Recording an album is a long slog. Well, maybe it doesn’t have to be but we decided early on that if we were going to do it, we were going to do it right. We’d spend the time writing, rewriting, destroying, reconstructing and basically working our asses off until we were happy with our songs. Then we’d record them in the way we wanted to, with the people we wanted to use and release it ourselves.
So in August 2012 we officially kicked off the process in my old secondary school in Monaghan. We spent two weekends there recording demos that we had floating around and trying to mould them into songs. These tracks formed most of what would eventually become the album but between then and when recording proper began at the end of March 2013 we recorded hundreds more variations. We also added in some late runners and lost some previously nailed on certainties.
Drums and bass were recorded in 6 days in K9 studios in Dublin. Guitars were recorded between April and July in our rehearsal space. This gave Colin and Barry greater control over their sound and allowed them the time to experiment without the pressure of expensive studio time hanging over them. The vocals were done in Guerrilla Studios out on North Strand Road. We laid down some extra percussion elements in Barry’s bedroom over two evenings and then the tracks were ready to be mixed.
We were fortunate that Jesse Gander who mixed the great Japandroids album, Celebration Rock, agreed to do our mix for us so we sent all our tracks off to Vancouver and waited anxiously to hear the results. What came back was amazing, he added lots of little personal interpretations and laid over a new layer to what we had conceived. Together with another great mixing job from TJ Lipple in Washington the album sounded just how we wanted it.
We asked Darragh Nolan to produce the artwork for us and he did a great job. We picked a photograph that we felt really captured the spirit we wanted to achieve with the album. A raw excitement, a playfulness.
When we got the vinyls back a few days before the album launch we couldn’t believe it. A year in the making and we had done it, we had an ALBUM.
You can listen to it, or buy it, over at gimmebouts.com
Daniel Flynn - Creative 