A Sad Cartoon (Live) - LOATHE

Working at EarthQuaker, I’ve had the pleasure of getting to hangout with some truly amazing bands and musicians like IDLES, The Melvins, Thrice, Nine Inch Nails, A Perfect Circle, and plenty more that I could talk about for hours. One of my favorite experiences happened this fall, and that was interviewing the band Loathe. Before the interview, I introduced myself to the touring sound engineers and had the opportunity to tell them about myself. I mentioned that I was a student going to school for audio engineering and of course they had to pick my brain to see if all that schooling has taught me anything…

Knowing I had to record a band on location for this project, I built up the courage to ask if I could record their show. They sadly had to decline my request due to record label reasons, and they were planning on recording the show themselves. However, they offered a counter option: I could record their sound check. I was shaking with excitement, and knowing I had to record the audio anyways for the video we were shooting, my supervisor Chris was all for it!

For the recording, I plugged into their personal Midas 32 touring board and quickly set up my session in ProTools. After setting levels, I hit record and shortly after the band proceeded to grace my session with almost 40 minutes worth of material. The processing on this track is very minimal, mainly setting levels and corrective EQ for frequency build-up. However, the vocals were a bit of a challenge to process, as the singer was not exactly the most clear to understand in some parts. To fix this, I used a HPF and compression to bring it up in the mix, as well as blending in reverb and the “Crowd Mic” that provided natural reverb from the PA system for the entire mix. The band also uses some backing tracks and synth tracks, as the band is made up of only three instrumentalists. Finally, the song I chose from this recording is the song “A Sad Cartoon” which features the guitarist on lead vocals.