I had a great time producing our latest single, ‘Shut the World Away’ with the rest of Alfie and the Avalon. It’s an upbeat and fun tune that makes light of our obsession with social media. This is a production with a weird blend of minimalist parts and ‘maximalist’ recording. It also happens to be our first self-produced release. For this release to come across in the intended way, we had to capture the humour and light-heartedness in the song. We wanted to retain the character of a live show, but with added charisma in the form of a chunky, in your face drum sound, crazy SFX and a pastiche guitar solo at the end.

We recorded drums and bass for this song and a few upcoming tunes in the same session, so I went for a bit of a ‘one size fits all’ mic setup that I can blend into a variety of different sounds. The sound is really glued together by a stereo pair placed in the stairwell attached to the small studio at my workplace, for both drums and bass. I also used a crush mic for the drums placed inside the piano in the same room, which worked wonders for the snare sound because the wood of the piano reduced any harsh cymbals and allowed me to compress the heck out of whatever was left.

For bass, I started with an AKG D112 on the cab and a DI, but on a spur of the moment decision I decided to put a second D112 up and fully clip it through the X32. Once balanced in, this ended up being really nice because I couldn’t get enough gain to clip every note, only the low ones, so every time I hit a low note there’s a small extra push of saturation in the bottom.

I continued with the ‘maximalist’ recording for rhythm guitar, where I split the signal to two amps – a Blues Jnr for the main sound and a distorted bass amp to blend in. The bass amp adds this scooped distortion that enhances the character and gives something a bit more than a nice clean rhythm tone. The lead guitar tone was simpler with the regular Blues Junior sound and a nice distortion pedal for the solo. There’s a nice part in the second verse that sounds like a clave doubling the tambourine, but that’s actually an accidental squeak from the lead guitar that we sampled. When Ewan and I heard it, we both instantly thought ‘clave’ so it must sound pretty accurate!

Despite all the mad recording, the mix was super easy on this song, all I needed to do was balance it properly and I had a sound right away. Usually I bounce stems and open up a new mix project, but it didn’t seem necessary at all with Shut the World Away, I just had to polish it up with a bit of EQ and compression and add some FX and it was ready to go. The room mics, distorted layers, occasional synth and of course the organ, which was composed by Ewan, added all the interest we needed.

Shut the World Away is accompanied by a B-side called ‘Influencer’. We love the humour in this song and thought it was a great match for STWA. We jammed the song out acoustically with a cheap Casio keyboard and some random percussion and loved the vibe, so ended up recording it as a live performance (aside from a few bits of percussion, recorder and BV overdubs). In terms of set up, I put a kick mic inside the Cajon, Alfie’s vocal was recorded with an SM58 and I had to separate Ewan and his accordion from the rest of us with a screen because he was super loud. I think and hope you can hear that the song was recorded live, it definitely has that charm and we didn’t want a polished sound.

If you’ve not already heard the songs (or even if you have) check out Shut the World Away and Influencer by Alfie and the Avalon below. Also, keep an eye out on my socials for more posts and releases, it’s going to be a busy year!