The Newer Album: It's a WRAP!!!

Okay a few things:

Firstly, the album will NOT be called Mushy Muschi Moshi, for reasons explained below. It will be called "The Newer Album". The songs are as follows, but not necessarily in this order:

Tracks:

Zombie Tragedy
Sudbury
Bring The Shit Back
Chachi Boys and Girls
Fat Dancer
Where Did It Go?
Phil Collins
Gumball
Tell The Doctor
Dutch Girls On Bicycles
Carousal
Urban Grey
Omigod

These songs are from various stages of Trike's illustrious career. Fat Dancer was written 9 years ago, when I moved back to Vancouver from Montreal, part of Bring the Shit Back was written in 2000 (when I was working at Brother's Restaurant in Vancouver - I would wear a monk's robe and hand out orange fliers to gullible tourists in Gastown and write rap verses in my little pocket-sized notepad about how much I despised them. It was updated two years ago when Xania contributed a verse) and the rest of the song was written in Holland in 2005. Sudbury was written after I toured Canada for the first time with Wes Knight, in a previous incarnation of Trike. I read an article about auto-tuning by Robert Everett Green in The Globe and Mail. The rest, however, was written with Xania, with the exception of "Tell The Doctor", which was written by Wax Mannequin; the most recent being Where Did It Go, which we wrote in Saint John, mere days before recording.

Our recording process took many twists and turns. This is the story:

We recorded the music tracks in Saint John, New Brunswick with my bro, Peter Taylor in "Pocketlint Studios". We put live drums into a number of songs, thanks to Isaac Guimond. Mushy (which was cut out of the album in the end), Sudbury and Bring The Shit Back all feature Isaac's drumming meshed with the synth beats. Where Did It Go and Urban Grey originally had an organic drum track without the synth beats. We put acoustic guitar into a number of songs. We had my bro's kids and Pete's friends sing on "Bring The Shit Back". My brother mixed down all the music and we headed to Montreal for phase two: Vocals.

We stayed in a house full of grey-metal-heads (all in a band called Forusofus), who graciously let us use their rehearsal space to record. John Keane came and recorded lots and lots of vocals, glockenspiel (the glockenspiel was too quiet in Peter's mixdown), jewelery scraping along the edge of a drum cymbal (for Carousal), more violin and more keyboard tracks. It was a pretty steady process.

We thought the recording was done. Boy, we were wrong!

We were on our Euro Tour. John was in Montreal working on the tracks, putting the vocal tracks together; slicing, dicing, editing, auto-tuning and more. But we were playing our show in Marseilles with Harry Merry (NL). Ron had driven us down. Ron has worked with a fellow named Mark Lotterman on two albums. Mark is signed to Tocado Records (NL). We heard both albums and they sounded mint. He sat me down and said that if we wanted to (we had the next 12 days free), he would help produce our album; rerecord the drum tracks and beefing up the bass to make the album more dancy. That sounded like a great idea.

So we wrote John and said we would be mixing the album in Mijnsherenland (outside of Rotterdam) with Ron. He began sending us what he'd been up to; polished RARs with vocals and the music tracks.

Going through the songs, we realized that the music tracks for Urban Grey and Where Did It Go just weren't very good. We rerecorded them using Alex van de Meer's beats and some synth beats, and they sounded MUCH punchier. We added some electric guitar and more synth lines, to add more colour and spice. We also decided to record a cover of Wax Mannequin's "Tell The Doctor", with a synth-polka-pop feel.

My brother had been mixing a few songs and discovered that the vocals we recorded sounded muddy, and the esses were sharp. He said there were things we could do in post, but the best thing to do would be to rerecord them using a tube pre-amp. So, what began as a simple affair of beefing up a few songs became an elaborate third phase of the recording process. We returned to Holland after our Nantes, France show (the BEST France show we've ever had) and began phase four; three intense days of rerecording lead vocals for about 10 of the songs. We did a lot of work with John and wanted to keep what he did, meshing the two together. We also did plenty of harmonies with John that we could work with.

Yesterday, driving to pick up groceries, Ron told me his honest thoughts. He didn't feel Mushy was working. We hadn't properly recorded it in the first place, stopping the recording just before the last chorus, thinking we could stitch it in later. We recorded the last chorus with John but it sounded so different from the rest, and didn't feature the live drums. We had to make a decision. We had fourteen songs recorded. We planned for 13 to be on the album, and the most problematic one was "Mushy" so we decided to drop it. We'll most likely record it in May and release it as a single.

So, last night we were up til 7am recording. There was still more I wanted to do, but I knew at some point we would have to leave the project in Ron's capable hands. So we did. Plus, Xania, Rouslan (Russian Sax and flute player who played on three tracks) and Ron's dog, Gizmo, were all curled up in fetal positions on the studio floor. Ron was weaving back and forth with glazed eyes. We opened up the last tune, Dutch Girls (the first and last song we worked on with Ron: Ironic, considering he's dutch), listened to it and realized the vocals sounded fine. Our album was done.

And, to be honest, my head was still swirling with ideas for things we could do. I had been getting various ideas yesterday, but unfortunately, time didn't allow for those ideas to come to fruition. We had to let our baby go and hope for the best.

In the future, of course, it would be nice to have a few months to really work on an album. But, at the same time, it's good to have limits and constraints. It forces you to work somewhat efficiently and in the end, you're forced to kill your darlings. Anyway, the songs sounded pretty finished, and I'm sure with Ron's studio-trickery he can make them work.

We will pick a date for our official release online. Not yet... possibly in May.