Past Lives - Vibe'n & Chillin' @ Avast!

Avast Recording Company has long been a part of Seattle legend. Yet, over the past 19-some-odd-years, the legacy of Stuart Hallerman’s studio has far outgrown its locality. I'd be willing to wage a small bet that these studio-spaces have housed much of the gear (boards, microphones, instruments) used to record, at least, one favorite album: The Shins? Fleet Foxes? Band of Horses? Modest Mouse? How about Sleater-Kinney, Low, Cat Power or Unwound?! The client-list goes canyon length with notable examples...

Whether it’s the bands, the producer, or the studio that is responsible for the many successful albums that have been made at Avast, the reputation of the studio certainly precedes itself.


By the time I arrived, Past Lives had been anchored there a few days. Drummer, Mark Gajadhar, was absent, but the remaining members of the band - Jordan Blilie, Morgan Henderson, and Devin Welch - were there, along with engineer, Steve Fisk; all busy working through ideas, experimenting with the old analog synthesizers and other vintage equipment stacked throughout the studio's various rooms...


With the project running so far ahead of schedule, the overall atmosphere around the mixing board became one of in-the-zone studiousness, coupled with the kind of jokey-camaraderie natural to friendships passing the decade mark: everyone making shape remarks; laughing at Fisk's wheezy old pug, all blobbed out and snoring on the sofa.

Over the preceding days, Welch and Henderson, along with Gajadhar, had burned through the basic-tracks for more than 12-songs, including a couple of full band first-takes! An incredible feat, especially in this age of Pro-tooled projects, where a musician can 'fuck up a studio-take, miss something or hit a bad note, put down their instrument, and expect the engineer to fix it by cutting and pasting in a computer program, instead of being inspired to play the part correctly'...

When you put a person in front of a tape deck and they have to get it right or know where they are going with the song, their performance changes, undeniably, the end result becomes artistically different. Which is something I imagine Past Lives strive for...

Not that I've heard enough of the new album to know... I mean, Jordan has yet to complete his vocal tracks... However, if the band's recent live shows offer any indication (of direction), it's that they're staking a serious claim, working over new musical territory by crafting an intensely individualistic sound...


Personalities play heavy here... With each musician bringing their own refined aesthetic to both the songwriting and performances... I'm continually amazed that the four distinct styles mesh so well together, that these players are thoughtful enough of their craft to take care in not dominating the others...


Sitting in on a recording session can be weird. Often, there's a concentrated intensity that precludes those outside the creative circle from participating. And rightly so. Bands operate as units. Insanely complex relationship mechanisms, that develop inclusive, and mysterious processes, which they (may) use to formulate a sound. It can be intimidating to do much beyond squinting in tight-lipped silence, unsure when to remark or raise a question.

With Past Lives in Avast, the awkward lulls were traded for awed silence: Devin over-dubbing a rhythm track with an electric 'bouzouki' guitar; Morgan warming up his bass clarinet in Studio B. After nearly a year spent in preparation - dissecting material in their rehearsal space and performing along the west coast - the group's self-proclaimed 'ultimate focus' had reached its first pay-off. Mixing and mastering will be wrapped by the end of this month, everything on track for an early-spring release date...

The following paragraph is an excerpt from Hannah Levine's pertinent, local-centric column, "Rocket Queen," appearing each week on-line and in print copies of the Seattle Weekly:

"Past Lives drummer Mark Gajadhar was pretty much bursting with excitement about the new record his band is working on. "We are in the studio with Steve Fisk right now. We tracked most of the stuff at Avast [studios], but [we're] doing overdubs and vocals at Steve's house right now," he explained. "I honestly think it's going to be the best record I've ever been involved with," he told me. Coming from the man who helped forge landmark works like the now-disbanded Blood Brothers' ... Burn, Piano Island, Burn, and who is currently the brain behind the beats of Champagne Champagne, that actually means a great deal. The new Past Lives record is slated for release on local label Suicide Squeeze in the spring of 2010."