We recently had Steaming Mulch back in the studio to record a new song. As always, it was an interesting project. There are two distinct bass tracks and two guitar tracks. We combined these with several electronic drum tracks. Then vocals were added. They often like to pitch shift the vocals and that is what we did with this song. This is definitely the type of song you want to hear in stereo to get the full effect (so at least plug in you ear buds). I don’t know how most popular music is mixed today, but I really like to give certain songs a heavy stereo effect. For this song we took the two bass lines and panned one totally to the left and the other totally to the right. The two different guitar lines are mixed the same way, but not as drastically so with reverb added it allows some cross over from left to right channel. To make it interesting, the vocals have some stereo spread but the main kick drum track goes straight down the center to tie everything together. The idea is to make the sound a bit disorienting – but again, you need to listen to it in stereo to get the full effect. For me, the fun of working with Steaming Mulch is being allowed to have total freedom to make up whatever we want in the studio. The track recording goes the same way. They have riffs and ideas for each part, but the tracks for each instrument are never exactly the same from take to take. We usually record several takes and then pick the best one at mixing time. The video is left up to me, so I went for simple night driving and then made it look as disorienting as the song. Hope you enjoy it.
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