Recording
In May 1995, in the wake of the critical and commercial success of their 1994 debut album, Definitely Maybe, Oasis began recording Morning Glory at Rockfield Studios in Wales, with Owen Morris and Noel Gallagher producing. By the time they were finished in June 1995, Oasis were on the brink of becoming one of the most popular bands in the UK: the August 1995 Battle of Britpop incident in which Oasis and Blur had a chart battle over their singles "Roll with It", and "Country House", would propel them to mainstream awareness.
The band recorded the album quickly: early on, averaging almost one song every twenty-four hours. However, tension arose between songwriter Noel Gallagher and his younger brother, lead singer Liam, when Noel wanted to sing lead vocals on either "Wonderwall" or "Don't Look Back in Anger". The younger Gallagher considered this tantamount to a temporary exile from his own group. The issue dissipated momentarily as Noel was pleased with Liam's vocal take of "Wonderwall". However, tension returned due to Liam's strained attempts to sing the high notes on "Champagne Supernova". When Noel subsequently took his turn to record his vocals for "Don't Look Back in Anger", Liam went to a local pub and came back accompanied by a crowd of people whilst recording was still underway, infuriating his brother. The siblings then began fighting viciously, the session was abandoned and recording was suspended.
When the Gallagher brothers were reconciled three weeks later, the group spent another two weeks working on the album, followed by post-production work in London. Despite the friction involved between the Gallagher brothers, Owen Morris reflected in 2010 that: "The sessions were the best, easiest, least fraught, most happily creative time I’ve ever had in a recording studio. I believe people can feel and hear when music is dishonest and motivated by the wrong reasons. Morning Glory, for all its imperfection and flaws, is dripping with love and happiness." Paul Weller joined them in the studio and provided lead guitar and backing vocals for "Champagne Supernova", and harmonica for the two untitled tracks known as "The Swamp Song". Noel wrote the last song for the album, "Cast No Shadow", on the train as he returned to the studio. Morris claimed the album was recorded in 15 days; when it was finished he said it would "wipe the field with any competition ... It's astonishing. It's the Bollocks for this decade."
The brickwall mastering technique utilised during the recording of the album has led to some journalists claiming that it was responsible for initiating the loudness war, as its heavy use of compression, first widely used by Morris on Definitely Maybe, was leaps and bounds beyond what any other album up until then had attempted. Music journalist Nick Southall, who has written extensively on the loudness war, commented, "If there's a jump-the-shark moment as far as CD mastering goes then it's probably Oasis." In Britpop and the English Music Tradition Andy Bennet and John Stratton noted that as a result of this technique "the songs were especially loud. Gallagher's voice is foregrounded to the point that it appears to grow out of the mixes of the songs, exposing itself to execute a pseudo-live quality."
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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.”
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