Failure share "Mulholland Drive" and part 4 of studio diary

photo by Priscilla Scott

We’ve posted part 1, part 2 and part 3 of Failure‘s studio diary for their upcoming album, The Heart Is A Monster, their first in 19 years (due 6/30 via INresidence). Now part 4 is here, which is about mixing the album and is written by guitarist/vocalist/bassist Ken Andrews.

The band also premiered a new song, “Muholland Drive,” from the new record. Listen to that, with part 4 of the studio diary, below…

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Issue04: Mixing The Heart is a Monster by Ken Andrews

Even though I’ve been mixing albums for close to 20 years now, I still get excited and sometimes overwhelmed at the prospect of either making something better or worse during the mixing process. I think even casual music listeners know when they hear a mix they like. Of course a listener’s experience of a mix is inseparable from the content of the recording, and yet, I know I’ve heard mixes that I loved, from songs that I didn’t really care for.

But mixing Failure is a whole different experience for me because, as you may have guessed, I’m actually in the band as a songwriter, instrumentalist and singer. I’ve spoken to quite a few people who can’t understand how I’m able to be objective during a mix, but for me, it’s always been about the whole picture and not my individual performances.

I never grabbed on to any of the normal guitar heroes when I was first learning how to play guitar. Instead I was more into the whole package kind of people, like Robert Smith. To that end, I never became a great guitar player because as soon as I was able to play parts that I liked, I was moving on to the other instruments, vocals and the recording and mixing side of record making. Sometimes I wish I would have taken more time to become a more technically proficient guitarist, but sometimes I see all that knowledge and practice take some people down very predictable paths that I’m just not interested in.

And the same can be said of my mixing work. As with guitar, I’m entirely self-taught. Which is funny to me now as I’m being asked to be a part of the educational process from the teaching side now. Instead, I just listened, a lot, to albums that moved me. I studied them backwards and forwards, until I knew every square inch of those recordings. That was indispensable because that was how I developed my ear for music and for sound in general. People often ask me what makes an artist pick me over another mixer, and my only answer is, they like my ear. They like the way I hear things, and following that, how I like things to be heard. It’s a very nebulous statement, I know, but then mixing in general is one of the most mysterious jobs I know of.

Which brings me to the definition of mixing. On paper it’s the blending of separately recorded elements to achieve one unified presentation of the song. In practice, it’s hundreds; maybe thousands of large and small decisions that hopefully result in a presentation that sounds like it has always existed and could never sound any other way.

The mixing process for THIAM was done in about six days. Well that’s not entirely true. The reason the process was so short is because, like several albums I have produced in the last few years, I was mixing the songs as we were recording them. Recording and mixing in the “BOX”, or in the computer, is why people are able to do this now. Recalling a previous song session, which contains all the individual tracks and the mix information, takes about two minutes. In the past, one would never move on to another song unless the mix was approved and printed to tape, because there was no, 100% accurate, way to get back to that mix. That’s part of the reason why mixing was always treated as a separate process to the recording.

Conversely, the way I like to do things with Failure these days is that everything is happening all the time. For instance, I may take 30 minutes while we are recording guitars on a song, to mix down the drum kit to two tracks. I might do that because I feel like I have a good idea of what I want and it’s already sounding pretty close. Then, with the drums mixed to one stereo track, or stem, the whole session becomes much easier to manager, and can lead to more radical and experimental edit ideas down the line. There were a couple songs on THIAM where the final print of the mix was being sourced from about six stereo stems. On the flip side of that, I would often punch in on a vocal track or guitar track during the mix of a given tune if something that I had not noticed before was bugging me, or if someone had a last minute idea for a new part. This level of fluidity in the entire process of making THIAM really helped the band to focus on the material itself, and not get bogged in tech issues of recording.

But don’t get me wrong; I do like to commit to things as we go. It’s just with an all-digital workflow, one can make changes down the line if need be. If’ I’m truly unsure of a particular path, I make sure to leave a path back to the original tracks, but a lot of the time I’m more interested in working fast, than covering my ass. Why? Because there’s nothing worse than having a creative moment stifled by a technical issue. I like to run the Failure studio so that if anyone has an idea, at anytime, we can get to working on it with as little tech in the way as possible. Ideas can be fleeting. One minute you’re inspired with a kind of vision, and the next you’re checking your email because a technical issue has stopped the process cold. I’m sensitive to that, and like to spend a good amount of time preparing the workspace before the three of us are in there actually working.

As we would start to approach the end of recording on a given song, I would shift my focus to getting a ‘rough’ mix that really captured the vibe of the song. On this album I was intentionally trying to keep the layering to a minimum, so many of the ‘roughs’ are quite close to the finished mixes. In some cases I would just be tweaking one or two elements that had been bugging me about the rough, and that’s it. There were no songs where I was so unhappy with the rough that I felt the need to start completely from scratch. This kept the mixing process relatively simple and quick. A few tweaks, get the other guys to give me some feedback, another round of small tweaks, then printing.

Rather than one day of mixing a song from scratch, this album was mixed, a bit at a time over the course of the entire recording process.

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Failure — 2015 Tour Dates
July 2 Lawrence, KS Liberty Hall
July 3 Joliet, IL Mojoes
July 4 Milwaukee, WI Summerfest
July 5 Cleveland, OH The Grog Shop
July 7 Columbus, OH LC Pavilion Amphitheatre
July 8 Lansing, MI Common Ground Festival
July 9 Cincinnati, OH 20th Century Theatre
July 10 Pittsburgh, PA Stage AE
July 12 Ottawa, ON Ottawa Bluesfest
July 14 Quebec City, QC Quebec City International Summer Festival
July 16 Portland, ME Asylum
July 17 Syracuse, NY The Westcott Theatre
July 18 Westbury, NY The Space at Westbury
July 21 Nashville, TN 3rd & Lindsley
August 8-9 Atlanta, GA The Wrecking Ball