Well I’m not even sure on what day we’ve reached but that doesn’t seem so important anymore, because the record is a couple of days from being completely done!! That’s right, through hard work, late nights and tight deadlines, we can finally say that we are 72 hours from being finished. A lot has gone down in the past few weeks and we’ve been travelling left and right. I have to admit that we broke our promise to keep you guys updated. I’m really sorry about that. There’s def been a lack of blog and vlogs lately but you have to understand…We’ve just been focusing all of our energies on making sure the album was the best it could be. So to make it up to you, here’s a gigantic recap of what has been going down over the last few weeks.
September 15-16. You guys all know that we have been working on this album with producer Dave Fortman, all summer in Montreal. Well, there’s another piece of info that we haven’t told you about yet…So to kick things off, here’s a scoop: We also worked with another amazing producer, Nate “Danjahandz” Hills! Danja has been working as Timbaland’s right hand man for a couple of years and he’s now coming out on his own. He co-produced some of the biggest songs of 2006 including Nelly Furtado’s “Promiscuous”, “Say It Right” and “Maneater” as well as Justin Timberlake’s “Sexy Back”, “My Love” and “What Goes Around” to name just a few. In our opinions, he’s problably the coolest and most innovative up-and-coming young producer around. We had the chance to work with him at Hit Factory Studios in Miami and he ended up co-producing 4 tracks on the new record. Those Miami sessions were incredible. We really got along amazing with him and became really good friends. It gave us the opportunity to try a completely new approach to how we write songs. It was really exciting to come up with music that sounded so fresh and special. I think the songs will speak for themselves and I can’t wait for you guys to hear them! Anyways, to get back to the recap…In mid-september, Nate came out to Montreal for the weekend to put some finishing touches on the songs we had worked on. We spent 2 days adding cool sounds, beats and textures to the music and it made everything sound even better. Thanks Nate…you rock!
September 17-22. With Nate gone, we had 5 more days booked at the studio in Montreal to finish every detail on the songs. That meant going over every single track and making sure that they were to our liking. For certain songs, that didn’t mean much: we would go through them and sometimes not change a single thing. On others, we added full guitar parts, key background vocals and Pierre even re-sang certain parts that didn’t feel right. We worked till the 11th hour until everybody was 100% satisfied with the songs. Montreal studio was done!
September 25th. We relocated to LA on tuesday the 25th to work with a couple more people and mix the album.
On september 26th, we went to a studio in LA to work with DJ Lethal. Lethal was the DJ in House of Pain (”Jump Around”!) and Limp Bizkit. Dave Fortman knew him from back in the day and immediately thought of him when we were looking to add loops and flavor to some of the songs. He ended up working mostly on one song “Your love is just a Lie” but man did he kill it! He added an amazing beat and made the song so much cooler.
September 27th- Next up was one of the most beautiful parts of the recording process: strings! We went back to NRG studios in North Hollywood where we had started the record to work with string arranger Dave Campbell. Dave is a legend in the business and has written some of the most amazing string arrangements you’ve heard on a ton of albums and even more movie scores. We had 15 players on violins, violas and cellos and we recorded them on 4 songs. Its pretty amazing how 15 strangers that have never heard your songs come in and with one look, play the parts perfectly….It was really a special moment for us and even got me all emotional. There’s something so magical and grandiose about the process. It gave me goose bumps and was a true highlight of making this album.
On September 28th We returned to NRG to finish vocals on one last song, “What If”. Late in the recording process we decided to re-write some of the lyrics for the song. We wrote new lines all day and then Pierre went in the vocal booth and nailed it. We did the same thing the next day for a song called “Generation”. We changed a few lines in the verses and choruses and re-sang them. We ended finishing that at 3:30am on the very last day of recording. Talk about pushing the deadlines!! The next day, we were due to start the last step of the album: mixing the songs.
Since then, everyday has brought us closer to a truly finished record with songs being mixed one by one in LA. We got Chris Lord-Alge to mix the entire album and what we’ve been hearing so far truly sounds amazing. Chris has mixed some of our favorite records ever, including to name but a few, Green Day’’s “American Idiot”, Black Eyed Peas “Elephunk” and All-American Rejects’ “Move Along”. We’ve always wanted to work with him ever since we started our career and the experience has been truly magical. He really understands how we want things to sound and the results are ridiculous. We’ve been driving around LA blasting the songs and they sound so fucking great! We’re so happy you have no idea. Everybody we worked with on this album is at the top of his game and we can only consider ourselves very blessed to have worked with so many talented people. So, as of today, October 8th, there’s 4 songs left to mix. We sould be done on Thursday. So exciting!
I want to take this opportunity to thank all of you for your patience. We spent the last 16 months working on this album and I know it’s a hell of a long time. But it feels so great to know that you guys are excited to hear the new music. When we read you guys’ comments on our myspace page, in your emails and when we meet you in person and you tell us you’ve been waiting for the new songs for so long, it just makes us more excited to come out, play you our new stuff and start touring again. Your support and the desire to make the best album we could truly kept us going over the last year. Honestly this is the best music we ever made and we can’t wait to share it with you. We worked longer and harder then we ever did before. We wrote and re-wrote song after song obscessing over every little detail, went thru a lot of frustating times creatively, dealt with some tough things in our lives. We took the decision to challenge ourselves to grow as songwriters and as a band and I think it really paid off. I’m so proud of this album I wouldn’t change a note on it and I really can’t wait for you to hear it!
So there you have it. That was a loooooong post but I hope it makes up for the last few weeks when we were MIA. Tons of more updates coming. Track listing, first single, new photoshoots and some new music!!!…so much stuff to talk about. Keep checking the site….We’re back in action!
Chuck.
