Recording
The album's recording sessions took place from November 1995 to February 1996 at Studio Litho and Bad Animals Studio in Seattle, Washington. Studio Litho is owned by Pearl Jam guitarist Stone Gossard. The band members made the decision to produce the album themselves. On the choice of not working with a producer, frontman Chris Cornell said that "a fifth guy is too many cooks and convolutes everything. It has to go down too many mental roads, which dilutes it." Adam Kasper, who previously had worked with Soundgarden as an assistant engineer on Superunknown, worked with the band as a production collaborator. The album was mixed by Kasper.
Work on the album began in July 1995. The band took a break to perform at festivals in Europe, where new material was road-tested. Afterward, the band did more songwriting for about a month and then recorded most of the album at Studio Litho. The overall approach to songwriting was less collaborative than with past efforts, with the individual band members having brought in most of the songs more completely written. The band sought to try things it had not done before and to use a greater variety of material. The band tried to create a live atmosphere for the album, and looked to leave in sounds that producers would normally try to clean up, such as feedback and out-of-tune guitar parts. The overall time spent working on the album was less than what the band had spent working on Superunknown. Cornell described the album-making process as "way faster and way easier".
Most of the material was written by Cornell and bassist Ben Shepherd, the latter having already worked on six of the sixteen album tracks. Reportedly, tensions within the group arose during the recording sessions, with guitarist Kim Thayil and Cornell allegedly clashing over Cornell's desire to shift away from the heavy guitar riffing that had become the band's trademark. Thayil's only contribution to the album was the song "Never the Machine Forever", for which he wrote both the lyrics and the music, and which was also the last song the band recorded. The song initially came out of a jam session Thayil had with Seattle musician Greg Gilmore. In the liner notes, Thayil credits Gilmore for inspiring the song. He stated that he had a lot of incomplete music ideas that were missing lyrics and were not arranged, so they did not make the album. Thayil said, "It can be a little bit discouraging if there isn't satisfactory creative input, but on the other hand, I write all the solo bits and don't really have limitations on the parts I come up with for guitar." Cornell said, "By the time we were finished, it felt like it had been kind of hard, like it was a long, hard haul. But there was stuff we were discovering."
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Famous quotes containing the word recording:
“He shall not die, by G—, cried my uncle Toby.
MThe ACCUSING SPIRIT which flew up to heaven’s chancery with the oath, blush’d as he gave it in;—and the RECORDING ANGEL as he wrote it down, dropp’d a tear upon the word, and blotted it out for ever.”
—Laurence Sterne (1713–1768)
“I didn’t have to think up so much as a comma or a semicolon; it was all given, straight from the celestial recording room. Weary, I would beg for a break, an intermission, time enough, let’s say, to go to the toilet or take a breath of fresh air on the balcony. Nothing doing!”
—Henry Miller (1891–1980)
“Self-expression is not enough; experiment is not enough; the recording of special moments or cases is not enough. All of the arts have broken faith or lost connection with their origin and function. They have ceased to be concerned with the legitimate and permanent material of art.”
—Jane Heap (c. 1880–1964)