Alphaville
about
the creation of "The Breathtaking Blue"
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"The
Breathtaking Blue" is the title of the new Alphaville Album. "Breathtaking"
- that made out also the production. The band spend two years for their
new work. And therefore a long breath is necessary. The band got it in
their own Lunapark studio in Berlin. "The Breathtaking Blue" is produced
by Alphaville in co-operation with Klaus Schulze. Bernhard Lloyd, the keyboarder,
did the engineering. He picked up a pen for the readers of SOUND CHECK.
here's his report about the history of the origin of "The Breathtaking
Blue"
The
breathtaking Story
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| After
the helpful experiences during the production of the first and the second
Alphaville Album, we decided at the end of 1986 to furnish our own studio
in order to produce our third album by ourselves. After half a year of
constructions and handicrafts we had the very first occasion to test the
studio as we produced two B-side tracks. We were allowed to approach our
project optimistic through the results and the atmosphere during the work
(daylight and much quietness), even if we changed many technical details
while the production. But an old Chinese wise says: the construction of
a studio will be never completely finished. Various things were the deciding
factors to produce in our own studio.
1.We are responsible for the realisation
and financing of the Alphaville album, also since we have a so called "tape-
overtaking- contract". With such a tape- overtaking- contract the artist/producer
bears the duplicateable tape to the record company. In return for the assumption
of the risk the artists get more percents from the proceeds than with a
simple artist contract. Here the record company bears not only the risk
of the production, she can also demand a decisive right to say (even if
they're talking about the guitars solo after the second
chorus). All in all we are one of the
less
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"lucky" artists
with the greatest possible scope in .the choice of our production conditions
2. We are a studioband in the true sense
of the word (but it doesn't bar making a livetour one day), that's why
we need the atmosphere and the technical possibilities of a studio even
for composing to realise our ideas. We don't want to go (even not for the
official recording) in a rented studio, but working from the beginning
in an atmosphere created by ourselves at our songs and sounds without a
limit of time and pressure. |
3.
The Demo- Syndrome: it happens in 9 from 10 cases that certain things from
the demo (former recorded with poor methods in the technical sense) you
can't reproduce in a professional studio. It's so that you can't repeat
a very individual sound 'cause the constellation of the effect -machines
isn't beyond you or one of the musicians had a "unique" performance. However
we lost hours and days with the absolutely statement :" that sounds not
as good as on the demo"- the horrossaying of each producer. We wanted to
come up against this so called "demo-syndrome" right from the start. So
we went from the composing to the arrangement and then directly to the
recording with the greatest possible care regarding to the recording methods.
Immediately we mixed each single track
to use the experiences we had during the production. Actually we planned
to add the usual mix- session (lasting several weeks) at the end of the
complete recording of all the songs in order to mix everything again with
fresh ears and a bigger distance. |