Very happy for this EP to finally be reaching the public airwaves. If you like (extremly poppy) pop rock tinged with elements of mathy/intelligent metallic hooks then these guys are going to be your bag. Click the picture below to listen!
Produced/mixed by sensei Neil D Kennedy at The Ranch, I worked on this EP as an assistant engineer back in September 2017. Directly after finishing my last major project at audio college.
If you live in the UK and listen to rock music, then you would have heard loads of Neil's incredible work. He's a incredibly talented music producer, with ears for guitar tone and melody like no other in my humble opinion. He recorded most of my own bands back catalog and I hold him largely responsible for me taking up the mantle of a record producer myself. I've learnt so much from him in the past and was so grateful to be apart of this record with him and the band.
I remember one of my first tasks was to melodyne all the bass tracks from the record, a technique I had previously not heard of - but it really makes the difference to keeping the low end in check, intonation of bass guitars can be tricky to maintain due to the longer necks and it's something that usually goes unnoticed until you're tracking guitars and vocals and something doesn't feel right. Neil also told me that 99% of the time, he records bass DI first. To re-assess and re-amp distorted bass tone once the distorted guitars have been tracked, as it will be much easier to place a complimentary tone into mix once you have them down, insane bit of advice that instantly changed bass sounds on my records forever.
I then got the chance to drive stick and engineer quite a fair bit of the guitars, I also got to see how Neil builds his tonal world with guitars - insight I consider to be invaluable to this day.
Following on from there, I was assigned to comping all of the guitar takes so that everything was totally on the grid, getting the balance ready for Jake to track vocals to the day after.
This record represents to me an incredible few days at an amazing studio, but also the point where I learned that hands on experience outweighs academic results 150%. In just a few days I had learned a heck of a lot more about actual modern record making than I was learning in "audio college" at the time. So after this weekend I sought out many more assistant positions in different studios with the only goal being to learn, for anyone looking to learn as much as they can about this line of work, I advise you do the same.
Jack x
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