The Tanuki Lounge

die!boredom records

Born as a vehicle to release and push The Beautiful Girls and Mat McHugh’s records around the world, Die!Boredom has now moved into a place where it can start supporting and releasing music and bands that we believe in and love. The first release out side of TBG and Mat McHugh was Tanuki Dub – see more details below – and is soon to be followed up by the debut record from Dead Beat Band. Die!Boredom will keep the music coming as we cross paths with music and musicians that fit the bill.

Tanuki DUB’s Glad to be Glad is the premier solo offering from the versatile bassist of pop/rock bands The Beautiful Girls and George, former metal band Pangaea and Brisbane Jazz/World/Groove Allstars The Neighbourhood Groove Collective.

PaulieB is an Australian music gem, tucked away in his West End studio ‘The Tanuki Lounge’ when he isn’t touring internationally with The Beautiful Girls. As a producer and engineer, PaulieB has worked with the likes of Tyrone and Katie Noonan, Tim Freedman, Ash Grunwald, AFRO DIZZI ACT, Saritah, Rachael Brady, Le Josephine (from New Caledonia with Nicky Bomba), Kooii, Darky Roots, Kingfisha, Dubmarine, Bobby Alu, Kafka and countless others. TanukiDUB is the project title for PaulieB’s solo record.

Glad to be Glad is a largely instrumental anthology of striking cinematic world music, sometimes reminiscent of the early Studio One releases, other times like a Tarantino soundtrack remixed by Bill Laswell. The album is brimming with beautifully recorded instruments - the only programmed track is the DJ KRUSH inspired down-tempo ‘Ombolek Tok Tok’ that closes the album. PaulieB offers us a glimpse of the multi instrumentalism resultant of over 20 years performing and producing by playing almost all the instruments himself.

A wonderfully organic sounding album that flows seamlessly between themes, Glad to be Glad showcases dub not only as a style of music, but a style of Audio Post Production, used to explore the spaces within all music. PaulieB explains: 

“Recently I have been collaborating with a lot of Jazz and World musicians, particularly West African, and I see this release as more of a world music record than anything else. I am greatly influenced by the production work and styles of Bill Laswell and his ongoing world music Dub collaborations. I do believe DUB is a production style that can be applied to any style of music and that’s what I find in listening to these recordings.”

Why, then, would an artist with a notoriety for collaboration in such a vast array of genres embark on a project in which he plays almost every instrument himself: drums, percussion, electric bass, electric guitar, nylon string acoustic, ukulele, melodica, Fender Rhodes piano, synths and various toy keyboards. Paulie also did all the engineering, dub effects production, mixing and mastering himself.

“I woke up one morning during a break from touring and recording and was sitting on my sofa with my acoustic guitar and a cuppa tea and realised the bass line for Creamtop Dub - the opening track. I knew all the gear was still set up from a previous session so I went in to the studio to just put down that bass line and see what followed. 8 hours later I was back at home with my first mixdown. It all happened so fast. Each subsequent morning I committed to another simple bass line or nice chord grouping and headed in to repeat the process.

When I first began to record music everything was analog and we recorded on tape. That meant the player had to get it right, preferably from beginning to end without interruption. I think I wanted to remind myself that I still had those skills. So a lot of what I played on the album is unedited and often the very first take. It sometimes seems to me that digital editing has had an adverse affect on many young musicians ability to concentrate and commit to performing well in the studio. Pro-Tools has become a verb.”

Guests on the album include Kooii’s Peter Hunt on trumpet, and West African Griot ‘Lansana Camara’ on Belafon. Peter Golikov from Golden Sounds plays some wicked Sci-Fi Moog on ‘Ralmar’ and Australian-Samoan rhythm superstar Bobby Alu drops the drums on the title track ‘Glad to be Glad.’

Using Spring Reverb with your DAW

My favourite reverb is spring reverb.  Not plug-in or pedal emulated spring reverb (even though I like some of those a lot too) but the real kind you find in guitar amps or in my case, in the original RE-201 Roland Space Echo.  I like it because it’s quirky, colourful and a little bit nasty.  Plus you can overdrive the input for adding weird harmonics that sound cool and I believe that every spring reverb unit has its own unique flavour.  It’s a mechanism, so no matter how hard the manufacturer might try, no two units could ever be EXACTLY the same.  And creating sounds that nobody else has is part of what I love about being a Recording Engineer.   So here’s how I use my RE-201 spring verb with my DAW, Pro-Tools 9…

So lets say we want to add some nice spring to a dry vocal track.  The first thing to do is patch in the reverb unit you want to use.  So lets connect one of the DAW’s mono analog outputs (lets use output 3 for example) to the input of the Reverb unit.  I use balanced ¼” Jacks.  Then connect the output of the reverb unit back into the DAW to any input.  Basically we’re gonna record the mono reverb onto a spare track.  Nothing new so far..

Next we need to send some vocals into the verb.  Assign the main output of your vocal track to mono ouput 3, instead of the mix bus.  Make sure you have NO Compression on the vocals here because we want the full dynamic range to hit the springs.   Now open a simple 2 band EQ plug in on the vocals and High Pass it at around  1K.  Yep – kill ALL the low frequencies.  These will only make the spring distort and are the source of so much Mud in your Mix.  I also like to add 6 to 12dB of high frequencies – usually around 8 or 10K.  Anything much higher than that starts sounding to glassy for me, but hell, try it and see if you like it.

Now create a new mono audio track and set the input to wherever your verb is returning.  Now your main vocal fader temporarily becomes your reverb send and your new track is the return.  Set your reverb unit to 100% wet.  Including any dry signal in the return will only add to phasing issues (a sad truth about DAW’s and latency).

So now all we need to do is tweak the send volume into the reverb (start with the most you can send without overloading the spring and distorting then back it off a bit ) and then get a nice record level on the return.  You’ll notice that with all the low frequencies out of the vocal send, you can pump a LOT in and the return volume can be quite low.  If you want more record level you can always add some gain using the preamp on your return input, but I prefer to leave it at a lower more natural level.  Additionally, with no compression on the vocal take, you will notice that the reverb is barely noticeable on quiet phrases and really kicks on on louder ones.  This is GOOD.  So good.

So once you’re happy with the tone and input level all you need to do is print the verb to its audio track.  Once that’s done assign your main vocal track back to the mix bus instead of output 3 and remove the 2 band EQ.  Now you have one track of dry vocal and one track of pure verb vocal.  The best part here is now you can compress the main vocal take as hard or soft as you like and the reverb remains totally separate and the singers original dynamics make the verb come in and out really organically, recreating the effect of natural volume triggered ambience.  Love it. 

Now repeat this process to create a mono Reverb track for each sound you want verb on – more vocals, Bass, Drum Mics, Bongos, Synths or whatever!!  Tailor the settings for each sound and then try panning the different verbs all over the place. Or stay true to the old school and keep it mono – up to YOU.

If you want STEREO reverb, simply record it twice (you cant be lazy and duplicate it  - it wont work) onto two mono tracks (one after the other) and pan them hard left and right.  It wont be True Stereo, but because the springs wont make (exactly) the same sounds twice, the effect can be really incredible.

Sometimes I like to EQ the recorded reverb track opposite to our send  - cut back the highs and pump the lows back in, but I find it’s the lows in the spring that muddy up my mix.

Make sure you experiment with different settings on your 2 band send EQ and also try overloading the crap out of the reverb unit input – sometimes it’s exactly what you need.  I also put all kind of modulations on my send channel so the colour of the verb is constantly changing.  Try putting a stomp box phaser or envelope filter between the output of your DAW and the input of the Verb.  Then try put it after the verb, before the return input.  See what you like and search for the WaHoo.  Bless, PaulieB.

* make * it * funky * now *

Aside from moonlighting ladies nights as the ‘Triple Clown Revue’, Gold Coast sensualists Brad, Q-Beats and Otto like to play a lot of really damn good music.  They have an amazing power sonic group called ‘Bowser’ currently collecting some of the best Unearthed review comments I have ever seen.  Go have a listen and let them know what you think.  In between late night “Clowning” and amassing cult rock followings these three Gents came up with so much extra music they thought they better start a second band.  Enter Kwerkshoppe.

Sketch by Emmanuel Hernaez

Started originally as an instrumental funk outfit to broaden their live show opportunities on the once venue scant Goldie, Kwerkshoppe recently hit studio 301 for a day and oh-so-nonchelantly happened to record 19 funk masterpieces in a single session.  Freaks.  Then they took ‘em home for a few weeks where Otto and Queezy rummaged and shuffled this and that, until the owner of the aforementioned clown revue turned up at their door with reprimand for a missed hens night.  Upon hearing the FUNK eminating from the clowns den, Mistress ‘Tan Tan’ was compelled to punish the bad clowns in the best way possible - with some ultra nasty night cat Betty Davis style vocal cuts.  

And now my NS10’s are humping to the funk as I have the absolute honour of mixing this voodoo and my vintage outboard is on the verge of blowing smoke dialing in cops’n’robbers rhythm section EQ’s with RE-201 spring reverb for bongos and guitars.  The album should be ready for collection from the Woodford Merchandise Tent this year.

Trivia - Bobby Alu used to play percussion for Kwerkshoppe.  Otto and Q were in The Julian Date.  Brad and I went to SAE with Quan Yeomans in 1994 and then went on to form HoRN.  

Upshot - Its all happening folks. The Bean…is easy?

Mixing for ‘Miguel’

Mixing today for Michael Rogers and his Bad Boy Soul big band ‘Miguel’.  Some of you might be familiar with Michaels previous project ‘Doch & The Gypsy Orchestra’.  This time around he hit the studios with 8 soul drenched tracks and Mark Henman on drums, Dave Spicer on Piano, Sam Vincent on Double Bass and 6 almighty Horns…  With just a couple of vocal takes left to complete the recordings, focus has shifted primarily to mixing.  

Today i was working on “Creeping Curiosity”.  This track is sexy as hell and dirty to boot,  with lyrics toting ‘a creeping curiosity for your body’, a rhythm section pounding like a lust charged wombat and slamming latino pianos reminiscent of the hip hop sounds of “ORISHAS”.    Then add the blistering lines and textures of the Horn section and Damn..  Thats DYNAMITE…!!!  And I must say - my favourite horn mic from the group i tracked with (including AEA’s and a ROYER121..) has gotta be my TOA checkout mic..  Crispy :)