Recording and Music
The band recorded and self-produced "The Killing Moon" – which was released on 20 January 1984 – at Crescent Studio in Bath, Somerset. After catching a cold, McCulloch completed the recording of the vocals for the song at Amazon Studio in Liverpool, where de Freitas also completed the drumming. The band then went to Paris where they were booked into Les Studios des Dames and Studio Davout. Henri Lonstan, the engineer at des Dames, assisted on the string passages and Adam Peters provided the string arrangements and played cello and piano. McCulloch, not happy with the lead vocals he had recorded in Paris, re-recorded most of the vocals at Amazon Studio in Liverpool. The rest of the band members were happy with their contributions.
Continuing the band's prominent use of strings – which began with the 1982 single "The Back of Love" – they recorded Ocean Rain using a 35-piece orchestra. Lead guitarist Will Sergeant said, "We wanted to make something conceptual with lush orchestration; not Mantovani, something with a twist. It's all pretty dark. 'Thorn of Crowns' is based on an eastern scale. The whole mood is very windswept: European pirates, a bit Ben Gunn; dark and stormy, battering rain; all of that." During recording De Freitas used xylophones and glockenspiels in addition to his usual percussion, bass player Les Pattinson used an old reverb machine at des Dames and Sergeant's solo on "My Kingdom" was played using a Washburn acoustic guitar which he distorted through a valve radio.
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Famous quotes containing the words recording and/or music:
“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)
“Noble and wise men once believed in the music of the spheres: noble and wise men still continue to believe in the “moral significance of existence.” But one day even this sphere-music will no longer be audible to them! They will wake up and take note that their ears were dreaming.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)