My hearing is back! They finally got all the gunk out of my head and I can effectively ruin people’s mixes once again. Just in time to visit a street I know well. I’m not gonna dox anyone but for some reason, everyone I know seems to live on this one street in Headingley. Now I can add Jamie Wray to that list. Someone I wasn’t sure was too keen on the Contact Buzz sound. Everytime I would ask what he thought of the mix when recording Ada Blue, who he is the guitarist for, he would say ‘yeah’ in a not very convincing way. But I know by now, everyone communicates differently. He must have loved it if he wanted a Contact Buzz of his own.

So I plonk my stuff down in the living room, with Harry’s drums already set up. Harry revealed a great secret to me, which some people were curious about in a previous write up. I will now reveal that it was a free parking spot next to the Conservatoire that I used for about a month, before it got closed off for good. I’m gutted, I was saving so much money, but all good things must come to an end, apparently. With a free parking spot outside the Jamie Wray household, we didn’t dwell on these matters, and got to ‘Glyn Johns’ing the shit out of that clear drum kit.

Harry is also the drummer for Ada Blue and admitted this drum part was created at a similar time to when the ‘Pixels’ drum part was written. You might be able to hear the similarities, but why fix what’s not broken? The little shuffle, the rim shots and the rotten Babybel shells were utilized again, just listen to that hi-hat. Trained Cellist, Kirsty, forced to slum it out on the electric bass, held it down and gave the track a lovely cushion, between her insistence on playing a spongebob riff on Jamie’s Acoustic. Fair play, it's a fun riff. I think this was around the time a few of us went to Sainsbury's. It was one of those hot days, so I went three ways on a pack of Magnum Ice Creams. Great decision.

When we got back, we plugged in Ben to hear what he had to say through his keyboard. Lovely decayed resonance you can only get through bouncing it down on a 4-track. Then it was Jamie’s acoustic, the guide for all other instruments to this point. Quite a dry signal, just a smidge of reverb. Pretty steady in its variation, but a nice little earworm for the whole track. After this, we got a tour of the collection of empty Monster Energy cans. It was actually quite uniform and artistic, but not very healthy I don’t think.

We recovered from this spectacle by getting the Vox mic’d up belonging to Jude, who’d just made the trip diagonally from Liverpool, in search of the Otley Run (Overrated in my opinion, you guys should get on the Route 60 Run). Just nice little decorations around the chords, with a spaghetti western tone, a bit of trem, hoisted into reverb. Always love a little juxtaposition. For the finale, we brought Jamie back out towards the microphones - again a pretty dry signal. A great performance from the lad, i’m pretty sure in one take - really good range and control.

Really like the tune man, the chorus is great, the descending line is proper catchy. Love the piano sound too, such a sucker for a good supportive piano part. Harry’s drums at the end too, bringing in the snare. I think we made really good use of the space on the 4-track, great dynamic range and none of it sounds squashed. Jamie’s putting the proper studio tune out soon as well, so make sure you go listen to that to get the full experience.

For fans of: Damien Rice, Bon Iver, Matt Maltese.