Ash frontman Tim Wheeler kept an online studio diary documenting the last week of recording for the bands forth studio album at Sound City studio’s in LA in November 2003.
November 15, 2003
Hola, today was pretty hectic, putting finishing touches on “Orpheus”, “Clones” and “Evil Eye”. Tomorrow is our last day and all our gear is getting picked up in the morning, as I packed up my 10,000,000 guitar pedals it dawned on me that we’re actually almost done. There will be much partying to be had tomorrow night when the last rough mix goes down. Short post tonight as it’s 4.30 and I should get some zzzzzzzzzzz gotta say, I love making records…
November 14, 2003
The penultimate day of recording!!! Actually we’ve got Saturday on hold in case we don’t finish so that was a lie unfortunately. Got loads of finishing off to do. Put some more guitars on “Solace” and a sweet Velvet Underground celeste on the breakdown. Flew in some mellotron strings and bang it was finished. The rest of the night was spent redoing my vocal on “Orpheus”. It was the first song I sang on this session and didn’t really have the vibe it should. It was a case of demo-itis, where the 1st version was so good, it was a tough one to surpass, but goddam it sounds wunderbar now. I’m glad we took the time to redo it.
Fact of the day: We have now been in LA for 74 days. That’s longer than David Blane was in his box.
As a side note; one day someone will acknowledge the genius of “Candy”, they might be on crack of course, but that won’t stop them from recognising something good going on.
Loads of dark vibes on the album, “Evil Eye”, “Vampire Love”, “Singapore Song”, “Clones”… for your wasted listening pleasure.
And finally the best thing to have happened over here has got to be making the record. It seems to have been all we’ve done! It’s been 2 months, but it’s really flown by.
November 13, 2003
It rained today for probably the third time this year in LA. I loved it. I never thought I’d see the day I miss rain, but it’s happened.
Rick did a bunch of percussion today and Charlotte sang her vocals on “Renegade Cavalcade”, “On a Wave” and “Solace”. Had a studio visit from Rich Costey who’s going to mix the album in December, he had a big smile on his face when we played him a few tracks. He’s really an amazing mixer and I can’t wait to hear his genius applied to the record.
The place we’re in at the moment is pretty damn fancy, but there aren’t any photos. It’s decadent to say the least.
The studio ‘Sound City’ where we did all the drums and rhythm tracks doesn’t have a website either but you can see it in the “Orpheus” clip. It’s a legendary studio with an amazing big live room (awesome drum sound). But it’s prettty much a no frills place. Mind you, every evening after dinner I do pine for it’s Miss Pacman machine.
As for the album title, no inspiration has struck yet, things have been pretty hectic for the last couple of months. We’ll get some head-space when we get home and come up with something suitable for this monster… however I reckon we’ve got some good song titles to pick from if things get desperate.
Don’t know what the first single is going to be yet there’s almost too many to choose from. I’m looking forward to hearing Tav’s opinion, he’s got great ears for these kind of things. You see, my trouble is I think they’re all great. As for guitar solos, this album has the most metal shredding and finger tapping of any Ash album. We’ve cranked this one right up. “Out of the blue”, “On a Wave”, “Detonator”, “Vampire Love” and “Meltdown” are all oozing.
Maximum fretwank action. There are wicked tones all over the rest of the record too…
November 12, 2003
Today was a good day, Dave Grohl came down to the studio and loved the new stuff. He made us play “Clones” twice. It’s amazing, I was sitting there watching one of my heroes freaking out and playing air-drums to our new record. Sometimes I have to pinch myself…
I spent the rest of the day doing my vocals for “On a Wave”. It’s turned out, you guessed it… killer! (that’s our producer Nick’s favourite word btw) so yeah, other exciting news, I just bought a Soundelux Elux 251 microphone, nope, didn’t think you’d find that very interesting…
Buenos noches…
See you tomorrow…
3 days to go…
November 11, 2003
Good day/evening to ya… had a visit in the studio this afternoon from the author JT Leroy, he came down to hear some stuff with his friends Speedy and Astor (in a band called Thistle) and their kid Thor. Check his books out, they might freak you out a bit but they’re absolutely amazing:
He’s managed to acquire a stellar celeb groupie list that would make Coldplay proud…
After they left I put down a guitar solo for “Starcrossed”. It’s pretty much finished now. We had to make the decision last night to take 2 more days to finish all the songs. Changing flights and all that. We always seem to over-run our deadlines, but we just got to get this monster finished right! Spent the rest of today finishing the vocal on “Renegade Cavalcade”. It’s totally killlerrrrrrrrr!!!
As for Robin photos, I’ll see what I can do. Don’t get too excited though. Steve strange as Batman was far more interesting in my opinion!
November 10, 2003
Dear diary. Boy am I glad I only undertook this sisyphean task for the last week of recording… ah it’s not that bad really…
Had a productive day doing loads of guitars that sound like they’re from outer space on a track currently called Tinseltown”. In August we demoed a 10 minute, 6 section epic version of it. But we decided to edit it down to just the Donna Summer meets Primal Scream in-a-fight section and make a killer psycho tune out of it. I might be deaf from listening to it all day but goddamn, right now it sounds like a hit.
I think the Hamilton/Homme convention involved hanging in the kitchen supping on gin ’n’ juice and discussing other bands names with phallic overtones (e.g Wueens of the Boneage, Jimmy Eat Dick etc…).
We’re now going back in on “Starcrossed”, Charlotte’s here and ready for some backing vocals.
Alrighty, well there’s work to be done, see you all tomorrow…
November 09, 2003
9.09pm Saturday, all the rest of LA is partying hard… and we’re in the studio… Charlotte wasn’t feeling the vocal thing last night, so I sang “Renegade Cavalcade” instead. Got back to the ranch at 4am, hung out with Rick and Steve in the kitchen talking shite.
I’d just missed Charlotte putting away half a bottle of Jack in an attempt to get to sleep. Left them to it at 5 and headed for bed. Rick stayed up till 8 phoning long lost friends on the other side of the atlantic on his mobile. Been down here all afternoon working on “Renegade Cavalcade”. We’re going a bit stir-crazy in the studio, so we’re gonna head out for an hour to the beach for inspiration. We’ll listen to the rough mixes on the way. Along with “Invasion of Your Privacy” by RATT. be afraid.
November 08, 2003
Ok, it’s 10.34 pm. I’m sitting here listening to Charlotte sing her vocals on “Solace”, sipping on a gentleman jack and cola, contemplating giving up cos my lyrics will never reach the starry heights of matt-o-mac’s…
But it’s all about the struggle anyway… so I shall persevere…
Today we’ve just been working on this tune. Then we’ll move on and do the backing vocals for “Starcrossed”.
For some shameless name-dropping we went to Dave Grohl’s halloween party on Saturday and got royally messed up. Mark was ’Jason’ from friday the 13th. ChaRLOTTE was a witch, Rick was the grim reaper but looked more like darth maul. Steve strange, our agent (y’know the horseman) was Batman and I was Robin. We’re all still recovering…
Then on Wednesday Josh Homme and Brody Armstrong called round to the house and hung out with Mark and Steve, unfortunately I was singing myself hoarse in the studio so I missed all the fun.
I’ve been here so long I’ve started speaking Californian, all I can think is that the record is sounding rad, you’ll all be like, totally stoked!
November 07, 2003
Well I can’t promise i’ll do this everyday, but here’s what’s happened in the last 24hrs… was recording vocals for “Starcrossed” last night with Nick our producer, sang my voice totally out by 2am so went out to meet the other Ash reprobates at a sunset strip bar. Threw some darts then retired to the mansion with a bunch of LA amigos. A lot of pool was played and shite was talked. Crashed out at 4. Was woken at 7 by a paralytic Rick blasting music. Asked him to turn it down, went back to bed.
Today I finished “Starcrossed” and am about to sing another sweet ballad called “Solace”.