infinite Wisdom
Original Progressive Rock
The Blue Room Out Now
Date May 4th 2020
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The latest album "The Blue Room" is available on all digital platforms.
Echo Studios 2018, 2019 & 2020
Date February 26th and March 4th 2020
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Location Echo Studios Buckingham UK
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With Jamie having done the initial mixes for review by the band, Mark and Paul returned to the studio to offer tweaks and changes. The initial mixes were awesome and Jamie had done a brilliant job. A few minor tweaks - bit more delay here and there and this a bit louder than that on this part - were easily implemented. Next up - final sign off and that dark art of Mastering!
Date November 27th 2019
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Location Echo Studios Buckingham UK
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Mark and Paul spent the day finishing the recording of all the parts for the album.
First up was the short instrumental and first track on the album to be, The Blue Room. This was completed with new keyboard layers being added and the final guitar parts being put down. The original guitar part was actually used for the first part of the track.
Next up, some atmospheric effects were added to the start of Born To Be King making it nice and eerie and giving Mark plenty of opportunities to audition all those weird noises from his keyboard sound banks.
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Once that was done, some backing vocals well chants to be more precise with both guys singing were added to This Is England. This was followed by some guitar overdubs adding some tasty lead guitar lines - “very Brian May” as Jamie remarked!
There was also the reinforcement of the main riff in a dropped D tuning on the guitar. Tuning down gave the riff a real heavy sound and feel played through the Les Paul with a cranked up Blackstar amp lifter set to distortion!
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Then it was onto Beautiful Soul with Mark adding stacked vocals and backing vocal harmonies to complete the track.
Thats it for the recording part - next its over to Jamie to do the mixes.
Dates 3rd September 2019
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Location Echo Studios Buckinghamshire UK
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After a big bout of the flu impacting his voice Mark, fully recovered, spent the day back in the studio completing vocals on more tracks for the album.
Dates 18th and 19th June 2019
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Location Echo Studios Buckinghamshire UK
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Mark spent two days working with Jamie to add vocal tracks to some of the new album. This included adding some additional harmonies that are usually created with a little help from technology in live performances. Work was completed on The Healer, This Is England , Heartland and a good chunk of Autopilot. More to come next month when vocals will hopefully be wrapped up.
Dates 8th May 2019
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Dates 14th and 15th May 2019
Location Echo Studios Buckinghamshire UK
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Mark spent three days back at Echo studios completing the bass parts on all the tracks on the album. He used his five string bass through his Hartke amplifier and put down all the bass parts in the three days. The parts were adapted with input from Jamie at the recording console and in Mark's words he was "really pushed" to come up with some challenging and interesting parts. This were particularly tight with the drums.
Dates 27th March 2019
Location Echo Studios Buckinghamshire UK
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Another day spent at Echo studios - this time it was Paul on his own recording guitars on Autopilot and putting down the guitar solo on Born to Be King , The Gibson Les Paul was used for most of this with the Fender stratocaster getting an outing for some additional cutting guitars on the Autopilot bridge section. Paul's Fernandes Burny Les Paul with its sustainer was used to generate a bit of feedback on a couple of sections. Sessions went well despite some equipment issues at the start of the session (the pedal board power supply blew up!) . Jamie had some great input to both the guitar parts and the addition of a harmony part to Autopilot. Paul's Blackstar amp was used throughout.
Dates 27, 28 Feb 1 2 March 20-19
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Location Echo Studios Buckinghamshire UK
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Another four days (well three and a half actually) saw Mark and Paul back into Echo Studios to continue work on the new album. Keyboards were pretty much finished with the epic This Is England getting the big keyboards treatment. Also use was made of the studios resident Hammond Organ adding that classic rock punch to the track The Healer. Some guitars were finished on both that track and No Good Will Come of This. Mark used his own live keyboard set up hooked up the the studios Midi system to allow access to multiple tracks and some easy online editing.
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Next up are some more guitars and then the bass and vocal tracks...
Dates 29th and 30th December 2018
Location Echo Studios Buckinghamshire UK
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Recording guitar and keyboard parts for Heartland, Beautiful Soul and Born To Be King
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Mark and Paul spent two days putting down keyboards and guitars for these tracks. Keyboards were recorded using Mark's KORG rig and incorporating midi tracking to make editing and sampling different sounds a simpler process. Embellishments were added to the core parts to broaden the sounds and add texture.
Guitars were recorded cranked up through Paul's Blackstar HT 60 valve amp using all the available six channels. A touch of TC electronics chorus was added to the cleaner parts and Paul used his Jackson Dinky, Fender Stratocaster , Gibson Les Paul and Jamie's EKO electro acoustic for some overdubs and embellishments. A Moer phaser pedal was added to incorporate a bit of funk in the song Heartland.
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Dates 31st October / 1st and 2nd November 2018
Location Echo Studios Buckinghamshire UK
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Recording drum tracks for The Healer, Autopilot, Beautiful Soul, Born To Be King, Heartland, This is England and No Good Will Come of This.
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The band spent three days recording drum tracks for their next album. Sessions were engineered by Jamie Masters and John's new Gretsch drum kit was set up in the main recording studio room with multiple microphones across the kit and room. The challenge was to capture the huge sound of the kit and get a real live organic feel and Jamie succeeded. The tracks were put down with the whole band playing the track as if it was live. Guitars were played in the same room as the drums with Paul's amp isolated in a vocal booth away from the drum microphones while Mark and his keyboards were set up in the control room. Once the tracks had been played through, the band and Jamie worked out the tempos (some of them variable across different song segments) and then John sat out the session while Paul and Mark played the entire song again to the click track. These would form the basis of the track for John to then record his drums too. John then played along with the click and the parts Paul and Mark had put down.
Paul said:
"John responded really well to this method of recording. It allowed him to punch in and really capture a good performance. Jamie was able to offer some good ideas and advice and between them they really nailed the drum tracks"
Most tracks were in the bag after a couple of run throughs and then Jamie (using the click guide was able to edit together a single performance from the multiple takes. Awesome stuff and sounding great - next up - everything else!
