But we got the piano from Mr. Garson and it’s pretty close. I’m speechless, so I’ll let this bag do the talking. It actually sums up the last two weeks perfectly in so many ways.
(Always recycle bags – and thank you’s)
You can’t mix all the time
You also have to:
Visit Kaffe 1648 in TriBeCa. Rock n’ roll packaging and equally great coffee.
Order take away. Takes at least an hour to decide what to get from this collection.
Go through t-shirt collections. Mario has been offered 500 dollars for this one and can’t wear it in public without being stopped every 200 meters. No wonder.
Have flourless chocolate cake, chocolate cookies and brownies.
Take pictures of random numbers in the street.
Note to self:
Don’t sing along when Mario is mixing. Makes his job pretty difficult.
Less mosquito and more of an angel dog barking
Isn’t it great when you can say things like that to other people and it makes perfectly sense to them? Didi Gutman knew exactly what I meant. He is such a personality and brilliant musician, and he found the most perfect sounds for the different keyboard parts and played them with great beauty and creativity.
There was one sound on the demo that we weren’t able to find a substitute for though. A keyboard part in ‘United We Stand Apart’ has a really particular and mysterious almost under water like vibe, and we couldn’t find a sound that matched the track just as good as the original one. So that part will be the original demo recording played by me. Which was quite a lot of work for Mario as he had to fix: 1. my wobbling recording, 2.the facts that we changed the tempo of the song with 2 bpm and we only had the original track as an mp3…. a lot of work, but so worth it!
Geniuses at work. Do not disturb.
A little less Enya too? No problem.
Outside the studio that day. Very cold, but very beautiful. The weather here changes faster than my opinion on whether I like horses or chocolate the most.
An inspiring collection. Had some wonderful days at Mark’s studio. Hope to be back one day…
T-shirts and time off
The mixing is on and Mario is performing magic in his studio. This means I have a little more time now to see friends and walk around like Uncle Traveling Matt. Yesterday I visited my friend Lance and we went for a little vintage t-shirt shopping. He has a HUGE collection of mainly old 80’s metal shirts and knows all the best stores in town.
Ozzy & Line
Love Lance’s place. So many cool details.
Metropolis. Probably my favorite vintage store.
Discussing stage outfits with this fine gentleman. He is a suit collector and plays saxophone in a jazz band. He belives that you should always dress up and look beautiful on stage to give the audience a visual experience – not just a sonic one. Amen! No t-shirts and jeans. He told us that he likes to wear a colourful suit, a leather suit or a mix of both.
Settled for these two.
Sequins 4 ever.
Feel in love with these at AC Gears.
Lance & Line
There is a right way to play something wrong
Hotel Terminus is off to Mr. Garson in LA, who is now busy recording the piano at his house. He knows the basic ideas of the piano, but has total creative freedom to play whatever he feels like.
The very first component of Hotel Terminus: the guitar riff that I send to my grandfather Boy Grunert back in December. I asked him to play something on his piano for the track, and decided to go to Ribe where he lives to record it.
The case is that I wasn’t able to hear what he was playing as we recorded it, and that led to the unorthodox, almost random use of piano on the demo.
I have a cable with an USB output that goes directly from my guitar to the computer. This cable luckily worked with my grandfather piano as well, but somehow the speakers of the computer wouldn’t play the piano sound when the cable was plugged in. The headphones were ok though, so Boy had one of them playing in his ear while recording. I heard nothing.
At the same time I couldn’t get GarageBand to play the guitar track and record the piano track on top of it. So the guitar track was playing from the speakers of Boy’s PC for him to listen to with the other ear, while the piano track was recorded in a completely separate file in GarageBand.
This means that I never heard where Boy played what in the song. Which didn’t hit me as a problem until I got home and everything sounded beyond confusing. But since I travelled 600 km to record it, I was very determined to use some of it no matter what, so I edited everything into bits and pieces and placed it randomly throughout the song. This awkward and occasionally out of tune and tempo piano inspired Mario to think of Mike Garson to have him bringing the idea of playing something “wrong” in the right way to the next level. When Mario suggested Garson I listened to a bunch of his work and was blown away by this effortless, creative and uncomplicated way of playing something very complicated. So beautiful and so powerful. And if he is good enough for Bowie, Reznor and Corgan, he is of course good enough for me…. I’m so excited!
No noisy jewellery in the iso booth
I am not a singer. Not in the sense that I make music to get the chance to be in front of a microphone nailing those notes that only Mariah Carey can hit and dogs can hear. But vocals had to be recorded and it was actually a lot of fun and very intense. I was so exhausted after each session that I was almost sleepwalking home from the studio and passing out on the bed. Green & Black’s dark chocolate 70%, dates, raw honey and Sarah’s Silk warming scarfs – tak for hjælpen!
Line can’t hit the note: “Øh, Mario, maybe that other take we just did was ok….” “What? do you think this is high school?” “Ok, this is not high school…” Gotta love Mario!
M7 Neumann from 1956. (no, not a machine gun)
Pitch, timing, feel, attitude…
Retro 176 compressor for the vocals.
I learn so much it’s insane.
Socks ‘R’ Us
I bet this is Chino’s preferred brand.
Drum roll…
You know that feeling of becoming aware of the fact that you’re smiling like an idiot and then try to tell yourself, ok you can stop smiling already, but you can’t? Now, this smile not only covers: 1. I just got laid, 2. I’m about to eat a chocolate brownie, but also: 3. recording drums at The Magic Shop with Marc and Mario. 
The drum recordings for ‘United we stand apart’ was a huge eye/ear-opener for me. Still so green in this field, I’m surprised what difference it makes to the vibe of the song to have the drums recorded live in an amazing room with an amazing drummer like Marc Slutsky. I would expect it to be good, but this was like getting that last minute party invite, and sure, I’ll come, and it turns out to be the party of the year.
Microphone mayhem. 20 all together.
A little help from the world of super powers never hurts.
Getting ready for the bongo session.
This is of course rock n’ roll gin in disguise. Or maybe just water for the thirsty yogi…. I came directly from the Golden Bridge yoga studio to the Magic Shop. A dinner at Pink Pony would have completed a day of potential Foursquare check-ins of ‘she is either on acid or in New York’.
On the voice preserving breakfast menu:
Blueberries, skyr, elderberry/honey sirup and yoga.
A Girl in a Rat Suit 