nyctaper Recordings

[photos courtesy of Jessica Amaya and Brooklyn Vegan]

L.A. band Pepper Rabbit, primarily a duo of Xander Singh and Luc Laurent, have a uniquely textured and melodic sound that we experienced first-hand during Friday night’s performance at the Kanine Records Showcase for Brooklyn’s Northside Festival. Considering the layered depth they are able to create in both the studio and in their the live performances, it’s easy to see why they’ve already achieved much critical acclaim and toured with major acts such as Ra Ra Riot, Passion Pit, and Givers (which we had the pleasure of capturing for a Backyard Brunch Session earlier this year).

This night’s performance was a mix of new and old with about half the songs coming from their debut album Beauregard and the other half coming from their newly released album Red Velvet Snow Ball. For this recording, I parked in our usual sweet spot and recorded the show with both Schoeps cardioid and hypercardioid microphones. Normally I wouldn’t choose to mix down all six channels, but thought it lent itself to a particularly good sound when mixed with the excellent soundboard feed provided the Knitting Factory’s sound engineer Rob. I hope you enjoy it!

Stream “Dance Card”:
[audio:https://www.nyctaper.com/P1706PepperRabbit1102/pepperrabbit2011-06-17.Dance_Card.mp3]

Direct download of MP3 files [HERE]

Download the Complete show in FLAC [HERE].

Pepper Rabbit
Northside Festival
Knitting Factory
New York, NY, US
2011-06-17

Recorded and released for nyctaper.com by hi and lo.

Recordist : hi and lo
Location : On stand right of sbd
Source : Soundboard + MK41/CMR > PSP-2 + MK5 > Nbox+ >> Tascam DR-680 24bit/96 kHz
Edit : WaveLab v5 (eq, dither, resampling)
Final Format : 16 bit, 44.1 kHz

Tracklist:

01. Harvest Moon
02. Older Brother
03. Murder Room
04. [banter]
05. Dance Card
06. The Annexation of Puerto Rico
07. None Shall Sleep

Running Time: 27:07

Please support Pepper Rabbit by visiting their their MySpace page and by purchasing their debut album and latest release, Red Velvet Snow Ball, on iTunes or from the Kanine Records Shop.

A huge thanks to Kanine Records and Pepper Rabbit for this amazing show!

[photo by Dominic Mastrangelo]

Family Band are a salve to a nerve-frayed city where everybody climbs their steps two at a time. Indeed, the Brooklyn back yard where the latest Backyard Brunch Sessions was held could as well have been miles from the city; in the presence of Family Band, we were transfixed, and transported. The components of the band’s sound are vocalist/guitarist Kim Krans, whose dusky, haunting vocals give the songs their emotional core; her husband, guitarist/pedal bassist Jonny Ollsin, and Scott Hirsch, on pedal steel. If you noticed that there was no drummer in that mix, that’s right – the band relies on minimal percussion beyond a tambourine tapped lightly by Krans’ feet, or Krans’ handheld “golden eggs”. The result gives their songs a hushed, intense and slightly mournful quality; Ollsin only half-jokingly called it “death prom”. But maybe that’s because New Yorkers associate a slowed pace with sadness; Krans and Ollsin write most of their songs up in the Catskills, where they met, and if you look at it that way, there is a pastoral quality to these songs as well. Given how scorching hot and humid it was outside in Brooklyn on this otherwise gorgeous day, many of us wished we were in those mountains, too (even if the show did come with brunch courtesy of Ollsin, bloody marys courtesy of McClure’s Pickles, and Adirondack Creamery ice cream).
The band, who have toured recently with both Phosphorescent and Warpaint, are working on a new record that they hope to release later this year. Several of these songs are new ones that will appear on it, and if the rest of the record is as outstanding as songs like “Again” and “Forgive the Rest”, it will be a great one. This show was also a first for Backyard Brunch shows in that it was the first fully electric performance that has been hosted, and that fit Family Band’s sound perfectly, as it relies much more heavily on the electric pedal bass to carry the songs. If Krans, Ollsin and Hirsch were suffering from heat (which they had to be) it didn’t show in a spot-on performance of these soothing, thought-provoking songs. For this half hour, at least, we could forget the rush, live in the moment, and enjoy.

I recorded this set with AKG large-diaphragm microphones miking the band’s amplifiers, using Schoeps supercardiods as very high-end vocal mics. The results are outstanding. Enjoy!

Stream “Forgive the Rest”:
[audio:https://www.nyctaper.com/F0723FamilyBand0211/04%20Forgive%20the%20Rest.mp3]

Stream “Hatred”:
[audio:https://www.nyctaper.com/F0723FamilyBand0211/07%20Hatred.mp3]

Direct download of MP3 files [HERE]

Download the Complete show in FLAC [HERE].

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Family Band
2011-07-23
Backyard Brunch Sessions
Brooklyn, NY USA

An acidjack master recording
Recorded and produced for nyctaper.com by acidjack

Equipment: AKG C414 B-XLS (wide cardiod)>Sound Devices USBpre2 + Schoeps Mk41>CMC6 >> Edirol R-44 [Oade Concert Mod] (24/48)
Mastering: 4×24bit/48kHz WAV>Audition (effects, mixdown)>Audacity (set fades, EQ, tracking, amplify and balance)>FLAC ( level 8 )

Tracks
01 [Intro]
02 The Field
03 [banter]
04 Forgive the Rest
05 [tuning]
06 Fantasy
07 Hatred
08 [banter]
09 Again

If you download this recording from NYCTaper, we expect that you will PLEASE SUPPORT Family Band, visit their website, and purchase their current LP, Miller Path, directly from their bandcamp page.