Studio Diary: Day One

Thursday 27 December, 2012

It’s so good to be all together again. We’d purposefully left November and December free from gigs to give everyone a chance to unwind after a busy year of touring and festivals. With the exception of our recording session for the Debt Records Christmas compilation today is the first time we’ve all been in the same room for about two months.

We set up the gear relatively leisurely. There’s a lot of equipment here so we’d decided to devote the entire of this day to uncurling cables and setting up soundtraps. We’re being a lot more systematic than in previous sessions, it’s easy to lose one’s way with so many mics, inputs and intentions. There’s quite a spaghetti around the drum kit now, resembling a hunched metal octopus lashed to the floor like Gulliver in Lilliput.

The set up is a little different this time, the control centre is now separated from our live room in order to position the drums more centrally. We also have a secondary recording setup away from the main room and overdubs area, this will be mainly Cleg’s domain, he works well dreaming up complicated guitar arrangements on his own.

Once we’d got the bulk of the equipment unpacked and connected up we had a meal and some wine, our last night of proper relaxation before the house fills up with the sound of Bedlam.