In to the Studio

Those of you who have been reading my blog may know by now that I'm in a band, Southern Sunrise.  We released our first EP last year and have spent a lot of time since moving to the Netherlands gigging our butts off. We wrote a few new songs recently and released our second single just before Christmas(?) so we decided it was about time that we put together a new EP.

Arjan used to be a roady for his friends's band Dewolff and they now own the Electrosaurus Southern Sound Studio in Utrecht where they all live, so Arjan booked some time with them to record our songs.
Just a day after getting back from our holidays in the UK, we packed our bags again and got the train North. I've mentioned Utrecht a lot recently with our stays there etc, it's a fantastic city so it was great to be able to spend some more time there again.

On the first day it rained. A lot. The studio (and a couple of the guys's homes) is right on the canal just above water level and there were reports of flooding in other parts of the city, so everyone was a little nervous until it stopped. We also recorded drums!

The studio records almost everything analogue on tape, this used to be how it was done by everybody before digital methods became readily available. A lot of purists still only record on tape and claim it gives a warmer sound than digital.

It's really great to work with a musician like Pablo, he was able to come up with so many new ideas to really change up the songs and take them from 'good' to 'awesome'. I'm so pleased with how the tracks progressed and grew whilst we were there. As the primary song writer (I do the lyrics and come up with a melody then Arjan works with me to translate that into something) it can sometimes be hard to have other people making changes to songs you've written because it's such a personal thing, but when you give it a try and know it's for the better, it makes it worth while.

Left to right: Remco (our keys player), Arjan, Pablo

Pablo is an incredible guitarist, he added some wonderful stuff to a couple of the songs.

I can't wait for you to hear the new material, I'm so proud of what we all managed to achieve in that short week. We also had a visit from the lovely Melissa who has shot a music video for our new single and done the cover art for the new EP! I've already seen a first edit of it and it's pretty cool. Keep reading the blog as I'll be doing an exclusive sneak peak (if I can convince Arjan to let me) in the near future!