Presentations of Electrical Confectionery
I prefer to work on smaller length releases such as singles and EPs. Because we’re doing music during evenings and weekends, and we are recording in analog which require a high level of skill to execute with no ability to quickly fix afterward, producing a full-length album is a major undertaking.
From the mixing perspective, with modern recording people can set up a mix on their computer, save all the settings, do a mix and return to the mix later to tweak something. You spend 3 hours mixing a song and then the next day listed to your mix on other systems to verify it sounds good. You find the vocals are too loud after listening in your car so you go back into Pro Tools, adjust the vocal, hit Save and you’re on your way. With our approach, you first hope that the mixing board is still set up, which if someone else came in to record or we did a different mix, will not be the case. If the board has been modified, you consult the mixing notes to reset all of the eq, levels, and effects. Chances are it won’t be set up exactly like before, but should be close enough. Then you rewind the tape, adjust the vocal, and do the entire mix again. If there were moves that had to be executed like panning a guitar, then you need to remember that and do it again. Once you get the remix done, you save that to a digital file to listen to and then hope it came out OK. Otherwise you repeat the entire process again.
That’s just for mixing. So facing that, I’ve shied away from committing to a full length album. The problem is that with all of this talk of how the music industry has changed with the Internet and how the world is all different, the music industry still thinks that an artist’ releases should be albums. Every time we try to engage with a publicity firm or try to push a single or EP to the press, they come back with the excuse that “We really want to see a full-length album to promote this.” So while we are told people consume music differently than in the past and that the full-length album is dead, not so for the marketing side of the music industry which apparently thinks that album rock is the hottest thing.
So to appease the corporate machine, Fascinations Grand Chorus and I decided to work on and release a full album worth of material. The band wanted to have a heavier sound for the album which meant beefier drums and a more rock sound. They also didn’t want to rely on bouncing down and just record everything to only 8 tracks. But as the work moved forward, they realized they couldn’t fit their arrangements into only 8 tracks so most songs feature a bounce down. Of course when you bounce down, the drums are not as powerful because they are 1 generation away, but analog recording is all about compromise.
Like pretty much everything my brother Andy works on, his songs have a Beach Boys influence, but where I think Chalk and Numbers worked in the Pet Sounds era, Fascinations Grand Chorus’ sound is more 1970 Beach Boys. Stephanie’s songs were going in a power pop direction so my inspirations to produce the album were taken from Sunflower and #1 Record.
Since they were going for a rock sound, we didn’t use many instruments outside of the standard drums, bass, analog synth, and guitar format. Only Until I Found You has a pedal steel guitar on it and that song was actually recorded a bit for the proper sessions for the album kicked off. Electrical Delight does have a lap steel on it and I used a gift from my in-laws. My spouse’s grandfather passed away and he owned a lap steel that I was lucky enough to have passed on to me. He lived in the Chicago area, and the brand of guitar is Regal. That brand was out of Chicago and in the first half of the 1900s, it was manufacturing guitars in the USA before eventually being acquired, sold off, acquired again, etc. Like so many brands, it’s now a shell of its former self and manufactures guitars overseas. Regal is not in the same league as a Gibson, Fender or Martin, but there’s a beauty in the idea that my spouse’s grandfather was living in Chicago, wanted to buy a guitar, headed down to his local music store where he picked out an instrument built by people who lived in the same area he did. If he had an issue with the guitar, he’d bring it to a local repair person where chances are they may have worked in the Regal factory at one time or knew people who built the guitar.
Compare that to now where we go down to a massive corporate-owned chain store and get the high pressure greeting from a salesperson trying to make their monthly quota. We pick out some guitar built overseas by people who make slave wages and when the thing breaks, it’s tossed in the garbage. Anyway, I used that lap steel on Electrical Delight.
Similarly, Stephanie’s sax doesn’t make too many appearances on this album save for Echos and Together, You & I. Speaking of Echos, that track is probably the most throwback to the Pet Sounds style of production we’ve used in the past. Together, You & I was probably the hardest song to get right during the recording and mixing. I put a Clarence White-influenced guitar part on the song and Stephanie arranged a trippy horn outro. Getting all of those pieces to fit together was tricky to mix. It’s a big balancing act where you don’t want the horns or lead guitars to overshadow the vocals.
We set a deadline of November 1st to release the album and as summer was winding down we had a lot of work to do mixing all of the songs. After mixing, we’d then have to ship off the songs for mastering which could uncover issues like the vocals being too loud or not enough bass. Luckily Joe Lambert was open to us sending over songs in batches so we could adjust to any feedback he had while we were mixing down songs. This allowed us to simultaneously mix and master the album and hit our release deadline.
It’s been a while since we put out a full album and I’m really proud of all of the work on this musical statement.
