What's the Commotion?
Dec 1, 2007 12:00 PM, By Dominic Umile
WRONG SIDE OF THE TRACKS
James' extraterrestrial blueprints are fleshed out in the workspace that gave West Indian Girl its new album title. It's seemingly all about names with this band. To begin with, the band name hails from an early-'60s strain of acid known for a better-than-average high. This time around, the album title refers to the warehouse location that the band calls its own. James' Carillon computer — “Great computer, [again], not so great support. They never return e-mails,” he says — sits alongside an Oberheim drum machine, Fender and Gibson guitars and their small assortment of synths in a hideaway studio. The bat-cave location happens to be in a dimly lit section of town that's frequented more often by homeless people than anyone else. But the location sometimes works to James' benefit.
In his pleasantly airy demeanor, West Indian Girl's multitasking gearhead explains a studio trick that hints at a treacherous danger for those huddled below, on the dark, damp L.A. streets beneath the studio.
“I'm very much into mic placement,” he says. “I'll spend hours trying to get a specific tone. Putting a mic in the outside corridor 30 feet away with heavy compression might be a little unusual, but not really. One time I dropped a cymbal out of a three-story window and recorded it from the street. You could hear a ‘whoosh’ sound as it came down, and the final cracking upon the pavement. I reversed it in the mixdown and used it as an effect. Pretty cool.”
Sketchy neighborhoods aside, something about James' occasional experiments says that the other members of West Indian Girl might be safer indoors.
WALL OF SOUND
Computer, DAW, recording hardware, interfaces
(3) Aardvark Q10 interfaces
Cakewalk Sonar 2
Carillon Audio Systems computer
Universal Audio 2192 interface
Consoles
Allen & Heath GL2200, GL2800
Soundcraft 32 Spirit
Software
Ableton Live
Propellerhead Reason
Mics, preamps, compressors, effects
Altec 438c compressor
Avalon Vt-747sp compressor/EQ, U5 preamp
Eventide Eclipse Harmonizer effects processor
Fat Man 2 preamp/compressor
Joemeek SC2.2 compressor
Manley Variable Mu compressor
Millennia TCL-2 compressor
Neumann TLM 103 mic
Sennheiser e906 mic
Shure SM57, SM81, Beta 58 mics
Trident 4T preamp
Urei 1176LN, 2-116LN, LA2A compressors and 2-610 preamp
Sampler, drum machine
Akai MPC4000
Oberheim DX drum machine
Synths, instruments
ARP Odyssey white-top synth
Crumar Orchestrator synth
Farfisa organ
Fender DeVille, '63 Concert,
'71 Super Reverb and '81 Twin
amplifiers; Jaguar, Stratocaster
and Telecaster guitars; Rhodes
piano; and Precision Jazz bass
Gibson Les Paul guitars
Hammond M3 organ
Korg MS2000, Poly Ensemble
Martin DCX1E Dreadnought
Cutaway Acoustic-Electric guitar
Moog Source, Prodigy, Satellite,
Little Phatty synths; Theremin
Rogers Drums
Roland JP-8000 synth
Taylor 710 Brazilian Rosewood
acoustic guitar
Yamaha CS70M, CS1X synths;
E1010 Analog Delay rack effects
Effects
Boss DD-3 digital delay
Electrix Filter Queen
Electro-Harmonix Big Muff distortion
Gibson Echoplex effects unit
Lexicon PCM60, PCM70,
PCM81 reverbs
Line 6 Delay
MXR Flanger/Doubler, Phase
100 pedal
Sony D7 delay, R7 reverb
Tapco 4400 spring reverb
T-Rex Replica analog delay pedal
Yamaha Rev7 reverb processor
Monitors
Alesis Monitor One speakers
Beyerdynamic DT770 headphones
Event Electronics 20/20 subwoofer
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