Recording
Work for the album began in 2001, when it was initially titled Chemical Four. The album explores new gear such as the Parker MIDI Fly guitar. When asked about if the album is a "back-to-roots" album following their change in style for Surrender three years previous, Ed Simons said "The first three or four numbers do remind me of those days when we were so excited about putting together little grooves and beats — that whole cut-up era of hip-hop. We had Grand Wizard Theodore DJing at our gigs then. Like that scratch segment in “Afrika,” those tiny segments where it sounds like a DJ cutting in, those sorts of things used to really excite us. But some of the music is totally removed from that. “Hoops” is totally different than anything we — or anyone — have ever done".
In making the album, the string arpeggios and the hard MIDI notes, came first. "Then it was about finding the right sounds and building from that point". The band worked from 12:00pm to 12:00am each day making the album.
The albums' drum programming started with doing the snare sound, then a kick sound, and a bit of "high-end ssshhhhhh". The duo said they "took the actual individual drum sounds, then wrote the chords. We always sample tiny fragments of sound as a starting point. But there were more definite tunes and ideas and melodies from the start of this album than before". The duo also experimented with Emagic Logic Audio on this album, which proved a successful instrument in the albums' production as it never crashed, unlike the Steinberg Cubase the band had used previously.
Read more about this topic: It Began In Afrika
Famous quotes containing the word recording:
“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)
“Write while the heat is in you.... The writer who postpones the recording of his thoughts uses an iron which has cooled to burn a hole with. He cannot inflame the minds of his audience.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Too many photographers try too hard. They try to lift photography into the realm of Art, because they have an inferiority complex about their Craft. You and I would see more interesting photography if they would stop worrying, and instead, apply horse-sense to the problem of recording the look and feel of their own era.”
—Jessie Tarbox Beals (1870–1942)