When I was told that I was going to work on a five day recording with LowSwing Studios latest acquisition a, Telefunken M15 2” 16 track, I was pretty excited. Leading up to the recording though the tape machine was everything but in working condition. A cock up during calibration, which blew out a power supply 3 days before session start, shrank the possibility of the recording actually happening, drastically. Thanks to Jim, and a sacrificial offering of days worth of sleep, the M15 was good to go when the band walked through the door. Albeit, untested. Calibrated, but still untested. I felt a little safer knowing I had an Otari MX-70 1” 16 track as a back up machine just in case the M15 decided to flat line. Luckily it never came to that. And thank god, cause the first thing David, the producer for the session, said when he saw it was, “It doesn’t sound that good”. I didn’t tell him it was our backup.

Three days and three 2” reels later, all the songs were in the bag and David said, lets mix. I was a little confused, because I thought this was a Recording session. But they had other ideas. Great! I thought, Mixing, tape to tape. That’s exactly what we did. Playing back was the M15 16 track, mixed and summed on the Neve 5316 and recorded to the Telefunken M15 A ¼” master machine. A dream come true. I was as giddy as a kid in a candy shop. The band, The Mashrooms, a self-titled “Independent Rock Orchestra” were a great bunch of flamboyant and friendly Sicilians who were really happy with the results. And when it was all over and I handed over the 2” and the 1/4” tapes I couldn’t stop thinking how easy it all was. They came in, played, recorded and mixed an album in five days. And there it was, the sum of all their work in a couple cardboard boxes neatly labeled and stacked holding reels of magnetic tape, their album. Done, no going back. Beautiful.

http://youtu.be/H168JU25ZVA