EQ Magazine - February 2008 - (Page 21) Joel Hamilton, producer/engineer and guitarist for The Book of Knots. JOEL HAMILTON AND COMPANY CALL IN THE TROOPS FOR THE BOOKS OF KNOTS’ TRAINEATER couldn’t even handle our giant gestures. I’ll also use the SPL Transient Designer just to have one mono fader that sucks up all the air around the drums. The image almost sounds reversed when you solo the drums, as the SPL totally reshapes the envelope. Couple that track with a reverb, and it gives the source sound the illusion of being more focused and punchy than it was when it was tracked. Another thing that works well is the Thermionic Culture Culture Vulture—which is basically an incredibly expensive distortion box. It can create everything from an old Ampex tape machine-esque sound with all that rich, harmonic lushness to an overdriven guitar amp that’s powering down. I typically use it across a drum bus, and it sounds just elegant. ” Essential to the end product is the previously mentioned slew of high-profile guest contributors.The roster on Traineater includes bassist-extraordinaire Mike Watt, Mr. Bungle/Secret Chiefs 3 wünderkind Trey Spruance, and Norman Westberg of SWANS fame. Perhaps the most noteworthy contribution on the album comes from Tom Waits, who adds his papal seal of approval in the form of a demented preacher vocal on “Pray. Collaborating with Waits ” was a Waits-ian process—meaning no trips to a proper studio to track, no live link ups, and no gear created post 1970. “Tom requested a 4-track cassette, ” Hamilton reveals. “There is definitely no FTP business withTom—not unless someone is making a wooden laptop now [laughs]. I made him a mono submix on track one, and he sang on track two.Then, he and Kathleen [Brennan, Waits’ wife and co-writer] sang the back-up vocals on track three, and he played guitar on track four. ” Hamilton decided to record first, and worry about context later when it came to the album’s guest musicians, which left the band with the Herculean task of editing down tons of source material. “Sticking with my ‘do everything wrong’ work ethic, we wound up with 98 tracks for me to edit, says Hamilton. “The Mute but” ton became my best friend for the first 15 minutes of the mix, as I looked for emotional cues from which to assemble the story, or to frame a lyric or a riff we recorded. We don’t think very much before we hit Record. I like it that way. ” Not surprisingly,TBOK songs go through a series of evolutions before the band settles on a final structure. “We’ll hack out entire parts of a song, or rework them, Hamilton says. “I have mixes ” of the record where a couple of the songs are unrecognizable from what was ultimately released—apart from maybe the drums and vocals. As far as I’m concerned, a mix isn’t done until something reaches out and grabs me—until I forget I am the one who is playing on it. When a song makes me shut my eyes and not make any mix moves because it’s making me think about something greater than where the kick drum is sitting—when it speaks to me as a piece of art instead of a series of technical issues—that’s when a track is done. If you spend 17 hours tweaking some parameter in Pro Tools, then you have already lost perspective. Making an album is more about utilizing basic skills than having a Universal Audio 1176, or knowing where a Fairchild 660’s sweet spot is. It’s about having the right approach—not necessarily the right technique. ” www.eqmag.com FEBRUARY 2008 EQ 21 http://www.eqmag.com
For optimal viewing of this digital publication, please enable JavaScript and then refresh the page. If you would like to try to load the digital publication without using Flash Player detection, please click here.