The Great Unwashed - EP
It’s been a while since I’ve posted anything here so this seemed like an apt opportunity. There are many other things I should probably also write about too… expect more at some point in the near future. When I have some more time. Probably.
The Great Unwashed’s self-titled EP is out now! Heavily based around their live performances all of tracks 2-5 were recorded in two days at Low Four. Track 1 (Unfold) was recorded earlier in a single day using much the same methods but in a different studio. You can have a look at the setup below as this is thankfully one of the occasions where I remembered to take some photos - plus it’s quite a fun setup.
Main live room during initial tracking.
The live room at the studio is broken up into two halves with these fairly thick blinds you can bring down between the two which are surprisingly effective. Now, usually I like to have the drums in this space, as above, some close room microphones and some distant ones on the other side with the blinds open. The close ones sound more like your traditional room mics whilst the distant ones sound ludicrously diffuse, which is something I find myself leaning on more in heavier sections when mixing, a pretty standard Room A/B setup. In this case though the setup is different, I used the other side for all the guitar amps and had a pair of omni 414s which sat in the same space with them to capture the reflections whilst being low enough to benefit from the baffles surrounding the amps.
There are three amps in use here, placed roughly where I figured they would be placed in the stereo field in relation to the room mics.
When mixing it was great to have these two sets of rooms, each receiving a smidge of spill from the other room, really allowing me to control how in the room the mix felt. In a lot of the quiet sections I leant on the guitar rooms more and there’s some lovely details that come through. For example it was raining on the day of recording so you can occasionally hear where the roof was leaking a little at the time in the background (I Do Try opening) which makes the whole thing feel all the more immersive. (Which reminds me that an Atmos mix would be fun for this at some point).
EP Cover Art by Liam Maxwell
The majority of all the recordings are made up of the initial best live takes where we were capturing: Drums, Bass, Guitars, & Synths. The piano and vocals were overdubbed after along with a few extra guitar layers or replacement parts, when overdubbing the guitars the setup remained exactly the same and we tracked the room mics too which allowed for them to sit really comfortably with everything from the initial takes.
The snare in particular I feel sounds rather chunky in these recordings, in fact the same snare was used on Dutch Uncles’ ‘Fester’. Colloquially known as ‘Bin Snare’ due to it being rescued by Brendan Williams from a bin around the time before they were recorded ‘Out of Touch in the Wild’ (2013), which definitely sounds like the right decision now.
Anyway, do have a listen to the EP, it sits comfortably in album length territory at a hair under 30 minutes long: for you if you like post-rock, mid-west emo, Sigur Rós, music-based journeys in general. You can listen on Apple Music here or on Tidal here or of course you can get it from the band’s Bandcamp!