Session Log – The Angelheaded Hipster – Part 1: Drums

On August 29th, BMG released Angel-headed Hipster: The Songs of Marc Bolan & T. Rex, a 26-track double album of T. Rex classics interpreted by a vast array of artists including Nick Cave, Kesha, Joan Jett, U2, Elton John, Father John Misty, Marc Almond, Gavin Friday, Todd Rundgren and many others. The record has been getting great reviews. It was produced by the late and great Hal Willner, who sadly passed away from Covid19 in April and never got to see the record released to the world. Hal consid-ered this his ‘white album’, the culmination of 40 years of album production. To learn more about Hal, visit haltribute.com.

I had the honor and privilege to be selected by Hal as the engineer for this project, and I got to travel the world to multiple studios and countries to record and mix these fantastic artists for three years. As you can imagine, doing so presented a series of challenges—giving the album a cohesive sound, keeping track of all the sessions, versions, takes, rough mixes, mixes, copies, backups, etc.

For the next year, I will take you through the making of this album from start to finish. From the perspective of the instrumentation and how it was recorded—the mics, preamps, plugins and speakers—all the way to the final mixing and mastering stages. I hope you enjoy our twelve-part RECORDING journey.