Lights EP

[danlea]

Hey fellas,

Just noticed this forum and thought I may as well try and plug my band's music. Four of the tracks from an upcoming CD are mixed and provisionally mastered and are available for download at lights.4shared.com (high quality mp3s). They were mixed by Richard Rainey (who works with U2 and consequently has two Record of the Year Grammy's for Beautiful Day and Walk On) in a small room at Olympic Studios (check out the bands that have recorded and mixed there!). That was a great experience for us in itself.

I should start by saying that I'm no showboater and I don't write my parts to stand out, but that's not to say I've not put a lot of thought into them - just don't expect many leading basslines from me! Just Say Goodbye is a fairly typical driving indie track - the bass has a wonderful clear precision tone in this one. Welcome To The Real World is a dark jazzy take on indie music and features two pops (as opposed to slaps) and a little bass run in the second verse (go me!). Losing the Proof is a dancy track with a punctuated bass line written around a great drum beat. Lastly, The Fear is simply a great 'anti-ballad', and without anything of interest in the bass part, I'll note that I play a short violin part in this one!

All the bass parts were recorded with my standard setup (see signature) using a 10" speaker cone as a mic on the 1x15 cab and an SM57 on the 2x10. Recording was done over about a week with one of the engineers at Fortress Studios, namely Ed.

We've recorded three more tracks at Urchin Studios (with some recording done elsewhere) and these are being finished off over the next week or so. They should be available for download (at the same URL) soon after that. On one of the tracks I use the DHA pedal for certain sections and for one glorious extended burst/rumble of bass feedback at the end.

Whilst I'm on the subject of feedback, anything from you lot is very welcome.

Dan.

[ShergoldSnickers]

Understated bass playing that just fits the context perfectly. Very tasteful violin on The Fear, just enough to leave me wanting more. Great bass sound that underpins everything on all the tracks. A quality job.

The only criticism I have is that the keyboards are too busy sometimes, and would be better off leaving a bit more space for the guitar and vocals. Minor though. Excellent otherwise.

[danlea]

Cheers! Glad you liked the tracks, and even that you listened to them in the first place. As always there are some things which didn't work out quite as we'd hoped: issues with the upright piano, having to use a digital piano for JSG (and LTP, but that's fine)... The thing is the piano is supposed to be more of a driving force a lot of the time, but the sound often doesn't quite live up to the part, meaning it can seem to be something of a distraction, so I know what you mean. In any case, I'm very happy with them overall.

Thanks again...