I should explain, we moved into that house with no material, so we were writing, recording, overdubbing all of that consecutively on a song-by-song basis. If one song took three weeks, it took three weeks and some of those songs did take three weeks. If we started a song and we didn't like it and we spent four days on it, we jettisoned it and never finished it. I felt like at that point of our learning curve as a band writing songs, it was the right moment to take the reins and do what we wanted. Part of that is just growing as a band, but part of it was the liberating feeling of it. When I listen to all three records, that record is the best for sure writing-wise, song-wise, sound-wise. How freeing was it to be in control on Fantastic Planet? It just made the room pop and we pointed mics into them and that's the drum sound of that record. We put the drum kit on a couple of those and laid some more around the room. I had the idea of going down to Home Depot and buying eight sheets of 4' x 8' plywood coated in Formica, which is super reflective, almost as reflective as glass. There was a little living room that was a good-sized space, but the problem was that it was wall-to-wall carpet, so there was no real ambient miking. The house wasn't set up as a recording space. Maybe once or twice, the people across the street heard us doing drums real late. We were very fortunate, and I think this is why this house was used by a couple of bands for a while, the two neighbors that flanked the house were a deaf couple and the other one was a deceased person. We had to figure out when we could be loud in the house because it was still in a residential neighborhood. There were at least a couple of weeks of setting up, experimenting and figuring out how the gear worked. What was the process of recording that record like? We went from that to having a fully functional recording studio, granted it was ADAT, but the console was a Mackie, we had some outboard mic pres and an Eventide H3000 as our sole effect. This was in 1996, maybe late 1995, we spent $50,000 on recording equipment and we didn't have recording equipment before that. Thankfully, Slash decided to let us do that, which was kind of a big deal. When we went into make Fantastic Planet, based on what happened on the first two records, we wanted to buy a bunch of equipment, rent a house, move into it and make a record on our own. What's the first piece of studio gear that you really bought yourself?Įverything leading up to Fantastic Planet was band gear, guitars and amps mostly, and pedals. Watch our new Make Your Mark to take a tour of Red Swan Studios and hear more of Andrews' story. digital and the lasting impact of his work with Failure. When we recently met up with Ken Andrews at his personal workspace, Red Swan Studios, we sat down to talk about the studio's set-up, his feelings on analog v.s. While working in these studios has provided Andrews with a space to grow his recording and mixing skills, the thought of once again creating his own home base was extremely enticing. In the time since Fantastic Planet's release, Andrews has been working in major studios and helping craft hit records for Paramore, Jimmy Eat World, Pete Yorn and many more. Once there, they would create the highly influential album, Fantastic Planet. What started as just recording to a four-track in his apartment, eventually grew to the budding engineer/producer and his Failure bandmates decamping to a rental home filled with newly purchased gear. Ken Andrews has always felt at home in the studio.
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