Written by Matt Blackman
August 2003…
It’s 7am at O’Hare International Airport and steaming hot. Deliriously tired and twisted with excitement, we are four wide-eyed man-children from Australia on our first visit to the USA. Chicago is our indie-rock Mecca, and here we finally are – after years of dreaming, saving our pennies, demoing and rehearsing – finally spat onto the kerb after a gazillion-hour longhaul from Sydney.
Playing it cool with our towering trolleys of guitars, off-balance with an internal religious experience taking in the sensory impact of the strangely familiar world we already kinda knew through movies and TV. A yellow cab pulls up. Bedlam offers up an ice-breaker joke as we load in, while I go for shotgun…opening the driver’s door. Excuse me, sir…sir? The driver chuckles. Welcome to America.
Then we’re on our way to our new home for the next 10 or so days – Electrical Audio. This is the studio built by Steve Albini. STEVE ALBINI. The sound engineer behind so many records that transformed our lives, and now there it is, the famous ‘e’ logo on the non-descript checker plate door. It’s 8:15am, noticeably hotter, and we’re on the kerb with our pile of guitars again. One of us presses the doorbell. Nothing. Press again. Gravelly voice says hello. It’s Purplene, we’ve just arrived from Sydney. Oh hey, voice says. What time is it? Uh…come on in and make yourself coffee. Door buzzes.
Steve’s wisdom and prodigious skill helped us to think differently and believe in ourselves a little more.
We walk through to the lounge area to sit and wait. It dawns on us what an un-rock’n’roll time it was to arrive at a recording studio. And how maybe we should have organised a rest day somewhere else before attempting Day 1 of The Record Of Our Dreams after a 26-hour flight. Eventually Steve wanders in around 9:30 with bed hair, torn jeans and dirty yellow tee. We apologise for the ungodly buzzing hour, introduce ourselves and shake hands. The way Bedlam quickly says his name sounds more like Duff than Dave, and Steve asks did you say Dutt? The band thinks this is very amusing but play it cool. Electrelane just wrapped up the night before and your sleeping rooms aren’t made up yet, sorry. But you can watch TV or videos here if you want, make yourself some more coffee, play some billiards. I’m just gonna have breakfast with my wife real quick, then we can get to work.
Staff start arriving, super friendly, the wry humour of the studio begins to emerge, an intern makes up the guest rooms. Then by 10:15 Steve comes back in, says hey again, and pulls on his red Electrical jumpsuit. We soon learn that this means it’s time for work. Still in the lounge, he passes us a yellow pad to write each song on a page, listing all the instruments and vocals used on each track. Reviewing the list, he determines 16 tracks will give us the best sounding result with the most headroom, and a few other technical details that we pretend we understand. Come on in, this is Studio B. Jesus, we think. Cool, we say.
…(Albini) pulls on his red Electrical jumpsuit. We soon learn that this means it’s time for work.
We take our pick of the dreamy inventory of amps, drum kits and snare drums and a staff member calibrates the 16-track tape machine. Presuming it’ll take at least half a day just to get the drums miked up, we’re surprised after 45 minutes to hear Steve say he’s ready for us to play through a song. Then after swapping out a few mics, and replacing the felt bass pedal with a rubber beater, he’s ready to record and it’s not even lunch. Nothing has ever sounded this good to us, and this is just a damn headphone mix. Despite the jet lag, we are energised beyond belief. We start recording.
‘Purplene’ was recorded in 6 days then mixed in another 4, but knowing how quickly Steve worked we probably could have done it in half that. After 20 years, we’re all deeply proud of this as a time capsule of what we were capable of as a band. Steve’s wisdom and prodigious skill helped us to think differently and believe in ourselves a little more. That we could realise our dreams, get out of our own way, sound as good as all of our favourite records and be more actualised humans within the world. Without wasting time and without the bullshit. If it wasn’t for that decision to record in Chicago I wouldn’t have met my partner and mother of our kids.
With the devastating passing of Dave ‘Bedlam’ Ledlin in late 2021, his family will always have this wonderful audio document as one of his legacies. And now we’ve lost Steve as well – perhaps the single greatest proponent of what we, collectively as a band, treasured about independent rock music. Dave and Steve, this LP goes out to you.
1. Love: Western
Jam came out of nowhere and the recording knocked us out. Unlike anything we’d done before so knew it had to be the opener. An investigation of paranoia.
2. Swords Down
Ad switched to second guitar, Bedlam on hard-picked bass and synth. Always notice the cool Albini trick on the vocal where the roomy gate opens up as the singing gets louder. A peace offering.
3. The Battler
Steve suggested Bedlam try the Mellotron instead of our Roland JX-3P. Steve loved the little mechanical splutter of the last held note…said you gotta keep that in. When one does not rage against the dying of the light.
4. Lyonhardt
I wasn’t happy with the original vocal take with my foggy plane flu throat, so after we came back from our 4-day break we re-did the vocal before the mix. Steve manually spliced the end loud bit. A reluctant peace offering.
5. Second Shift
Probably one of my favourite Purplene tracks. JX-3P synth drone. The way Rosie’s beat fades in sans studio assistance. Bedlam’s guitar parts rule, as do the bass and drums. Dreamy and warming and simple and hopeful.
6. Scars For Sores
Wasn’t landing right so Steve took a half day off while we arranged this. Was a bit of a puzzle but it worked…and I’m still surprised by how much I enjoy its oddness. Bedlam’s vocal sounds great.
7. Cahoots = 1
Before we laid on the vocal Steve commented that this evoked an armada of ships crashing through the sea. A solid showcase for Electrical’s 1928 Ludwig snare drum. My attempt at inhabiting the mind of a paranoid conservative.
8. Watch The Watch
Steve pulled out a massive marching bass drum and sampled/looped it at our request. Everyone sings. Ad’s bass bit at the end gets me every time. And Rosie on tremolo guitar! A celebration of the late hours.
Purplene “Purplene” reflections by Matt Blackman, May 21, 2024 ◾
