Hannah Peel released ‘Mary Casio: Journey To Cassiopeia’ today. The album was partly recorded on location in Barnsley by staff engineer, Oli Jacobs and assisted by Oli Middleton. To achieve the location recording, the team took an SSL L500 live console to the civic hall in Barnsley.
The album was mixed in the Big Room on the SSL console by Oli and producer, Erland Cooper and mastered by Guy Davie.
Read more here on the Bowers & Wilkins website, where the album was available first, thanks to their Society of Sound.
Hannah: “When we moved from Ireland to Yorkshire, I was dropped into a world of brass music surrounded by the low end resonances of the brass band – a sound that I never knew could exist before. That powerful and rich immersive feeling was so visceral and still gets me excited today. It felt important to write and record a piece that was true to childhood feelings amalgamated with the electronic appetite I enjoy today. I often find that brass recordings miss this mighty force and I was very lucky to have an incredible team that also supported this vision and could enable it to come to life. Along with my long-term collaborator and producer Erland Cooper, we worked with the Real World Studios team and their lead Engineer Oli Jacobs who brought all their equipment to The Civic, Barnsley: a now newly refurbished venue, which still contains the old Victorian features I remember as a child when seeing my first musicals and bands on stage.”
Erland “After Peel’s last solo record took around four years in development on the writing, sound palate or experimentation side, this record came together very quickly in her writing stage so it was important to capture the same buoyant energy and freshness on the production and mixing stages. Fundamentally this dictated a fresh commitment on the sound and mixes and encouraged what I would call an old school, no recall, mix approach. Committing to the sound palate and performances early on was vital. This happened twice in the recording stages, initially with the synth production dictated by a singular choice of instruments and working within their limitations, helped along by Brian Eno’s oblique strategies and again in the production and recording of the best performances from the brass and rhythm players. Extensive notes were taken on the day of band recording and generally each song was played around three times, no more with very few if at all punch in sections. Not least because brass players rely on their lips working well for around 3-5 hours before rest. As it was impractical to provide monitoring to all 29 players, with the exception of the drums section, they relied heavily on the conductor Sandy Smith to keep time, pace and feel. The most natural recording and performances were captured through the SSL remote desk, Real World’s two exceptional engineers and into Pro Tools running off a laptop and then collated by Hannah and I spontaneously with an instinctive gut feel that was obvious to all”