With Brisbane rock/progressive pop-rock four-piece Patient Lounge having just released their debut single All You Want, band members Nick Keogh (drums) and Zach Eather (vocals/guitar) had a chat with us about why they recorded at Lush Recording Studios and what it takes to capture their live sound in a recording.
Fresh off the release of their epic new single All You Want, we caught up with Brisbane four-piece Patient Lounge for a complete run-down of their creative processes.
“We are always commended on how great our live sound is so we realised we needed to make sure that we captured that with the recording of this new single. We wanted to make sure our fans can have an experience similar to our live show with just a UE Boom at kick-ons.”
“Going into a studio is always a unique experience – every bit of gear in there plays a huge part in the tonal character of a recording. It can even have an effect on the vibe and feel of a performance when you lay down a track. We talked a bit about where we would like to record our new single All You Want and decided on Lush. Lush Recording Studios is well known in the Brissy music scene for its elite recording equipment (some of which has come from all corners of the world and has been on some very high profile recordings) and we believed it would be the best choice to capture our live sound perfectly for this single.”
“It seems that the world is moving towards digital amps, computers and samples which, don’t get me wrong, serves its purpose and works great for certain artists! But a lot of the time you see bands using this gear purely to replicate analogue gear and because of the unit’s convenience. We’ve always been a band that never wanted to compromise and the same can be said with our equipment. It’s also why we chose Lush, because the analogue gear they had really complimented our sound.”
“It makes it easy when you’ve got great gear to start with, and we’ve spent a couple of years honing in on our live sound. When we started playing shows we decided right from the start that we needed to spend the money and get good gear which complements our playing styles and translates the emotion we put into the songs to the audience. This is why we run gear like an EVH 5150iii, ENGL Fireball and an Ampeg SVT3… oh and how could I forget Nick’s gorgeous Tama Starclassic.”
“The gear on tap at Lush was insane. I remember doing a mic shootout for vocals and having the opportunity to choose between a Neumann mic used by Frank Sinatra and Michael Jackson or a $22k Telefunken mic that had made its way from the states. There’s no better feeling than finding a piece of gear that works so well with your voice and its history just adds something special. We ended up going with the Telefunken, but we figured Sinatra’s mic was good enough for a drum overhead!”
Patient Lounge worked with Bernie Wedrat (recorded & mixed All You Want) who is well-known in the Australian music scene, having trained with Grammy award-winning engineers such as Chris Lord-Alge, Tom Lord-Alge and Michael Brauer.
“We knew Bernie was going to be great to work with from day one. We told him that we wanted the drums to be a very huge, live and natural sound as opposed to the fake, sampled and computerised sound that seems to be very trendy in a lot of modern recordings – and boy did he deliver!” said Nick. “We’ve spent a lot of time and money on our sound and Bernie is an expert at capturing the essence of what a band does, into a recording. I think the result speaks for itself. Of course, we had our work cut out for us to make sure we nailed our parts!”
“Working with Bernie was fantastic. He was so cruisey to work with and was very open to all of our ideas – he basically just let us do our thing and worked with us to make our vision for this track come to life. Whatever sound we wanted he would have it dialled into the Neve Pre in a heartbeat, and I’m sure that comes with the experience of working with a broad range of artists.”
Bernie and Lush Recording Studios’ previous clients include huge names like Katy Perry, Zedd, Jimmy Barnes, Jason Bonham, The Red Paintings, Glenn Shorrock and Jeff Martin just to name a few.
“In the end, we are just a rock band, and the history of rock music has always been pretty simple. It comes down to the performance and the emotion, and if you have access to top of the line analogue gear, you have the ability to capture that emotion in its purest form. That’s why people love music and we couldn’t have asked for a better end result.”
All You Want will be out soon – in the meantime, you can check it out here. You can find Patient Lounge on Facebook and Instagram, and head to one of their All You Want’East Coast Tour dates to catch them and their hard-hitting, high energy performance live:
Patient Lounge ‘All You Want’ Single Launch:
Sunday 5 May
Woolly Mammoth, Brisbane.
Doors 8pm. Tickets: Pre-Sale $10 (+booking fee), $15 Door
w/ Big Whoops, The Desert Sea (NSW) & RHINO
Event page: Click here.
Patient Lounge ‘All You Want’ Tour Dates:
Thursday 16 May – The Lounge Room, Port Macquarie, NSW
Friday 17 May – The Hamilton Station Hotel, Newcastle, NSW
Saturday 18 May – Rad Bar, Wollongong, NSW
Sunday 19 May – Frankie’s Pizza By The Slice, Sydney, NSW
Thursday 30 May – The Vineyard, St Kilda, VIC
Friday 31 May – Young Supper Club, Frankston, VIC
Saturday 1 June: Bombay Rock, Melbourne, VIC
Thursday 6 June: Haken Australian Tour Support, The Brightside, Brisbane, QLD
Saturday 13 July: Dead of Winter Festival, Brisbane, QLD
Sunday 14 July: Peregian Originals, Sunshine Coast, QLD
More info here.
