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