A couple of years ago I got an email from Brendan, Grupo Fantasma's tour manager, noting that their self-recorded album, El Existential, had won the 2011 Grammy for Best Latin Rock, Urban or Alternative Album. After I heard the CD I wanted to know how it all went happened, so I tracked him and Adrian down in their hometown of Austin, Texas. There I learned the story of a rented house and trying, but fun, recording sessions. I was also lucky to catch live sets by Grupo and Brownout, a related band of Adrian's, where both groups delivered the goods to excited audiences. Grupo Fantasma has done several records with Stuart Sullivan, also in this issue, and they have a new album coming out in 2013, produced by Steve Berlin (Tape Op #55) of Los Lobos and tracked at Jim Eno's Public Hi-Fi (Tape Op #27) and Adrian's home studio, Level One.
Where were you recording your previous records?
A: The record [Sonidos Gold] we did before El Existential was at Wire Recording with Stuart Sullivan. He's a good friend and helps us out. Our first record [Grupo Fantasma] was practically a demo. We were playing live and our manager, and soundman at the time, David [Lobel], was like, "Everyone wants to hear a CD." We went into the studio, knocked that shit out, and hardly even thought about it. I was 22; I didn't pay attention to details.
Were you tracking a lot of it live?
A: Yeah, and we only had two or three days [in the studio]. The second album [Movimiento Popular] we did at Stuart's, but we went overboard with the production. Next we decided to make a live album [Comes Alive]. On those first two records people were like, "That band is so good live, but the records don't really capture that." With [Sonidos Gold] we finally knew sonically how we wanted to explain it. We had a relationship with Stuart, where if I wanted a whale with a microphone up it's butt, Stuart can make that happen. I was into recording enough at that point where I knew what I wanted. The band had a vision and it all just came together. A lot of that was getting into the room sounds. I really like those old school records where everyone is in one room. Stuart asked, "How do you feel about trying to avoid any fake reverb? Just use reverb from your amps and room mics?" So he was compressing the hell out of the room mics — everything sounded huge and massive because his studio is amazing. That was the first time I was completely 100 percent proud of an album. Mainly it was his awesome room, his mics, and his knowledge of how to make it sound good. Then for El Existential we just didn't have the money to go to Stuart, and he was really busy at the time. I also wanted it to sound completely different. I love Sonidos Gold; I just didn't want to repeat it. We wanted to write in the studio too — we'd never had that opportunity before. Our manager asked, "What if we rented a house and you did it yourself?" It's not like we're the first band to ever do that, but we'd never done it. We asked Brendan, who has a lot of experience in recording, to put it all together.
You were working with the band already?
B: Yeah, exactly. I'd been tour managing Grupo for about four years. I was doing production management, tour management, and monitors. We had a front of house engineer, but I'd do monitors and record the shows too. Adrian said, "We've got a house and we're going to start recording. It'll probably take four months." I already had my brain wrapped around what the band needed, and what sounded best.
A: Our manager was looking at houses while we were on tour. We had to nail it down. One day he called and said, "This one came up. It's awesome." I said, "I need to see it. We need to see the layout and see how big it is. Do you even know if we can make loud noise?" He's not a studio guy — I could tell he just wanted to get it over with. So we piled up what gear we had between us; it didn't include a lot of high-end stuff, so we rented some, including a [Neumann] U 87.
B: Adrian said, "What are we going to do about gear? We're basically going to be filling up a whole studio." We were following up a Grammy-nominated album with this. It definitely gave me a sense of challenge. Then I showed up the first day and saw a Rupert Neve Portico, an API preamp, and the U 87.
A: I felt that pressure, for sure. I thought, "I'm going to produce and Brendan's going to help me out." Every now and again I would get anxiety attacks at night. We could hardly get the studio to work at first, but we were so busy we just didn't think about it. The first month was almost all troubleshooting.
Winning a Grammy
A: I was a voting member of the Recording Academy when Sonidos Gold was nominated and we felt like that was a great year for us. We played with Prince, did huge festivals that summer, and there was momentum. That album was doing awesome and we felt super proud of it. We knew that we were possibly getting a nomination. We got it, but we didn't win. After that El Existential didn't sell or tour as well, and we didn't feel that same momentum. I actually cancelled my [NARAS] membership and then we got nominated. It was crazy, especially because we really worked our asses off on this one and we thought nobody would like this album.
B: We watched the ceremony at a truck stop in Flagstaff.
Was it hard doing headphone mixes?
A: We had to improvise, big time. B: We did not have a proper console where you could build a unique headphone mix for everybody. We'd do it in software and send it out left and right out of the [Apogee] Ensemble. It worked great with some direct outputs for the "more me" thing.
A: I ordered the Studiomaster [console] board that I now have in my home studio [Level One Studio]. It came in and half of it didn't work, so we put it aside. We'd borrowed my friends Mac G5, but that kept crapping out so we ended up doing things on my laptop. We worked a lot on the MacBook Pro, and I also had a TEAC 4-track. If the drums weren't sounding good I'd take that original rhythm section take, bounce it to tape, bounce it back and we'd re-play to that. I didn't have the capability to get more than four tracks on there. We almost felt like we wasted a whole month without tracking anything. The construction took a while. We were finally rolling, and then we hit the holidays. All of a sudden we had one month left. That's when I started freaking out. We called our friend Damon [Lange], who was Grupo's first soundman and manager. He's got a sound company here [Nomad Sound] and tons of gear and let us borrow gear. I picked up two mics and we switched up the drum sound. I fell in love with the Beyerdynamic M 160s. We tried a lot of things as new mics came into the studio. It was definitely a lot of improvising.
What did the other band members think of the process?
A: I don't think a lot of the guys were entirely convinced that it was going to happen, especially because it took so long. The guys who aren't into recording wanted to show up and play the horns; they couldn't have cared less what mic I was using. But I think everybody had fun. It was so much fun to hang out, stay late, and drink beer.
B: People were wondering where it was going to go, but at the same time there was this instant pride that this was ours. All ten of these guys had a pretty good attitude about it. A: We had a little clubhouse.
How did the rooms sound in the house?
B: Originally we wanted to run with the room sound. But we'd throw up our room mics and it was not like the room mics at Stuart's. Our room sounded like a bathroom. A: Yeah. "How come ours sounds like a toilet?" B: We were struggling with the room mics.
Did you mix in the box?
A: Yeah, we did. I wanted to take it somewhere and mix on someone's board, but we were tracking up until the last minute. I was actually still mixing it at Erik Wofford's [Cacophony Recorders] while he was getting the album mastered. I was there with my headphones handing him a song and still making tweaks. Erik ran it through a bunch of stuff and I asked him, "Honestly, does this sound like it was done in the box?" We're following up a Grammy-nominated album with a little record done on a laptop. And Erik said, "It doesn't sound like it was done in the box." At first Erik didn't want to hear our previous record but then, after a while, he said, "Put it on." And then, "Oh shit. That sounds massive. But I like this new one. It sounds a little more aggressive and urgent." It's Latin music, but most of us come from the background of garage bands. Some of the guys grew up playing Latin music, but I grew up just playing rock.
Do you think you'd ever do this again?
A: We were just talking about that. We both want to do it because I feel like we're at a place where we know so much more than we did back then, and I feel like we can do it. I do feel like we could both do a much better job. And I'd want that challenge; it was super fun.
