The Hackles - The Twilight's Calling It Quits (2018) [Hi-Res]

Tracklist
---------
01. Bright Light Midnight
02. Oh My Days
03. Sit Down Game
04. What Did I Do With the Day
05. Still Next to Me
06. Too Far
07. New Shadow of the Pines
08. Don't Let Me Go By
09. Humane Society
10. Can We Get Some Air Back Here


It can feel like you’re watching them rehearse in their living room as they sit onstage facing one another, singing while being captured by the bi-directional microphone between them. From the audience, it appears to be less of a performance and more like eavesdropping. Watching them, their voices and instruments coalesce into one, as if coming from one source. So, when it came time to approach recording, the obvious choice would be to re-create their live setup as we embarked into my recording studio (Type Foundry Recording).

Utilizing their bi-directional microphone technique, we would have no ability to balance relative vocal levels during the mixing process; but so what? We chose to embrace the lack of control. It’s too easy to manipulate every minuscule detail in today’s recorded music. Let’s not be able to do certain things and see what happens when our control is taken away. But, in a live setting, something happens when sharing space and time; a sorcery of sorts. Listening to, as well as watching, musicians in real time is very forgiving. However, recorded music is inherently in the past. In fact, it is the opposite of ephemeral. The sounds are there to be scrutinized; they remain fixed, permanent and immalleable. So, when listening back to our recordings made by recreating the live setup, the inability to balance the levels of the voices and instruments became an impediment to achieving the sounds we heard in our collective heads. Sometimes it worked great, providing interesting results we probably wouldn’t have achieved had we maintained total control of the outcome. Other times, results were unflattering and unusable. So, why not try again with another session? This time we created new obstacles. We decided to take the music out of the recording studio and move it into my house in Astoria, conveniently located across the street from Luke and Kati’s home. They also decided to have guest musicians during this session, inviting one or two friends for each song.

Rob Jones and I packed up his ludicrously heavy 1/2” Tascam 8 track tape machine up the 36 stairs into the living room and set up all the microphones. Upon testing the machine that hadn’t seen any use in about 10 years, the recorder went from being an 8 track, to 6 track, and finally to a 5 track; even those were hanging by a thread. It wasn’t until later, when I pulled up the tracks in the studio, that I was able to accurately hear what we captured. There was some distortion here and there. Sometimes tracks would drop out, but we were still sitting on some amazing takes for sure. These were not hi-fi recordings, but the vibe was there and we had captured a unique sound; a sound antithetical to modern recordings. If we were going for hi-fi, we surely were using the wrong tools! At the end of the day, we had a handful of keeper takes but realized we still needed another session. So, we packed up the tape machine, dragged it into the shop, and decided to reconvene in the living room a few months later, again inviting guest performers. With the tape machine in better working condition (but not without with its quirks), The Hackles and friends, fueled by cheese, whisky, and this year’s crop of dilly beans, captured some truly awe-inspiring takes.

With three sessions under our belts, we decided to come full circle and make one more appearance at Type Foundry to catch those last few songs that got away. Since the studio was a bit contrary to our desire for obstacles, I decided to mix the songs live to an analog 2-track, trying to get as close as I could to preserving the immediate sound of their performances. And there we had it: four sessions, one album; impediments overcome and flaws embraced. I like to think we made an honest record that epitomizes The Hackle’s sincere approach to songwriting, performance, and recording.

DOWNLOAD ALBUM [mp3]

DOWNLOAD ALBUM [flac]

DOWNLOAD ALBUM [Hi-Res]