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 GRAND FATAL - FREE IN FRACTIONS [POISON CITY RECORDS] ALBUM INSTORES NOW The name of our album is Free in Fractions How did the name come about? I’m not really the right guy to ask as Jimmy came up with the title, but i can say it relates to partial freedom. A freedom that’s metered out and controlled. It was released on March 2nd through Poison City Records. We recorded it at Megaphon Studios, St Peters, Sydney. Tell us a bit about the studio and why you chose to record there? It’s built on the top floor of an industrial complex just near my house, so the lug in up 3 floors is brutal! It’s a kinda rambling, older style studio with a huge live room and enough other areas that you can track live with good isolation. It has a big old Neve? desk and 2” tape as well as all the standard Pro-Tools gear. Our main reasons for recording there are JonBoyRock has done lots of work there so he gets shit up really fast and that it has a cool comfortable vibe, not a ‘this is costing $$$ a minute’ type feel. We did Allies there as well as Dots and Dashes so we are at home there and the surroundings don’t detract from the music. You can play cricket on the roof and watch the planes land! We recorded it with JonBoyRock Tell us a bit about the engineer / producer and why you chose to record with them. We’ve been working with JonBoy since Chaser/Eraser, when he drunkenly approached us after a show one night! We have similar tastes and ideas, he’s got some sweet amps, mics and outboard gear and his shit just sounds killer. Because we’re mates the vibe is more relaxed but he can also tell us exactly what he thinks without it getting weird. And he relishes the psychological challenge of working with me! Tell us about the writing / pre-production process, how long did it take and how did you go about it? We took a lot longer this time round. In hindsight we probably rushed Allies a bit and choked some of the ideas, so we were much more measured this time. Some of the songs we’d already been playing for a while so they just needed some tweaking of the arrangements, but for the new material we worked them up till we thought they were complete then JonBoy came to rehearsal and we dissected them. We didn’t really demo them so to speak but we did record various versions on minidisk and laptop. It took us a while to record it. Hahahaha Tell us a bit about the recording process the band used. We set up with the kit in the main room with the amps isolated then tracked live to tape with us all standing in the studio together. We looked for the takes with the best feel and most perfect drum and bass takes. Then we would overdub guitars. We split the tracking over several weeks, which allowed us to go away and listen to progress mixes, formulate ideas then come back and record again. In a few instances we re-tracked entire songs. Prior to the vocal sessions we recorded rough takes on my laptop to work on the melodies and deliveries before going into the studio to do finals. Gear wise, was there anything outside your usual live equipment used? We did our usual trick of amassing loads of guitars and amps from everyone and everywhere, but basically the tones are simple head/cab combinations. From memory we played the bulk of the record with the guitars we use live. JonBoy has some excellent heads and I used one in particular for a lot of my parts. The thing we did do on this album though was experiment with pianos, synth's, acoustics guitars and some fucked up sonic overdubs, some that made it into the final mix and some that didn’t. Any memorable moments during the process that stood out? Nothing as bad as the catching fire/flooding that happened on the last record. But we did record Rusty playing the kitchen sink, Rachel baked us a pie with our name on the top, that was lovely. We’re always funny/serious and apart from drinking shit loads of beer, wine and spirits we try to focus on the work. Though everything get a bit strange in those hours between 4 and 6am. Who took care of the artwork and why you chose to use them? Jimmy, cos we don’t have to pay him! Now that it’s released, what can buyers expect from the final package. Um…well for anyone who knows us there will be some surprises but it’s still all anchored in our trademark meticulous chaos. I think this time we tried to focus a little more on the melodies without robbing them of energy. There’s more variety in the material and in the production, something for the headphones, something for the stereo and something for the stage. Do you have a favourite track on the album? Gravity’s a Bitch. Track 2 How would you compare the album to previous releases? It’s the most complete and accomplished thing we’ve done so far, but you would hope that is what all bands are trying to achieve with each successive release. We’ve already started writing the next one!
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