Sour Pop

Production Notes

We tracked most of the songs at Karmic Hit in Rozelle. Karmic Hit was owned by Steve Kilbey at the time, one of my heroes, and was the birth place of some great records like the brilliant Refo:mation album, Pharmakoi/Distance Crunching Honchos with Echo Units. Sour Pop is not one of those records.

Tim Powles played drums and engineered. We recorded on a Tascam MS 24 track 1 inch machine. Jon and I used the same gear we had used on You Buried Me, though sometimes Tim would duplicate a guitar send to another amp like a Fender twin for variety. I think the guitar on Oblivion has a fair bit of that ratty Fender sound. Tim used a Mapex kit I think.

We recorded Oblivion, Drowning, Remains, Vivid and a later discarded version of Buried at KH before transferring to 2 inch and mixing at Charring Cross. Charring Cross was an old shop in Waverley with a lot of cool gear including a Neve desk and was a bit of a darling of the indy scene at the time. I don't think it worked for us. I don't like any of the mixes done there except Oblivion which is tolerable.

Following this we recorded and mixed two more songs - Handbrake and a different version of Buried at Sony's studio in East Sydney. The recording room was a bit dead (in fact, some people referred to it as a vortex) but it had an MCI 24 track 2 inch machine and for the first time we enjoyed the beautiful fatness you get when you track to 2 inch.

We had been working with John Butler playing drums live for a while by this time so he sat in the chair for these songs.