Back To Work

I’m going to start this off with a big News of the World style headline:

Yes, that’s right, whilst everybody else in the world is winding down for the Christmas period, the ‘Soul were hard at work in the studio recording brand new tracks for the new album/singles for ’09

We’ve all be getting a bit restless with the lack of activity on the new music front, but it’s all been to do with the business side of things rather than the music which is always frustrating. However, we’d managed to sort out a few precious hours where we were all in the same place at the same time and there just happened to be a nice recording studio free too.



For those of you who are particularly observant or are real fanatic Soul’diers you’ll notice from the photos that we were back in Britannia Row Studios which was the place where we recorded our first two singles (Brittle Heart/Give Me Love and Lips Are Unhappy/Baby I’m Broke, yes that the kind of stuff we put on the b-side!). Not only that, but we’re back with one our favourite producer/engineer chaps, Dead Pan Kris or DPK to his friends. So far so 2005!

We started of the day nice and early (well early for musicians, especially those who may or may not have been out on the sauce the night before for people’s birthdays) and got to Brit Row just as DPK was putting on the kettle. Impeccable timing. As Mr. Atkins and DPK set about putting ludicrously expensive microphones on the drum kit and Andrew and I played with guitar amps, Ali put aside her vegetarian principles and managed to find us some bacon sandwiches.




Meanwhile Rusty was sitting in the control booth attempting to channel the spirit of Duck Dunn (click here for details on Duck, and if you don’t know who is he is, you’ll certainly now the tracks he played on). He had also set up his rather tasty vintage Fender Tremolux amp in the corner for the low end duties.

Having set everything up we started on the really hard work. First song up on the block was “Up In Flames”. We had a few runs of the track, tweaked a few amps, mics, drums and then decided that we finally up for a take. It was then that the gods of rock ‘n’ roll look down on us and again decided to dish out some bad luck. Rusty was busy playing away and then suddenly noticed a strange smell…something cooking…no…burning…is that smoke?…oh…shit.





Rusty managed to get to his beloved vintage fender before it actually went “up in flames” but it was severely smoking before he managed to turn it off. Apparently the output transformer had a hissy fit and decided to let go in a spectacular fashion. Seriously uncool, but the irony was not lost on us, and we pushed on regardless.






We moved on at a cracking pass only stopping for a quick slurp of coffee or a minor review of the track. In a short 7 hour period we managed to get down the bones of:

Up in Flames
That’s When Trouble Begins
Woah Billy
Upon Hilly Fields
White Russian Doll.

Rusty then took his leave of us and rushed back to the coast so that he could get to his other gig before they started without him (he managed it with 7 minutes to spare!) and we decided to crack on.

Mr. Atkins, DPK and Andrew had a quick ‘thought shower’ (brain storms are no longer allowed because they’re too dangerous) and decided that it might be cool to go through W.R.D and Woah Billy again but with a slightly trashier, more rock ‘n’ roll sound.

So microphones were dutifully moved and Mr A. channelled the spirits of Bonham, Grohl and Animal and created pure, distilled rock and it sounded amazing. Heavy, but at the same time quintessentially Lucky Soul. amazing.

Then it was time to start on the guitars for Woah Billy so I finally managed to turn everything up. Not quite to 11, but enough to shake things up again. Eventually the guitars sounded a bit Marc Bolan, who I think is a particularly underrated guitarist, adding just the right amount of “Glam Stomp”(tm) to proceedings.

Then it was back over to the Man Mountain, Mr. Atkins to explore the space, relieve Andrew’s fever and lay down some cowbell action.

By now we were getting near the end of the day, but had just enough time to all stand around a microphone Band Aid style and do some hand claps.






We loaded our Rusty Steed Alan with all the gear and headed off into the night. Lots more to do on all the tracks, but they’re coming together and sound awesome. They’ll be lots to look forwarded to in ’09 if you’re a true Lucky Soul’dier.

keep the faith

Ivor