satellites satellites satellites

Guitar pedals over here in the States are crazy cheap. It's amazing! So Tim's been hitting ebay pretty hard. The latest in his collection is the 'shredmaster' with which he formed an instant love affair. I'm not sure whether it's because of the name or because it makes you sound like my bloody valentine. Probably both. I bought myself a 'space station' because that's how I like to roll (ie: searching for higher meanings, getting all cosmic and shit). We put the new purchases to use the other day on new tune
'satellites' sounding like '90s shoe gazer meets Jeff Lynne'... our new favorite of the recordings.

Top 5 "fruitiest" instruments used so far

1. glockenspiel
2. sleigh bells
3. theremin
4. 12 string guitar
5. plastic wood blocks

I feel love

We're into acoustic guitar territory now with the recording our 70s pop / italo vocoder epic 'feel the love'. To our initial terror Goldsworthy pulled the 12 string guitar off the shelf (giving us visions of burned out 70's glam guitarists with heads up their own asses). Thankfully it sounded great and we all heaved a sigh of relief. The last two days have been spent laying down a myriad of synths and even arranging some strings to sweeten the deal. It's the longest we've spent on any of the tracks so by mitchell's mathematical equation this should be at least a top 5 hit, possibly number one in some countries.

Build a fire...

The last two days have been spent working on an album version of 'hearts on fire'. Yesterday we re-recorded the vocals, big club drums and some of the synth arrangements, and took today reshaping the intro for the track, deciding that it should sound like something a bit more organic in keeping with the other tracks we've recorded. After overdubbing endless layers of warbling synth loops and strange sound FX it was starting to take shape. At one point Tim even had us running some New York radio station through a chain of filter pedals from a gigantic boombox they had lying around. The KLF would have been proud.

Roll the snare

Yesterday was spent putting the finishing touches on our recording of "out there on the ice". Despite hangover I took all morning trying to record vocals. Then we found a miniature mirrorball at the back of the studio and things took on a very chicago '88 vibe. With the lights dimmed so we could barely see anything, we sat around the mixing desk rearranging the track until it had perhaps the longest breakdown and drum machine snare roll in the history of dance music. We were all jumping around going crazy to it until we got tired and collapsed back down in hysterics... and then realized it was actually a bit ridiculous and shortened it back to how it was. Thankfully the cracking snare roll managed to survive to the final recording. It's going to do some serious damage in the clubs.

Hello from Studio DFA

Hello everyone and welcome to our revamped page. We're in New York recording our second album right now (in case you didn't know). So we thought we'd use our spare time to post updates of how the recording is progressing and anything else exciting that happens on the way.

While we're here we're in the 'loving hands' of Tim Goldsworthy in the producers chair. And here at DFA's Studio we're surrounded by all manner of modular synths, pedals, drum machines and effects units. It's a bit like a playground for musicians, but hopefully we keep our minds on the job long enought to squeeze out an album worth of tunes. (sorry, I mean "tuuuuuunes!")