Mixing it up

After last weeks post frenzy as Balustrade were more active than, well, possibly more active than ever before, I thought we would give the weblog a bit of a break and only post if there were any developments. As such, after a few quiet days, this Wednesday saw a return to Alpine studios and the beginning of the final mixing of the Stalisfield EP. After a weekend and a bit of listening through the CD as a whole, we reconvened to begin work on polishing the rough tunes and getting a final version of the EP ready to... well, to do whatever we eventualy decide to do with it!!

First up was El Mariachi. It was decided that El Mariachi would actually work better as a duet and so we decided to record new vocals for Carters part and generally make it fit in more with the rest of the CD's Kings of Convenience-esque style. Musically it is still working really well, but we have beefed up the hand claps so it sounds a bit less like to muppets in Lex's bedroom slapping their hands together like fools!

El Cartino's Blues, works great as a live track but in the context of the CD it really stands out (and not in a good way). After some thought it has been decided to rearrange the song and 'Balustrade-ify' it and generally give it a bit more of a lazy groove.

Americana is almost there, but Lex's guitar part is a bit dodgy and needs rerecording. there is also talk of adding a new layer of guitar to compliment it. More final tweaks than anything major!

Mourning Song. Ah, Mourning Song. The song we dreaded recording and the one which has in actual fact turned out better than we ever could have imagined! With a few tweaks to the vocals and overall balancing of the sound this one is done and sounds great!

Then comes the actual problem track of the EP - The Wolf. It didn't really help that this song has never really been figured out by either of us and is probably the least Balustrade-y song which we do. As such when recording it we went in a million different directions and it didn't really work as a whole. The bold step was made to get rid of Wolf from the EP and save it for another day when we have a better idea of how it should sound. In it's place is set to arrive Walking, the closest Balustrade will ever get to writing a pure pop song - and our tribute to Mr Billy Bragg! However it will given a bit of a new treatment for the EP and maybe when we record the album it will return to it's once true greatness!

Last but not least we have the first song we recorded, You Sleep With Your Eyes Open. Still sounding great, Carter is not entirely happy with his guitar part, yet we think with a bit of clever mixing we can sort this out, and with a bit of clever arrnagement of the strings it is very nearly there.

The rearrangement of the songs and the inclusion of one new one and the restyling of another means we have quite a bit of work to do, however we decided to begin at the beginning and rework El mariachi. With a couple of hours work we soon knocked the opener into shape and the first song of the EP is now complete. All it needs is a 'Lex the Pedant' mix and it should be all ready to burn for posterity! All we have to do now is sort out the other 5 songs!

The most interesting part of this final process is beginning to fathom the Balsutrade sound and complete it. It gives me a new sense of admiration to producers that they can form this decision and work on songs and make them sound consistent with, not only the band's vision of how they should sound, but also in making them sound like a collection of songs by an artist, not just a mish mash of confused genre pieces. It was only by listening through the songs a few times that we could hear a Balustrade sound come through and really begin to take shape, and thank god the majority of the CD sounds great, or else I don't think there would be many more posts on this site!! It's no White album, but the results are still so much better than we ever genuinely expected!

The Birth of Stalisfield Day 5

Another successful day yesterday saw the compleion of 2 more songs, leaving us with the challenge of Mourning Song for this morning - irony or delightful coincidence?!

The recording day was cut short by Lex's travel plans, but in the end it didn't matter. As a result of ruthless efficiency and a new found mastery of the recording process we whizzed through Mourning Song and cracked it in just over 3 hours - a new record. Part of it is down to us discovering the 'Balustrade sound' and knowing what we were working towards. Keeping things simple and not attempting to reinvent the wheel meant that a song which has caused many a heated discussion and confused practice session came together with almost no problems at all. The inital temptations to over do things and try and be flash with earlier tracks was abandoned and as such we managed to create what can fairly be described as a true Balustrade song!

The main reason for this new simplified approach was the success in recording Amerciana the previous evening. Lex was, once agin fretting over his vocals and in the end resigned himself to giving a more understated and subtle performance that actually was how the song should have been sung all along. Combine this with a simple guitar part and some nice harmony's and the new simplified stripped down Balustrade song was finally uncovered. Previously we had only ever heard the songs in our heads and had no idea of how they sounded to the outside world - although Lex's distraught house mates with their TVs turned very loud each and every Wednesday gave us a pretty good idea. Actually recording the songs down meant that a definite idea of the shape and structure of the song was required. It also required us to harmize with each other rather than the song and as such has made the songs much tighter and more conistent. This actually presents us with a bizarre new scenario of having to relearn the songs we have been playing for the last 6 months to make them tally with the CD version!

By 2.30 we had finished our first rough mix and a burnt CD complete with all 6 songs was ready for listening. The soon to be legendary Stallisfield white label. We've given it a listen through and overall we are damn impressed. Never in our wildest dreams did we expect to produce anything like this. Speaking personally I, [Lex] thought we would get pissed off and bored of it and frustrated at our inability to get a decent sound by about Wednesday. However thanks the magic rosetta stone of recording equipment and some hard work we have produced a piece of work that we are rightly proud of. Final mixes and a few last minute changes are needed and this will proceed over the next few weeks, but after a week of work, Stalisfield is now one gigantic step closer to completion. So keep your ears to the ground and who knows, that fine CD of musical genius may be landing on your doorsteps in the not too distant future!

Todays recording was brought to you by Blind Melon, dodgy Swiss referees, injured scallies' broke metatarsels and hardly any tea whatsoever.



... and following that informative and, I might say, quite scary rant from Lex, it is time for I, Carts, to write to few words. These are they: When we first formed the band back in 1998 in a lonely house in Canterbury, I don't think either of us thought that we'd either (a) still remember each others names or (b) still be making music together in 2004. But we are. We've come a long way, considering we took a brief (4 year) break from the band, and I now feel that the vision is coming together. But where will this vision lead us? I'll write more today/tomorrw/the day after tomorrow, as this post is getting rather long...
luv elcartino.xxx

The Birth of Stalisfield Day 4

After yesterday's sucesses it was much more of a work man like day for the Balustrade boys today. Having sorted three of the six songs needed to complete the mighty Stalisfield we needed to nail another 2 songs today before daring to attack the most tricky song of the lot (The Mourning Song) on Day 5.

As was mentioned on Day 2, recording has proved a wierd and very different way of playing that has taken some getting used to. The first battle is simply playing in time with a time signature. Until you sit down and try and play along with a metronome or click track you don't actually realise how in or out of time you play. Bashing out songs with only 2 guitars and 2 vocals you don't really notice whether the songs are in time with anything other than yourself. You can slow down or speed up according to how the other person is playing. Yet when it comes to recording you actually have to maintain some kind of beat - especially if you then want to add drum tracks or any kind of musical loop over the top.

Working out track orders and good working practice has also been a challenge. Where to start, guitars and vocals or simply a bass line or drum track? But as things have progressed we seem to have cracked most of these early problems and the creative process has begun to get easier and easier (touch wood!). It's still very wierd playing parts in isolation to the songs though and even wierder hearing your own voice on tape!

Day 4 was brought to you by tea, McVities cookies, a severe haircut, Tom Waits' Nighthawks, jazzy basslines and a sense of inevitable sporting disapointment!

The Birth of Stalisfield Day 3

After yesterdays triumphant recording debut the talented twosome attacked todays's recording sessions with a renewed vigour! The successful recording of You Sleep With Your Eyes Open - complete with strings! - had filled the mighty Balustrade with confidence and the sky is indeed the limit!

To fill the casual observers in how we are doing this here is a breakdown of the kit we are using to record Stalisfield;

The heart of the recording system in Lex's eMac which is running Apple's GarageBand software. A stunning piece of software that costs less than £40 it offers multi-track recording, utliizing both real instruments, vocals and digital/software inputted instuments. It can do almost anything you can imagine, from drums and percussion, through strings piano and all sorts of wierd synthy sounds that could make the mighty Balustrade turn into Emerson Lake and Palmer at the click of a mouse button! It also offers up loads of cool amp sounds for your guitar and vocal effects to cover up the out of tune wharblings that may or may not have been a feature of todays recording!

Connecting the outside world to the Mac is a Tascam US-122 USB Audio/MIDI interface which is the Rosetta stone of the Stallisfield experience. Connecting guitars and mics and transferring the analog signals into digital, it was this magic box of tricks that solved all our problems on Day 2! An impressive piece of kit, that's not cheap. Good job it's ace!

Rounding off the studio set-up are the instruments. Cart's electric acoustic, Lex's 12 string and Epiphone SG electric as well as the brand new Evolution 25 note MIDI keyboard. Thus far most of the guitar parts have been recorded on Carts's acoustic, plugged straight into magic box, but today we beefed up a couple of guitar parts using the electric and an assortment of GarageBand's Marshall-based pre-amp sounds. The keyboard is a god send though and is allowing us to program in drum lines, bass lines and strings - eat your heart out Mick Skinner, us west country white boys can program drum loops to!!

And that is it it for day 3. We recorded El Mariachi (my little guitarista) and El Cartino's Blues #4 today, which means we only have 3 songs to go before a rough version of Stalisfield is complete. So far it seems to be going well!

Todays recording was brought to you by tea, cheese and ham toasties, Cadbury's Twirls, the Kings of Convenience and the over excited shouting and arsing about of 2 single blokes on a week off in an empty house.

Inside Alpine Studios

The Birth of Stalisfield: Day 2

After 5 hours in the studio, Balustrade emerged into the rain with a 7-minute epic called You Sleep With Your Eyes Open. We can�t wait for the world to hear it - Cart's Dad says it�s alright so it must be OK!

Recording is a totally new discipline us � it highlights the, erm, shall we say, limitations of our talents. And makes us sound like the Kings Of Convenience on Slow (which I am presuming is a narcotic with the opposite effects of Speed)

So, that was Tuesday, brought to you in association with tea, pasties, the new BDB album and expensive but sexy recording equipment.

Does anybody know a shop where you can buy any talent?

The Birth of Stalisfield: Day 1

There are many great days in history; the battle of Hastings, the fall of Rome, the day man walked on the moon, the Kennedy asassination. But these trifling dates all pale into insignificance next to today. For today is the day that Balustrade finally begin to record the mighty Stalisfield EP. Oft spoken of in a hushed whisper around campfires and dirty corners of smoky pubs, the mighty Stallisfield has developed as something of an urban myth amongst those in the know in the West Country. Six years in the making, Stallisfield was originally concieved in the house of the same name in Guildford Road in Canterbury. Two fevered brains, distracted (momentarily) from their further education developed a concept, and that concept's name was Balustrade. A force of good that would change the face of humanity in new and unexpected ways and the first of those ways would be Stalisfield.

After years of supposed inactivity, the two minds, having been seperated by geography, reunited and Balustrade was reborn like a musical phoneix rising from the cultural ashes of 2003. Work began on the debut masterpiece and the cause was christened. Balsutrade would be the genesis of a movement known only as alt.westcountry. Thousands would follow, but for now there are only two.

To explain alt.westcountry is not to know alt.westcountry, for mere words cannot convey the beauty and complexity that it symbollises. A mix of contradictions and non-sequeters as well as unifying forces the likes of which no-one can truly apreciate without hearing their work. The doubters said that the grand plan would not be realised, but in 5 short days they will be forced to eat their words and the pudding of proof wil be before them in compact disc form.

Alas, after inital teething problems with the top of the range technology required to envision this masterpiece, Lex and Carts retired early to watch the footie! Come on the Scholes and vive la ginge!!

Welcome to the Balustrade web log

Grettings mortals and welcome to the official web log of alt.westcountry pioneers Balustrade. We intend to use this as a way to keep our intrepid fans up to date with all the exciting devlopments that occur in the world of Balustrade. There will be sneaky insights into the genius song writing process of Lex and Carts. As well as previews of forthcoming material, humourous Balustrade related anecdotes and even gig news as and when they happen!

Keep checking back and we will make sure to update things regularly in order to further enhance your Balustrade experience.