Interplay

Interplay recording at Rushden – the next stage

Photo by Neil Hunter

I’ve just spent two days listening back to everything we recorded in August at Nick Weldon’s Shoe Factory in Rushden, Northants.  Amazingly we put down 20 tunes while we were there, including many of our current repertoire and some we haven’t played much in a while.  The results are really gratifying – several ‘first takes’ and many more that need just a little tweak to be ready for release.

Several factors may have helped to make this a really enjoyable as well as productive recording experience.  Undoubtedly the atmosphere at the Shoe Factory was one – not only is it spacious and comfortable, it’s also the home and working base of very creative musicians, so it’s conducive to music-making.  Nick and Andra made us very welcome too.

Another thing is we didn’t spend a lot of time on each tune, one by one, as frequently happens.  Instead we played a few tunes in a short ‘set’ and then played them all again.  This way second takes were really fresh – and third takes were often unnecessary.

Now I’m heading over to One Nation Studio in Leamington to get together with John Wilson for the mixing stage.  John engineered the session for us in Rushden and he knows how we play live, so I’m confident he will help us get a really good ‘live’ sound for this recording.  I’ve worked with him several times now and really value his musical approach to the technical aspects of recording.

If you’d like to see more images from the session, here’s a slide show of Neil’s pictures  for you to enjoy.

Meanwhile keep an ear / eye open for our new CD.  Hopefully it won’t be long in coming!