Erin Lang Music

We spent the morning reveling in the success of the first annual Uphon Grillfest, and that kept my last day sadness at bay and my separation anxiety under control for a time. Besides there was still lots of work to do so we had to just pretend that it was any other day.
Still i couldnt help thinking ‘this will be the last pretzel’ and things along those lines. But anyways i know we will be back i just dont know when and that is.. anyway anyway anyway.. work to do!

We opened up ‘Happy to See You’ and it was sounding really nice.. i had thought after the last block that the chorus’ needed to be a bit more pronounced since there are only 2 and the first one is short and the verses so long.. so we replayed one of the guitars and added a little bit of electronic percussion that i had done at home. Roger thought of a really nice guitar part with a delay for a nice variation on the 2nd chorus and then i sang a bit of the old harmony vocals for the very end of the song. I think it is very rich and intense now. Then we opened up ‘now’ and it is a hard song to feel sad when its playing so that was good! uptempo and great synth lines, we ran some of the guitars through and amp to make them sound a little less clean, by this time the day was escaping as we worked quickly so we did a quick mix. Martin came in to tell me that i had a furry fan at the door and a little cat was sitting outside with her blue eyes shining in. She had wandered around in the studio earlier in the week and was back for more! my furriest fan…

I then proceeded to take 100 pictures of everything to make the last moments last. it made me feel a bit better. A few more last little things on Lightning and then we were backing up files and packing up gear.

Goodbyes are so sad and even though i should be so happy, the recording of my first album finished, i didn’t want it to end. i didn’t want to say goodbye. It has been such a huge step in my life, such a momentous time and i feel so lucky to have made the album with such amazing people. Rogers incredible faith in me and endless support, Mario’s passion and vision, Ron’s wonderful patience, i can hear all these things in the music and it is such a wonderful feeling. All the parts everyone played including Christoph and Martin.. i cant thank them enough.. or rather i cant thank them at all since i am too choked up by the time the car is packed and the sun is down.
I just hope they know.. i think they do.

in the liner notes of an album we were listening too in the car as we drove away it said “there is hell in hello but there is more in goodbye”

thank you guys.
and we will be back to mix it soon anyway!

We returned to the studio revived and refreshed and the things we had worked out the night before on ‘Until Then’ turned out to be pretty nice and mario knew just what to do to make it just right! Working out a variation on the one bar pattern that really helped the song move along and all kinds of other nice parts and variations that fit into the song like puzzle pieces instead of the percussion just being its own part going along parallel to the song. Quiet parts being subtle, pickups to choruses, its so nice when little things happen to compliment the song so well. So then we moved swiftly onto ‘1000 years old’.

When we first got to Weilheim for this block we listened to some drum programing that Martin Gretchman from Console and the Notwist did for this song. We loved it right away and were very happy because this song had been a problem song from the beginning but it sounded really good and the ascetic had somehow totally changed in a very good way. Also Martin had become a part of the making of the album in a way because he has a studio and office at Uphon too, so we were often together having little breaks chatting about the future and important things like music, drinking apfel shorle and eating bananas. He was also really great at just popping his head in the control room and making me feel really nice telling me how he liked this song or the other and what it made him feel. So it was so nice that he played on 1000 years and really fitting in the whole scheme of things.
Somewhere along the lines in this block when we had found this really nice bass sound we quickly put in a bass line and Roger put a synth bass on the verses that worked perfectly. We closed up the song to work on something else and only came back to it today. Right away re opening it I was very happy. I always thought it was a strong song despite all the problems and it really seemed to be working now. I think it is so strange how a song can be so many different things but that is a long discussion to be had over tall cool drinks late at night i think. So we still thought the chorus needed a bit more.. just in general a bit more.. again a nice nearly intangible thing so we started trying things out and finally thought we needed another guitar part to add speed and width to the chorus. Meanwhile the first annual Uphon studio BBQ (or German- “GrillFest”) was gearing up. We had decided to enjoy the good weather and some burned and or undercooked things one fine evening.
So while Ron and I were finishing up guitars Martin made caprese salad and Mario sliced and grilled a giant zucchini from his mums garden.
Christoph made the journey from Munich back and it was the nicest way to finish recording on the second last day, to wander out into the warm evening and sit around with such a great group. Other friends came and i made guacamole while talking to Christoph about the album in the kitchen (i love to cook and talk!) which was really nice because as i was saying to him, getting so near the end and starting to doubt everything is tricky. He has been in the exact situation before many times and even with Mario and at Uphon of course since Mario has produced some of the albums Christoph has been a part of. Also for me not having that many other opinions through the process is a bit scary so Cristoph’s good ears and very eloquent way of speaking about music is always so welcome. He explained to me an expression in Germany about ‘hearing fleas coughing’ and thats what he thought we were doing since he thought things were sounding really nice.. which made me laugh pretty hard and put me at ease about everything for the evening.

After enjoying some amazing zucchini and wine and corn and salads mario directed me back into the studio to record one last guitar part that he Ron and Roger had worked out while i made mexican dips. We had layered a few too many parts and they were blending together too much so they made one really nice part from the important bits. a few takes later we were ready to go to cafe central for some vodka redbulls jacks and cokes and a new drink i discovered called a ‘happy maker’ which i have no idea what is in it but it sure tasted nice and refreshing on a hot night.

It is 8 o’clock and i can hear the bells tolling in the nearby church. i dont know why they ring for so long at 8 but they make a beautiful sound across this distance, they shimmer on the air. Today being the 8th day in a row of working was finally taking its toll. We spent some time thinking of electronic drum patterns for ‘until then’ and we had some things we kind of liked but then felt unsure and doubting. is it because we have been working so hard for so long straight or because we are nearing the end and feeling the pressure of making so many final decisions? I’m not sure but it was a welcome relief to have a visit from Christoph (Brandner who plays some amazing drums on the album). His tanned and relaxed tea loving presence was a very nice addition to the afternoon.
At a stage where we were a bit lost again in the clicks and cracks of the patterns we had created i sat in with Ron (who is the most patient and persevering engineer in all of Germany and maybe the world!) and listened while he manipulated delays and shifted triangle hits.

I think we left it sounding pretty nice and Christoph also liked it but we decided to call it an early night because we didn’t want to go around in too many circles and Mario and Roger really couldn’t decided.

So this is why I am sitting here at 8 when we would normally just be wrapping up the powercables of our computers and saying our good evenings. We went for a walk past fields of corn and barley and an amazing field of gladiolus with the sun low in the sky. Now i am sitting on the 2nd floor verandah (as is very traditional of the construction of houses in germany) listening to the voices of our wonderful hostess and her kind husband below. It isn’t eavesdropping if i cant understand the language right? Drinking red wine and eating pumpkin seeds, reading my book on the rise of communism in China and the love affair between the communist party learder Chairman Mao and communist actress and opera singer who becomes his wife and the co-leader of China, though i find this hard to concentrate on and switch to the other book i brought with me Leonard Cohens latest book of poetry (it is so much easer to focus on something so strikingly poignant in the space of a page!). I think it is even still too early for the crickets to be calling that have been singing me to sleep this past week. I will sit out here until they tune their strings and take up their bows and start their nightly serenade.

After another night of thunderstorms and doors and windows open to the evening slamming and waving, it is another sunny day and we are finishing up the details of ‘lightning’. It was much tricker that we thought in the end to turn our great creative static percussion idea into a suitable reality. We went so far in an dramatic acoustic direction with this song, grand piano and accordion, slide guitar and acoustic guitar layers, that it was really hard to place something so electronic as these very high frequency clicks and pops that seem to travel straight through the song leaving it in the background to attack your eardrums. We got so far as thinking we were really ruining the song with our clever idea and it was totally inappropriate but after a bit of time outside
debating the merits of martial arts and eastern philosophy and re-approaching the pattern a little bit, running it through a amp for a bit more air around it, it started to work. Bouncing the parts while watching the Bjork video for Triumph of a heart’ and Shakira ‘Hips dont lie’ put us in the mood for banana sandwiches and apfle shorle, well me and Ron anyway!

So then we open ‘You’re Better Off’ to add some more lovely cello parts that Paul (Van Dongen) recorded for us over the holiday season and that was perfect because this song really does have a snow globe coo coo clock kind of feel.
We recorded some pizzicato strings for the verses and ever since i wrote this song i have had it in my mind that though it is a sweet tragic song, musically the middle eight must be full of hope and joy and i pictured it like the big glorious endings to those 1940s musical films where there are hundreds of women synchronized swimmers with flower covered bathing caps on making the shapes of stars and concentric circles counter rotating, trapeze artist flying through the sky and fireworks….
but only for 8 bars and then back to the quiet sad song..
So.. this was a bit of a difficult sentiment to get across.. to interpret this musically.. hehe.. of course i only wanted to allude to it not have a orchestra and a 60 person choir or anything, at any rate i think the piano we did in the last block together with the harp Roger played in England last week and that we just added to the mix, work together to give me just enough of that fantasy happy ending felling and thank god for that because these guys around here are sick of hearing me go on about those swimmers!
on the way home we stopped by a weilheim street party type of event where the main street was closed off and filled with tables where people sat looking happy with their steins of beer and giant pretzels. Kids played in the tree lined small river that runs down the middle of the street and there were some great bavarian Leder Hosen to be seen!

Last night we sat outside under umbrellas with a warm rain falling around us sipping our drinks and talking over different low budget video ideas. I fell asleep to the distant rumbling of a thunderstorm and today though there is not a hint of last nights moody weather, after putting some finishing touch acoustic guitar on the last verse of ‘empty’ we are working on ‘lightning’. Roger had the very cool idea that we should create drum beats and percussion using static sounds to relate to when the air is thick with electricity before a storm, so in England we mic-ed radios between stations and recorded the pluging and unpluging of various electronic equipment. We proceded to cut it all up and make samples.

Now in Germany we are working with those samples to make the perfect strange tense electric pulse for the song along with the tango snare roll that Christoph (Brandner, the drummer from Lali Puna and Console) played in the last recording block.
Now it is getting near evening and the sky is darkening again. I have seen a few flashes far off on the horizon.