavy riffs. Therefore, I can’t lie I did try to also include Deftones as a mild influence for some songs if not the entire EP. After a discussion with the band about the same, we also tried to emulate (as much as possible) the raw sound of certain 90s alternative rock/metal bands like Calm and Dystopia. All such information helped in sculpting the sound to taste in the recording stage. Everyone invovled was happy with how the records sounded.
For such reasons, we tried a bunch of recording experiments for each song which makes each song quite unique. The band also requested to not overly polish or microedit the groove of any recordings. They just wanted a nice balanced mix that made them sound just like they sound live. Being a huge fan of the great late Steve Albini, I also try to idolize and pay my respects to him in my own way through producing a band like this who wanted to sond authentic. Albini’s style of production usually meant acting like an outlet or window for the real or authentic sound for any band. Ensuring an unadulterated sound when needed or requested by a band like when he engineered Nirvana’s In Utero. Producing an underproduced and not so overly polished record for Seppuku is something I have been meaning to do which could also be considered my tribute to Mr. Steve Albini. May he rest in peace.
Coming back to the process. Everything was mixed and mastered in the box in in Pro Tools. Nothing too fancy was done other than really getting the balance just right and choosing the perfect panning for each instrument. As Albini has always despised compression when it comes to drums as they could sound mechanical at times. I mostly only compressed my group tracks (other than the drums) and not any individual channels to keep the authenticity of the recording intact while building on the feeling that we got from the recording. I only went a bit hard on the mix for Flower man Dead at 45 by doing an analogue mix on the SSL G+ solely for easy monitoring by being inside an actual studio. This gave me a rough idea of how things need to sound on the large speakers when it came to achieving an acceptable level and frequency balance for multitracked insttruments which technically applied to all instruments even vocals. The layers defintely added some nice textures to the overall recording. Flower man Dead at 45 was further mixed down on Protools along with all the other songs. I mastered the tracks within the same Pro tools sessions by inserting certain plugins from Brainworks on the master bus.