Power Animal: Excorcism

While I do enjoy recording with a band in the studio; building their songs from the ground up, helping them realize their own vision for a song, it always keeps things interesting to mix something that was written and recorded in a space, both physically and mentally, that is quite far from confines of the Headroom. Keith Hampson, of Power Animal, writes about his latest EP, “Excorcism”, which you can listen to here.

This album was created over the course of 10 or so months where I was in and out of the hospital with various illnesses. The palette for the production of this album was a result of being too fatigued to get up and play my instruments most of the time. I had a cassette player that could play in reverse into my sampler, and a big box of cassettes that I’d found at thrift stores over the years. So I arranged a good deal of this album while laying in bed with an Sp-404.

Power Animal is a band I’ve been following for years ever since I had the pleasure of playing a show with them in Baltimore a few years back (its amazing how many great philly bands you meet on the road instead of actually being in philly), and its been a little dream come true to get to mix the titular track of this EP. It has been released by Crash Cymbals ( a small texas label) and Human Kindness Overflowing, Hampson’s charity label that donates proceeds from its digital sales to Philabundance, a local philly foodbank

Keith sent me the wonderfully cacophonous multi-track and I spent the brunt of my time making each layer distinct, sonically, as well as extending the low and high end trhough some creative eq, compressions, as well as a pinch of pitch shifting. We had such a great time working together, that now I’m producing their next full length!