Larry Hibbit run us through the veteran Brit-rockers’ new album, ‘Glorious Sunset’
At this point, Hundred Reasons count as legitimate scene legends. Back with their brand new album 'Glorious Sunset', we got Larry Hibbit to tell us a few things about it we absolutely have to know.
→ We weren’t all in the same room, or even all in the same country, at any point during the making of the album
The album was made at the tail end of COVID, and with Andy Bews (drums) living in California, we had no choice but to record the drums remotely. The drums were recorded at a studio called The Ship in LA. We rigged up a system using a price of software called Audio Movers which allowed me to listen to Andy’s drums and also talk to him using the talk back button in my studio. It worked surprisingly well, and actually, a lot of the time just felt like he was in the next room.
Then the other two guys came to my studio in Brixton, and I finished the rest there. We finally all met up for a rehearsal in January of this year; it was the first time we’d all been together in the same room since 2012!
→ We wrote very quickly and dumped nearly as many song ideas as made the record
Due to our busy lives, we only had very short sessions in which to write music together. A typical writing session lasted maybe 2 or 3 hours and usually with only two or three of us present. The time being so precious meant that none of it was wasted, and I think we left every session with at least the sketch of a song in place. We found it to be a wonderful pace to work, which kept procrastination at a minimum. I don’t think we’ve ever been as productive as a band.
→ We made the album in secret.
No one knew it was coming. And no one is expecting another one. This is allowing us to live in the moment as a band for the first time in our lives! Another advantage of doing it in secret was that if it had turned out to be rubbish, we could have binned the whole thing, and no one would have ever known. I would recommend to any band out there to never let on you’re making a record and to always act as if you’re never going to make another one. It’s quite liberating!
→ Colin recorded all of his vocals on a hand-held microphone, usually in two or three takes
We decided that vocal booths and pop shields suck and that nothing is more important than the vibe, so all the vocals were recorded with Colin holding a mic and moving around as if he were singing live. We generally did whole takes of the songs without splitting it up into sections which allowed the performances to flow naturally.
People can make such a faff over vocal recording and load it with way too much pressure. It really doesn’t need to be that way.
→ A lot of the guitar parts were made up on the fly
While recording the guitars on a few tracks, I’d just run it and jam along with the track. I also kept quite a few parts from the demos or just looped sections I thought sounded cool. This meant I’ve only ever played them once, which has made figuring out what to play live a bit of a challenge. Some of the parts are still a mystery to me! Guess I’ll just have to wing it on tour as well…
Hundred Reasons’ album ‘Glorious Sunset’ is out 24th February.
