Songs are mixed

Yup, we got the final mixes from J. Robbins and they sound fan-fucking-tastic! It seems J. really knew what we wanted and he got the best out of those tracks. I've been listening to this so many times now and yet I still get goose bumps.Now the hard part is to choose what songs make the cut! We want to do vinyl of this album as well, and with 11 songs and around 46 minutes of music, we need to leave out one song to keep the vinyl sounding good. If you put more than 22 minutes of music on one side of an LP it will not sound as good as we want it to, so it's really needed. Unfortunately we don't agree among the three of us which song to leave out so it's a little difficult. But we'll work it out.

Oh, and on a more personal note; I got a son a few weeks ago! A beautiful boy who has turned my world upside down. It's incredible becoming a parent. I feel like the luckiest man on earth!

Best
Mikkel / Barra Head

Mixing and mastering

Time for an update...
We got everything mixed by Tim, but we had some doubts about some of the mixes. So we got in touch with J. Robbins again, and fortunately he agreed to give it a shot. Some of you might know that we have already been in touch with J. Robbins before. He was supposed to record the album back in january, but due to his son's severe illness, he couldn't come to Europe to record with us. But now it looks like he will be part of the project anyway, which is just fantastic. He will mix it in his Magpie Cage studio later this month. We have admired J. Robbins' work for many years, as a musician and songwriter in Goverment Issue, Jawbox, Burning Airlines and Channels and as a producer and mixer for bands like Against Me, Faraquet, Promise Ring and many others. We can't wait to hear what J. can do with our recordings. The album will be mastered at West West Side Music by Alan Douches, who has mastered just about every cool band on the planet. We've checked the liner notes on some of our favourite records. His clients include bands like Converge, Sufjan Stevens and Mastodon, just to name a few. And well, those records sound amazing. We're so excited, can't wait to get the final result.
We'll be back later!

Mikkel / Barra Head

Update

We hoped to have the mixing done by now but we ran into some trouble and it's still not completely done. We'll let you know when we have news.

But we started thinking about the cover art work. The incredibly talented artist Sarah Bodil Hansen is doing the design for the album as well as some video stuff. We've met with her and she has some really interesting ideas. She also madesome sketches and it looks fantastic. She shot a couple of photos of us looking ridiculous as usual, but she said it didn't matter, since she weren't gonna use our faces. I told you we looked ridiculous!

Thursday July 12th

This morning we did the final touches... A couple of strokes on the piano, a background vocal here and there, and that was it. The album is recorded. It has been a lot of hard work, but we're really satisfied with the result. Now we're sending everything to New York, where Tim is gonna mix it. The plan is to also have it mastered there, Tim had some good ideas for great mastering studios.

The album might be recorded but there's still a long way to go and the blog will stay active. We'll inform you about cover art work and the further process in making this album happen. We'll post more photos and hopefully videos very soon.

Later

Mikkel / Barra Head

Wednesday July 11th

We worked hard and fast today. We did a lot of guitars for Some Wars, for From Hope Comes
Doubt and some for Common Ground. We got Jakob's percussion takes which sounds fantastic by the way, and got them added to the sessions. Then vocals for Legitimate, vocals for Accept
The Risk and some vocals for Gradiska... and then off to sleep...

Mikkel / Barra Head

Tuesday July 10th

It was nice having some days off and getting a bit of distance to the recordings. Arvid went to Roskilde Festival, Jakob recorded some percussion on his own and went back to work and I spent time with my wife trying to organize things for our baby, which is to be born pretty soon. But now I'm back on my own here in Hamburg, and it feels good to be in Ton Hotel again. The songs sound fantastic to my ears! I still need to do a couple of vocals, some guitars here and there and maybe even an occational piano part... we'll see. Udo and I decided to just take it easy and do whatever comes to mind. We started with One By One, which is probably the song on the album that sounds less like anything we've ever done. We added some electronics to it and it's almost a danceable tune now. It was quite hard getting the vocals sound right for this, but we finally got a decent take... Actually it was great, but just so hard getting it sound right. After this we did vocals for Iron To Skin, which is more aggressive... It was great to yell those lyrics out and we got a super take. We also recorded some guitars for Legitimate, and after this we were too tired to work any longer...

Mikkel / Barra Head

Tuesday July 3rd

Udo and I spent a lot of time with technical stuff making rough mixes of all the songs for Jakob. He needed them to record some percussion tracks to back home in Copenhagen. We also got some good stuff recorded though. We recorded vocals for Somebody's Floor and One By One and some guitars here and there. The rest of the day was spent doing back-ups. At this point it is clear that we will not be done in time. The delays we had in the beginning of the recording period have made the last days pretty stressful, and you just can't make a good album if you're feeling stressed out. Udo, as the incredible kind man he is, has promised us that I can come back two or three days next week to finish things off. We need to do a couple of vocal tracks and some guitar. This way we will get to relax a couple of days and clear our heads before we do the last vocals and finishing touches. I'm looking forward to a break. I'll be back with the blog next week!

Mikkel / Barra Head

Monday July 2nd

As I mentioned earlier Udo has been so kind and given us a couple of extra days in the studio. Jakob and Arvid needed to go back to Copenhagen for different reasons and Nagel, the most incredible helpful friend ever, rented a van, drove them and our equipment to Copenhagen and came back to Hamburg the same night. He even went for beers for Udo and me... We can't thank you enough for all your help, Nagel!!!!Udo and I got some good stuff recorded. we did vocals for Idiot On Treadmill and Common Ground, and we did some guitars for Somebody's floor. Udo is great to work with. He has some cool ideas and of course he knows his way around the Ton Hotel studio. We worked until we couldn't keep our eyes open anymore...

Mikkel / Barra Head

Sunday July 1st

Arvid and Jakob partied hard last night... I heard come home in the morning at some point.
As it turned out I could have partied there with them, since we didn't do any vocals. This was Tim's last day and he prefered to have as much basic tracks done, so we did guitars for Common Ground and some small bass parts that we needed. Unfortunately we will have to do the rest of the recordings without Tim, since he's going on vacation with his family now. But Udo has promised to help out and he's a skilled producer and engineer, so we're in good hands. Udo came in the evening and we played around with some of his great electronic stuff for One By One. It sounds like nothing else we've ever done, but still it's really cool...

Mikkel / Barra Head

Saturday June 30th

Now it seems a really long time ago, but at some point this spring we decided it could be fun to play a show in Hamburg while we're here recording. It seemed like a great idea at the time but now that we're a little short of time in the studio, suddenly it did not seem so convenient. We worked at the studio through the afternoon with some bass for Common Ground and vocals for Undermine, but we didn't get a whole lot done before it was off to the Übel & Gefärhlich, which is a pretty cool venue. It turned out to be a really great evening. The nice guys in the band Sport was on the bill too and opened with a great set. Then we entered the stage and it actually felt really nice to loosen up a bit, not worrying about little details for a night and just enjoy playing these new songs live. We played a mixed set with both new and old songs, and while the new ones were fresh in our memory, the old ones were a little more shaky. But all in all we played quite ok, I think. It was packed in the room and among all these nice people were our friends from Delbo and from Sinnbus who travelled all the way from Berlin to see us. Thanks so much for coming, guys! It means a lot! Nagel once again worked incredibly hard making things as nice as possible for us. Jakob and Arvid stayed for some hours at the Übel & Gefärlich listening to the DJ's for the rest of the night, but I had to go home and take care of my voice. There's a lot of work to be done tomorrow.

Mikkel / Barra Head

Friday June 29th

Tim came around 11.00 and we decided to record some of the guitar we did for Undermine again. We also came up with some pretty sweet guitar dubs. We did a few guitar parts for From Hope Comes Doubt and then it was finally time to start recording vocals. We did From Hope Comes Doubt, Some Wars, Gradiska and it went really well. Tim works fast and seems to prefer energy and passion over precision in the vocals. Now I'm not much of singer, but I tend to agree with Tim on this and I just cross my fingers hoping he knows what he's doing - which I feel pretty confident he does. He's talking a lot about what the songs and the lyrics make him feel and how he want to capture that mood. He's really into it...
We made an unpleasant discovery today as well. Unfortunately the take we had of Common Ground wasn't good enough. It was too fast and a little sloppy, so we decided to set up mic's for the drums again, and Jakob will record his drums over night. He's a hardworking drummer, that's for sure!

Mikkel / Barra Head

Thursday June 28th

The days are really starting to be one big blur. I don't remember excactly what we worked on yesterday, but I think we did guitar stuff on Iron To Skin and Idiot On Treadmill with Tim. Idiot On Treadmill got some crazy fast melodic stuff in the guitar riff so we needed to get that pretty precise. Iron To Skin has a really aggressive riff and ended up sounding just great! Late afternoon Tim had to leave to pick up his family, but we worked on some guitar for Undermine guitar ourselves. Jakob has engineered quite a bit before and even though Ton Hotel's equipment is new to him he did really well, I must say. We got some great stuff recorded. Nagel came by at night and with Undermine done we couldn't work anymore without Tim here. After all he's the man calling the shots regarding the production. So we watched a movie and drank a few beers instead.

Mikkel / Barra Head

Wednesday June 27th

With Mikkel in the studio recording guitar the whole day I have decided to step up and start writing a blog entry. So here we go. And what happened yesterday? We recorded bass on Gradiska and started doing guitar. We recorded Gradiska once before for a single that was released about a year ago, but this time we really wanted to give the gloomy feeling in the song more emphasis. The song is inspired by an experience the band had on tour in ex-jugoslavia where we were held back at the border for 24 hours because of bureacracy. I have always regarded that experience as something out of a Kafka novel, and for me it was important that this edgy and eerie feeling got back into the song. And I think it has now. After that Tim and Mikkel started working hard on the guitar - only interrupted by Tim now and then sarcastically commenting on the relentless pouring rain. "Hey guys, guess what... It's raining!!". On the bright side the weather at least isn't giving us the urge to leave the studio. Things are progressing nicely and the songs are really coming to life here in the studio.

Arvid / Barra Head

Tuesday June 26th

We worked pretty hard today. Arvid did some great sounding bass on the tracks that weren't recorded live and we did a great moody live take of a slow song called Accept The Risk. We put up a big empty oil can in the recording room and put a microphone inside it and got some crazy sounding reverb and ambience out of it. We even decided to record the pouring rain (it has been raining almost consistenly for the past week), we'll see if we're gonna use that. At this point all the drum tracks for 11 songs have been recorded. We might do some percussion here and there but the basic stuff is done. Almost all bass tracks have been done too. It feels pretty fantastic to have come this far in the process. So now it's up to me to get the last guitar stuff and the vocals recorded.

By the way, some photos added in the earlier posts. New photos and hopefully a little video on the way too...

Mikkel / Barra Head

Monday June 25th

Udo was still sick today and unfortunately we lost valuable time with some technical issues. Tim worked like crazy the whole day trying to fix things. What a great guy. We talked with Udo that promised us an extra day or two if we fail to make it in time. We listened to the takes we've done so far and got pretty confident, though... they are really great takes.

Mikkel / Barra Head

Sunday June 24th

Not much to say about Sunday's work... Other than we didn't work! Udo called in sick again. What a bummer. We really wanted to get something done but without Udo or Tim here we couldn't. Instead I tested the two fender cabinets, but decided they weren't sounding better than my current set-up. the low end sounded good, but I missed something in the high end. Nagel came by with some german baked goods, we relaxed and tried to prepare us for the coming week. It's gonna be hard work.

Mikkel / Barra Head

Saturday June 23rd

This was a busy day for Jakob. We decided to record the next couple of songs in layers starting with the drums, because these songs have a different feel to them. The song One By One has a steady, almost electronic feel in the beat, even though it goes in 14/16 or what the hell we can call that beat. It's danceable, that's for sure. It worked really well with the edgy, precise drumsound that Tim made for it. Jakob also recorded drums for the song Idiot On Treadmill (still a working title, but we kind of like it now). This one also has a crazy beat and needed the steady precise feel that layered recording gives. Jakob and Tim stayed up all night and recorded the drums for yet another tune called Gradiska. This is a slow one but we wanted to experiment a little bit with the beats and the drum sound to make it a bit more rough sounding. We've done a recording of this before that ended up being too "nice", almost like a ballad...In the basement of the studio we found an old Trixon kick drum, which apparently is kind of legendary. It's an old german kick drum and it sounded awesome! Today Tim has a business meeting in Frankfurt and Udo won't be here until the afternoon. Jakob decided to go back to Copenhagen for a few days to see his wife and kid, so we will do some guitar and bass recording with udo tonight.

Mikkel / Barra Head

Friday June 22nd

Today we decided to go for 2 songs that we knew were going to be hard to record. Common Ground is a fast song with lots of drum fills and stuff. There's a lot going on... We decided to record it with a live feeling again, this means we're recording without click and stuff. Tim seemed quite impressed with the result. Most of the bands he's recording can't keep a beat without having a computer counting it for them, he said. Recording with a click makes it all more accurate, but there's a risk of losing a bit of energy this way. The other song we did was Iron To Skin, also a fast one with some complicated riffs and some crazy drumming. "The kids are gonna be copying this" Tim said... I still haven't tried the two fender boxes, since there's an ohm issue here. Anybody knows of an easy way to make a 4 ohm cabinet work with an 8 ohm amp? Drop me a line...

Thursday June 21st

This was one of those days were things go wrong. We started working around 12.00. We decided to go for a recording of Undermine, which is probably the oldest of the new songs. We had the feeling that this would be an easy first take recording since we played it many times live. We needed to adjust the sound for this one though, getting a bit more ambient drum sound. It took a long time to find the right sound and just when we were getting ready to record the system crashed. We couldn't record for the next couple of hours and when things were finally working again we were cold and it took us a long time to get a good take. Luckily the waiting was worth it, because late at night when the last take was done, we felt certain that it was definitely the best one we ever did. During the break in the afternoon I went to pick up two giant fender cabinets that I want to try out. The great store Rückkopplung here in Hamburg has the best vintage gear and Smukal, who's the owner, is kindly letting me borrow the cabs. It's gonna be fun hearing how my old Fender PA amp sounds through these monster boxes.

Mikkel / Barra Head

Footage from Mittelsinn

Nagel shot a piece of video from our performance at Mittelsinn. It's from a new song called Iron To Skin. The quality is not great but anyway.. During this song the sound guy was crawling around on the stage adjusting mic's. At one point he is literally sticking his head up between jakob's legs adjusting the snare mic. Jakob actually manages to keep the beat! Check it out:

Wednesday June 20th

Udo called in sick this morning. I guess there's something in the air... Jakob also needed more drumheads again, so I went to get them. We were nervous if this would mean a serious delay in our work. Tim came around noon and he worked his butt off. He was absolutely amazing today! He was fast, efficient, attentive and gave us a lot of confidence. Somehow he made us play so much better. We got three great takes today. Songs were Somebody's Floor, which is a percussive catchy song, Some Wars which we recorded with a great energetic live feel and From Hope Comes Doubt, which is a heavy melodic tune that goes in 3/4. My wife Pernille came to visit today. Nagel dropped by too for some moral support and we even got the cable so we can finally get those photos uploaded. Pernille and Nagel cooked us great dinner and we went back to work. Finished at around midnight.



Mikkel / Barra Head

Tuesday June 19th

We started recording today. After a while it was clear we needed to adjust the sound a little bit and we also needed new drum heads for Jakob's kit. He hits those drums pretty hard! So that was a minor set back. We made a great take of a song called Legitimate, though. I don't think we have ever played it better. Jakob said he felt he finally got that Billy Jean feeling he has been chazing for the past 15 years! Arvid and I played it hard and aggresive yet it was swinging like never before. It felt great! Unfortunately Arvid is getting ill. Let's hope he will have a quick recovery.

Mikkel / Barra Head

Monday June 18th

Today we started working. Tim wants us to have to possibility to record live in the studio. After seeing us live he felt there was a lot of energy that would go lost in a lot of the songs if we recorded it one instrument at a time. But in order to do this right we needed to carefully place the microphones in the room. Udo had some great ideas as to how we could do that. He really knows this room and all it's little secrets. What a talented guy. Ton Hotel has a lot of possibilities and we spent a lot of time trying things out. We ended up with a killer sound. Jakob's old pearl drumkit sounded quite amazing. He has borrowed a Supaphonic and a Black Beauty snare from Anders Kidmose (ex Monoton) and with his own Harnus and Hert snare we got a lot of possibilites. Tim is an amazing drumtuner so he really gets the best out of those old drums. Arvid's Mesa Boogie amp was mic'ed with 3 mic's AND a line and sounded killer! My new set-up with the old Fender with the 4 12" speaker and the weird german amp Echolette with the 18" speaker was mic'ed with 3 mic's as well and it sounds fantastic! Rich and crunchy. I feared that it would be hard capturing that sound but Udo and Tim sure know what they're doing. We spent all day making sound and finished the day with a great barbecue in the garden.

Mikkel / Barra Head

Photos coming soon

We're taking a lot of photos and video footage but need a cable to upload it. As soon as we get it we'll get some photos from our sessions here.

Sunday June 17th

We woke up to a delicious breakfast at the small hotel and drove off to Hamburg. Tim were entertaining us all on the way with fun stories about all the bands he's been working with. Did you know that J. Mascis has been abducted by aliens? We arrived at Ton Hotel around 17.00 and started loading in all our stuff. Ton Hotel is a fantastic studio. The atmosphere is really nice, the recording gear is great and there's lots of space to both work and relax. I get the feeling we will be doing great stuff here. Tim was excited about the studio too. Udo, who's a great friend of ours and who will be engineering the recordings, had been on tour this past couple of days and came back late, so we decided to have a quiet evening. We just hung out in the garden, Tim went to be with his family for the rest of the evening and Nagel and Jakob cooked us a nice dinner. Nagel can cook, too... A man of many talents.

Mikkel / Barra Head

Saturday June 16th

Actually we couldn't make everything and everyone fit in the van. Arvid had to take the morning train to Hamburg where we were supposed to pick him up after we installed Tim's wife and kid in Nagels apartment, which we rented for Tim to stay in while he's here. Arvid got in Hamburg on time but the van was delayed big time because of massive traffic jams. So we didn't get out of Hamburg until 17.00 and we still had a 5 hour drive to the Magma Festival in Mittelsinn. Luckily we were scheduled to play at midnight so we made it in time. The festival was held in what seemed to be the middle of nowhere. Just a small group of houses and a deserted little railway station. But sure enough - people were coming out and there were 7 bands in the line-up. I really admire these kids from these small villages. They make things happen! Apparently Barra Head have some die hard fans in this area, there were people that travelled a bit to come see us. Crazy. We got a great dinner, played a good gig, drank some great local beers and had a good night's sleep in a nice little hotel in a beautiful spot in the countryside. The best was probably when a dog entered the stage during the outro of The Discipline Of Making Sense. We stood there feeling oh so serious and a dog came and sniffed us in the crutch... Hilarious.

Mikkel / Barra Head

Friday June 15th

We started working at noon and had a great rehearsal. Again Tim had some ideas for small changes and made some notes about the best way to record the different songs. Around 18.00 our good friend Nagel came up to Copenhagen from Hamburg. Nagel is an amazing guy. One of the most helpful guys I have ever met. He has saved Barra Head's ass many times. He will be driving us and all our gear to a festival gig we're playing tomorrow south of Kassel, and then from there to the Ton Hotel in Hamburg where we're going to record for the next couple of weeks. We were asked to play this festival and we thought it would be cool if Tim could see us live before we record the album and we could also try some of the songs live. The rest of the evening was spent trying to organize getting everything and everyone fit in the van. Not as easy as it sounds.

Mikkel / Barra Head

Thursday June 14th

Tim O'Heir and his wife and son arrived in Copenhagen yesterday morning. Jakob went to pick them up at the airport and dropped them off at Arvids apartment, where they're staying while they're in Copenhagen. We let them sleep most of the afternoon. Tim's 2 year old son Kingsley got a kick out of playing with all Arvid's weird little gadgets. We met again at night for dinner at my place and talked about our plans for the coming weeks. We're all totally excited about making this record! Tim is a great guy, he has a lot of experience and it is obvious that he already has ideas as to how Barra Head should sound. Today we then started pre-production at our rehearsal space. After around a year and a half of songwriting it felt good to play the songs live to Tim. This in a way marked the beginning of the final stage of making the new Barra Head album. We were a bit nervous at first and didn't play that well I think, but Tim really seemed to like the stuff. He had some comments and some suggestions for small changes as well as some great ideas as to how to we could record it. Great to know that he's already thinking in those lines - how we can capture the songs the best way possible. We worked for 7-8 hours, but Tim was pretty beat with jetlag, so we decided to call it a day. Tomorrow we're rehearsing together again and I'm already looking forward to hearing Tim's ideas.

Mikkel / Barra Head