On the road and in the studio with Glassglue

by Parsley on Sun, 2010/07/11 - 6:05pm Post to Twitter

PARSLEY’S COMMLOCK
Diary: On the road and in the studio with Glassglue (myspace.com/glassglue)
On hearing that my friend Matthew’s band Glassglue were going to do some recording in Germany I was invited to drive some of them over there in my camper van. Glassglue have been struggling to capture their live performance on a recording, but had learned of Faust Studios in the South of Germany and decided it was worth a go. The studios are under the stewardship of Hans Joachim Irmler, of legendary experimental Krautrock band Faust, an early signing of Virgin Records in the seventies.

We began our journey on a Friday afternoon and spent a few hours in legendary British traffic. Eventually my passengers’ patience with my random iPod content waned and we switched to Nico, Dylan and the Stones’ Aftermath. We enjoyed the luxury of the largely empty channel tunnel train with a very chirpy carriage attendant. Then the marathon cross-continental European hike began.

One of the hidden advantages of the trip was that I remained blissfully unaware of England’s atrocious world cup performance against Algeria until long after it was over. After a four hour overnight stop in a French lay-by we continued with the accompaniment of Glassglue guitarist Gianluca Galetti in the back of the van. A man and an acoustic guitar will find great difficulty holding my attention for longer than 2 songs, but Gianluca’s efforts renewed my faith in the power of live music, and along with Matthew’s conversational insights made the journey feel much shorter than it was.

On arrival we discovered drummer Ravi and vocalist Marcel already enjoying the delights of the amazing studio complex, built in the carcass of a former paper factory next to the Danube (website and pictures at http://www.faust-studio.de/). The main recording room is massive and reminiscent of The Beatles rehearsals/recordings for Let It Be. There are also showers, kitchen/dining area and a venue of club size.

We arrived in time for breakfast of locally baked bread and strawberries. I then adjourned for a further 4 hours sleep while the guys began to do their stuff. Matthew has always surprised me with his innovative approach to things, and the recordings began with ‘rough’ recordings of all songs for Joachim of Faust to make suggestions on the next day. Given the intricacies of Glassglue’s songs this seemed a very brave use of time to me, but they soon showed that the honing of their set over 6 years has made them very comfortable with repeating their performances.

I sat in the recording room. As an unabashed fan of their stuff I enjoyed the ‘anthology’-style deconstruction of the songs into endless almost dub versions, courtesy of the recording process. However, my nap had helped me recover more than my passengers, and they finished relatively early to get a good night’s sleep.

Next morning, after a wander round the local town of Scheer, the band listened to the previous day’s work. I was now sporting a paisley suit which I hoped would reflect the plan for hippy experimentation on the tracks. The guys seemed to be agonising is some diametrically opposite directions about how best to enhance the songs in recording. Joachim and his dog wandered in, and he gave some small fatherly suggestions. Personally I couldn’t really imagine much improvement on the source material and found myself thinking of my favourite psychedelic touches – backwards guitar solos, phasing, telephone amplifier vocals. However, I slinked away from the discussion after my naive suggestion of using a bow on the bass in one song met with disapproval.

I decided instead to enjoy the pleasures of the studio sensation without the responsibility of contributing to what got produced. However I did find myself catapulted into the fray when I was nominated to conduct the coordination of conflicting guitar and drum rhythms in one song. I approached my inaudible contribution with all serious commitment, and it seemed to work out.

An idea for a live concert in the studio was shelved in favour of ploughing through the recordings. The European cameraderie of music showed up in the friendly shared meals provided by our hosts. Jochim told me about his Klang Bad annual festival in Scheer, and how he had eventually won the locals over to the idea.

They say ‘a watched pot never boils’ and I decided that ‘a watched Glassglue would never be satisfied with the last take’ and so I kept myself to myself and arrived late at studio the next day. Lo and behold they had suddenly recorded loads of songs, despite probably appearing to the casual observer just to be recording the same song over and over again.

The work continued through the day until late on the third day we all listened attentively through to what had been produced so far, and anyone’s suggestions. Jochim seemed, like his dog, to be creating an amiable feeling (in his case about the recordings), which was a valuable counterweight to the dedicated seriousness that was going around. I was mostly struck by the originality of the bass lines, which I don’t think I’d been able to appreciate properly before.

Next day it was time for the long drive home leaving Ravi and Marcel to complete their contributions alone. I had recorded the rough mixes on my phone and Gianluca was keen to hear them, whilst Matthew was determined that a period of not listening to the songs should ensue so that he could give them a fresh ear review at a later date. Gianluca was only allowed to listen to them on headphones, and not to comment (not always an easy task for someone of Italian origins…). Matthew was somewhat perturbed at my relatively unintentional recording of the discussion around the listening to the rough mixes. To be honest I didn’t think it would rival the infamous Troggs studio conversation/argument for subsequent listenability.

On the way back my iPod redeemed itself with The Soft Boys unreleased Radar album (Gianluca’s new favourite band apparently) and the Bee Gees psychedelic Horizontal album. I particularly enjoyed the track ‘Birdie Told Me’. By the time we made it back to London, my Eagle Transporter had a thick film of dead insects covering its front, and I seemed to have picked up some beginnings of flu, but also a degree of satisfaction to know I had been involved with recordings I would relish at a later date.

parsley@gardenrecords.com [www.gardenrecords.com]