Video of the day 24th of February - Tobias recording the Stylophone 350s

One girl playing the Stylophone 350s and three obviously deaf people looking on.

....let me explain...The sound of the Stylophone isnt necessarily the smoothest sound you will ever hear. But it has a weird way of fitting in a mix. The most common one is a small toy-like instrument that is played with a pen. The 350s is a attempt to make something a bit more....professional. I have used it on recordings with Vera Vinter, Akaba, Vijaya, Andreas & jag and Necromonkey

Stylophone 350s.

...and here is what Wikipedia thinks of the 350s.

The more versatile 350s version of the instrument was used by UK experimentalists Camberwell Now, and appeared on their album All's Well. The 350s dual-stylus version was also extensively used as a lead instrument by British band Pulp from 1992 to 1994. Its glacial tones are particularly evident on their breakthrough album His 'n' Hers (most notably the songs "Happy Endings" and "Pink Glove") whilst the 1993 album, Intro – The Gift Recordings, features a track called "Styloroc (Nites of Surburbia)" which revolves around a riff played on the first model. Pop/rocker Richard Barone features the 350s prominently on his 2010 album "Glow" (Bar/None Records), particularly on the title track, its instrumental reprise, and cover of T.Rex's "Girl," on which it is played by producer Tony Visconti.

Video of the day 22nd of February 2014....Akaba sessions.

Tobias Ljungkvist and the Vox String Thing

A great day in the studio yesterday. We started off listening to a Akaba track called Everything Matters to sort of close the book on the track but realized very quickly that it needed....lead vocals and drums (maybe).

So we moved on to another track with the horrible working title Rifle gun. Its a weird track and were are not completely sure wether it will make it on to the album. So we started by having Tobias recording his signature instrument, the baritone guitar. 

Tobias recording Baritone guitar

I think its very important to do stuff in productions that work as question marks. So we pulled out an old Vox String Thing and pulled it thru NecroDavids Peavey.

Recording the tremeloed Vox String Thing

This pushed the track in a completely new direction so we recorded two takes with the tremelo at different settings to create a weird fluttering effect. As bass we added the Stylophone 350s. To give the choruses more high end energy and movement we recorded two takes of Mono/poly arpeggios. By doing this we had changed the whole feel of the track making it much more electronic in a slight 80s fashion. The half tempo drums I had recorded sounded utterly out of place and probably wont be used. To get the drums more harmonic we used the Vocoder plus to make the electribe follow the chords....and then we ended it all by recording a Chamberlin Piano thru a rather dull sounding Boss Leslie pedal.

Video of the day 5th of February 2014

Hey Hey, video of the day is from an album project that was started a long time ago. Mattias hallbom used to be the singer in a band called kit le fever.  We recorded two eps together.

After kit le fever fell apart Mattias approached me and said that he had some songs that he wanted to record. We started working...video of the day is from those sessions.

Rokit Scientik recording the Stylophone 350s