No, not that “fire” – but that fiery FIREBOTTLE blues band fronted by Joric Maglanque AKA DELTA SLIM – a self confessed soul dredger, err, soul bender – one of the few local ambassadors of blues music (don’t even bring up blues in a conversation unless you are ready to sit for a blues history lesson – LOL).

Firebottle in the recording studio

The FIREBOTTLE band was in the studio in late September to record their song contributions to the BLUESKRIEG Pinoy blues compilation CD to be released by Rebolusyon Rekords* on November 2006. FIREBOTTLE has been busy playing the club circuit that they were the last band to complete their songs for the blues compilation album.

FIREBOTTLE is composed of Joric on guitars and vocals, Nathan on guitars, Bitoy on drums, Erick on bass and Roneil on keyboards. Firebottle plays a raw and mean kind of blues – raw with emotion and mean with power – but that’s just my perception, the listener will be the final judge. Our job in the studio was to make the guys comfortable and get them in the zone – and that we did.

We stuck to the plan of tracking all instruments “live” – no click tracks. We recorded Bitoy’s drums together with the rhythm section of bass guitar and rhythm guitars – we captured the kit’s overall sound in the room with two room mics – one in front and one at the back of the kit. The guitar amps we used were all tubes – the Marshall TSL and the Fender Blues Jr. – which were mic’d with SM57’s and Audix i5’s. I also snuck in the newly arrive AEA r84 ribbon mic to get the guitar’s room sound. We exploited ribbon mic’s figure 8 polar pattern by placing it in between the two guitar amps – the ribbon signal was fed to a Purple Audio Biz preamp and man – what a killer sound – Mon and I looked at each other when we first heard it – goosebumps – what a sound!

For Joric’s vocals – we setup a Groove Tubes large diaphragm mic fed to PurpleAudio MC-77 compressor then to UAD 610 mic preamp. We got a great vocal sound with just a few tweaks. Joric was confident with his vocals and delivery – it was a breeze nailing the songs.

Watch out for FIREBOTTLE’s songs in the BLUESKRIEG compilation CD, Pinoy blues power will attack the country starting Novemeber this year. My BOLD prediction is 2007 will be a blues year! 😀

*Rebolusyon Rekords is owned by Sound Weavers Recording Studio & Production, Inc.

Firebottle Links:
* Deltaslim onlnie videos on Utoob

Tags: recording studio, Blues, guitar recording