The Peryls of recording The Peryls by The Peryls

We’ve not blogged since the Jubilee Extraordinarium a few months ago, so it’s with great pleasure and some nicely framed black and white photographs by Nicolai Amter that we reveal what we’ve been up to.

You can see all the pics here

Starting at the start...

So... we’ve begun work on our second album and over the last two weekends we’ve been in the studio all day to lay the foundations of the new record.

Now, we could be all secretive and not talk about where we’re recording, or any of the song titles, or what the album’s going to be called.

To be honest though, that would be silly... we’d have nothing to write about.

So, after last year’s ‘A Man He Was to All the Country Dear’ (and breathe) the new record is almost certainly going to be called...

 ‘The Peryls’

Yes, The Peryls.

Having been together in our six-piece format for a year now, we’re really playing well together and churning out the songs like a well-oiled and nicely dressed machine.

So it seems like the right time for the traditional self-titled record.

The desk - with 500 megawankaflops of memory.

Rather than ask you to scroll through page after page of what we did, we’re going to do this as a day-by-day diary – with massive gaps in between, as we realise we’ve blown all our money and need to save some more for the next bit.

Fortunately though, we already have five days of recording to talk about. So here we go with Day 1 of recording...

Day 1 - 'can you hear me?' - 'What? - 'Are you getting anything?' ... '...what?'...

This morning we arrived at the studio... Ascape in Bromley, which we discovered through many hours of googling. We met with Nick our engineer and began eating Pringles and Kit Kats, because this is always how it starts.

It’s also how it continues.

We began at 10am on a grey and rainy day and spent the first four hours setting up the kit. That’s not because we’re clumsy, or we don’t know how to put a kit together or anything. It’s a luxury that we decided to allow ourselves... a half day of just getting the kit to sound right.

For those of you who drum, we used a Yamaha 9000 recording custom, a green one at that. A really nice kit with a bass drum that goes ‘Whumph’ and a set of nicely tuned up toms. We also had a choice of snare drums, which accounted for a good half hour.

The kit

Once the kit was sounding great, we moved onto the bass. We rigged this up to an Ampeg head and a big fat Ashdown cab on wheels, which we put in a room downstairs because it was very loud.

Then we ate more Pringles and Kit Kats.

Oddly enough the usually superfluous bananas all got eaten this time. It’s normally the case that we buy bananas with good intentions, then watch them go black and throw them away.

This time a healthy new The Peryls that eats fruit has emerged, and we didn’t have any of those mini flapjack bite things, because they make you fat. Did you know they have 150 calories a pop?

Getting back to the recording...

Over the rest of the day we hammered out a whopping eight songs... with the help of guide tracks from piano and guitar.

A lot of these tunes are the new ones we’ve been playing over the last six months or so. In fact a good deal of this record has been written and gigged over the last year, which is great because it means we know the tunes backwards.

We decided to record them forwards as it turned out, because we think it’ll make a better album, but you get the idea.

So 2-3 nice live takes of each tune and away we go.

Take one!.. or two, or three maybe.

We wrapped up at 6pm and then went for some ‘didn’t that go well?’ beers at the Grape and Grain, which is where we always go. We like it there and they have a nice new puppy called Boris.

So day one... all good. Nick is a great guy to work with so we look forward to bashing out another eight tunes tomorrow (we’ve been prolific lately).

Day 2 to follow...

Technical Notes from Liam
Here's some riveting info for all you nerds! Normal people should skip this part in case it causes a boredom-induced seizure.

Disclaimer: I've probably got most of the names of mics wrong, thanks to my general ineptitude.

Drums:

Nick used a single Neumann M147 as an overhead, and there were two Blue Kiwi condenser mics placed roughly two metres either side the kit.

On both toms were Sennheiser MD421's. I like these mics, they look like Captain Kirk's phaser from The Wrath of Khan.

I paid no attention to the kick mic. It was probably an AKGD112, placed through the sound-hole near the beater. I can't say for sure which fictional weapon these mics most resemble. Maybe a thermal detonator from Jedi.

There were top and bottom snare mics. As with the toms they were a good 3 or 4 inches from the skins. Bottom mic was an SM57, while up top we used a Beta 57.

Bass:

We recorded a DI feed and also miked up the amp with another AKGD112. (I think)