Blog: Mike Peters ‘Under Attack’ Recording Diary Entry #40

Day Forty: Wednesday 12th July 2005

‘Superchannel’ sounds as good today as it did last night. The mix is run off together with an instrumental backing track mix without vocals and a mix of all the vocals only. We do this just in case we need to have a louder / quieter vocal when we come to master the album. There is always someone out there in the radio promotion department or the record company who says “let’s have a mix with the vocals louder”. So this is just to head them off at the pass. The next track up is “I Never Left I Only Went Away’. James wants to tackle this track as he thinks it is going to be one of the more difficult ones. The first thing to be done is record my rhythm part. I actually wrote the guitar riff with Billy Duffy in mind but even so, we want to steer this away from ‘The Cult’ territory. I worked out a way of playing the intro in a similar way as the intro to ‘Superchannel’. It works well. Next up, James puts on the big Les Paul sound. The track is sounding good and George wants to make the bass and drums sound really big. He puts the bass through a guitar pedal which sends the bass down an octave. Something really interesting happens to the instrument down in the extreme bottom end and adds a lot of weight to the whole track. I suggest a counter melody guitar part which works well in the chorus and James twists the main riff into a splendid ‘solo’. In fact there are two ‘solo’s in this track which George is having a bit of a problem with. James comes up with a way of playing the guitar parts that is making the two ‘solos’ work. I eventually get to sing the lead vocal late at night, but it’s sounding great. I decide to sing the first verse an octave lower than usual and this gives the chorus a lot of power when it comes in. George suggests a great discordant, Hendrix style chord just before the chorus that really works. By the end of the night the track is definitely taking shape.

Publication::
Author::