Video: Zombie Roof - Somewhere in America

 Back in 2020 I produced the album "Somewhere in America" for the band Zombie Roof. We did it in a week (including mixing) at Hipposonic Studios, here in Vancouver. Everyone was quite happy with it and felt excited. Sadly almost the moment we finished the mastering and went to pressing the Covid 19 pandemic hit and the world stopped. The album slid under the collective attention and has been lying dormant nearly ever since.

Back in August Combine the Victorious opened for Zombie Roof in their hometown of Squamish. While we were there Todd from the band proposed the idea of making a video for the title track "Somewhere in America."  Todd felt the song connected with the general zeitgeist of modern day USA. He suggested taking news clips and popular stories to cut together a video that demonstrated the state of the union. With that in mind I re-listened to the song and tried to conjure up a narrative. 

Using clips from news stories and popular youtube videos as well as advertisements the video came together slowly and a feeling solidified. It was a bit overwhelming at first and I found myself getting a bit depressed with the collected imagery, so spend a bit more time trying to add a positive balance to the video. I think in the end it works well and suits the energy of the song tightly. Have a look and please let me know what you think!

Art During COVID19: Zombie Roof - Automatic Lyric Video

This weekend I cut together a video for the band Zombie Roof. Earlier this year we made a full length album at the wonderful Hipposonic Studio here in Vancouver. Hipposonic is essentially the reincarnation of Little Mountain Sound Studios, in the former studio B. A fantastic spot with incredible rock and roll history (Bruce Fairburn and Bob Rock made several platinum selling albums in the studio) we recorded and mixed 10 songs in a week (yes I like to work quickly).

Just ahead a couple months and we are all in isolation and life has all but stopped for most of us. The band members have been proactive though and set about releasing video singles to share their music. Singer Trent sent me some footage that had a very cool "comic book" filter set on it, turning it to an almost rotoscoped looking black and white image. He also cut in some old archival footage in between his lip sync and I thought he had something cool. I requested everybody in the band do a similar thing and then transfer me their footage. I'd then cut together a lyric video from their stuff.

So on Saturday I received four different performances, all made in various spots around the province, all separately but of course all playing to the same song. I placed them on a timeline and within a couple minutes I knew instantly that it should look good. An evening of editing and tweaking and voila, a new video for Zombie Roof: Automatic.

Video Single: Not Just Another Night - Zombie Roof

This was an interesting project, something I'd been toying with for a while: to do a one-day video single in a proper studio. I'd made one with Sex With Strangers on their Momento video, but that was done in a rehearsal room with a Mackie mixer. This time I had an SSL in a world class studio to play with. My goal was to record, mix and film a video all in one day. Zombie Roof was the band that agreed to do it!

Zombie Roof are from Squamish (mostly, let's say the west coast islands area). We recorded an album in two days back in 2016 at Afterlife Studio. Afterlife is the old Mushroom studio with a slightly revamped room and completely new control room. Those ten songs went down easily. I didn't have any time with them before we started recording that Saturday morning but we managed six or seven bed tracks on that first day. We were recording vocal overdubs by 4pm the next day! I couldn't believe how quickly it all came together. 

Jump to Summer 2018 and the band reached out to me once again. This time to record a single. I said yes but I wanted to use Hipposonic this time instead. I'd had two successful sessions in their earlier this year with Savanarola and wanted to keep learning that room.  Plus it would be big enough to film the band playing live. 

A couple emails back and forth, one pre-production session at Soundhouse Studio (nice people; well built rehearsal space) and then we showed up on Oct 13th to record "Not Just Another Night." I'll say big props to assistant engineer Liam Moes at Hipposonic; what a smooth running day, everything was ready and waiting and sounding good. Great work, Liam, thank you.

We tracked the song live off the floor. One guitar in the left speaker, the other in the right. Bass and vocals in the middle with some loud-ass drums filling the spaces in between. What a joy it is to work in the old Little Mountain Sound studio B again. Nothing has changed, and Rob Darch (studio owner) has even sorted out how to get the loading bay back into the equation. It's the 90's all over again. This was the room that I shadowed Tom Lord Alge while he mixed Pureafunalia in a week. This was the room that Pure made our first single "Laughing Like a Fiend" with John Webster producing, Ken Lomas engineering, and Mike Plotnikoff assisting. I think we also recorded the acoustic version of Tall Grass on that session as well. 

Back to Zombie Roof. The core of this band has been working together since the early 90's. I knew they could play, so why mess with things right? I wanted it to sound as big as it could without overdubs. A real live off the floor record. Trent, the singer, did a good job tracking with the band but even behind a baffle Enzo's drums were bleeding heavily into his mic so we retracked the lead vocals (and then doubled it as I still love that sound). The bridge was just a quick couple backing vocal overdubs with guitarist Todd's daughter on the oohs and a 12 string to give it some freshness. All told we took nine takes and then grabbed one better fill from our 8th take, fixed a bass note, a guitar bend and that was it! 

Then I mixed the song while the band was setting up to do their video performance. I was still mixing the song while Kale Beaudry and Benn McGuire were filming the band! Great work from both of them as well.  Really appreciate the gimbal work Kale.  

Printed a mix that evening at Hipposonic, along with stems, and then packed up a good days work. We had Craig Waddell master the mix and then, after several evenings at the computer editing, I came up with this:  Zombie Roof - Not Just Another Night.  Please have a look!  

Thanks for reading,
MRH