hinterlands
Music & Lyrics by Michael Cerveris
Produced by Michael Cerveris, Nick Brine
Engineers: Norman Blake, Nick Brine
Mixing: Nick Brine
Assistant: Jonny Quick
Guest Musicians:
Norman Blake, Francis MacDonald, Charlotte Hatherley, Alex Lutes, David Arnold, Big Mac Horns, Katy Orton, Euros Childs, Jonny Quick
limited release, wide release pending



Recording hinterlands

The project began to take shape as Cerveris finished a US/UK tour as guitarist and backing vocalist in Bob Mould's band during the ex-Husker Du frontman's final electric band tour in 1998. Cerveris spent several weeks recovering from the tour visiting friends in Glasgow, among them Norman Blake of Teenage Fanclub.

During the visit, Blake suggested using the Fanclub's recently finished studio to record the material Cerveris had been accumulating. Built in the remains of a disused bread factory laboratory on the bank of the river
Clyde, Disco Citizen seemed an ideal place for the half baked ideas that would become the first Retriever recordings.

It would be more than a year before Cerveris and Blake could reconvene to start recording. Besides writing all the material, Cerveris handled vocal, guitar, bass and occasional keyboard duties. Norman engineered the session, added backing vocals, guitar and bass, and recruited Francis Macdonald, who had recently rejoined TFC, to handle drumming chores while Michael brought along Charlotte Hatherley (Ash) for additional guitar, bass, keyboard and vocal enhancement. The four of them finished basic tracks for the 11 songs over the course of 9 marathon days at the end of March and beginning of April 2000.

The initial idea had been to get ideas to tape live, quickly and without much fuss. In the absence of any careerist motivation, the Glasgow sessions were more about a bunch of friends having a good time playing music than agonizing over technical details. But listening back to the board tapes, they realized that the tracks they had finished so far deserved better than to be finished off without a second thought.

By August, Norman had finished recording TFC's Howdy! at Rockfield Studios in Wales. The engineer on those sessions was Nick Brine who had assisted on most of Rockfield's output for the past seven years, including albums by Oasis, Stone Roses, Beta Band and others. Busy with promotional duties for Howdy!, Blake introduced Brine and Cerveris and the album made a quantum leap in production values.

Rockfield is one of the world's premiere residential studios with a very colorful history dating back to the 60's. Combining top flight, classic analog gear, the madness and freedom of the rural Welsh setting, and its own history of mayhem and insanity, Rockfield was the ideal location. Over 15 sporadic--marathon, again--downtime sessions between August and December, Brine and Cerveris recorded overdubs and mixed the album. The deeper they got into the songs, the more ideas they had for tape effects, experimentation and additional instrumentation.

A conversation with another old friend, composer David Arnold (Bjork, Garbage, Bond films) resulted in string and horn arrangements. A brass section was recruited from a local band. A 5-piece string quartet was found by trolling pubs for players from the local girls school. No one was safe. Gorky's Zygotic Mynci were holed up recording in the second studio, and before long, Euros Childs was adding a piano part using the same piano Freddie Mercury had used to record Bohemian Rhapsody at Rockfield years
before.

The record began to take on a life of its own and eventually the collection of songs, written in different places, times and states of mind began to take shape as an album.

HINTERLANDS is a document, a short history of feelings and experiences, a conversation between friends.

It’s located somewhere between rural West Virginia, the American southwest,
New York, London, Glasgow and south Wales.

It’s a good place to visit.

Photos from Recording and Mixing Sessions

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