Day One

When I was young I used to think recording was really fucking boring.  For me, recording an album was something that had to be done in order to be able to sustain touring.  To tour, you had to have a record to promote.  I remember being pretty miffed by our label's explanation of that point before recording the first Speedhorn record.

Things change as you grow up though and these days I enjoy working in the studio.  I guess I've learned a bit about it as the years have gone by, and the more you know about what you're doing, the more you tend to enjoy it. 

If experience has taught me anything about recording a record though, it's that nothing every runs smoothly.  This is something I happen to forget before every album, only to be reminded at some point during the first day of recording...

I get to the studio a little later than the rest of the guys, who have been there since ten am.  Upon arrival Linus tells me things are going slowly.   The first day in the studio is always a bit of a drag though, since most of it is spent getting the drum sound together.  So even though I turn up a few hours after the rest of the guys, I still get to spend a couple of hours listening to Andy hit his drums.

Drummer's have the worst and the best of the recording process.  Getting the sound must be a nightmare, since it entails playing drums non-stop for the best part of a day.  But then, they're the first one finished on the album, so when they've done tracking it's just sit back and relax and listen to the rest unfold.  Andy is having a proper work out today though.

Once Nico and Linus get near to a sound they like, and it is sounding good, the pro-tools rig on Linus' computer develops a bug.  It seems to be refusing to save any takes.  So the next few hours are spent trying to figure that problem out.  What ever happened to good old analogue recording?

Nico then has to go for the night as he has a show at an Irish sports bar in Uppsala with Entombed.  He didn't actually seem that psyched about it haha.  He'll be back tomorrow morning.

We decide to rack our brains together over a pizza and a beer at Verona, the restaurant above the studio.  Time for a break.  The pizza is awesome too, banana and curry.  Something I never knew existed until I moved to Sweden.  Fucking beautiful!  The other guys laugh at my choice of topping as I wolf it down.

After the pizza and a cup of shite coffee, that we think is free with the food but turns out not to be, and is quite frankly a slap in the face at 20 kronors, I head back down into the studio with Linus, whilst the other guys take a trip to the off-licence and get some beers.




After a while Linus works out that we can, at least as a temporary fix, record on an external hard-drive and make regular back-ups. 

So around seven pm. we finally start tracking some drums.  I sit on the sofa in the control room, drinking a superb bottle of Anchor Christmas Beer that Johan has kindly bought me, whilst Johan and Jon play some guide guitars for Andy.  The drums are sounding really good.  We get three tracks down and call it a night.  Considering the hinderances we've had today, that feels like pretty good prgroess. We'll see how it sounds in the morning, but tomorrow we should be up and running...