Quick, think of the most iconic and respected recording studios in the world. Got your list? Who’s on it? Abbey Road? Hansa? Sunset Sound? Well, earlier this year, Converse gave a selection of very luck bands the chance to record in all of them and more.
The global launch of their monumental new Rubber Tracks program gave 84 bands the keys to 12 of the world’s most iconic recording studios. Among them were Aussies Reptiles from Melbourne, The Attics also from Melbourne, and Sydney’s Vigilantes.
This trio of bands were selected for record at Sydney’s famous Studio 301, whilst Melbourne’s Abreact were selected to fly all the way to Vancouver, Canada, where they were given the opportunity to record at Warehouse Studio.
We recently caught up with Reptiles, The Attics, and Vigilantes and got them to share on their time at Studio 301 and all of the highlights of their recording sessions.
Motivations
Vigilantes: Iggy Pop’s sale pitch and the outrageous prize. To record in Sydney’s most prestigious studio is incredible when you’re not rolling in cash.
Reptiles: Iggy Pop narrated the commercial for the comp’. We had a bunch of songs we’ve been working on that we’re ready to track so timing would have been great! Scoring a free trip away somewhere and getting to check out a big studio sounded like a good time.
The Attics: We already had plans to start work on new music around this time of the year so when we saw the competition being launched online, we put in an entry and didn’t think much of it. Just one of those things you think you’ll enter and never hear back from, but a few weeks later we did!
Heroes For Sale: Really just the off chance that we might get some recording time! When I entered the band in, I honestly didn’t think that we were gonna win, so I’m pretty happy that we applied.
You’re A Winner
Vigilantes: We were pretty astronomically excited when we won. We were both on our way up to Splendour, so the synthesis of all those things was like a weekend long sugar rush.
Reptiles: It was just pretty sweet validation of the songs we had used in our application for rubber tracks to be honest.
The Attics: I think we were all just excited to be heading into a place where loads of our favourite local bands had already worked – not to mention all the huge international acts that have spent time there. Flicking through the guestbook in the studio I saw little notes from Collarbones and Oscar Key Sung and heaps of other acts that had come out of the same places we were coming from now. I guess it was a bit inspiring, or encouraging even.
Heroes For Sale: We were over the moon, it was like 8 in the morning or something and our Facebook page got a message from a man named Shawn who represents this side of Converse. I spent the next 45 minutes trying to call Tom and Adison to tell them but they were asleep.
Highlights
Vigilantes: It’s given us new insight into the direction we want to take our sound. The whole thing was a super positive, enjoyable experience. Hector our producer and Owen our engineer, are both really cool guys and a great hang. Plus having our next single sound very, very mint is a massive win… there were also many free chucks.
Reptiles: Probably when we just smashed through a bunch of songs live in the room together to warm up and, along with our engineer Hector, just kinda laughed that this bunch of songs was fun to play and felt good as a group of songs.
The Attics: As much as the space was amazing, I think the opportunity to work with Hector Castillo on our guitar tones was probably the highlight. We played with a bunch of different pedals and effect to make sure that each guitar sat within our mixes perfectly. His intuition in knowing exactly which direction to push the guitar tones was flawless.
Heroes For Sale: The biggest highlight is definitely being able to work with Hector Costello and Owen Butcher, it seemed to be something of a match made in heaven, they knew what kind of sound we wanted, and were willing to experiment, and let us experiment in order to do interesting things. And I guess along with that too, being able to use the facility with virtually no limits is pretty incredible.
As a band, we hadn’t had the chance to travel to Sydney before; to record or to play. Our bass player hadn’t been at all, so we got busy being tourists on our day off. Ticked the necessary boxes. We played a show at the Standard Bowl while in town with some pretty handy local bands. Was a good night, fun place to play.
Getting To Work
Vigilantes: The song we recorded’s got that bitchy girl indie pop, distortion to eleven type game.
Reptiles: We basically recorded the bones for a bunch of songs we’ve been fleshing out in the last couple of years. We’ve headed to the States a bit lately for showcasing at CMJ, SXSW and we got picked up on Festival NRMAL in Mexico though it was really after we played BigSound here in Oz and Lee from Burger Records vibes what we had going we felt okay let’s track this album and just see what comes of it. What we’ve walked away with from our Rubber Tracks session is ready to have a little bit more work done then it’s ready for a mix which has been a big help!
The Attics: We started work on the guitars and bass for three new tracks. They’re all a little different from each other and a long way away from anything we’ve ever worked on before.
Heroes For Sale: We recorded almost all of 8 songs, which for us is a whole album worth of material. After finding out that we had won, we started writing pretty hard and changed a song and wrote 4 more songs. The other 3.5 tracks come from some stuff we’d already recorded ourselves but never released.
