Back to Smelly

The rehearsing for the gig April 13th at Huset Magstræde is on. The location is Smelly in the north west corner of Copenhagen – the infamous basement  that leaves an equally  infamous smell to your clothes and your hair. Mmmmm… dead guinea pig with a touch of blue cheese and very old playing cards.

It’s a trainers park at Smelly. I’m sporting my Nike, Kristian is in Vans and Korff in Converse.

Turn up the click track for Mr. Korff.

Kristian is either: 1. buying in more guitars on ebay or 2. fixing back tracks.

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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…

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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!

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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.

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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’.


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“This is not a girl’s guitar”

… and that would be a Les Paul to be exact. Indeed a heavy infiltration creator with a testosterone loaded sound. Perfect for the rat suit vibe as long as the girl doesn’t have to play it! Aaron did an amazing job nailing the tracks and I’m thrilled with the sound of the guitar.

Knobs of the finest kind…

We recorded the guitar at Mark Plati’s cool and comfy studio in the East Village. It has such a nice vibe and being there feels like hanging out at a very good friends house. It was pure Danish hygge discussing subjects such as music, Danish pork, music and music in between recording.

You know you’re with geeks when your iPhone accidentally plays 0,5 seconds of a song in your iTunes library. Mario: Was that Morrisey? Aaron: The Smiths? Spot on boys…

Aaron’s custom made brown brick of awesomeness.

Be sure to check out Aarons band The Madison Square Gardeners. They are playing in Brooklyn at the Rock Shop February 24th so I get a change to see them live while I’m here – weeeee! They have an EP and a loaded tour calendar including SXSW coming up.

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Stretching my etching and sketching skills

In between all the demo making and working, I shot a music video for an old song of mine: 42 inches. I it did together with the talented, incredibly sweet and cool Jonas Krüger, who I met when Morgensang was created back in September. It’s a creative collective of all sorts, sharing a space in Copenhagen NV at an old piano factory.

A half-finished snake

Jonas was filming, instrcuting and is also doing the editing. I was just etching and sketching for hours and hours. He will do the finishing editing in the next few days, so stay tuned for the premiere.

A quick survey the night between Saturday and Sunday made it clear that no one could tell that this hands was holding a fish. Creative suggestions such as a parsnip, tepee, rocket and a hornets’ nest made it clear that we had to redo the fish. Luckily all the other motives came out great…

Thanks to my friends for helping me with camera, equipment and light.

This image of me and my Washburn will also be in the video.. etch’ed of course.

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