New year/ New Noise
New Years resolution #7: Do studio blog.
I think we do some fun stuff here in our soundproof boxes, so I’ll endeavour to catalogue the most interesting stuff. and update! Quality promise: there will be no “So… Steven Guitarman was here this week and it was good”, but there will be lots of “Dave dropped the compressor/now it sounds like Satan/we put it on everything and now everything sounds like Satan” or “…then we gaffa-taped microphones to a pigeon and recorded a guitar part with the thing flying round the room/it really gave an organic sense of movement to the track”.
2011 was one of the funnest years for us so far. We started the year with a varied influx of album projects, from Symptom tracking a live 5-piece band in two days to Grey Goes Down labouring for a month on their debut long-player (and we’re excited about recording those guys again next month). GGD’s “Love Letters To Rock And Roll” proved to be our last hyper-slick, digitally edited record – a month later we were plumbing in all the spaghettimess of cabling for our gorgeous 24 track Otari tape machine. It’s been a blast over the last eight months recording everything from whole bands live in one room- vocals and all- to intricately layered pop, crushing hardcore, industrial synth-goth and low-down gritty blues.
For this year we plan to find more excellent bands, root ourselves more in the local and online scenes, build a further load of custom recording gear and – most of all – make even more bands high-five/jump up and down/weep for joy on playback of their music. That bit’s our favourite.
Mark
FilmClub
Dear Friend;
Thanks for accepting our invite to FilmClub. The importance of your role in FilmClub cannot be understated.
At the Crash Factory we’ve got some videos. VHSs. A cockload of. Our clients sometimes have a hard time picking the proverbial wheat from the crap. This is where you come in: simply peruse the brief* catalogue of titles below, pick one you’ve seen and submit a short, long or very long review. Be as hard or as drippy as you like. You’re a film Nazi so act like one. Opine. See how many titles you can sum up with “Shit Sandwich” or “Bono comes out of a lemon”. Each review will earn you a smile, a heartfelt thanks and a Sherbet Fountain**. You’ll be bored at work tomorrow, right?
Email submissions to thecrashfactory@gmail.com
Thx.
Mark.
*brief like Return Of The King was brief.
**may be*** substituted by digital image of Sherbet Fountain. Cash Value nil.
***will be.
Radiohead live at the Astoria
The Last Starfighter
Blade Runner
Soft cell: videos
The Matrix Reloaded
The Matrix
A New Hope (1st digital remaster)
The Empire Strikes Back (1st digital remaster)
Return Of The Jedi (1st digital remaster)
Star Wars: the phantom menace
Monsters inc.
Fly Away Home
The Parent Trap (Lindsay Lohan version)
Metallica: a year and a half in the life
Wild Things
Dire Straits: Alchemy
Jeff Buckley: live in chicago
Dracula 2001
Leaving las vegas
Jay & Silent Bob strike back
American History X
Unforgiven
Bush: Alleys & Motorways
The Italian Job (original)
Mortal Kombat
Friends s1: 5-8
The Shawshank Redemption
Dogma
American Psycho
Pulp Fiction
28 Days Later
Girl, Interrupted
Star Trek: Generations
Cats
Bullet to Beijing
The Mummy
The Mummy Returns
Personal Services
Queen: we will rock you
Battle Royale
Freeway
Boozestock 2001
Snatch
Lock, Stock & two smoking barrels
Batman Returns
Simpsons: bart wars
Heart: if looks could kill
Bring It On
3rd Rock from the sun: in 3d
Ricky Gervais: Animals
Mallrats
Gremlins
Lord of the rings
Cruel intentions (1&2)
Friends: pilot
U2: popmart
It’s A Wonderful Life
The Godfather I
The Godfather II
The Godfather III
Friends s4: 21-23
The Krays
Alice Cooper trashes the world
Scarface
Road to Perdition
Die Hard
Die Hard II: Die Harder
Die Hard With A Vengence
A Time To Kill
Pirates of the Carribean
Daredevil vs Spiderman
Matrix Revolutions
Smashing Pumpkins: veiwphoria
Beavis and Butthead: the future of Beavis and Butthead
Wallace and Gromit: a close shave
Fawlty Towers collection
South Park: Bigger, Longer, Uncut
Angel Enforcers
Street Fighter
Sleepy Hollow
The Virgin Suicides
Starship Troopers
Red Dwarf: smeg outs
Red Dwarf 1: the end
Red Dwarf: Smeg Ups
The Blair Witch Project
Final Destination
The Beatles: magical mystery bore
The Mummy returns
Great Expectations
The Score
Gardening from scratch
Raiders Of The Lost Ark
The Temple Of Doom
Indiana Jones And The Last Crusade
The Count of Monte Cristo
Fight Club
Twelve Monkeys
Red Dawn
American Pie 2
A Knights Tale
Green day: Astoria 1997-Nimrod Tour
X-files: jersey devil/shadows
Star Trek: the empath/the tholian web
Star Trek: first contact
Phone Booth
Toy Story
Iron Maiden: Live After Death
The Tommyknockers
Swordfish
Fargo
Red Dwarf v: back to reality
When Harry Met Sally
Mean Machine
Hedwig & the angry inch
Fear
Christine
Paddington’s Christmas special
Zoolander
Coyote Ugly
Hard & Heavy vol4
School of Rock
Spaceballs
One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest
Signs
The Sixth Sense
Unbreakable
Bridget Jones’s diary
Ocean’s Eleven
This Is Spinal Tap
The Rutles
Buffy the Vampire Slayer s4 box
Muppets From Space
The Muppet Movie
The Great Muppet Caper
Rolling Stones: voodoo lounge
10 Things I Hate About You
Jackass vol 2/3
Robocop
Licence to drive
The Little Mermaid
Shooting Stars: unviewed
Dinosaur
The League Of Gentlemen Xmas Special
Labrynth
Shawn Of The Dead
Marion & Geoff
Mr Bean: The Merry Mishaps Of Mr Bean
Joe Satriani: the satch tapes
Flowers In The Attic
Friends: the final series
Muse: Hullabaloo
League of Gentlemen s2
Ferris Bueller’s Day Off
Transvision Vamp: singles
Vimla lalvani’s Vim Yoga
Mr Bean: The Exciting Adventures Of Mr Bean
Mallrats
The Hole
Rosemary Conley’s whole body programme
Star Trek: Insurrection
The Second Coming
Urban Legends 2
Four Weddings And a Funeral
One Night at Mccool’s
Nirvana: live tonight sold out
Wayne’s World 2
Atlantis
The Secret Of Nimh
Highlander
Beauty And The Beast
Swimfan
Dune
The Crow
Pulp Fiction
Geri Yoga
A Life Less Ordinary
Clerks
Star Trek: the cage
Star Trek: Nemesis
Bottom live 2
Go
Prince of Egypt
Lost boys
The Prophecy
Man On The Moon: The Andy Kaufman Story
Terminator 2
Friends s5 e13-16
High Fidelity
Best of Father Ted
Driven
Cher: fitness- a new attitude
Fist of Fury
Transformers: the animated movie
The Exorcist
Addams Aamily Values
The Secret gGarden
Minority Report
Ready? Rolling…
It’s coming on for two months since we kicked our Powermac down the stairs and told the insurance company it “just stopped working one day” and things have never been better.
After a day of recording to tape the consensus was simply “please don’t make me record music onto a hard drive again”. For the first time since I quit my first tape engineering job in, like, 2001 I’ve felt like I don’t have to fight the medium to get a record to sound good… and the records have been more than good!
I feel massively lucky that our first bookings have been a list of Nottingham bands we think are really important right now – we’ve rolled tape with interstellar lady-raider Dick Venom and his Terrortones, the mucky-as-you-like When A Train Hits A Truck, big rock from JD&theFDCs <represent>, the Blippy-yet-crushing postrock of Aparatus Of Sleep and a whole bunch more. Everyone’s left having a really positive recording experience and it’s tremendous how uncluttered the process is here now.
One thing that’s surprised me is how many people want us to mix to 1/4″ tape as well as/instead of CD so the band can hand it to a mastering engineer in an analogue format, as well as having a copy of their music that will still be playable in decades to come. Try doing that with a non-brand CDR with a couple of scratches in five years time…
Sounds will be up soon. Real, real soon! We’ve been aquiring more extraneous chunks of cool gear – spring reverbs and tape echos and things that massively distort other things. I plan on using those on EVERYTHING.
Please please drop us a line and let me talk your ear off about recording. Maybe even do some songs with us!
Mark
Refurb-A-Go-Go
In April 2011, after nearly five years in business, we made our last record with a computer and quietly closed our doors.
In June we re-open after a hefty refurb and a new entourage of analogue recorders! We’re really excited about recording to tape and we hope you are too. After recording hundreds songs using a mouse, a space bar and plugins galore, we feel it’s time to start making some *real* records. The smell of tape running is a beautiful thing.
We’d love to make your next record. Drop us a line and tell us how it sounds in your head.
But first! The plumbing in of miles of cable and antiquated connectors. Pass the soldering iron…