Abubilla Music

10.05.08 This Week in the Studio

Written by Jimmy

The Chipmunks take on Efatuation Nation — and Rob’s latin beats win out.   And Sophie continues to cause trouble, while Andy’s comedian takes an interesting turn.  This week in the Studio.Okay.  We’re all busy sorting out this well hung Parliament, so let’s be quick.  Five things you need to know:

1. Today we laid down Efatuation Nation, the final track for our second album, Misery Marmalade and Other Spanish Jams (release date:  July 2010).    This is our 71 Hours to Monday for 2010.   Rob brought his latin beats from his song Too Much Booze in Puerto Banus, and we used that to start our little ode to too much drinking and too many one night stands.   We threw everything at it, including cello (Sophie), trumpets (Ed), boom-boom (Andy), latin beat mix (Rob), tamborine and caxixi (Mike) and Martyn on lead guitar.    So that’s it.  All songs are known for the album – now we have to figure out which survive, and mix and master ’til the Ear’s Bleed.
2. And we think we pretty much finished My Knees (Big Knees), adding Ed’s trumpets!  Now, the fun part was we decided to put trumpets over Martyn’s lead riff – but poor Ed couldn’t spit out the notes fast enough.  So we played back the song half speed, and let Ed play over it real speed – and then sped it back up.  A regular George Martin tour de force.   And the best part was the chipmunks.  It is very hard to listen to young Gus sing BIG BIG BIG at half speed and the rest of us kept laughing as poor Ed tried to put down his track.  Andy saved all this and we had a lot of Chipmunk laughing when we played back at full speed. 
3. This left us to ‘fix a lot of things’ but we pretty much melted down.   We cut out a chorus of The Only Thing That’s Missing (from last week) and then argued for a bit about She Knows and Face Book Party.  And basically after a bit of slappin’ and kickin’ , the band failed to agree on the required changes (oops, Changes, (opps, That’s the Way it is)) and drifted into anarchy and a food fight.   So Andy and Jimmy will take things off line!
4. And then, there is the Andy and Sophie comedy act.    Andy’s jokes were funny, but you kinda had to be there… And Sophie is Sophie and basically wanders back and forth from the studio to the ‘office’ (where Hannah and Steph were working away) trying to make sure no one gets anything done.  We’re quite used to this — she’s our Kevin, our Dwight, our Linus, our Gareth, our George Carlin, our nails on a chalk board, our screeching weasel….  But she plays a mean cello and is pretty funny.
5. And Hannah and Steph kept the business end, working on the Newsletter and the Album Cover — lots of Jam Jars spread out all over the kitchen table.    Hannah and Your Mailing List Provider lose her Newsletter six times – and each time she resigned from Abubilla Music, only to rejoin 4 minutes later.    And, Jimmy spent a little time with them and understood for the first time what we sound like in the rest of the house — Ed’s trumpet, going again and again and again and again and again.  Sorta drives you crazy, crazy, CRAZY!

That’s it!   Enjoy the Newsletter

Jimmy