If you haven’t already listened to Bloods‘ new EP Seattle, go listen to it now. It’s a collection of six infectious and jangly indie-rock numbers, recorded in the city they were named after.
Fresh off the EP’s release, Dirk, Mike, and MC from the band have shared a series of pics from throughout the recording process.
Sydney legends Bloods have shared a series of new photos, giving a glimpse into the recording process of their new EP, Seattle.
Dirk
This was from the shoot we did for I Hate It. The premise is that we’re kind of inhabiting the world of Youtube (or Bloodstube). So we’ve got an unboxing vid, a cooking vid, we do our own version of the iconic viral vid ‘Vape Nation’, and I somehow was lucky enough to be the ‘model’ for MC’s makeup tutorial! It sort of ended up with a bit of a Joker vibe, so hopefully, this helped out some cosplayers in the end?
This was at Sound House studio in Seattle! And that is a beautiful vintage Ludwig kit, owned by none other Jack Endino (who also owns the studio). I think at this very moment, I’m bragging about the situation to a fellow drummer friend of mine, who was probably asleep back in Australia at the time… To the right is a sweet-ass suitcase I scored at Vinnies about a week before we left for the trip. I like to think that the EP wouldn’t have come out quite as good without its valuable contribution.
This is me looking all smug-like at a secret location in Sydney where we finished off some of the vocals for the EP. I didn’t really have much to do at this session come to think of it, maybe I look like that as I’m thinking about what to have for lunch? So maybe a little less smug, and more just some eager anticipation of future flavours. Side note: you may also be able to spot a very nice gold record for our former US touring buds The Preatures behind me!
I took this pic of MC at Jungle Studios in Sydney, one of our fave places, and the location of some of the additional recording for the Seattle EP. I like this shot as the bottom half captures her shredding abilities on the fretboard of that tasty red Gibson SG quite nicely, but if you scan up towards the top half of the frame, it shows you that she’s actually a nice person as well! Two sides of the coin as they say…
Mike
Here’s MC kicking it at Studios 301 in Sydney, where we recorded GAJFCLT and I Hate It after we came back from the US. We only had a short amount of time to get the songs done and send them to Steve to mix, so I remember it being a pretty busy session. I love this pic though, as to me, it captures the essence of being a part of Bloods; even if everything else is going nuts, you gotta chill and keep the vibe strong.
On a personal note, I loved recording the EP. We had so many Uber-fan trainspotter moments whilst we were in at Soundhouse, but to me, this photo was one of the most accurate snaps of what it is like to record there. Despite the history in the gear and the generation-defining work that both Steve and Jack have done, the studio is still a living, breathing, creative space where Jack takes care of a lot of maintenance himself, and to me, things like this “actual 70s Big Muff” (that was used on all the guitars I tracked) show that.
MC
This was taken when we were recording at Sound House with Steve. This was the amp room and when I first arrived, the engineer asked me to pick what amp I wanted to use for the recording. I pointed to this beautiful vintage Fender Twin, that looked like it was in really great nick. The engineer looked at me and said “great choice!” and then as he was plugging it in and micing it up, said “you know what’s cool is that Kurt Cobain recorded a bunch of Bleach through this amp” and he said it so nonchalantly too. I looked over to Dirk, screaming through my eyeballs. It was such a crazy moment that I will remember forever.
This is a picture of Mike being an EPIC boss. We took this pic at Jungle, where we did some demoing before we went in to record. This is a pic of Mie laying down some bass in the control room, because along with being an absolute boss bass player in the band, he is also a killer producer who produced both these sessions and the I Hate It and Girls Are Just Fucking Cool Like That recording sessions. Talk about an overachiever!
This pic was taken on our first day in Austin, at the first stop of this tour which was showcasing at SXSW. We got to play two shows this day and this was just before the first one, where we played out the back of a cool bar for a party called Hipster Robots Must Die. We were all feeling so giddy and happy that this was the start of a cool adventure.
This pic was taken by Sarah at Sub Pop in their official ‘Sub Pop Photo Taking Room’. We had such a great time getting to hang out and meeting all the awesome people who work there and work on our music and this shoot was so fun. They have this crazy furry chair in the room that you can plug your iPod/iPhone into and it has inbuilt speakers. We were listening to the band Heavenly because Steve kept saying that we reminded him of them. It was lots of fun!
We took this photo on the last day of recording with Steve and the shot was taken by Jack Endino, who mastered our EP. It was such a surreal moment and such a beautiful wrap to the whole experience. We got on so well with Steve and relished every story he told us. On this day, after the session we actually invited Steve back to our place and cooked him and a bunch of our Seattle buds dinner and we stayed up talking and laughing until about 4am. It was a fantastic time.
Seattle is out now. Listen here.
