Leannan Sidhe are a Seattle-area folk band; Mine to Love is their second album. It just hit Bandcamp today:
Mine to Love, by Leannan Sidhe, on Bandcamp:
http://music.leannansidhe.com/album/mine-to-love
About 40% of it was recorded at PhantaSea Studio in Oregon, using ProTools; about 60% was recorded at Supervillain Studios (my studio), in Ardour. Tracks recorded in Ardour were comped and timed in Ardour as well. Mixing and effects were done in both; in particular, the broken-church-bells-across-a-moor sounds in “Voiceless” started out as acoustic guitar plucking before I chewed on it with varous Ardour plugins.
I’m pretty bummed that my favourite track (“King of Elfland’s Daughter”) isn’t streamable because of rights reasons, but everything else is.
Performing on this album: Shanti Singleton, Alexander James Adams, Betsy Tinney, Mickey Phoenix, S.J. Tucker, Rob Lindfors, Dara Korra’ti (j0! I ended up doing some percussion and the like), Sunnie Larson, and Wednesday Phoenix. This is the Extra-Bonus Oversized XXL version of Leannan Sidhe, which is normally like a three-piece. Things got out of hand f’srs. XD
Actually? I mostly agree with you about the brightness. But Leannan Sidhe do not - they like the darker, more closed sound, and every time I would start to bump up the high end a little bit, they’d want it tamped back down. Alexander James Adams down at PhantaSea (who had final mixes) was pretty much on their side too. It’s a specific artistic choice. Similarly, I’d’ve had a couple of effects and sounds have much wider fields than they do in the final mix; I’m more adventurous in some ways, I think, than the band.
I can’t take any credit for arrangements; I wish I could, but those were all Shanti. No, I lie; on Once More, the minimalist one with vocals and percussion and noisemakers, I can. I’m basically everything on that track after songwriting and vocals, both of which are of course again Shanti. But I do really apprecaite the comments on the harmonies, because a lot of the closest (see again Voiceless in particular) were recorded, comped, edited, and mixed by me at Supervillain Studios. (In Ardour, of course. )
I will relay your approval to the band too; they were getting adventurous in many ways here, and they’ll appreciate hearing from people who like the result. Thank you!
Wow this is really great production of a unique artist, nice job! Beautiful arrangements and harmonies. Great work!
After listening to a few tracks a couple of things come to mind (intended constructively) I’d like to hear a gentle cut in the 250-400hz range as there are some lower mids that muddy the cellos, bass acoustic guitar strings and lower male harmonies, also I’d like to hear a ‘brighter’ Reverb and a litlle more of it everywhere. I’m not a big Reverb fan but I find it really suits this quasi-Celtic type of material…
Anyway please take those comments as minor, this is truly a very impressive production!
