He's arrived!

Hey Plastic people!

So as you all probably know by now, we're coming out with our debut full length album of never-before-recorded material at some stage this year called "Shark", recorded at Sound and Motion studios. This diary serves to give you guys an inside peak into our recording world and how things are progressing.

Up till now, we've done the basic tracking for 6 songs of everything excepting the vocals. So far so good. But the big news is that Gordon Raphael, album-of-the-decade-winning producer of The Strokes first 2 albums, amongst others. He arrived on Sunday and we had a rad meeting/chilling session on Camps Bay beach just getting to know each others and discussing the POA for recording the album. First impressions are that he's a really laid-back cool dude who's infinitely knowledgable about rock music, especially 60's and 70's music so he'll definitely bring the old school vibe/sound we're looking for on many of our tracks. Also heard some cool stories about guys like The Strokes and Skin from Skunk Anansie which was awesome cos I'm really into rock music history and trivia.

Yesterday we spent the day in Sash and Scal's studio working on the tracks we're recording with Gordon. He gave us loads of ideas and opinions to take our songs to the next level and already we can see the benefits of a hands-on producer. I think he's into most of our more rockier songs (soundbite after playing one of our more mellow tracks: "It's not The Ramones is it") but there's one piano-driven Beatles style track he loves and says he has loads of production ideas for it. Stoked! The process involved Gordon sitting on the other side of the glass listening to us jam, captured by our NT-2 mic, and then coming into the room with thoughts, suggestions and little ideas for melodies. He also isolated the instruments by eg getting the guitars to play together so he has the whole song in his head. So all in all a really profitable day and I think we learned a lot from Gordon.

Sitting here about to leave for the studio for set up day, exciting times! We'll keep you updated with news, photo's etc documenting our progress throughout the next few weeks so watch this space!

Respect!

Karl