We recently completed the first part of drum recording for a new batch of songs Instead of heading into the recording studio we decided to be adventurous and did it guerrilla-style. We found a nice warehouse in North London: The ceiling was high, as it is a furniture warehouse it was filled with carton boxes and old furniture displays but it had a fantastic sound. It was a little cold during the night and on Sunday morning... but nothing a few cups of coffee and cigarettes can't fix.
On Saturday morning we moved into the warehouse a DDrum Dominion Maple kit, loaded with Evans heads on the toms and Aquarian on the snare and Zildjian Zxt cymbals. As we did not have the pressure of studio time ticking away, there was ample time to tune up the drums, find a good spot to set up the drums and to experiment with mic placements. We used a matched pair of RODE NT-1As as overheads, tom and snare were miked up with SM 57/58s, and the kick was miked up with AKG D112. Placement-wise we used the Glyns Johns method with extra mics on toms (as toms were crucial in some of the tracks), and the spaced pair technique.
In all, we are pretty excited about the unmixed result and look forward to laying down the guitars and vocals next. In the meantime, you can enjoy some of Sergio's drumming here.
