Opening LIQUID PENNIES‘ new album “Distant Dawn”, “Camp” looks at the harmony and enmity between the natural world and the its inhabitants leading to an impending upheaval that leads to looking toward a better horizon. The song blends analog tape, violin, guitar, bass, and drums that cover a new space than Liquid Pennies have ever gone before. A culmination of playing a lot together both in shows and rehearsing relentlessly leading up to the tracking of the instrumentals (rhythm guitar/bass/drums were all recorded live on the first day) during May of 2020. Today, we’re pleased to gie you its first listen below
Liquid Pennies was formed in 2018 in Saint Petersburg, Florida as a surf/psych/experimental trio. After playing shows for a year around Florida and working on demos, we independently recorded, mixed, and released our first EP Floods digitally in October of 2019. Over the following year we began playing with violinist/vocalist Zoë Turtle who co wrote and played on our May 2020 single “Secrets Dash” and joins the band on three of the four tracks of Distant Dawn.
Comments the band: “For our upcoming release we combined forces with producer/engineer Nathan Doyle of Voyager Recording, dividing the sessions between his studio and our home studio Change Room. The result is a four piece (40 minute) movement through the four elements as they find both harmony and enmity with forces of a polarized present. Each song ends with a different element that fuses the album together using analog tape experimentation and field recordings. Happy listening!”
Asked for some more details about the recording process, LIQIS PENNIES continue: “All of the instrumental foundation for the this album (rhythm guitar, bass, and drums) was tracked at Voyager Studio with Nathan Doyle behind the console in Clearwater Florida May 2020. Over the following two months we recorded guitars, some of the violin, and the first pass of vocals there as well. During that summer Nathan moved out of the studio and we recorded the rest of the vocals, violin, and analog tape overdubs (for backwards/pitch shifted guitars in the songs and for the ambient interludes between each track) at the band’s Change Room Studio.”
“The album is also interspersed with field recordings of the water, forests, thunderstorms, and wildlife around the gulf coast from outings in between recording and mixing sessions. Without a time constraint during the pandemic and know prospect of playing gigs, we were able to give ourselves a lot of time and space to make this record how we wanted it and reflect on the place that we found ourselves in with aspirations to keep looking forward. The process of recording this was almost the inversion of our last record where we had tracked the drums, bass and guitar onto tape and did the vocals/extra overdubs digitally.”
“This album was done on Protools for the initial tracking with a looser approach of doing the vocals and instrumental leads. The mixing process was done in conjunction with Doyle, which was also far different from our fully independent process for our first album. It was a learning experience for everyone and brought more clarity and focus to these songs than we could have ever hoped for on our own.”
