This album is a little bit special, in more than one aspect.
The feels
First, I got to work with a band from the town where I've spent my youth - Le Serpentine. Yeah, big deal... but sincerely, there is a different flow (for lack of a better explanation) to the communication with people from your hometown. It comes effortlessly, I feel like I can turn off the part of my brain that takes care of "localization" and just converse with the band members like we've known each other since forever. Well, with some of them, that might even be close to true, but still. It was... soothing in a way.
"Izštekani" live event at Radio Slovenia Studio 13, Photo: Ksaver Šinkar
The chills
And second, it was the first album that I've mixed from start to finish in my new mixing environment, the control room at Brainworx. Yes, it looks mouthwatering on the photos, and the selection of analog toys is mind-boggling...
... but from a purely objective point of view, for a mixing engineer, changing the room requires re-training her/his brain to the sound of a different pair of speakers and the room itself. What's the "just right" amount of bass? How bright should the cymbals be? Are the mids too aggressive or too shy? Are there any room-modes/resonances that I'm not aware of yet, but will make me cry at the infamous car test? Well, to my enormous relief, it turns out that those PMCs (worth as much as a fairly good car) are, indeed, perfectly capable of driving you mad until you do it right. And then, you can take those mixes to a car, a laptop, and a pair of headphones... and it sounds right! OMG!
The mix
Sound-wise, I was aiming to find a middle-ground between the raw, live feeling of the unplugged performance and the dreamy, shoe-gazer sonics of their non-unplugged albums. Working with the bleed of a live performance in a relatively small space, I decided to only give the vocals some longer, platey reverb (and an occasional subtle sprinkle of chorus), and stick to the "living room" kind of space for the instrumental. I wanted the mix to have a feeling of being a private gig in a cozy, welcoming space. You know, a couch at your friend's place with a can of beer and some snacks.
The video below is the single Adijo, taken from the album, and the rest of it is available on your favorite streaming platform.