Wow. Who would’ve thought that it would take a year and a half to complete a CD with only 9 songs on it. It’s been a long haul. We started Pre-Production in January of 2009 and now the chapter which is the follow up album to our first record is finally here. Why did it take so long you ask, well let’s do a recap.

Back in 2009 when we started this journey the biggest difficulty was finding a place to rehearse. Luckily our good friend Ryan had a house to himself in the little town of Leduc which was perfect for us to jam and write songs at (aside from the noise complaints from the neighbours that is). With regular rehearsals going off with out a hitch and our producer Kevin Hoskin working with us at the Jam space by April we were ready to hit the studio.

We moved all of our gear into Beta Sound Recording Studio and got pumped to start laying shit down. After some extra pre-production at the studio itself we started recording drums in May. Tracking drums was a breeze, Cal nailed all the songs in less than a day and you could really tell that all of our prior rehearsing paid off. Once that was done we took a little break for editing and had to regroup due to loss of our bass player.

Fast forward about a month and a half and we got back on track. Time to record guitars. This was by far my favorite part of the process. I basically hunted for all of the best amps that I could find. I did have a general guitar sound that I was going for, and seeing as I got all the amps I needed, our guitars sound freaking amazing and exactly how I wanted them to. Recording took a few days, we blew up an amp, all in all it was awesome.

By this time we ended up finding our new bass player, Dave Stoten, and all the pieces came together for recording bass. It actually went by really fast, Dave is a machine. With only being given the gig to track bass for us with about 10 days notice Dave pulled through on all fronts. Also he is a perfect fit for the band.

Now for the last part of the recording process. Vocals. Vocals again were surprisingly quick, it helps that Jay has an amazing ear. It only took a couple nights to get it all done up. So by this time when vocals got completed it was getting into August 2009 and we made the executive decision to hold off on releasing the album until Summer 2010. No one wants to tour in the winter in Canada.

Now it’s June 2010 and the time has finally come. After remixing and remastering the record between September 2009 and May 2010 on three occasions with three different mixers and 2 different mastering guys we have finally finished. It’s done. There is nothing else that we need to do, it’s time to release the damn thing (especially because our CD release party was 2 months ago!!). All I can say is that I don’t regret taking the extra time, and spending the extra money to get it to sound exactly how it needed to.

If I have any advice to give here it is, don’t ever assume that mixing is less important or easier than any other part of the recording process. It is probably the MOST important. I have learned more about compression, EQ’s and SSL consoles than I have thought I would ever need to. Take your time with the whole process. Listen to multiple versions of your mixes and trust your ears.

AND THE MOST IMPORTANT THING: Never Set a Release Date Until the Album is DONE!

So that is that. It’s done, it’ll be up on iTunes and I’ll have physical discs to flog in the next couple weeks. Special thanks to Nathan Kidd for coming on board and mixing the shit out of the album.

Check it out new tracks on the website:
http://www.livingillusion.com in the sidebar

Or go to our MySpace Page:
http://www.myspace.com/livingillusion

🙂

Shane Lamotte
shane@livingillusion.com
http://www.livingillusion.com