Here it is,  a summary of what we’ve done at the studio since I last posted. Actually let me just dispense right now with the “we.” There is no “we” at Nuthouse Recording… there is me, with valuable, sometimes even crucial assists and contributions which I will do my best not to omit.

MUTINY WITHIN
In July, I produced a track for Roadrunner Records artists  Mutiny Within that the band had written as a theme song for WWE wrestler Evan Bourne. William Putney contributed his massive metal know-how on drum tracking day and slayed all of the drum edits. I had jury duty concurrent with the mixes, which was a bummer except that I got a meatloaf sandwich up the street from the Jersey City courthouse that was positively delicious.
Here’s some totally shitty YouTube video of  Mr. Bourne entering the ring to the track:

CRUEL BLACK DOVE
Other bands that came through this summer included Cruel Black Dove, a female-fronted act that evokes PJ Harvey and  Garbage. I think they will go places. Here’s a video from a track that I did not record. Let it also be known that the sessions did not in any way resemble what you are about to see in this video. We run a family-friendly operation here!

UPON A BURNING BODY
In late summer/early fall, Will came and recorded drums for the Sumerian Records debut of young deathcore hotshots Upon a Burning Body. Will is really stoked on the record, which I have not heard in its completed form yet, but if he says it kicks ass, it does.  These kids have some serious plugs. I saw the drummer (second from left) without his is in… it was wild.

FLAMING TUSK
The absolutely massively named Flaming Tusk and their debut album was up next. Crazy-ass extreme underground metal. A smarter, more well-read bunch of guys you have never met.  They are obsessed with bizarre spirits (of the alcoholic, not supernatural type) and had bottles of some of the weirdest shit I have ever seen (artichoke liqueur, anyone?) at the ready at all times. Some excellent video was shot during the recording. Enjoy…
amp;feature=player_embedded&fs=1″>

THOSE MOCKINGBIRDS
After the punishing task of completing the Tusk album, the Nuthouse frigate entered considerably less metallic waters. I  produced the debut SideCho records single for New Jersey alt-rockers Those Mockingbirds

ANDY ALEDORT
I also mixed the live album for Dickey Betts guitarist and Guitar World Magazine instructional DVD star Andy Aledort. That’s Andy on the left at one of his gigs with Dickey.

FIVE FINGER DEATH PUNCHLast but not least, we had chart topping metal outfit Five Finger Death Punch in the studio for a day of drum tracking. These guys will be on the main stage of next year’s Mayhem Tour, and were super cool and mellow despite the fact that they all had colds and were smack dab in the middle of a grueling tour. I was going to imbed their latest video, but youtube won’t let me. Watch it here.

The following post assumes that you acknowledge that The Who’s Live at Leeds is, in fact, the greatest live record ever. As one not given to making absolutist statements of this sort (at least not positive ones… I’ll often proclaim that an album or band is, “bullshit”), the supremacy of Live at Leeds over every other real or purported live record is a  truth that I hold to be unalienable. Why? Everything. The sound. The performances. The Energy. The unbelievable luck that the band was actually set up to record on a night where God descended from above and said, “I’m here to watch your gig, and therefore, it shall be good.”Having said that, from what I can tell, Leeds University was anything but a posh venue. Dig it:                Yup. The greatest live album of all time was recorded in a cafeteria. At any rate, I have always wanted to have a snare drum for the studio like the one that Who drummer Keith Moon used at this show. Problem was, no one was sure which snare it was. I asked my friend and drummer Ray Kubian to investigate, and after several months of assiduous research, he found this.               Now if you’re a drum nerd, you be able to tell from this shot from the very same Leeds performance that  Moon was in fact using a 5×14 Ludwig Supra-phonic. So what did I go and do? I hit the internets and got one on eBay (a ‘71, one year later than the Live at Leeds performance but it’ll do).  And yes, it sounds FUCKING AWESOME.         

Finished mixing an album for New Jersey’s famed glam-cock-sleaze rockers Frankenstein 3000 last night. The album will be released on Main Man Records in the spring. If you’ve read earlier posts, you’ll recall that that’s the same guys who put out the Winter Hours tribute disc, A Few Uneven Rhymes, that we recorded a track with Matthew Caws of Nada Surf  for. F3K actually recorded the album all DIY-stylee (rather well, actually) on some sort of of Yamaha digital multitrack which actual sounds OK good except that it has a REALLY crispy-sounding brickwall limiter that kicks in if it’s seeing an input signal that scares it. Like REALLY crispy. Like Ministry record crispy. Eh, you live and learn. The band’s frontman, Keith Roth, has several cool things going for him:  1) He looks A LOT like Tommy Lee. Like if Tommy Lee was 5′ 8″  2) He’s the Host of “Electric Ballroom” on New Jersey’s WRAT   3) He DJs on Sirius/XM where he also produces New York Dolls frontman Davis Johansen’s radio show. Here’s some really shitty footage of F3K performing the Dolls’ “Lookin For A Kiss” with David Jo himself on vocals. 

Scale the Summit have posted another video of them recording their Prosthetic Records debut, Carving Desert Canyons,  which comes out this Feb. If you’re a guitarist into players executing feats of mind-blowing intricacy and speed, you will find it to be super watch-worthy and perhaps, if that’s how you roll, almost erotic in nature. If fretboard antics are not your bag, you may want to pass on this one, although there’s a good bit in the middle where I seem to be having a nervous breakdown and I start doing the wave and throwing the goat simultaneously.   

 

 

 

Recordists will note that I have a 421, Royer, and 57 all lined up more or less phase coherently on the sweet cabinet of each cabinet. The 57… eh. The Royer and 421 were sweet though. I also took a direct signal off every guitar track because editing those nice clean transients is much more efficient than mucking through the muck.  Ok that’s definitely enough nerdiness for one post.   

 

 

 

 

 

It’s been pointed out to me by concerned parties that I haven’t posted anything since June, and that if you’re gonna have a studio blog, you better write in that blog or people are going to think that there’s nothing going on. In fact, quite the opposite is true. Here are a few bullet points… highlights shall we say.  

 

 

Finished up the Right on Dynamite EP. It sounds super good,  everybody’s happy. The lead-off track, “Time” has already landed in a Ford Sync (that’s where you talk to your car and tell it to do shit) commercial. You can see it here:  www.fordvehicles.com/discoversync. It’s the sixth spot. And, yes, I did try to embed it, but the Ford website does not offer that option, which explains a lot about their current predicament.  

   

 

 

 

In September, a band called Scale the Summit came up all the way from Houston to record their Prosthetic Records debut. They play  instrumental metal. Yeah, yeah I know… are you done laughing? We’ll you’re wrong. They’re fucking AMAZING. Melodic, memorable, compositionally savvy… the whole deal. And funny to boot. After the drummer Pat, finished his tracks, he basically sat on the couch and made weird Yoda noises. Excellent tension breaker when you’re trying to figure out if that Mixolydian run might actually need to be Lydian… or something. At any rate, the record is complete and will be released in February. I am very proud of the the work we did. No corners were cut, no deals made with the demon of “eh, that’ll probably sound ok with all the other tracks on top of it.”The band made and excellent blog about the experience that you can see here.

 

Here’s some footage of that little fuckin’ spider monkey Pat. When the camera pans you can see Travis, the member of the band most likely to die of a stress related coronary before he reaches the age of 24

 

Since Scale The Summit wrapped in mid October, there’s been a bunch of super cool artists making the trip up the dreaded 66 steps to the NH including Bird of Youth, a group featuring singer/songwriter Beth Warena that’s being produced by Okkervil River singer Will Sheff and Twilight Procession, a bunch of rugged dudes from Jersey City who have enlisted the help of noted songstress Heather Duby for additional vocals and keys. 

 

Our good friend Matthew Caws of Nada Surf also popped in to record a version of Winter Hours’ “One Small Achievement” for A Few Uneven Rhymes a tribute album to the band that will be released December 30 on Mainman Records. 

 

 Here’s some video of WH in their late-eighties prime.

 

 November also saw the Nuthouse’s first foray into the strange yet ever-expanding world of the humorous musical duo. It’s a concept that dates back to the Smothers Brothers.

 

 

And also includes Cheech and Chong

 

 

 

 

 

 

Tenacious D

 

 

 

 

Flight Of The Conchords

 

 

 

And the guys I recorded, Good For The Jews, a comedy rock twosome feature Blender Magazine Music Editor Rob Tannenbaum and former Rosenburgs frontman David Fagin. They were super cool, laid down some seriously mean vocal harmonies, and wouldn’t let me pay for a single meal. Solid.

 

                                                            

 This weekend,  I  mix “Victory” a new track from the Austin/Nola band Jerusalem which features members of the the Gutter Twins and the Twilight Singers. It has strings, horns, mandolin, 12-string you name it. I have my work cut out for me!                                                         

Nick, bassist and vocalist for Right On Dynamite, the Greenpoint, Brooklyn band that I’m recording right now is like a fucking stealth video blogging savant. Whenever he come to the studio, he bust s out this little handheld digital camera, disappears for an hour and returns with a totally happening video for the band’s blog. http://www.rightondynamite.wordpress.com  

So Sasha Frere-Jones from the New Yorker decided to write a feature in the magazine about the Antares plug-in  Autotune, and a friend of mine gave him my number. I was mentioned in the piece, although unfortunately the studio wasn’t. The accompanying podcast, however, in which Sasha comes to the studio and has me tune his rendition of Kelly Clarkson’s “Since You Been Gone” made it all the way to Gawker. Here it is…. http://www.newyorker.com/online/2008/06/09/080609on_audio_frerejones