Advance of "Engraving in Panda Studies" by Nicolás Igarzábal
Losestudios Pandafueron el fetiche de todo músico del rock argentino durante los años ochenta. Equipados con tecnología de última generación, entre esas paredes del barrio de Floresta,Charly Garcíareinventó su sonido conYendo de la cama al livingy produjo el debut deLos Abuelos de la Nadaen plena Guerra de Malvinas;Los TwistterminaronLa dicha en movimientoen apenas veintinueve horas y media; losRedonditos de RicotaregistraronOktubrecon un técnico que nunca antes los había escuchado nombrar;Sumoentró a grabarAfter Chabónsin ningún tema preparado;Los Fabulosos CadillacscantaronVasos vacíosconCelia Cruz;Andrés Calamaroplasmó sus primeras andanzas como solista;Fito Páezconcibió su disco más doloroso; yV8hizo un álbum de heavy metal cristiano.
During the ninety -two thousand, this venture mounted by the musician Miguel Krochik on Segurola Street continued to receive first -line bands (La Renga, divided, Attaque 77, the balls, authentic decadent, the lice, drool, catupecu machu) andHe opened to tropical music, giving him space agilda, Antonio Ríos, Shadows, Ráfaga, Greeny many more.Cumbia classics like La Ventanita, you never missed me and you were immortalized in the same room as Jijiji, the armored eye and she will come.Forty years after its inauguration, this book recovers the mystique of the place with a juicy anecdote that reconstructs the recording of key records.
Then a fragment, as advance:
1986-1987: Expansion
Averaging the decade, new recording technicians were strengthened along with Mario Breuer, such as Osvel Costa (recorded Oktubre, from the Redonditos de Ricota), Mario Lastiri (after chabon, sumo), Peter Baleani (the end of the wicked, v8) and Roberto Fernández (the banana ritual, the parakeets).Breuer was still firm and Don Cornelio, friction and green dwarfs were waiting for him.This time it had a new assistant, Walter Chacón, who came from working in Brazil.In full job search, a friend of his scored the name of Mario Breuer in capital letters and, below, Panda's phone.He called, coordinated an appointment with the owner and took a test: he put the Calamaro hotel tapes to mix a song.The result was well received, but it was accompanied by bad news: there was no budget for attendees.Then Breuer pronounced the magical words:
"I can't pay you, but I can teach you.
And Chacón accepted."It was one of the best decisions of my life," he thinks today.Breuer was working with David Lebón on album 7 x 7 and announced that the following week he was going to start with one of the grandparents of nothing.It was my things.
Complete Chacón: “Working with Mario was the dream of every applicant because he was the coach of the moment.Panda was a great study, with a very cooling atmosphere, but one of the greatest attractions was that Breuer was and many groups went there for him.Working together was one of the most important things in my career.I learned a lot - beyond technical things - how to carry out a session ahead, how to generate a climate of work conducive to music and how to communicate with artists ”.
While the country immersed itself in the Southern Plan, the new Argentine currency demanded by the International Monetary Fund, Panda dominated the economic crisis that the Alfonsinist government caught and expanded.The dollar was high and record outside was expensive.Only consecrated artists such as Charly García, Miguel Mateos or Soda Stereo agreed to produce their materials in countries such as the United States (New York), Brazil (San Pablo) or Spain (Ibiza).Local bands were distributed between Panda, Ion, Moebio and Del Cielito.There were no more options.Companies gave them two hundred hours to record, which used to spread in ten days of recording, not always consecutively.The entire recording and mixing process, then, could sue between three and four weeks.
As of 1986, Chique Krochik, Miguel's dad, set up another smaller study at the bottom of the Segurola Street lot, where the UNDER bands that would not have large budget could access to record their demos, something vital to make disseminationIn the radios.There Daniel Melero worked in the models of silence, the first album of the managers, and produced groups for their own stamps (uncertain catalog) and alien (Radio Tripoli) as uncontrollable feeling, the cotton and quum.The musician parade around the hall was constant."The lice came a few years later to make a demo in the background, when they just started, and did not give them a ball," Miguel regrets.“Ten years later, being famous, I crossed Andrés Ciro and said:‘ Do you remember me?We were going to make a demo in your study and you ignored us ’.And, well, with so many people who came ... I am not a seer! ”.
In 1986, the year we left world champions in Mexico, the study would close the season in a dream way: recording Diego Maradona.Yes, the 10 sang with the Pimpinela in the last days of December and left its trail among the halls of the study in the year of its consecration.Breuer recorded it and Chacón attended him.It was not easy.He had to repeat several shots of dear friend, a song designed for Mother's Day in Italy.
"If you tell me it's fine, I gave you a shirt," he proposed, already given up, the recording technician to convince him.
In the neighborhood the voice had run.Segurola 1289 entrance was a hotbed of hysterical people shouting and hitting the door to see it."El Pollo Ricardo", in charge of the place, appeared, received the papers of those who intended an autograph of the football star, asked the name and closed the door.Inside, he filled them himself, imitating the signature of the player, opened and delivered them to each."Total was the same, the matter was to calm people," he recalls."And we did it.But they were not going.The departure was chaos, with the security ones opening the way, taking people and fans holding Lucía Galán's hair.I think some stayed with a lock of her ".
Sumo: A quality jump
Opening 86, the first vital album that was recorded in Panda was the monkeys, with Sumo, with sessions that started in March.The band had not been satisfied with the sound of their previous album, divided by happiness, and sought to renew their audio.They had a contract with CBS and the experience for their study had not been entirely good: they had no rock -linked technicians with whom they could be understood to work.Fresh Walter, its artistic producer, who dealt between the seal and the band, Panda proposed as an option."I took them there because we wanted to make a leap of quality," he says.“While what we had done before was fine, it was something basic, without many technical ambitions.We chose panda because it was the best worked studies, ”he adds.
Luca Prodan, far from the role of leader who assumed in the shows, did not interfere so much in these logistical decisions of the recordings. “Para mí la única diferencia entre los estudios Panda y CBS era que el bar estaba a seis cuadras de Panda y el de CBS, a media”, ironizaba en la revista Rock & Pop.[1] “No, it really kills more panda.CBS is an impressively big study, you imagine eighty violinists accompanying Gardel.The problem is that you also meet Gardel's coach ".Roberto Pettinato, in a note for the magazine El Musiquero, looked more interested in technical issues and highlighted his “saxal dubbing”.[2] In addition, he was buying with Breuer: “Mario told us:‘ Crazy, you are in one of the studies that have the most processors! And they put nothing more than a little delay to the voice? ’.We think of him because it is ‘more high’, it is more for our sound […].This is a dry album, more stuck in the speaker than all that modern musek that the groups of here have ”.
The material was pre -produced at the base of operations that the group had in the Sierras de Córdoba and demeado in an 8 channel holder of Fostex brand.In the recording, a Yamaha RX-11 electronic battery was chosen and the great star was the Roland G-707 guitar by Ricardo Mollo, to the point of inspiring the title of the Rollando track.As a mirrors ball, the monkeys arriving lights everywhere: from a punk sample like the armored eye and the explosion of Nextweek (first known as maybe Next Week) to a danceable hit of funky cadence (the old vinegars), passingby three contagious reggaes (to step on me, not good and rolling).A version of five magnificent recorded in its homemade studio Cordobés and a rescue from the first independent caset of the band (corpiños at dawn) called Heroin, with a clear wink to The Velvet Underground.Originally registered in the garden studies, in the year 83, with all the brides of the musicians doing the choirs, it was tried to replicate the vocal arrangement in Panda with the same women ... but the new version did not leave them satisfied.So they stayed with the first and the audio was improved in the mixture.
The old vinegars was chosen as a dissemination cut with the idea of repeating the importance of the blonde tarada in the previous album.The issue brought internal conflicts within the group since its genesis itself.
Fresh Walter like this: “Pettinato had ruined the subject.One day I arrived late at the studio, I had sat next to Breuer, who was the place of the producer, and had taken the recording command.I stayed calm, until at one point he said: ‘Well, Marito, do we throw a mixture?’ And there I stopped and said: ‘Look, here we did not come to make this shit.I cost me blood and sweat to bring them here to make such a.So it's back ’.There it was recorded and mixed again and the final version we know came out again.The first was horrible, had no concept, or anything.It was a soulless issue and supposedly was going to be the single of the album ".
And, on the roles of each musician in the sessions, he details: “Luca was the least conflictive, against everything one could imagine.Germán (Daffunchio), on the other hand, was a brain in every way and it was the best I took me.In fact, we made a remix of the old vinegars only between him, Mario and me.The producers have to see the balloon of the thing and the artists do not understand that and many times they fight for how the instrument is put or how it sounds, losing sight of everything that does to the rest of the song.In the mixtures I arrived and they told me ‘now it subime the bass a little’, and ‘now it subims the guitar’, and so.With that concept, all the knobs would go and voila! ”.
Breuer confirms Luca's passivity ("he arrived and went to the bottom room, listened to everything from there with headphones, did not come to the control room") and the problem of working with so many chiefs giving orders."They were very strong personalities and everyone defended their place.They all had things to say and their opinions were worth.But they did not always agree with those of the rest, so I had to do that synchrony to unite all their orders ”.
The monkeys arrived at the coach because in the end of the last theme he captured the murmur of the musicians in the room and a cry of Diego Arnedo asking: "Paraá, Mario!".Thus ends the Sumo album."At the time I brought several benefits with women the fact of appearing," he releases today, with a spicy smile.Personally, he was one of his most toxic albums."I turned every day at eight in the morning, driving hard and fart, made a cloth, and in this album I told myself:" I have to stop, "he confesses."My toxic nights were just for the record.They were not even a quarter of many of those I recorded.I never toured two or three days in a row awake.I didn't give me the body.In all my career there is only one session that I left by drunken.
Mollo was never satisfied with the audio of arriving the monkeys and he exposed it in the book Sumo by Pettinato: “I had many problems with the serious ones, that was one of the discussions I had with Breuer […].You put it on the radio and it was like the speaker had disconnected, and that was the sound that Mario seemed cleaner, but in reality it was lacking sound, there was a frequency that was not ... one afternoon I arrived in the studio beforeTo start the recording and called me and took me to the Chiquito de behind, and as something very personal he asked me what problem I had with the serious (laughs) ... and then I told him that I had no problems with the serious ones, because the serious onesThey weren't, what problem was I going to have if they weren't, and that if I had ever heard reggae ... and well ... ".[3]
At the same time, friction was recording its debut consummation or consumption for Interdisc.“I remember a day with Luca listening, we said:‘ Give him, put the theme ’and something began to sound.And Luca says: ‘But it's not us’, and it was friction.We were recording above the friction album! ”Remember Pettinato in its official biography."And we stayed as ... did you see?So smoked we said ... it was a rare thing.No one said anything, until I said: ‘I think we are recording above another group’, and it turned out that it was the friction master ”.
Friction: The era of modernity
The story of friction had zigzags.It began as an informal project between Richard Coleman (who came from playing in Metropoli), Fernando Samalea and Christian Basso (drummer and bassist of Clap, respectively) and Gustavo Cerati, when Soda Stereo just took his first steps.The band had very good live acceptance, with promoted shows as "the strong avant -garde of national rock", but entered Stand by when Soda began to climb in popularity and her three remaining members, to record with Andrés Calamaro and play with Charly García.The group was virtually dissolved when an Interdisc proposal appeared to record in Panda in March/April 1986.The troops had to be rearranged: Cerati appeared more as a guest musician than as a stable member, and Coleman decidedContributions on the Twist, Soda and Los Redondos) in saxo.
How to Write A Loan Agreement Between Friends https: // t.CO/3GWI7JUT8A
— StepStone Realty Tue Apr 11 00:09:14 +0000 2017
In tune with groups like Don Cornelio, the pillos and the overload, friction commune with the Dark aesthetics of the time: dark clothing, makeup, hairs with gel and discs of The Cure studied by memory."It was a new bohemia," says Samalea.“I can close it with surrealism, dadaism, beatnik movement and Di Tella's move.There was some of that, if something different was happening.That freedom, those clothes, those girls, those characters in the bowling.There was an idea of seeing that for the first time, that we were not emulating the young people of twenty years ago, but it was something new.We lived the era of modernity ".Obviously, these codes also transluked in friction music, with suffocating climates, enigmatic lyrics and tortuous voices.
Coleman and Samalea came from recording together in cruel life, from Calamaro, and opted for a similar concept for consummation or consumption.“When changing training, we wanted to give the album a more contemporary connotation with the sonorities of that time: we use a system similar to the disk with Andrés, that is, acoustic drums with electronic drums, some sequencers, pads and overwhelming drums and broken-Toms separately, ”explains Samalea, who lived the whole process with a bittersweet taste: I knew that I would not be able to continue in friction because Charly García required full time.His dream had always been playing with him and was in a cloud that he couldn't get off.
Basso, unlike Samalea and Coleman, stepped on Panda for the first time.“I remember the place as a kind of cave, without any window and with the quite vitiated air of cigarette.And I remember El Pollo (Ricardo), who was a boy who was in all the sessions of the night.He had terrible dark circles, very deteriorated.It looked like a real chicken.We feared for his health, we always said: ‘I went a little abroad!’ ”He points out.And, about Krochik, he adds: “He always appeared with good vibes and was supported by the monitor looking at us while we recorded.We did not live as something invasive: it was part of the study folklore ”.According to its impressions, the recording had no major inconveniences."It was a quick process.The bases were recorded in a ten -hour session, ”he says.“We didn't have to make second shots, we were very professional, to the point of bringing scores to the study.I was to write music for movies already at that time, I was used to working like this ”.
Cerati participated in four of the eight songs on the album.Some guitars recorded them directly in the control room, plugged by line."In what I could, it came.He was very involved and you can say that he copied the album.Friction was always a band to which he had a lot of love.And, in addition, he gave a little air to his relationship with the soda, ”says Samalea.
And he explains: “I have his image with his echo cameras, very concentrated.There was a climate of friendship and much dedication to music in those sessions.There was something very dreamlike from my perception, something in the world of fantasy.It was a mixture between the earthly and the mythological.People like Gustavo, Charly, Spinetta or Andrés were people who when they were in a place there was a particular halo, a pretty, magical and powerful atmosphere.I do not say shamanic, but some of that there was.It was not the same as they were or were not ”.
Breuer, an engineer in charge of the record recording, agrees: “Cerati was very involved in the sound, guitars and mixture, with tracks recorded by him.He was a producer as sharp, professional and creative as he was as a musician, performer and showman.He did things, he took his time, but he knew very well what he wanted.It could be thirty minutes to find the guitar sound I wanted and, when I had it, I told you: ‘record’.And when you recorded it, you thought: ‘Ahhhh!’.I always put it at the angle ».
The themes (modern architecture stood out, cars on my bed and losing the contact) had been composed of Coleman, layered in a 4-channel homemade home recorder that I had in its department, plus the help of an electronic battery Yamaha RX-21."With friction I laid a precedent for my artistic vision," he said years later.“I was very young and I realize that some ideas worked and others not, but as for the composition, I think it's fine.They are things that I felt at that time, that needed to express.Although I do not share the aesthetics of García Márquez, there is a phrase from him that says that the novelist writes the same novel, again and again.That happens to me: my idea is one and what I modify are the tools, the elements, the pieces with which I play ”.[4]
Basso closes: “I don't say it for vanity, but we were good good.Today I see videos playing live and I am surprised.With Samalea we came from recording Clap's album in RCA Victor, which was half a shit, because it was very scheduled and not so touched, something typical of that time.It was quite lazy.But friction is a discazo ".
Casanovas: broken bottles and borrowed guitars
The Casanovas were crazy about American rockabilly and walked through the streets of Buenos Aires with jopo, shirt and tie.Inspired by the Stray Cats, they formed in 83, they became strong in the underground scene between the years 84/85, and in 86 they got into Panda to record their debut with Breuer of coach and producer of producer.A luxury duo.Pablo Casanova, bassist and author of all the issues, recalls the itinerary every day: move on to look for the leader of those in charge of his Recoleta department, eat in the broccolino canteen and take 99 on Avenida Córdoba to Floresta.During the trip they were cutting sounds, arrangements and effects for album themes.That's how burning they were.
They came well rehearsed and the recording was agile.It was done in a hundred hours with the band playing live (drummer Claude Cat Casanova made it standing, faithful to the style) and then the definitive voice of Flavio Casanova, the guitar alone (task of Sid Casanova, with just sixteenyears) and the contribution of the guests.The Toupe of Friends Musicians who chose a time change, with three colleagues linked to first -line rock/pop (Andrés Calamaro, Daniel Melingo, Pipo Cipolatti) and two revolted punks such as Horacio Gamexane (all your dead) and Marcelo Life Life(Baraja).For a contractual issue, because they belonged to another seal, Andrés remained in the credits such as "Calamar", Daniel as "Melingus" and Pipo as "latex" (his first nickname).The usual menu for members and visits: Chinese food, bought in the new place that had opened in front of the study, on Segurola Street.
Some curiosities?On vacation on the coast a fight between Mods and Rockers was simulated hitting the band's lead (even the noise of a bottle is listened to!).For possible youth offender, Mollo guitars were used (Sumo recorded on the previous shift) and Black García López (the tower was producing hunting dams in study B).For Summertime Blues, by Eddie Cochran - the only cover of the album -, a sound closer to the version that The Who did was sought.For her it is an eagle they asked Melingo to emulate with her saxual the Chillido del Ave (and she succeeded!).For sepia color, where there are spoken flavio parts, four Pzm surface microphones were used, glued to the wall with suction cups, with which, according to Melero, it was heard until “the friction of the clothing” of the musician when moving inside the living room.
For the final mix, the producer decided that no member was going to be present to comment.
"You called me, so they trust me," he asked for.
Hence, the sound that was eternalized has not been pure strain rockabilly, which was what the band had in mind, but something more heterogeneous, with certain modern touches, which disagree with the album.A success.The dissemination cut was a model of 56, with a tradillo of rock This Town, of the Stray Cats.Over the years, this debut would become a holy grail for rockabilly collectors.
Patricio Rey and his Redonditos de Ricota: an ACME brand siren
Being an independent band, the Redonditos de Ricota cost them twice as to those hired by large companies to access a first level study like Panda.They had to sell six thousand copies of their first album (Gulp!) And play every weekend to finance the sessions where Oktubre would be cooked.There was, in fact, a double presentation in Paladium during May 1986, in full room, testing some songs of the future material.
Thus the Indian solari reported the vicissitudes of self -management: “You are always working to the limit and with little margin to make mistakes.If it goes wrong, you have to start back because your money was over.Paying all the recording of an LP is very expensive, but if you do well, you can recover the money.[…] This plate will be done in better conditions: a better study, more hours and all as for a good production.And that is due to the administration of our economy, which implies having joined money from the profits of our first plaque.Then, if it will be better or worse, we will see it later.At least we believe that the issues are good and tested before the people who follow us ”.
And, excited, he anticipated his next movements in the Floresta bunker: “The idea is to record more than we are going to edit.We rent one hundred twenty hours of recording and want to register everything possible, and then make a selection of about ten topics.An old theme would go, like Nene Nena, and the new material we released in Paladium, in addition to a new theme that would be the LP leitmotiv [...].Let's not forget that we do not have a musical producer, and then the successes or errors are all of us ”.[5]
Osvel Costa says, the coach who assigned them randomly, who when they announced that he was going to work with a group called Patricio Rey and his Redonditos de Ricota believed that it was a project for children.He came from recording folklore records in Music Hall and was not familiar with rock.Besides, it was new in Panda.Hence, between his inexperience and that of the musicians, who had only made Gulp!Before, there were certain entry disregards.“I did not have a great time, there was even a rape session that I abandoned and resumed it to the next day because it could not sound like I wanted.I was half scratched with Osvel, because he could not explain what was happening to me, and he also did not resolve it, ”says Tito" Fargo "d’Aviero.What was happening?“I put myself next to my team, with my guitar and my cable, and it sounded good;Then we put a microphone, we recorded, I was going to listen to control and sounded totally different.Until at one point they turned off a couple of devices and equalizers, and the matter began to accommodate.The sound was very inflated with the standard configuration that the study had.It was not a real audio, the acute and the bass seemed very artificial.And we wanted to capture a sound as we were live ”.
Another disagreement of technology was Willy Crook, who had clashes with the coach for the effect of reverb camera that put his saxo, causing him to vibrate much more grandiloquent than his natural colorature was."I had well tested material.Had learned to play.But the reverb defined my saxal arrangements, ”he rezonged in the book we were kings.[6] “Osvel told me to do everything, and then he did what he wanted.My saxos should have been more raw and they are listened totally pasteurized ”.
"Sacá that shit effect or break your ass will kick," he ordered, without success.
The album, recorded between the end of August and the beginning of September, ended.They rent the night shift (the cheapest) and the early morning were sifted with fernet, the favorite drink of the Indian-Skay-Poi trinomial, the famous “three people's sulky” whom Solari always alluded to explain the internal dynamics of the group.[7] "When it was time to put the voice, the Indian dried his throat," says Osvel Costa.[8] “It may be because I was not used to recording or because it was a cold time.For some people, standing in front of the microphone implies a problem.You are only and the microphone;That weighs.Sometimes he didn't feel good, he came to control, we chatted for a while, we were disturbed and recorded again. ”.
Claudio Fernández (Don Cornelio drummer) and Daniel Melero were the only external musicians.The leader of the managers had seen them take off in the underground circuit because her partner at that time (actress Vivi Tellas) was one of her usual choristers.“I had a rather close relationship with Skay and Poli, but I went to the shows and slept me.I never attracted his music, ”clarifies the Flower's keyboardist."There was a lot of humor from them to have called me.It was like a joke and I always had a smile for every contempt.When they call you in such a situation is when you have to say the most.It was a divine contrast ".
And, on his particular contributions, he explains: “I arrived, the tapes passed me and I was playing the keyboard above without knowing the songs, because they were still unfinished, only with the reference voices.Some things remained and others not.I worked something invisible, my concept was to stand out without being noticed.I didn't want there to be keyboards, but I put notes on the dominant frequencies of guitars.I remember that this produced grace and the Indian at one time said: ‘I don't hear anything’.So, when we were listening to all in the control, the other instruments muttered, and there he realized.A tense climate of recording was lived;The Indian was always a tense character ".
Outside the musical, you have to talk about missile noise that gives way to October fires (taken from an effect tape), the storm at the closure of prisoner in my city, the clock and the glass hitting in the middle of songFor shipwrecks ("We made a quilombo with some bottles in the battery cabin!" Fargo says) and the nautical siren in the flamenco end of Jijiji that recorded the louse Ábalos."I bought it at a percussion instrument store and it was a brand ACM.And, on the transcendence that the subject would have in time, which defines as "a kind of tango" by the accentuation of the rhythm, he acknowledges: "Jijiji was recorded normal, as one more theme.Had no special treatment, or different from the rest.When we recorded the pop beast on the previous album, I felt it was an issue that could hit it, for the chorus of to shine, my love.But here, no.At no time do we think it was going to be a hit: he won it alone ”.
Osvel Costa never listened again Oktubre.The last time was when he mixed it.Then, he gave them "the cake" (as they told the tape finished to make the matrix acetate that was cut for manufacturing) and never crossed them again."Musicians always think they are going to make the best album of their lives, but I don't know how far they were aware of what was going to come later," he believes.[9] “It was a fresh album, in which they were looking for a personal sound, without trying to look like Fulano or Mengano.There was no lie: everything that is there is what they touched.Nothing ‘subime the tuning’ or ‘cut this part’.It has that magic of what came out at the time ".