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Sugarbeat - Blue Flux 2001
Though now outdated, we've decided to
leave this page on the server, as it might be interesting to those who'd
like to find out more about the making of our 2002 album 'Sugarbeat'.
A State of Flux Following a move from Britain to Germany in the latter part of 2000, Jill and I had our heads spinning with plenty other things to not think about music for a while. The move was complicated enough, and dismantling our Bigger Hog studio in South Wales was quite a heartbraker.
Our new home is not ideal for setting up
a new studio, so we figured we'd wait until we move to bigger premises.
That belief lasted about 4 weeks, when I picked up a guitar again, after
completing most of the donkey work of putting up furniture and general
admin aggro. Deprivation had charged my inspirational batteries to 110%,
and as I was playing I realised that I must find a way again to record
what was falling out of my guitar.
The Steely Feel The need for a compromise gave me the idea. Space was the limiting factor - keyboards need lots of it. So I decided to unpack and install only essential recording gear - hard disc recorder, signal processing equipment, and microphones. No sampler, no synths, no sequencer or keyboards. Guitars only - the steely feel! My only concession was to buy an electric bass guitar, an excellent choice, as it turned out. I hadn't played bass before, but it seems to come natural to any guitarist, and it's FUN! I never could have guessed how much more alive it sounds compared to even the best bass guitar samples. With relatively little practise all these bass lines flitting around in my head for years soon became organic reality. Sugarbeat
The spartanic setup also helps to promote high recording quality, through shorter signal paths, and generally less equipment plugged into the mixer. Although I still master to DAT, post processing on the PC now starts with digital input, and further benefits from some fancy DX plugins for Cool Edit 2000. Recording for the new album "Sugarbeat" was completed in October 2001, while post processing and final mastering took another 3 weeks. Time well spent - only when all tracks are known can one begin to tweak and nudge the overall sound to create a homogenous sounding album.
Guitar's the star - no holds barred. Judging
by most listeners comments, it's the guitar that most defines the Blue
Flux sound, so I hope the new album will please them as much as me.
Some of the effect processing I had to
use to give me the timbre I was looking for have yielded sounds that even
a synthesizer or sampler would have struggled to produce. When you listen
to some songs on the "Sugarbeat", you'll realise why I used the remark
Brian May used to proudly stick on the early Queen albums - No synthesizers
used on this album!
Copyright Enthalpy Publishing 2004
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