Black Box Pt. III

After what seemed like an eternity of foreplay, November 9^th finally rolled around. This was to be the day that Soul Plane’s vocalists (Blythe and myself) finally began the process of pulling the music together after having had a reference CD of bare instrumentals to work with since the October 19^th recording session at Machinehead Studio, the final result of which will become Black Box, Soul Plane’s official demo release, an essential in our electronic press kit.

Blythe got to Toronto around 5 30pm, and along with a good friend of mine who just so happens to be a very talented and meticulous studio engineer named Vladimir Baranov, we headed back to my university residence to make some sense of the music we were about to record in less than three hours. As we went over the demo tracks, the three of us got to talking about how Soul Plane needs to find direction as a band if we ever hoped to make it somewhere – I couldn’t have agreed more. The bottom line is that you can have a product with an enormous potential demand (which is not to say that we do at this point in our careers, or ever will), but if it is poorly marketed as a concept, it will go in the same circles as so many never-heard-of artists that come in and out of the music industry. The other bottom line is that the current version of Soul Plane has been together since September 3^rd of 2007 – I think it’s reasonable to cut ourselves a little bit of slack in that at the very moment, as a band, we are still in search of our sound, a cornerstone to establishing any direction of any sort. I mean, shit, it’s been less than two months – nothing worthwhile happens overnight. Just ask my parents.

Blythe’s two cents was that while Soul Plane made good music, it was time to separate the men from the boys – problem identified. Her suggestion was essentially that we continue making this good music while working on bringing out the great moments in each song for recording, as well as at live shows so that it would make people catch on better/quicker to our otherwise very consistent riffs, drum patterns and flow. The three of us could have made kitty litter out of that discussion if we had more time; like Socrates, no one would have shut the hell up until we got every answer we were looking for or until we were poisoned with hemlock. Knowing Blythe and I and how often we’re always yelling at each other (it’s the only way things ever get done around here), somebody would have had to die. Unfortunately, at that point, time and death were both luxuries we couldn’t quite afford…

Once we arrived at Machinehead, we were pretty much ready to go (Dave was already recording vocals the day of, so everything was set up). While there are exceptions to some rules, it is my firm belief that tradition is never to be overlooked – despite Blythe’s threat to boycott me if I smoked weed before recording, despite her persistent pleas and protests informing me sternly that the cottonmouth effect of chronic would have a direct negative impact on my articulation and enunciation while recording, I smoked weed before recording. The funny thing is that I probably wouldn’t have, or more likely, I would have forgotten, had she kept her mouth shut. Sadly, though, I am a spiteful person, and I have problems with authority. Besides all that, I had an 11 30pm bus to catch to get to Waterloo with Vlad, so there wasn’t any further argument as to who was recording first between Blythe and me.

But oh, when I got into the vocal booth, what a fucking feeling. I asked Dave to level out everyone’s instruments so that I’d have the complete effect of the music going through my headphones as I rapped my verses. As the instrumentals played, I turned the lights down real low and closed my eyes. Immediately, the setting went straight from me rapping into a condenser mic in an 8 ft. x 8 ft. room insulated with over $30K’s worth of soundproofing foam and, literally, moving floorboards (for sound production/absorption purposes, not because Dave’s from the projects) over raw instrumentals to Soul Plane live at the Air Canada Centre.

I wish everyone reading this right now could have been in the vocal booth with me then – those were easily the best two hours of my life. The sound coming through my headphones was just so… whole, the vibe itself so fresh. I’m going to try to be eloquent without getting too dramatic here: it was a plethora of music, emotions, and sensual raw beauty that overwhelmingly saturated the little room, and each time I finished rapping a verse it felt like I just busted a nut. That’s really the only way to describe it. Recording “Liquor on the Curb,” a song paying tribute to Tyler Perez, a formerly-promising basketball player as well as a boy of mine who was caught in the crossfire of some gang trying to get retribution on his roommate, I nearly had a fucking breakdown… the thought of my buddy not even being able to have an open casket viewing at his own funeral because his face was blown apart by a sawed-off shotgun blast, coupled with how much I missed him, coupled with my own imagination of what Blythe’s powerful Whitney Houston-esque choruses between my verses would sound like on the track, was almost too much for me to bear. All this enhanced by the melody Kevin composed several months ago when I had woken him up to write this song the minute I got the bad news that Tyler was gone, played out by Soul Plane. It was incredible.

At any rate, after I did my parts, the plan was for Vlad and I to leave Machinehead and head right down to the Greyhound bus terminal which would be taking us back to Vlad’s place in Waterloo so that we could be up and ready to record tracks for an upcoming solo project by Saturday morning. The plans changed, however, the minute I stepped out of the Machinehead booth – Blythe was there, sitting patiently waiting her turn, and after every take I did, Kevin, Vlad, Dave and she would break down the verse I recorded and tell me what I could do to make it even better. I felt the least I could do was be part of the evaluation and assessment team for her when it was her turn to record as well. Besides, Kevin was pressuring me to stay, and let’s face it: my solo rap career without Soul Plane is a total write-off – I would never go anywhere in music without these guys. Knowing this, I stuck around, clearly realizing where my priorities were at.

As it turns out, Blythe didn’t get to finish. I finished recording my vocals just before 10pm (session started at 8pm), leaving Blythe just over 2 hours to do her share. By midnight, though, she had recorded the vocals for two out of the five tracks (she is a perfectionist to the point that until she gets a take she wants to keep, no one gets to go home, not even Dave, despite the fact that he owns the damn place), and as she started on her third, her voice started straining and wavering, showing signs of wear and tear; two hours straight of recording were taking their toll on her. Despite being told this, she was relentless and kept at it, persevering, and by 1 15am, Dave had to pry her away from the microphone, telling her that she would ruin her voice if they did any more and that it was futile to keep doing takes that weren’t making it anywhere near the demo and that he refused to let vocals like hers get ruined over foolishly blind determination. I guess she enjoyed her recording experience as much as I did. Who wouldn’t? It’s fucking Soul Plane, for crying out loud…

Next (and hopefully final) Machinehead Studio session on the 16^th of December…