Due to Covid-19 pandemic lock down restriction in Dublin, March 2020 we learnt how to do everything different.
Getting food, books, toys were all relatively straight forward, but now we couldn’t play music together in person,
which is at the core of how we create. As is filtering out the shite through iterative sessions by recalling what we
came up with in the last jam, or failing to:
“If you can't remember it then it wasn't memorable” - Fastriser
Lock down had no definite end and we needed to make music together. Living in Cork and Dublin our absolute analog
approach was not going to be possible for some time. Flying to Chicago to record also wasn’t a runner. So we turned our focus to working out how to play together in real time and with high fidelity so that our reverie would not be disturbed. After much experimentation we figured out how to not only play, but also record in high definition over the Internet.
Shouting, along with another 11 songs that we have created since March, was born through jamming over the Internet
during lock down. Pure therapy. Shouting was conceived on June 7th with abandon as “to-be-named-
song-1” which it remained until two weeks later when it was named “Shouting” after a domestic event that is audible on the track. Shouting, like the others, was recorded, mixed and mastered in Cork and Dublin at the Fastriser Distributed Studio.
Of course recording over the Internet means that in addition to having a distributed recording studio capability you must also be able to connect the studios over the network. All the normal recording studio necessities remain. You still need the highest quality microphones, pre-amps, analogue to digital converters, mixers, and the list goes on (and on..). Simply put we had a
lot of great stuff but also lots of not so great stuff. Some quick back of the envelope calculations showed it would
take about 160 grand for just the microphones we wanted and were accustomed to (thanks Steve!).
Anyways, that wasn’t going to happen. We would have to make good with what we had and make minor investment in some drum microphones that paralleled the capability of our existing microphones. This was not perfect but hey, it is what we had. We took a leaf out of Florence’s book (The Magic Roudabout) who once said
“Be content with what you got as what you got is quite a lot ”
— Florence
That said, using what we got we were able to work with minimal delay for an experience equivalent to being on the same stage.
Also we could record in high definition to capture the harmonic gestalts, spirit and messaging of our endeavours so that
it made us feel good. Shouting builds up tension over its relatively short life of 166 seconds. It starts with driving bass and sparse but dense guitar harmonics and ends in a sea of sound with a little girl shouting at the top of her voice “PLAY QUIETER!!!”. Well, it is this shouting that is the reason the song is called shouting. If you have been sharing your home over lock down with small children, you would know, as we do, that they are not at school and are ever present. Jamming, recording,
mixing and mastering at the Fastriser Distributed Studio always took place with small children in both Cork and Dublin.
Artwork for Shouting
During lock down children put pictures of rainbows on their windows to make people happy while they’re walking by,
and also offer a message of hope. The rainbow art for shouting was created for this purpose by the shouter and at the same time as this song.