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.In terms of its other tech knickknacks, Reflection’smodest arsenal showed discreet taste, even by 2005 stan-dards.The studio boasted an excellent collection of high-quality vintage microphones (like the vacuum-tube Neu-mann U47, whose globe-like foam windscreen remindedStipe of Angela Davis), as well as choice signal processinggear like compressors (a couple of UREI 1176s, whichare an engineer’s ’65 Mustang), exotic new digital delays(like the Lexicon Model 200, at the time the LamborghiniCountach of digital reverbs), and a few cherry perks, suchas the studio’s tube EMT plate reverb.5 As Easter said,“Reflection was essentially comparable to any studio any-where, gear-wise.” As such, Dixon and Easter didn’t findit necessary to bring any of their own gear, except for afew signature musical instruments.Easter brought along• 17 •J.NIIMIhis white Fender Electric XII twelve-string guitar (a giftfrom his father when he turned thirteen; Peter Buck didnot own an electric Rickenbacker twelve-string at thispoint, contrary to fan myth), as well as his trusty Danelec-tro electric sitar (which Buck had used in the Chronic Town session, most prominently on “Gardening at Night”).Easter’s Electric XII can also be heard on many of Let’sActive’s early recordings.Peter Buck’s workhorse amp—his Fender Twin—wasbroken at the time, so Easter loaned him his checker-board-grill Ampeg Gemini II for the session, which wasused on most tracks, alongside the studio’s little solidstate (i.e., transistor rather than tube-driven) Kasino amp.Guitar-wise, Buck had brought his maple-glo Ricken-backer 360, which he had also used on the Chronic Townsession.Mike Mills had been using a Dan Armstrong bassup to the time of Chronic Town, but Easter lent him his Rickenbacker 4001 bass on an early garage session, andby the time of the Murmur sessions Mills had bought his own.Mills played through the studio’s trusty Ampeg B-15, which was set up in the hallway outside the live room.Dixon recalls Bill Berry using the studio’s Sonor drumkit, set up in Studio A’s isolation booth, which everyonecalled the “Tiki Hut” for its cedar-shingled conical ceil-ing.Easter remembers wanting to set Bill up in the mainroom, but Berry, in his ratty Steel Pulse T-shirt, likedthe weird little space and was excited to play drums inthere—it was how he envisioned a studio session wassupposed to be.Easter, Dixon, and the band availed themselves of thestudio’s two pianos (a modern Yamaha and an old upright“tack” piano—so called because of the thumbtacks in-• 18 •MURMURserted on its hammers to compensate for the dark soundof its enclosed harp), its Hammond B-3 organ, its Wur-litzer, and the somewhat unusual presence of a vintageMusser vibraphone.These instruments played a big partin Murmur’s sound, and in resolving the band’s aesthetic concerns.Dixon explains:I wanted to create a Stax-like sound in the balance ofthe overall mix.Vocals as part of a drum-drivengroove.A big reason for this was the desire on thepart of the band for the guitars to be very clean.Guitars were kind of “out” at the time, and fuzz guitarswere scary to the band and the label.The best modelI could think of to keep a heavy groove was the soundof old Stax records.With [these organic-soundinginstruments] as part of the studio’s standing arsenal,we had the tools we needed to accomplish that.As is common studio practice, the band recorded thebasic tracks for most songs playing together live—drums,bass, and guitars, and probably a “guide vocal” fromStipe—with the instruments acoustically isolated fromone another.Buck’s guitar amp was set up in the mainroom, Berry’s drum kit was in the isolation booth, Mills’sbass amp was in the outside hallway, and Stipe was in thespace under the stairwell behind the control room (hedidn’t want anyone to see him sing).The band monitoredthemselves over headphones.Often in recording sessions,a band might start by recording the basic tracks for allthe songs on the album, then go back and overdub therest of the instruments and the vocals
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