Electric Eel Shock have hit the 50K target on SellaBand... So what next? We found out what sort of album Aki plans for Electric Eel Shock... along the way he gave us some pretty good insights into how EES recording has developed and changed over the years...

Interview with Aki (Guitar and vocal) 23rd June 2008…

// Describe how your recording has developed and changed since your first album, Slayers Bay, The Go recordings and then working with Attie Bauw

The first two EES albums could not be more different how we approached them. The first 'Maybe I think We can Beat Nirvana' it was a kind of practice for recordings. Of course we didn't think it was practice at that time, so we satisfied it almost. But also we realized it was a very clean sound and we had lost some feelings of dynamics, energy etc on the recording process. So we did totally opposite way for second album "Slayer's Bay Blues". It was recorded straight to an 8 track recorder and we made really distorted dirty rock sound. It really worked for that album.

In a short, these two albums are adventure album to find EES sound. After "Slayer's Bay Blues", we started our world tour life, we recorded many times as we toured around in many different places, these became various different Go releases. Then we got a chance to record these in the UK as "Go Europe" with a good engineer who has knowledge to record. We tried to make good mix of feeling of live gig with proper recording sound.

The next big step of course was meeting Attie Bauw, he saw us supporting Danko Jones at the Melkweg in Amsterdam and asked us if he could record us. When we were chatting to him we had no idea that he had recorded Judas Priest, Scorpions, Bootsy Collins etc. We just knew that he really understood our music and recording.

// What are the biggest things that you learnt from doing two albums with Attie Bauw?

Before we worked with Attie we had many fixed ideas about recording: We thought great live tracks are made by combination of many coincidences which was maybe almost uncontrollable and very difficult to reproduce and record. We thought production will reduce our garage essence and that dirty loud rock sound will be more difficult to control by proper production way. Attie changed our thinking he opened us up to many new ways to approach music. He showed and proved it is controllable somehow, some stage without losing its feeling. We learnt not only techniques for recordings from him, we learnt about mental things, i.e. how to think about possibility. He taught us to use the studio like a playground and also a laboratory. Don't worry about mistakes. Trial and error can be very enjoyable when you have more technical experience to learn from each experiment. If we keep good thinking then we have nothing to worry about.

// What albums (not EES) do you think has the perfect production.

All album of The President of the United States of America for me are great. Very clear, simple, but loud, big and fat enough. Sometime I feel thin and cheap, but they are good thin and good cheap. It's come from their playing skill and I think they have both, great skill and great production. We very much enjoyed touring with them this year and hope to do more dates with them again.

// Where will you record this album?

We have learnt a lot about recordings already by last three albums in Europe and now we have a confidence to make great album anywhere. We are excited to be planning to record it in Japan, which apart form a couple of tracks we did for compilations, will be the first recordings at home for years.

One big reason for recording in Japan is so that Gian our drummer will be with us. Gian hasn't been able to tour lately because his mother has been very sick, we have had good stand in drummers for on tour but no one can ever replace Gian. we can't make EES original sound without him. The other reason that I am excited about is that all my favourite equipment collections are in Japan: My great ESP flying-V guitar and other guitars, my favourite speaker and vintage orange amp are all in Japan.

And also one last thing you know, it is our home country, we can take more relax in break and we can eat real Japanese food in the studio!

// Please describe how you intend to record this album

We have really interest about self producing now. We want to use everything that we have learnt so far. This means we wont have Attie as a producer, but I much respect his work, so hopefully Attie will be our supervisor? He will certainly be in the studio with me in my head. We also need a really great engineer, because our skill as recording engineer has still a lot of question marks... Maybe Attie can come to Japan to record drums with us? No one in the world can record drums quite like Attie! And lastly we, of course, also want a good studio that we can be comfortable in (we are starting to find the great studio in Japan now).

We will record drums and bass first at the same time, and then we are going to guitar dub and vocals. I think live recording for drums and bass same time is best for us now. It will make more strong original rhythm section. It is proved by our previous albums. Also we may don't go with click track for almost all songs, we have used this in the past to get good recordings that make it easier to mix however we think we have a way to control the recording through our feeling.

So this is our first plan, but we'll see the changing the situation as we go along, most of all I want go flexible and be open to all opportunities!

// How do you write songs?

Normally, I bring some of ideas, guitar riffs, part of melody etc in to the practice studio, and then we build to proper song. But some time I made whole song just only myself. Always this situation is really quick to make. i.e. "Orange is back" was made only in just 2 minutes in toilet while short break in Japanese practice day, with 50% of the lyrics coming at the same time. The inspiration was that a friend brought my Orange Amp to the studio which he had borrowed for a long time and I was very excited (so you can see why it will be good to be surrounded by our own stuff for the first time in

a long time!) Another early song "Nothing" I made on the way to fishing, immediately I parked my van and I made a call and recorded it on my answer phone. "Bastard" was made by Gian and me originally, when Kazuto (bass) was changing his string in German practice studio, sorry Kazuto but you always break strings!

But also we took long time to make song sometimes. We spent a lot of time to make "Scream for me" and played it live several times in different forms. In fact we had been changing it and playing it lives so much that already before we recorded it had become the closing song in our set. The song is made by all three guys and even Bob Slayer helped (he suggested some lyrics) although have you heard his version “Scream For Me Shirley” it is totally rubbish! Big Mistake was another song that we developed quite slowly and played live many times before we recorded it.

It was bit hard to make songs for the album " Transworld Ultra Rock". because we were on the tour almost days in the year. So I made a lot of songs in tour bus. Sometime, I don't play any song on car stereo, even in all night driving. But I never get sleepy on the bus, because I really excite to make a song in my head. I always play Rock & Roll music in my mind. It was interesting with this album because the way we recorded we could also develop songs more in the studio.  

// Is there a concept for the new album?

Well no not really, the concept is that we just only want to concentrate to make greatest album so far on our music life and be totally flexible. Always we are 120% satisfied after each recordings, but it turned down to 90% few months later... But I believe it's not negative things, it means we are continuing progressing. I think a lot of artists think this way. So anyway we want reach to get 100% pure original EES sound on this recording. And when we get it, then maybe the next album should be the concept album.

// How many songs / part songs do you have written already?

You know we are always very busy touring, we have put together songs whilst touring in the past but ever since recording Transworld Ultra Rock I have just been collecting ideas. Touring and thinking about parts of songs. I already have lots and lots of parts of songs in my mind and on my hard disc, but no finished songs... But don't worry! This is how we want to prepare for this album. We will take many, many ideas and put them together between now and recording and still be very fresh for us! It is actually, it is first day that to go to practice studio to do it today - very exciting!

 // Finally please describe the album that you are going to record

The new album's appearance should be in the between of "Slayer's Bay Blues" and our latest album "Transworld Ultra Rock". We want to put back more garage rock feeling again. But it doesn't mean we want make Lo-fi album. We want show garage rock & roll spirit on great sound. But don't worry, it also doesn't mean we want hi-fi! We'll find out best matching sound for us.

We have been preparing all of EES life for this album and we are very excited to see how it turns out, even we don't know yet what we will produce but this is one of the great pleasure of recordings.