Paying homage to Sunset Sound’s beginnings
Reflecting on how this pack came together, Nicky Paul shared:
“The original purpose of writing and recording these records was purely for me. Not something to release or to make money from, rather, creating something for the sake of creating and doing it in the purest possible form. I come from a “player” background, specifically but not limited to jazz, where folks can sometimes do too much on an instrument.
I wanted to capture a group of highly talented musicians recording simultaneously to get that “human sound” without the complexities of playing “too much.” On the tech end, I wanted to produce these records as close to the way this sound was originally produced (i.e direct to tape).
Because there are a lot of influences from the ‘60s and ‘70s in the songwriting, getting that natural tape distortion and saturation was paramount. Unknown Mortal Orchestra and Tame Impala are two modern examples of projects utilizing a similar technique that influenced these recordings.
There were very few overdubs, no recording direct to DAW and running to tape and back, and the majority of edits were taken from a single take. Although I would maybe do this differently, a big part of the sound was having amps in the same room (with baffles) as the drums. Bleed occurred, which for separate editing purposes can be funky, but for authenticity purposes, can’t be beat.
The session was recorded on a custom API 32x24x8 Demedio Sunset Sound Custom Console with API 550-A equalizer’s on all modules (along with the classic outboard accouterment we find in most well-recognized studios). The tricky part was getting the tape print back to digital to line up.
Luckily, Sunset Sound supplied an SMPTE alignment system (Alesis MasterLink) for the Studer A-827 24 track we were using so as to get it as close to on the grid as wanted. Because tape machines are still machines and run on analog mechanisms… naturally, they drift. One of the coolest parts about Sunset Sound is that every studio in the complex shares access to both chamber and plate reverbs housed in the facility. This was especially useful for sending drum and guitar amp signal.
Every sound in this pack was recorded directly to tape and done so at the highest level to create quality that is unmatched and completely in line from playing to recording as it was done on some of the classic records recorded to tape. Funny enough, a lot of those records were recorded on the same board, same room, same tape machine, and same studio as where these sounds were recorded. Enjoy!”
Session players:
Chris Hartz (drums)
Sam Sugarman (guitar)
Ross Clark (guitar)
Thomas Drayton (bass)
Engineers:
Andrew Lappin
Clinton Welander
Nicky Paul
