Tropic Bombs – Nuclear Honeymoon
Tropic Bombs (sort of a reggae, funk, classic rock, hard rock hybrid) just dropped their record today. I was in charge of sweetening, mixing, mastering and authoring the record. It was hard work but very rewarding and the record is just awesome.
Essentially, the record tracks were recorded at the singer’s studio on a Roland VS-2480. After the tracking was done, we brought the board over to my studio and dumped the stems into Pro Tools and started chopping away. Not a whole lot had to be done on the guitars other than a little eq’ing and some compression. Most of the clean guitar parts used a similar delay and reverb patch that helped keep things sounding consistent between tracks. The Bass was recorded purely D.I. so we built a custom patch using Ampeg SVX which really helped the bass come alive. We added a little overdrive as well to warm the tone up a bit as well. The bass was recorded with a p-bass so the combination really made for a cool tone. Drums were a bit of a challenge at first but after some ducking of toms and some eq sweeps they turned out great. The kit used was only a 4 piece so that cut down significantly on the clutter and extra noise. Vocals used the same preset patches: 7 band eq, compression, a little tube saturation for warmth, delay and reverb. The vocals are hot and airy while still maintaining they’re aggressiveness in harder rock parts.
The mastering took a few passes before everything was sewn up, and after track order was sewn up the final product was a gleaming success. Check out Tropic Bombs when you get a chance or download the album on iTunes. You won’t be disappointed.
-Steve
