WATERLAND/SECOND HEAVEN

Waterland
Second H eaven
BREATH1

We recorded Waterland at Denmark Street Studios London Two weeks after our original drummer Tris joined the band. We’d spent about three months writing songs without a drummer (firstly just Dominic and me and then Gary as well) and after numerous auditions decided to hire Tris who was the brother of a friend of ours and at that time still at school. We recorded three songs Waterland, Second Heaven and another song The First Issue which never saw the light of day - all within a ten hour session and came back to mix them about a week later. The studio was really unusual in that the engineer wasn’t facing the band behind a glass partition as is the norm, but was on a different floor and communicated by microphone, which in a way was quite nice, as it was my first proper recording session and I was really nervous, so it was kind of calming not being aware of the engineer. I think Tris was even more nervous than me, because we did Waterland a couple of times and then on about the third take he suddenly stopped playing right in the middle of the song. We were all about to stop as well, when we noticed him frantically signalling to us to carry on, he then joined in again as if nothing had happened and carried on drumming to the end of the song. We naturally assumed we’d all have to go in and do anther take, but Tris was adamant that he wouldn’t be able to play it any better, so we used that version and Dominic had to build the vocals around the gap in the drums, to make it sound as if the gap was intentional, which I think he did really well.

Interview with Ari on the recording of Waterland