To my great excitement, Amelia Fletcher – the lead singer from 80s indie pop band Heavenly – had been lined up to contribute backing vocals on a couple of Milky Wimpshake tracks, and I had offered to visit her in London to track the parts. My reason for visiting the capital was primarily to see To The Boats..! launch the Bruised Pilgrim LP, a party which united much of the extended Libris clan: with Aaron McMullan, Jo Kelly and Jeremy Williams all out in force. Sadly, Amelia had lost her voice and had to cancel our appointment at the 11th hour, so I was unable to meet what Pete described as “the dream girl of every teenage indie boy during the Eighties”. She promised to mp3 the .wavs to me instead.
On the 11th I began the audio extraction from the big old desk that lives in Nathalie’s music room, in preparation for mixing her album. It meant lots of laborious cabling between channels on her desk and my mixer, and I was sure to use the desk EQ to colour the sound on the way out: some sweep in the 600Hz region (since most of the layers consisted of female vocals) and a touch of brightness about 10kHz – although this kicked up as much dust as anything. Nathalie was very clear that she wanted all the hiss and noise left in, with all the analogue desk warmth included in the mix.
Thursday 17th September was an important day, as My Attorney had their first rehearsal at the new Libris rehearsal space we’ve started renting from the Roots & Wings group. It’s opposite the Star & Shadow Cinema, and next door to the Tanners Bar and Blank Studios, and has a PA, amps and drum kit ready for use. It’s an ideal locale for web casts, small gigs and recording; and we intend to use it for such in the coming months. Sunday 20th saw Blue Screem of Death start to use the space for their rehearsals too, adding fresh impetus to the project to get gig ready before Christmas.
The end of the month saw continued rehearsals with Attorney and Death, overdubs at the new space with Rui (during which I rigged up a floor tom next to a guitar amp to act as a reverb chamber ) and more audio extraction from Nathalie’s desk. Phil also visited to keep an eye on the Tyler mixes, adding backing vocals and some extra fiddle to a couple of numbers.