As you may or may not have known, we spent last Friday at Canterbury, a studio hidden away at the base of Dufferin St. The goal of the session was to rerecord bed tracks using our prerecorded tracks as a template. Why rerecord? Experience has taught me that (at least for this band) there is no such thing as simply recording some songs and being done. The process of writing songs and capturing them to some recorded format always takes time; not an issue in itself. Over that time however, the project never stops evolving. Exhibit A: a planned 1 month recording of a 4 song demo which 6 months later had morphed into the full length album We Are Not Normal.
Rehearsing, playing and recording the current batch of songs has caused them to evolve to a point where the original bed recordings didn’t capture all that we wanted them too anymore. I hope this doesn’t make us sound spoiled. We were lucky enough to have a second chance at it. You only get to make your debut album once, right?
Our day at Canterbury was more than worth it. The size and isolation options of the studio allowed us to play together, while still keeping all the audio discrete. This time we really captured the energy of the songs. I also witnessed some of the most awesome noise I have ever heard coming from the room where Kent was locked away.
I’ve posted some of our photos on flickr.
Now I know that there are at least one or two people with the following question on their minds: “well Hugh, that’s all good, and we’re happy for you, really. But when do we get to hear a finished CD?”
Let me side step that by saying this: I was listening to old Linehaul recordings yesterday – right back to stuff from The No Itacifaxes Sessions, and up to We Are Not Normal – and let me tell you, you can hear the ideas, or at least their beginnings in those recordings. But we have definitely come a long way in the past 4 years. Stick with us a little longer. I promise it will be worth the wait.