totally rad unconventional recording spaces for totally meaningful indie bands (besides a church)

1. a church

fuck

Phil Elverum recently took an extended break from touring to record two albums in a studio he built in a deconsecrated church.

2. A Barn

3. a log cabin

4. your mom's vajayjay

5. Murder House

6. ground zero

7: Spooky Roller Disco

8. dolphin sanctuary

9. The Astrodome

10. Der Fuehrerbunker

11. The Milk Bar toilets

12. Whole Foods Market

13. Michael Jackson's oxygen tent

14. in a professional recording studio, because absolutely no indie band does that these days

15. a 5000 gallon water tank (great acoustics)

16. Old SchoolBUS

17. flower shop

18. Amateur Night at the Apollo

19. By the side of a stream.

20. In a church basement.

21. Their old school gymnasium.

22. In a garage.

23. Local greasy spoon.

24. Abandoned (and drained) swimming pool.

25. inside Zooey Deschanel's head

26. Abbey Road

.. apparently.

27. Remote tumbledown cottage in Surrey

28. In a silo

29. in a dumpster round the back of Jeff Mangum's house

30. Catholic Girls' School, Helmand Province

31. Robert Smith's urethra

32. inside a giant sequoia

33. Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry

34. on Dave's sofa, smoking a doob

35. the Council of Trent

36. Open top bus while driving round Cowdenbeath

37. Sammy Hagar's Malibu pad

38. live inside a wet paper bag

39. the Marianas Trench

40. Young Farmer's summer camp

41. Atop the world's largest blood sausage

42 each member in the back of 5 different pickup trucks, all travelling down the highway at slightly different speeds.

43. Duncan Norvelle's Withernsea pad

44. Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant Zone of Alienation

45. on top of earth movers and backhoes at a construction site over the weekend when there's no one else there.

46. a farm, but not a rundown old timey place with generations of folksy wisdom, a big fuckall monsanto farm.

47. On a rocket ship racing to Arboria

48. the deck of a Japanese whaler

46. Within a whirlwind of their own hubris

47. charity clothes donation box

48. The Groucho Club.

49. Kim Jong Il's mausoleum.

50. Mrs Slocombe's pussy

51. the onion a.v. club offices

The wreck of Titanic (metal bands or ambient knot-twiddlers only)

53. WWII era bunker

hate on, haters, but I know a specific cave in the Agiofarago gorge in Crete where I totally want to record an album someday

54. Lassiters

Is it this one?

http://www.sanmarkotravel.com/images/Griekenland/Kreta/Agiofarago/Agiofarago_09.jpg

(sorry)

55. an old luncheonette (turning one into a studio was basically the main plot point of the whole last season of the NBC show Parenthood)

56. a methadone clinic (I have a friend who owns a studio and that's what the building used to be, but it's basically just a typical Baltimore rowhouse and people generally don't know that that's what it once was)

57. a funeral home

58. A crypt.

59. Tutenkhamun's tomb.

sic

60. the infinity room

Would record in all these places.

61. a Martello tower (NB: must be concept album about Ulysses)

62. The Orfield Laboratories Quiet Room.

63. scrooge mcduck's money bin

oh my God I need to be in that Orfield room, fuckin A

There was a thing about the guy who was in there for 45 minutes in the Guardian Weekend this, er, weekend. Sounds hardcore.

64. on an airplane, moments before it crashes and kills the entire band. their final moments would be captured in lo-fi glory on the black box recorder (it would helpful, but not mandatory, if the name of the band was "Black Box Recorder"), and the limited-edition release would be housed in a box designed to resemble the actual flight recorder.

65. The Fortress of Solitude

66. Inside the MCP

Are you aware of this Black Box Recorder?

xxpost

67. A perspex box dangling from a crane.

68. an Ames room

xxpost - yup. but I would be sad if Luke Haines died in a fiery wreck, so nix that, actually.

this is my old band performing inside a box at the museum of contemporary art in chicago as part of an art exhibit
http://images.artnet.com/images_US/magazine/reviews/velez/velez12-5-07-7.jpg

69. At the sea organ, Croatia.

70. a (un)Convention Center

71. The penalty box at an Edmonton Oilers game

72. My friends and I once plugged in some instruments in the middle of the night at this weird rest area outside Blackfoot, ID; the acoustics were awesome and someone should really take advantage of it

http://itd.idaho.gov/highways/ops/maintenance/RestArea/RestAreaMap/images/northblackfootNB.jpg

Coldplay are recording an album in my colon right now. It's pretty damn uncomfortable, but I endure it knowing that one day this shit will come out.

A "rest-stops of the NJ turnpike tour" could be awesome.

"Live from the Walt Whitman...rest stop"

73. An Orgone accumulator

74. in a hidden corner of a studio where another, more prominent band is already recording. a thousand people will be able to hear Coldplay playing faintly in the background on your band's album, and a million people will be able to hear your band playing faintly in the background on a Coldplay album. instant exposure!

75. A dumbwaiter

76. a sun temple in a lost city

77. the trading floor of the New York Stock Exchange

78. Inside someone else's house while also at a party with that person, a la Lost Highway

79. a church

1. a church

― of family bonds and individual triumph. Narrated by Tim Allen, (zachlyon), Tuesday, May 22, 2012 1:24 AM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

80. a synagogue

81. A different church

82. Eine Kirche

83. a church

84. une église

83. Eine Kirschtorte

84. in a grave

85. a free-range chicken slaughterhouse

...oh sorry that's more of a herbert location

86. up its own ass

84. in a grave

― congratulations (n/a), Tuesday, May 22, 2012 5:44 PM (9 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zo8DhbQw_O4

87. Halliburton's corporate headquarters

88. a 1960s cold-war-panic fallout shelter

89. A parking garage next to an empty corporate center in suburban San Diego

90. a magic carpet bag

a soon-to-be-demolished house
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burn_to_Shine_(DVD_series)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RjSN_jEORfk

91. beach fire

92. Inside a wicker man

92. old movie theater

94. underpass

cross-index this thread with music video locations, fish-eye, 1989-1999

https://www.google.com/search?q=";recorded+their+album+in+a"

95. In an abandoned mall

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/29/Dixie_Square_Mall_Block_B_stores.jpg

96. A burning church

97. sauna

98. abandoned mill bldg above our practice space

99. Mormon temple visitor's center

100. Mormon seminary building

101. Mormon institute building

102. Mormon cannery building

mormon-owned all-you-can-eat salad bar?

103. yes, a Sizzler's

104. the birthplace of thomas edison

105. San Xavier del Bac

106. the wren building at the college of william & mary, the second oldest college in the united states

107. inside the world's biggest ball of yarn

108. on top of the world's biggest ball of yarn

109. underneath the world's biggest ball of yarn

110. next to the world's biggest ball of yarn

111. inside the world's second-biggest ball of yarn

112. on top of the world's second-biggest ball of yarn

wld listen to all these yarncore recodrings

113. underneath the world's second-biggest ball of yarn

114. next to the world's second-biggest ball of yarn

115. in the mythical land of yarnia

116. in your mom's uterus

117. The Geographic Center of the United States

111, 116, 117 are duplicates

oh wait there's three. triplicates? that doesn't sound right.

http://definr.com/triplicate

in a reclaimed former grain silo that, like, used to be an abandoned whiskey distillery and has, like, really great natural reverb

118. In... your face

Inside an aged oak barrel made from wood from the wreckages of 19th century naval ships.

119. mathmagic land

120. an authentic tape-operated recording shack in some forest in Thailand and like we had to, like, communicate with the engineer in like broken english

121. Miracle Of Birth Pavilion at MN State Fair

122. Fantastic Sam's

123. Waldo Flea Market

124. we found this great 19th century amusement park that has this like great aura of urban decay and it totally comes through on the recording

125. The belly of a sperm whale

126. Charles Manson's old Volkswagen Microbus

127. The Large Hadron Collider

128. we found this awesome tent out in the desert, like, right between these huge mountains and it's like the perfect space for a recording setup

129. Pete Doherty's gaff

129. Pete Doherty's guff

130. The Isle of Naboombu

131. The Tardis

111, 116, 117 are duplicates

― Philip Nunez, Tuesday, May 22, 2012 4:31 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

perhaps the most excellent "your mom" zing i've ever come across

132. the set of Two & a Half Men

133. the living room of the last house holding out in a gentrified neighborhood of condos

134. A battery chicken farm

hate on, haters, but I know a specific cave in the Agiofarago gorge in Crete where I totally want to record an album someday

― cosi fan whitford (underrated aerosmith bootlegs I have owned),

was this the same cave serena-maneesh recorded their last album in?

I feel like I'm hearing more and more of these retarded "my recording setup is more authentic than yours" stories every day

Matmos to thread.

there was a good portlandia sketch about that this season.

was this the same cave serena-maneesh recorded their last album in?

turns out it was a difft cave

i'd like to hear an indie rock album that was recorded underwater.

135. Great Lake Swimmers -- The (self-titled) album was recorded over several months in an abandoned grain silo in Southern Ontario. Jim James also recorded his "At Dawn" vocals in a silo.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oihxOcRh6wc
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8bLHg2c1a34

136. Fleet Foxes -- Blue Ridge Mountains at the Grand Palais
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t1tbX_NJn98

137-40. Sigur Ros, Beruit, Bon Iver and Lambchop in some indiscriminate localles.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z3uQl-8ywKE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uYwmDJigB1o
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x5Swa9CYgRk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pZ8sW_kovBs

141. Avett Bros in a Wyoming gondola:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wlSZzKcoFp0

141. Tom Waits -- Mule Variations; some produced in a hen house.

Not indie; but props for Kitaro for recording and sampling all over creation.

I feel like I'm hearing more and more of these retarded "my recording setup is more authentic than yours" stories every day

http://ayup.co.uk/avina/twoyork.jpg

in 2013 the most authentic recording setup is in bed, on a macbook with garageband. the new lo-fi.

are these albums ever 100% authentic? I mean what if som eindie-folk act records an album in their great-grandfather's depression-era cabin in Maine, but when they go back and listen to the tape, they realize it sounds exactly like a studio recording, so they dub in some howling coyotes and creaking doors and crackling fireplaces to make it sound more rustic (and to justify the effort of hauling their gear into the woods)? in that case I think I would delete all of their albums from my hard drive and unsubscribe from their youtube channel regardless of what I thought of their music. I don't care if your intentions are pure: if you build your own banjolin and play the saw with a violin bow, you have no right to fuck with your audience's expectations, ever.

it broke my heart when I found out that only 3 of the 11 tracks on Movietone's The Sand and the Stars album were actually recorded on a beach, and some of the beachiest-sounding titles ("Ocean Song", "The Sand and the Stars") were recorded indoors. but at least they had the decency to include that information in the liner notes.

I even worry about more minor breaches of authenticity. part of the appeal of Mark Hollis's solo album is how immersive it is — you can hear the creaking of Mark's stool and the shuffle of footsteps on wooden floorboards, and it feels like you're right there with him in the studio. but what if even those mundane sounds were dubbed in from a sound effects disc? I don't care if the man is a legend; that would be the instant death of his credibility, as far as this listener is concerned.

the Mule Variations "hen house" is actually a room that used to be a henhouse but was in use as a storage room when he got to the studio. He liked the way it sounded. I've recorded in it, people call it "the Waits room" now.

looking fwd to the first album recorded inside a loaf of artisanal seed bread

the Mule Variations "hen house" is actually a room that used to be a henhouse but was in use as a storage room when he got to the studio. He liked the way it sounded. I've recorded in it, people call it "the Waits room" now.

so it wasn't one of these?

http://i46.tinypic.com/206le0x.jpg

I used to think Tom Waits was the realest motherfucker alive. but now? *sigh*

Supposedly once a chicken coop:

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-T7JTbUqCCJ8/UJ6By4DMDXI/AAAAAAAAAyQ/9CgRBl2_Ue8/s1600/3trackshack.jpg

xp some next-level chicken housing there

I'm ok with Link Wray, but AnCo are a bunch of hucksters, apparently:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Campfire_Songs_(album)

The album comprises five individual songs played back to back and recorded in one take. Although it was the middle of November and thus very cold, the recording was made outside on a screen porch in Maryland, using three Sony MiniDisc players with Sony ECM-MS907 microphones placed strategically around the band. Ambient sound from the surrounding area was also captured and added later.

I really need to start a blacklist of artists who pull this shit.

aw, i love that album. i don't know if they are "hucksters" really, even then they weren't considered lo-fi purists.

this really doesn't seem like any sort of dastardly artifice to me. i guess there are levels at which records that somehow super-foregrounded the mythical genesis of their record might be deflated by revelations about them being made in a studio but it just seems like both of those things - surrounding your record w/a certain narrative/context, or importing ambient sound for atmosphere & affiliation - are legitimate parts of a group's toolkit. it's like cinema. it's okay that it wasn't filmed in an actual remote village. it's okay that it never really happened. i think there are probably more ~problematic dynamics~ involved in like shitty mercury rev records that apply effects to a piano track than there are w/somebody making a collage & putting a name on it.

while we are here sometimes it is nice to go to bat for a cool record & anyone who likes sorta field recorded nice group records might enjoy this tenniscoats record, temporacha, on room 40, which they recorded just kinda out & about & which is very gentle & musical but also subject to the ebbs and flows of traffic and nearby ambient activity. i think there is maybe a better school of unshowy "naturalism" in some japanese stuff - cf reiko kudo records where the song stops when the phone rings or dishwasher starts, katsura yamauchi lps where he records intermittent sax motifs separated by the noise of water flowing.

http://room40.org/store/image/cache/data/tenniscoats-temporacha-450x450.jpg

http://blog-imgs-31-origin.fc2.com/h/y/d/hydrargentum/rokuon02.jpg

btw movietone fans might be deflated to know that a bunch of the non beach songs on their records are recorded in a library, iirc, fwiw.

lol. libraries are best known for being the opposite of the beach.

aw, i love that album. i don't know if they are "hucksters" really, even then they weren't considered lo-fi purists.

If you record an album in your backyard and title it CAMPFIRE SONGS, it had better be as pure as it gets, no matter what the rest of your discography sounds like.

Virginia Astley didn't really record From Gardens Where We Feel Secure in one take on a lazy summer's day:

http://www.virginiaastley.com/discography/albums/html/gardens_03.html

The sound effects used on the album were recorded at various times between April and June 1982 at locations in and around Moulsford, Oxfordshire.

so that makes...

AnCo
Movietone
Tom Waits
Aerosmith
Virginia Astley
PAT FINN

If you have any more artists to add to my least, feel free to implicate them itt. I already have some major suspicions about Deep Listening Band, but I don't want to be too hasty here.

*my list

If you record an album in your backyard and title it CAMPFIRE SONGS, it had better be as pure as it gets, no matter what the rest of your discography sounds like.

― first geir, it's alright (hongro hongro go faster faster) (unregistered), Sunday, April 14, 2013 4:10 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this is like the homely & bucolic equivalent of I LIKE MY RAPPERS PACKING HEAT right

i remember relating some recording mythos to a guy at a party in college -- i think it was about the crystal castles guy recording in icelandic churches -- and he became very hostile, saying "so? so what? does that make it sound better somehow? what is the point of that?" one of the worst conversations of all time.

what if it turned out that ... bon iver wasn't really heartbroken

shocking cctv footage reveals modern comforts of bon iver's "mountain hideaway"

he had netflix streaming

there were two whole days when he was just having a nice vacation

something sad to me about people buying campfire songs & then being disappointed that they cannot actually smell sausages cooking while they listen to it

DEAR ANIMAL COLLECTIVE
I RECENTLY PURCHASED YOUR CAMPFIRE SONGS ALBUM AND WAS VERY DISAPPOINTED TO FI

the French village in which it was recorded has no "Main Street" at all. That would mean "Hand Street" over there anyway. FRAUDS

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51JA6YQJ4YL.jpg

faulting all these stupid hat & vest bands for being inauthentic about their retro authenticity kitsch is just as dopey, imo. i imagine that most of their fans just like the songs, not so much the idea that they're really real about the appalachian folk tradition or w/e. it's musical steempunk.

stones a key text supporting the CONCEIT RULES/AUTHENTICITY DROOLS thesis

i recently wrote about that in the lumineers thread!

although my thesis was a bit different. i distinguished between different kinds of inauthenticity, and how some are better than others. it's a fraught issue, and a key one, i think, that people who think a lot about music get tripped up on. The Lumineers i'm sure there is a thread about the issue of authenticity somewhere in the archives...

At the time of recording [Tales from Topographic Oceans], heavy metal group Black Sabbath were producing their album Sabbath Bloody Sabbath in the studio next door. Singer Ozzy Osbourne recalled that placed in the Yes studio was a model cow with electronic udders and a small barn to give the room an "earthy" feel.

i forget, did the beach boys record all of their music on a beach?

not impressed unless they did it all whilst surfing

lol.

didn't the boredoms record that piano bit at the start of seadrum on the beach

via wiki
Parts of the album was pieced together from previously recorded material, some of which included guitarist Yamamoto, who was no longer in the band. As its name implies, parts of the album were recorded by the ocean, and some audio was recorded directly underwater.[6]

the thing about this whole trend that annoys me is that it seems like people are trying to use it as a shortcut to ACTUALLY BEING GOOD AT MUSIC

I'm just waiting for some singer-songwriter guy to record an album in "a variety of settings that were integral to my personal development". the lyrics would be strictly autobiographical, and the tracklisting would go something like...

1. Hospital Room
2. The House I Grew Up In
3. Playground
4. Fairhaven Regional High School (sad & lonely)
5. Dorm
6. Couchsurfing at Eric's
7. Westfield Rehabilitation Center
8. My First Real Apartment
9. Buca di Beppo (Jenn will you marry me?)
10. Recording Studio (this is now!)

the deluxe version of the album would come with a bonus DVD with clips of the artist driving to all the different locations while reflecting on his past. in one clip you see him convincing the owners of his former childhood home to let him record a song in their guest bedroom. he gets a little teary because he can barely recognize the place with all its new furniture and decor, but it all comes back to him when he pulls out his guitar and starts to play, and then the camera pans across an Instagram-faded photo of the way the room looked when he was a kid. it's all very emotional, very authentic, you can hear dogs barking in the distance if you have the right kind of headphones.

1. Just got out of jail!
2. On my way to the hardware store
3. People all look the same from the roof of a house (it's your house)
4. Watching your window from my sister's car
5. This town doesn't have enough pay phones
6. Sleeping in my sister's car
7. Combo #5!
8. Creeping up the stairs (it's your house)
9. Hand on your bedroom door
10. Standing at the foot of your bed

"Oh, hi there f.g.t.i.. Plenty of room in the bed, it's a cold night. Need a blanket?"

are there any albums recorded inside an igloo?

http://nymag.com/news/intelligencer/16806/

^ this seems pretty authentic

http://continuo.wordpress.com/2008/07/14/moniek-darge-sounds-of-sacred-places/

At the time of recording [Tales from Topographic Oceans], heavy metal group Black Sabbath...

lol

Folsom prison.

yeah, you know the iconic moment when Johnny sings "...just to watch him die" and some guy shouts "WOOOOOO!"?

that "WOOOOOO" was an overdub http://i.somethingawful.com/forumsystem/emoticons/emot-colbert.gif

> 42 each member in the back of 5 different pickup trucks, all travelling down the highway at slightly different speeds.

135 on a similar tack to the above: each member in a different helicopter

The Utah Data Center.

i wanna buy this down the street. my new performing arts center.

http://www.cohn-company.com/properties/601

why can't i win the lottery? would make such a great venue.

this one is nice too. up the road a piece. cheap. you could live in it and have studio/performance space.

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xib8vq_historic-renovated-church-charlemont-mass_people#.UbCbRPnryQM

142. hydrothermal vent environments, which are often home to unique and thriving ecosystems

omg, $150K? that's nuts.

http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lhtahevJw81qhxwcso1_1280.jpg

lol whoops, wrong pic

a secret government metadata silo

that rooftop looks like an authentic recording space to me

i know a guy who both lives and plays in a church that he bought and renovated. I don't know if he actually records there, but I do know that he actually bought, restored and installed a full pipe organ.

http://www.gizmodo.com.au/2013/02/heres-how-gotye-made-his-grammy-award-winning-album-in-a-barn-in-victoria/

http://i.imgur.com/GR4gZEa.jpg

the Gotye barn is nice, but is it Authentic? I just can't imagine a horse going through that door

In 2002 Bird moved from his apartment on the North Side of Chicago to a farm in rural Illinois, near the town of Elizabeth. There, not far from where his parents made their home, he set up his studio in a converted barn, spending the majority of his time letting inspiration come to him from his surroundings. He farmed crops such as soybeans and corn, and raised chickens and cows. His daily routine during this time consisted of getting up in the morning, gathering eggs for his breakfast, and then letting ideas for musical compositions slowly grow like the crops all around him, until they took strong enough hold in his mind for him to commit them to recordings.

http://i.imgur.com/rVIqW72.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/8jllZM5.jpg

Andrew Bird's barn looks legit from the outside, but the inside looks like a typical home studio, so what's the point? I just listened to one of the tracks he recorded there, and I wasn't able to "smell the hay", if you catch my drift.

I'm not ever gonna listen to anything by a dude called "Andrew Bird", but those floorboards look mighty uneven, if you take my meaning.

yeah, that's a real floor, I'll give him that.

one of the members of Andrew Bird's band is called Martin Luther King Chavez Dosh (his indietronic side project is just called "Dosh"). I wonder if they bonded over their shitty names.

grizzly bear made yellow house in a yellow house near where i was living at the time and i could feel the vibe. felt really accurate to me mentally and topographically. thank god i friggin' moved.

I'm starting to think it might have been a dream, but I could have sworn that sometime in the last few days I saw a side-bar on some news site about a band recording a song on a submarine.

God, that must have been a dream though. I can't google anything up about it.

barns are ideal studios because they're huge open spaces with high ceilings, they're far away from other neighbors, and it's presumably cheaper to be out of the city. you're not supposed to "smell the hay" ffs.

Between the embargo on old-tymey locations such as barns and converted churches, and inflections of wantrepreneurship in bobo locations such as bedrooms and dorms, you're not leaving a lot of places for people to get their recordings done.

Approved locations for album-making include funeral homes, soup kitchens, Eastern bloc recording studios, active army bases, outer space,

and let me tell you, getting a good room sound when you're 20m miles away from Earth's atmosphere is HELL.

Nowadays, the least conventional place for a totally meaningful indie band to record is a recording studio.

145 (estimated). the quiet car on an amtrak train,

146. an Irish castle

147. on the left side of an infield left vacant by a david ortiz shift, during the fourth inning of a red sox - yankees game.

148. New York Knicks locker room feat. James Dolan on whine

1. Just got out of jail!
2. On my way to the hardware store
3. People all look the same from the roof of a house (it's your house)
4. Watching your window from my sister's car
5. This town doesn't have enough pay phones
6. Sleeping in my sister's car
7. Combo #5!
8. Creeping up the stairs (it's your house)
9. Hand on your bedroom door
10. Standing at the foot of your bed

― flamboyant goon tie included, Thursday, June 6, 2013 12:29 AM (9 months ago)

^^^belated LOL @ this