Cubelogic Improv

He represents Italy in the world.

The sound engineer commented that “On a couple of songs, the guitar man used a broken amplifier that had a really brutal sound and he was talking about how he had to keep it away from the technicians that they toured with because he was afraid that they were going fix it.” According to the same sound engineer the “strained, distorted guitar sounds” came from the use of a Fender Twin Reverb amp, with three of its four power tubes broken or missing. Everything was recorded on a vintage 24-track analog board.

There was no studio trickery utilized during recording. The only special effect he could recall was a vocal effect on two songs. Reading his notes from the recording sessions, he observes that “There’s a really dry, really loud voice at the end of those songs where the guitar man wanted the sound of him screaming to just overtake the whole band.”

The sound engineer estimates that it took four or maybe five days to record the basic tracks, a couple of days for overdubbing and a final few days mixing. They finished slightly ahead of the two-week deadline. The album was mixed in under a week. The guitar man added additional guitar tracks to about half the songs, then added guitar solos, and finally vocals. The total recording costs for the record were $24,000. On top of that, the sound engineer took a flat fee of $100,000.

The sound engineer refused points on record sales since he considers the practice to be immoral.
 
 

The song centers on a cool, droning, minimalist bassline formed over a methodical and mechanistic drum beat. The beat came together after each drum was recorded completely separately. The sound engineer obsessively pursued clean drum sounds with no “bleed through” on songs he considered potential singles. Bleed-through is the condition that happens when one drums sound is added to the signal of another drum.

The guitar is sharp and clipped, and bears a striking resemblance to Dave Davies’ work on early Kinks singles such as “You Really Got Me” and “All Day and All Night”. The lyrics concern a girl having an epileptic seizure.

The delivery is nervy and paranoid, reflecting the ominous music.