Battle of mice named #2 heavy record of the year!

joel hamilton · Post by **joel hamilton** » Thu Mar 29, 2007 8:51 am

http://www.fanaticpromotion.com/battleofmice.html

Crazy.

I produced/engineered and played drums and guitar on this stuff...

There are some downloads...

Recycled_Brains · Post by **Recycled_Brains** » Fri Mar 30, 2007 12:48 pm

awesome. i've been patiently awaiting a vinyl release before picking this up, but the mp3s i've heard are pretty devastating.

-ryan

Recycled_Brains · Post by **Recycled_Brains** » Sun Apr 01, 2007 6:21 pm

so i said "f**k it" and picked up the CD yesterday (i'll get the vinyl anyway if and when it arrives).... holy shit, it's f***ing massive. the drums and bass crush the world when the heavy parts on "Bones In The Water" kick in. so many parts are giving me chills.... intense. parts remind me of the Cure's "Disintegration" record and the way that album changes the mood in a room so quickly.

the room sounds on the drums are killer. did you use the bova ball mic on the kit? did you use the same MD1a on Julie's voice this time around? it's cool to hear more of her mellow singing style on this.

glad to see this is doing well for you guys. now all i need is the new Neurosis record, and i'll be set for a while. keep up the good work!

-ryan

p.s. is The Book Of Knots disc out yet? i was looking all-over for it with no luck.

Skipwave · Post by **Skipwave** » Tue Apr 03, 2007 11:00 am

Wow. Those songs are amazing, and the sounds are dead on. The drums are so bulbous. Well done.

Immanuel · Post by **Immanuel** » Tue Apr 03, 2007 11:40 am

Yes, these are great songs both musically and sound vice. I found the Neurot label to be a little treasure chest with some really cool songs. This is refreshing news compared to, what I usually come along.

treymonfauntre · Post by **treymonfauntre** » Tue Apr 03, 2007 11:53 am

i had the 3 way split with some songs on it.. i got so used to hearing sleep and dream the way it was that the new mix is distracting (especially the electric guitar that fades in about halfway.. it gets so loud whereas before it was barely noticable)

on a related note, i was playing it in my car one day and a friend of mine said "i didn't know joanna newsom made music like this"

joel hamilton · Post by **joel hamilton** » Tue Apr 03, 2007 8:28 pm

Recycled_Brains wrote:so i said "f**k it" and picked up the CD yesterday (i'll get the vinyl anyway if and when it arrives).... holy shit, it's f***ing massive. the drums and bass crush the world when the heavy parts on "Bones In The Water" kick in. so many parts are giving me chills.... intense. parts remind me of the Cure's "Disintegration" record and the way that album changes the mood in a room so quickly.

the room sounds on the drums are killer. did you use the bova ball mic on the kit? did you use the same MD1a on Julie's voice this time around? it's cool to hear more of her mellow singing style on this.

glad to see this is doing well for you guys. now all i need is the new Neurosis record, and i'll be set for a while. keep up the good work!

-ryan

p.s. is The Book Of Knots disc out yet? i was looking all-over for it with no luck.

I would say that about half the drum sound is JUST the bova ball, over my right shoulder, away from the hat... kind of aiming (it is omni) at the floor tom. Compressed with a neve 33609. I swear to god. There are no more than 5 mics on the drums on any of the songs, though the tracking varies greatly from song to song. the room at Studio G is just tight and smackey like that. Tile floor, wood walls, diffuse/apsorbing ceiling.... weird shape...

The sound of the bova ball is THAT sound though... totally thick... the top end is really crisp without being bright... detailed... even when I was smashing the HELL out of that mic. I used the Sage pre's for the kick and snare, and a weird old manley/VTL tube mic for the U47 in front of the kit. The bova ball went through either a chandler germanium or an old averill 1272 on that stuff.

Glad you are digging it.

sthslvrcnfsn · Post by **sthslvrcnfsn** » Fri Apr 06, 2007 1:20 am

Bones in the Water: The vocals are so bad. That can't be just an overloading mic capsule ... or maybe it is an overloading mic, but compressed to hell and back. Do tell! The drum drop-out is cool.

And yeah, I'll second the overall appreciation of the drum sound. If you chalk it up to a good room, I'll go with that. Also, after checking out the Sage Electronics site, I found the Bova Ball mic is about 500 bucks. Gotta check that out.

jim!

joel hamilton · Post by **joel hamilton** » Sun Apr 08, 2007 8:00 pm

sthslvrcnfsn wrote:Bones in the Water: The vocals are so bad. That can't be just an overloading mic capsule ... or maybe it is an overloading mic, but compressed to hell and back. Do tell! The drum drop-out is cool.

And yeah, I'll second the overall appreciation of the drum sound. If you chalk it up to a good room, I'll go with that. Also, after checking out the Sage Electronics site, I found the Bova Ball mic is about 500 bucks. Gotta check that out.

jim!

The Vocals for that whole record were recorded with a GT MD1A original. The pre, depending on the song, was either a Manley/VTL mono tube reference pre, or a Sage SE-1 mic pre. COmpression was... um... a lot sometimes, and not so much other times...

A lot of the kick ass drive is from the GT MD1a, with a weird old tube in it and the manley. It really doesnt require THAT much compression when the vocal is meant to drive the pre and mic that hard when it gets loud. Any compression on the way in was more being used as a fader to trim the scorched mic and pre down to an okay (meaning, still too hot but not crunching the input) level during the loud stuff...

sthslvrcnfsn · Post by **sthslvrcnfsn** » Mon Apr 09, 2007 8:28 am

Awesome, thanks for the info Joel!

I was aware before about mic capsules (and in this case a pre, too) overloading and just by their very nature being compressed, but ... I've never pondered the question very deeply. Do overloading mic capsules behave in a limiter-type fashion - they hit a brick wall for output - or is it gentler than that?

And when I said "bad", I meant in the Michael-Jackson-in-1990 kind of way.

So it was a compliment!

jim!

joel hamilton · Post by **joel hamilton** » Mon Apr 09, 2007 10:25 am

sthslvrcnfsn wrote:Awesome, thanks for the info Joel!

I was aware before about mic capsules (and in this case a pre, too) overloading and just by their very nature being compressed, but ... I've never pondered the question very deeply. Do overloading mic capsules behave in a limiter-type fashion - they hit a brick wall for output - or is it gentler than that?

And when I said "bad", I meant in the Michael-Jackson-in-1990 kind of way. So it was a compliment!

jim!

Distortion IS compression. Having the mic and pre simply give up on putting out any more level produces a square wave, rather than more level, ya know?

If you could have seen some of the waveforms from the vocal tracks... total squarewave at certain points.... I wanted to get the power of julies vocal across, like that something REALLY loud was happening in the room, and therefore would produce overloaded sounds.... especially with he dynamic nature of the performances, I wanted it to just sound like the pre was set for the "pretty parts" and then all hell breaks loose.

I like the way it turned out.

dtrider · Post by **dtrider** » Thu Apr 12, 2007 10:57 pm

joel hamilton wrote: I would say that about half the drum sound is JUST the bova ball.

For real? The drums on that disc are brutal. It sounds incredible. Bova and u47 as mono oh?

joel hamilton · Post by **joel hamilton** » Fri Apr 13, 2007 8:00 am

dtrider wrote:
joel hamilton wrote: I would say that about half the drum sound is JUST the bova ball.
For real? The drums on that disc are brutal. It sounds incredible. Bova and u47 as mono oh?

Sometimes NO overheads. Just the bova behind me, an the U47 5 feet out from the kick, at chest height, along with kick and snare.

Someof the songs have the earthworks TC30k's as OH, with the bova and the U47.

The song called "sleep and dream" had a few more mics on the kit....

I just tried to play to the song, and to the room, and make the kit balance happen at the instrument....

I like some of the more machine-like sounds for the drums on that record. The BOVA was seriously at least 50% minimum of that drum sound for every single song.

dtrider · Post by **dtrider** » Sat Apr 14, 2007 3:06 am

brutal. sage electronics has a new customer. thanks.

parasitk · Post by **parasitk** » Sun Apr 22, 2007 9:51 pm

I recently picked this album up and had to bump this thread to give it some love. Fantastic stuff - and I freaking love the drums sounds.

Any other info you can give us about this recording would be smashing, Joel. Thanks!

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Battle of mice named #2 heavy record of the year!

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