Melbourne’s Flyying Colours are renounded for producing a sound spectrum combining nostalgic shoegaze with all the juiciest bits of psychedelia past and present. After two successful EPs, their debut album Mindfullness is so close we can almost taste it. For the latest fix, we asked lead singer and guitarist Brodie J Brümmer to share the gear that has shaped their debut.
Flyying Colours’ debut album Mindfullness promises new tunes as high-quality as ever. We’ve taken a peek at the sick equipment behind the imminent release.
’77 Fender Twin Reverb Amplifier
I bought this amplifier when I was 17, and I’ve had a love/hate relationship with it since then. It’s a beautiful amp, with a particular warmness I’ve only heard in a few other old twins I’ve been lucky to play through, but plays up often.This is a ’77, ’65 reissue, so its not all that old, but it does need to be regularly serviced, and is ridiculously heavy.
The recording of Mindfullness was the best time I have ever had with this amplifier, running it on only 2 power valves to have it breaking up a little more at high volume. I had the volumes set at 8 and 8 which is how I achieved all the clean sounds on the record. It was absolutely singing, so loud no one could actually be in the same room with it.
JC Vintage Stratocaster Pickups
Hand made vintage strat pickups made by our live engineer’s dad John Collins. These pickups are also used for most of my clean sounds in the studio, they are matched to early 60’s strat specs I’m pretty sure.
They have a higher output and a chiming sound I absolutely love, particularly when paired with the clean Fender amplifier. I put them into my strat just before we started recording and they really changed the entire instrument. Check out their website.
Earthquaker Devices
This is my favourite fuzz box in the world, and its not even a fuzz effect. I had tried out so many different fuzz boxes when I found this one. On that day I honestly think it would have been at least the 15th one I had tried (a good day), but still hadn’t found the sound I wanted.
It’s an octave effect, or guitar synthesizer as the company call it, but the two down, one up and square wave through the base signal when blended create a wicked palette of fuzz. If there is an FC song with a fuzzy sounds, it’s probably this.
Shure Level Loc
An old school small vocal compression unit with one knob for input and a slider to select how far a microphone is from the source – pretty odd I thought. Marty picked this one up and it’s genius for dirty lo-fi, drum destruction applications, however it’s fantastic in the studio for guitar also.
Sometimes a guitar part needs to feel really close in the mix, but not stand out, and running a guitar through this unit would create this sound instantly. Be it for a fuzzed out riff type part, or a cleaner rhythm guitar, it worked a charm on a few songs when blended with the guitar mic tracks.
Senneheiser 441 Microphone
This is the main microphone we ended up using for our vocals on Mindfullness. We recorded all the parts with a few different ones, however when it came to mixing, the sound of this microphone was perfect. It’s sweet, crisp, yet warm sound was exactly the vibe we were looking for.
They are amazing live as well, sounding great straight away without much EQ. They have a high pass filter on the microphone itself, step switched between ‘music’ and ‘speech’ – which is actually one of my favourite things in the world.
Flyying Colours album pre-order is live now, and set for a release on September 23. Head to the band’s website for all the juicy pre-order deals, and info on how to get your hands on the physical releases.
