We asked Alex Robert, frontman for Black Whales, to keep us posted about what's going on with the band now that they are unsigned and recording a new album with John Goodmanson. We'll be posting his words here in three parts. This is the third. If you missed it, check out the first and second parts, here and here.

{If you would like to see the Black Whales at the Chop Suey, June 11th for free, email us your name and a reason why we should give you a pair of tickets to <tig@threeimaginarygirls.com> by Tuesday, June 8th at 5:00pm with "Black Whales" in the subject line. We have two pairs of tickets folks. Get 'em!}

So, if you've been following any of the little studio diaries that we have put up over the past four or five weeks, then a thanks is in order. Thank you very much! We really appreciate it. If you haven't, then nothing is in order. Nothing for you in this. Thank you for nothing.

To close things out: The next couple of weeks are John's time to do his thing to the thirteen songs that will be on this record. It's kind of a downer really, finishing a record. The next time I'll be in a studio to record music won't  be for awhile. And I've gotten so used to doing it everyday that everything else seems like plain Yoplait by comparison.

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Here at TIG, we love John Goodmanson. Not only has he worked to make some of our favorite artists sound a-mazing (from Los Campesinos, Wedding Present and The Gossip to The Blood Brothers, Bikini Kill and The Lashes), but he is also, just a great guy. So, as we finish our studio diaries with Black Whales, we couldn't resist a short interview with John about the process. Here's what we got.

1.  What was your approach to making/recording the Black Whales record?

To capture the group sounding great in a room together.  Their songs were pretty well worked out, so really getting the live performance of the basic track was key.

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We asked Alex Robert, frontman of Black Whales, to keep us posted about what's going on with the band now that they are unsigned and recording a new album with John Goodmanson. We'll be posting his words here in three parts. This is the second. If you missed it, check out the first one here!

Day 13 of recording - Moved studios. London Bridge was amazing, but money flies as fast as time and our five day residency was up. We moved the gear to John's studio, deep in the womb of the lush and mystical valley that is Seattle's alluring Central District. The room here is packed wall-to-wall with recording equipment and a who's who of machines and instruments from the past 50 years. Today we struggled for a keyboard sound for the choruses of "Young Blood" (which we decided to re-record for this record). We wanted something old and kind of melancholy and bell-like to back up the vocal line. After messing around with some really depressingly bad synth sounds, John jumped up and said, "Oh, right…I know what needs to happen here", and put a Cembalet in the middle of the room. The Cembalet is this weird little wooden keyboard that plucks strings when the keys are played, instead of the traditional hammering motion. It has that "Sunday Morning": Velvet Underground thing to it. It's the kind of instrument that is a war to keep working, costs way too much and takes up a lot of space, but you none-the-less store in the corner somewhere, just in case you have that one song that might need it. Young Blood needed it. That's a lot of what this recording has been; digging through unmarked closets and boxes and asking, "What's this do?".

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