Inkblot is the latest in a series of Philip Lynch tracks released on Workbench -- that will eventually be compiled into an album. And by eventually, I mean we're shooting for 2011.
Philip and I have known each other for (yeesh) a lot of years at this point. Something like 14 years. We came to our arrangement to record this album together because Philip has all these great songs and I have the means to record them. He allows me to produce the recordings, giving me some exposure, and I do my best to do the songs justice.
We started working on the project in 2006, on weekends when we had a matching schedule. It was never supposed to take as long as this to get it done. But there has been a benefit to all that time -- and that is that we've gotten a lot better -- or at least, I have, as a recordist, mixer and producer.
"Inkblot" was recorded over eight sessions between December 11, 2010 and March 22, 2011; and mixed and mastered in April. In our first session, Philip and I played together: he played guitar and I played the "bass drum" (it's a floor tom) and snare. The guitar was fairly well separated from the drums -- the amp was in a separate room -- but there was some bleed. And of course recording the kick and snare with one mic limits what you can do with them come mix time. But the goal was to work fast, and we did. We got the skeleton of the track down in under an hour.
Later that same day Philip tripled the guitar part: he played it again through this crazy blue speaker I have -- which has a great, really ratty sound -- and again on an acoustic guitar. Philip, I should note, plays all the guitars on this track, including the epic guitar solo at the end.
Other days were devoted to vocals, bass, filling in the drum part (cymbals and tambourine), additional guitars, and the guitar solo. A couple more sessions were devoted to editing and cleaning up the tracks, and finally it took a few separate sessions to get the mix and revise it.
We hope you enjoy it.
~ James Beuadreau
By the way, for those of you on the East Coast -- Philip is acting in the world premiere production of John Biguenet's Night Train at New Jersey Repertory Company in Long Branch, NJ. It runs through May 29. There are two "behind the scenes" videos with the three actors at the NJ Rep site, here.
