Last year for NZ Music Month 2016, we asked bands/artists for a favourite memory of making music in Wellington.
It could involve a favourite gig, a funny story from the recording studio, a moment that led to the inspiration for a song, the fond recollection of a defunct venue, or the piece of music or lyric that they were most proud of creating.
We really enjoyed the stories people told us, so we are doing it again this year. Up next is Rowan from Glass Vaults.
When recording our new album The New Happy we were listening to alot of 80’s New York vibe music… Talking Heads, Tom Tom Club, Grace Jones etc and we knew we wanted our record to be as dry sounding as possible with minimal reverb. We didn’t want to use any hi hats on the album, percussion everywhere and only synth bass. One of the methods we used was to record the drum tracks was to use these things called Cymbomutes. They’re actually made to use for rehearsing in your bedroom so you don’t make any noise. Essentially they are stretchy material strips that slip over the cymbols so that they don’t resonate at all, instead making a clicky/ tappy noise with no splash. We really pushed our drummer Hikurangi in that direction and sometimes it was a little touchy, maybe verging on strangling his performance, but we really wanted to push deep in that territory. It was cool he was so open to it and trusting even when Richard and I weren’t sure how it would turn out ourselves. We just trusted in Bevan’s direction on that one haha! It’s cool in the end. It almost has a feel close to an 808 or 909 with very short and sharp hi-hat attack and decays.