Friday, June 08, 2007
RECORD
Hello.
Beau Sorenson, the guy at Smart Studios in Madison, Wisconsin who helped me mix 'Plans', recently referred to the place I've been for the last three weeks as the 'mix tunnel'. I like this term. It exemplifies the amount of focus and discipline required to complete the last thirty percent of any, and every, record a mix engineer takes on. It also points out, quite literally, that every studio is something of a cave where light, air and food are of poor quality; where communication with the outside world is difficult (if possible at all); and where the days are an ashen smear.
When Elliott Roberts came to the Alberta Court to check in on the Tegan and Sara record (he heads Neil Young's Vapor Records, to which T&S are signed), he mentioned that I 'looked healthy', and that 'studio guys were supposed to be pasty and fat', or something very much like that. He's a really nice fellow and it was a nice thing to say, so I said thank you and I'm doing my best and so forth, but I don't feel healthy. I actually feel quite pasty at the moment. The stress of finishing a record, of honoring and presenting the songs and performances of people you respect dearly (and are now good friends with), is unlike anything else I know. It happened a little bit with 'The Crane Wife', but Tucker did most of the mixes from that record and I was necessarily disconnected from the minutia of the process as Death Cab for Cutie was in the thick of a tour. And the Death Cab records occupy a different space in my brain as the others - like family Christmas versus friend Christmas, in a way.
What I'm getting at is that, though I've fallen apart just a little, and though my complexion hasn't been so rotten since I was seventeen, and though my hands haven't looked this bad since I wrote 'My Hands', Tegan and Sara's record is unstoppable. It's all I've been listening to for two months and I still want to hear it. Like, all the time. I can't wait for the rest of the world to listen.
More soon. My record is next, and I have some news about that.
- Chris
Beau Sorenson, the guy at Smart Studios in Madison, Wisconsin who helped me mix 'Plans', recently referred to the place I've been for the last three weeks as the 'mix tunnel'. I like this term. It exemplifies the amount of focus and discipline required to complete the last thirty percent of any, and every, record a mix engineer takes on. It also points out, quite literally, that every studio is something of a cave where light, air and food are of poor quality; where communication with the outside world is difficult (if possible at all); and where the days are an ashen smear.
When Elliott Roberts came to the Alberta Court to check in on the Tegan and Sara record (he heads Neil Young's Vapor Records, to which T&S are signed), he mentioned that I 'looked healthy', and that 'studio guys were supposed to be pasty and fat', or something very much like that. He's a really nice fellow and it was a nice thing to say, so I said thank you and I'm doing my best and so forth, but I don't feel healthy. I actually feel quite pasty at the moment. The stress of finishing a record, of honoring and presenting the songs and performances of people you respect dearly (and are now good friends with), is unlike anything else I know. It happened a little bit with 'The Crane Wife', but Tucker did most of the mixes from that record and I was necessarily disconnected from the minutia of the process as Death Cab for Cutie was in the thick of a tour. And the Death Cab records occupy a different space in my brain as the others - like family Christmas versus friend Christmas, in a way.
What I'm getting at is that, though I've fallen apart just a little, and though my complexion hasn't been so rotten since I was seventeen, and though my hands haven't looked this bad since I wrote 'My Hands', Tegan and Sara's record is unstoppable. It's all I've been listening to for two months and I still want to hear it. Like, all the time. I can't wait for the rest of the world to listen.
More soon. My record is next, and I have some news about that.
- Chris
