In a recent interview on Brooklyn Vegan with Mike Hill of the band Tombs, Larry and Trevor from Pelican talk about the making of their new EP -” Ataraxia/Taraxia,” and what it was like to track drums with me here in Los Angeles.
Here are some highlights from the interview -
Mike Hill: Who handled the production duties on Ataraxia / Taraxia?
Trevor de Brauw: It’s sort of complicated. Since the band is no longer located in one city we have to fly by night, we have limited time at our disposal. What we ended up doing for these songs was split up the recording. Larry tracked his drums with Aaron Harris (Isis drummer) in L.A. for two of the songs and then sent us the drum tracks. We recorded the rest of the material in Chicago at Engine Studios with Sanford Parker (Nachtmystium, Gates of Slumber, Leviathan).
There are basically three engineers involved: Aaron Harris, Sanford Parker, Kemble Walters, who’s Larry’s bandmate in ÆGES.
How does recording with close friends affect the process of making a record?
LH: For me, I’ve always looked up to Aaron (Harris) as a drummer, and he’s gotten a lot busier being an engineer as of late. He’s working on records all the time now and I just feel like he’s a good person to have in the studio with me; he’s such a mellow guy and he’s easy to talk to. He calms my nerves. The studio can always be kind of a stressful situation, kind of uptight. He can offer good insight. I remember there was a couple of fills I was doing on the second song of the EP and he was like “Yeah why don’t you pull back a little, hold back on those fills.” He does offer really good insight. Made the songs better in the end. He made it more of a comfortable experience. I’m in a band with [Kemble]. He’s a drummer too; he was the same way. You know he’s kind of like, if I did something that was kind of weird, he’d say “Oh, why don’t you try this instead?” And I’d say, “I didn’t think of it that way.” Both guys were really good influences on me; made it pretty smooth. As far as Sanford goes, I wasn’t there [this] time, but recording with Sanford is always awesome. When I was in Lair of the Minotaur we did our records with Sanford.
To read the full interview go HERE
