After the release of Full Fathom Five in 1995 we went into Hipposonic studios in Vancouver with Rage Against the Machine producer Garth Richardson to record our next album. We did bed-tracks (guitar bass and drums) for twelve songs but only four were ever finished. These four were released in 1997 as an EP entitled Crow. The owner of Hipposonic studios, Rob Darch asked me to paint him a 6 X 8 foot painting as payment for the session. I tried, but I really didn’t know what I was doing at the time and quite literally the painting sucked. A year went by, then two and before you knew it fourteen! We all thought those reel to reel tapes have got to be taped over by now if not lost all together so we just forgot about it.
In 2005 Rob Darch Bought Mushroom studios, one of Vancouver’s most historic and esteemed musical artefacts having been host to everyone from ACDC, to Aerosmith, even Led Zeppelin recorded a harmonica part there back in the day. In 2010 after re-acquainting with Rob, Hamish and I popped into Mushroom to see if he still had the Tapes. After moving everything from the old Hipposonic building and various storage lockers into a small attic like crawl space at Mushroom Rob told us “if your tapes are here they’re in this room.” It looked fairly daunting as the room was completely stuffed from floor to ceiling like a moving truck with old recording gear, odds and ends including two rows deep of reel to reel tape boxes encompassing the perimeter. We just looked at each other and said “if it takes all day to find these tapes then it takes all day.” But within twenty minutes of digging we had miraculously found all four! The tapes luckily were still in usable condition and I must say we were all blown away by the sounds that Garth had captured. The performances of the band were pretty amazing as well capturing a snapshot of us at a time when we were rehearsing fiendishly and really gelling. Anyways we are working on this stuff adding overdubs and vocals to the recording. Hopefully we will have something to play for you soon from this never before heard BTG album so stay tuned.
Oh and by the way, I finally figured out what to paint for Rob and on the night that we went into Mushroom to listen to the tapes for the first time I gave two paintings to pay for the session.
Hey guys, can’t wait to hear the “new” stuff.
I have one memory of visiting you guys in the studio …not sure if it was during these sessions: Duane freaking me right out with a nasty photo of a mangled face at a car crash scene.
Those were the days. If he did it again though, I might have to punch him.