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!