One might ask, what took so long ? After all, though recording an album is no simple mater, it's not an impossible task. Anyone with half a brain can pull it off as long as they are willing to commit the time and finances. And I absolutely agree. After all, while AxMinister was going through a hiatus between the years 2003-2007, I spend more then 3 years playing in a band called Grizzly Madams. During that short period we managed to put out a 3 song demo, a live album, and a full LP recoded professionally. So why did it take AxMinister 10 years? The blame could be placed in three main places: band infighting, the unwillingness to put a real financial investment in the band, and the believe that we could produce a better album by recording it ourselves. Though all the reasons have significantly hindered our process, I believe the biggest culprit was the third: believing that we could do a better job ourselves then in a studio.
Our misguided journey began in the winter of 1997 when Spire Cranes, a band that I have played in in high school, went to a studio to cut our first album ever. We found a studio in a flier. We knew very little about recording or music; we agreed to record 8 or 9 song album. We did not know much about the recording process and the studio was more then happy to take out money. In the end we released a album called Deaths and Entrances and pressed around 200 copies on tape. In total, the final cost was about $1500 which was split three ways. Looking back in hindsight we got a pretty good deal. Almost 15 years later, I still enjoy listening to that album as it has a real distinct sound reminiscent of the mid 90's. The songs have a real hint of maturity that surprises me even today. 15 years latter, the little imperfections, I believe, only add to its appeal. However, in 1997, we were quite critical of ourselves and soon I could not listen to that album without only hearing the out of tune drum set, the fluctuating tempos, the parts where the vocals go off tune, and the occasional misted note. It was then that we decided to start recording ourselves. Our reasoning was that we might spend more money in the starting stages, but our investment would pay off in the sense that we could keep recording for countless hours once we get all the equipment.
What we soon discovered was that recording is quite the complex task. You need countless equipment in order to get a professional recording. However, for many reasons we could not accept that. This soon evolved into a quagmire of endless second rate recordings and squandered money.
The problem with trying to record yourself is that you are constantly forced to compromise. The reasoning almost always went something like this "why go to a studio when this pirated computer program" or "this digital eight track can give you almost the same quality." The key word in that sentence is "almost." When you compromise just a little on the vocals , a little on the guitar, a little on the the drums and a little on the bass, all those "little compromises" in the end add up to a big piece of crap.
Old habits die hard. Even with this album we were destined to repeat the same mistake. We recorded the drums in a studio and recorded the guitars and bass ourselves using a downloaded computer program. We soon found ourselves reasoning that maybe we could do the rest by ourselves. Thankfully, sanity prevailed and we ended going back to the studio to do the vocals, mixing, and mastering.
In the end the whole project including the pressing of the Cd's ran us less then $2500, which is peanuts when you factor in the fact that you can enter a studio and leave with an album in 2 weeks, and the songs will last you a life time.
Another sub-lesson that I have learned from this is that when dealing with studios it is always better to negotiate a rate where the studio charges you per-song rather then by the hour. When a studio is charging by the hour, there is a big temptation to accept little compromises in the interest of keeping costs down. A recording lasts a life time and little imperfections that seam minute become big distractions down the road.
Naturally, I don't always take my own advice. Even though we tried to avoid past mistakes, we were destined to repeat at least some of them. However, I'm lucky that this album got made in the first place; and at this point I'm willing to live with the small imperfections. I'm hopeful that AxMinister can put out another album in a much sooner time frame then it took to release its debut and improve with each release that follows.
As for now, I can say that I'm proud of our debut and want to share it with people. If anyone reading this blog would like a copy of the disc, please e-mail me your mailing address to axminister31@hotmail.com and I'll mail you a Cd free of charge. You can also find the complete album posted on our myspace page. www.axminister.ca.
