La Bête Blooms Guitar Recording Techniques

In my initial meet with La Bête Blooms, they made clear that the main focus of the recordings would be the 'Wall of Sound' type approach to recording guitars. Almost as if the guitars were the main focus rather than the vocals in most popular music.

When conducting my initial research I discovered an article on Butch Vig (Buskin, 1997) and Nevermind. The article briefly mentions 'Wall of Sound' in relation to experimentation and multi-layering.

All this improvisational trial-and-error multi-layering could be said to amount to a latter-day 'wall of sound'. Vig agrees: "Kind of! I mean, a lot of the bands that we listen to and who we love are doing very similar things: Tricky, Massive Attack, Björk...(Vig cited in Buskin, 1997)  

Upon further researching I discovered Phil Spector, the pioneer of the wall of sound technique. I gained a basic understanding of what the Wall of Sound technique entails at the following link by reading a blog post by Hollis (2010). He states; 

 Phil Spector is famous for the ‘Wall of Sound’, He created this sound by having a number of instruments or vocalists perform the same parts in unison, then he would record the sound using an echo chamber. Some tracks were doubled or tripled to make songs sound fuller.'  Hollis (2010)

Taking this into consideration, I don't have access to an echo chamber, however I do have the ability to record and multi-layer guitar takes playing the same parts in order to create a dense, full sound much like the original Wall of Sound technique pioneered by Phil Spector.   

Initial Meeting with La Bête Blooms

For my recording portfolio I have decided to work with La Bête Blooms, a band whom I have previously worked with. I aim to record, engineer and produce an accurate representation of the artists sound through appropriate production techniques based on the artist’s direct influences.

The first step involved arranging a meeting between myself and the band to discuss initial considerations of the recording process. I first discussed what approaches the band have usually taken when working with other producers and which approaches they are most comfortable with as artists in order to get what I believe would be the best from them as performers.

 They informed me that they usually begin by recording bass and drums together to a click track and then follow suit in a typical multi-track recording manner, adding guitars, followed by vocals and any extra instrumentation. 

I followed this by asking key questions which may help me pin-point my research focus for this project. Firstly, I asked what key genres they would associate themselves with as an artist. They responded with;

‘Shoegaze, Grunge, Indie and Post-Punk’ 

I also asked which artists they consider influences on their sound, they replied with; 

'My Bloody Valentine, Pixies and Nirvana' 

I also asked if there are any producers the band were particularly fond of. Jack, the bass player informed me that they particularly admired Steve Albini who produced In Utero, by Nirvana.

The band also informed me that the main focus of their sound would be their 'wall of guitars' otherwise known as a 'Wall of Sound'.

I believe the following information has given me enough information to form a valid research focus to inform the practices I wish to employ during the recording, mixing and mastering process.