Dorian Williamson (Northumbria)
SPB: You recorded your first album in a church - what was it about the space that appealed to you and what kind of spaces would you like to utilise in the future?
Williamson: The main reason we chose to record in a church was because we wanted to track at a very high volume level, beyond what would have been possible in a studio environment. The reactivity of the sound changes so much at very high levels. The amps and guitars come alive, and we just act as kind of a conduit. You can feel it breathe and change shape and almost go out of control. We also knew we wanted to do everything live with no overdubs, so using an acoustically vibrant space with a combination of distant and close mics gave us more flexibility later in the mixdown.
Because our records are very much documents of a live event, we'd love to use different spaces for future recordings. Both Jim and I want to do something in giant abandoned industrial space sometime. We've also toyed with the idea of doing something extremely loud outside, far out in nature, where we can use the landscape as a musical element: like in a valley or a fjord. This music very much feeds back on itself and becomes an entity of its own, so anywhere we choose to record and play will have a big effect on the final outcome.
