(…) Coming off a year of intense touring, they wanted to just sit down and write some songs. And then record them. So they found a church out in a small town and turned it into a studio. They moved in all their amps and instruments, bought some nice curtains, stocked the fridge, and hunkered down. They were in no rush.
They knew they were working on an album, but didn’t know how long it would be, or what it would be called, or what songs would be on it, or what instruments would be on the songs. They knew they would produce it themselves, though—they had too many musical plans pent up in their brains to hand control over to someone else. So they found some grand engineers to make those musical plans reality—Markus Dravs (Bjork, James, Brian Eno) and Scott Colburn (Sun City Girls, Animal Collective).
Slowly the songs came together. They found a huge pipe organ in a huge church in Montreal and recorded it. They bought some bass steel drums and some bass synths. They got a hurdy-gurdy. They called in friends for help: Martin Wenk and Jacob Valenzuela, the horn players from Calexico, came in for a song. Hadjii Bakara from Wolf Parade added some bleep and bloops and sonic weirdness. Owen Pallett, aka Final Fantasy, helped to orchestrate (as he did on Funeral). Pietro Amato and his horn playing associates added some brass. The band traveled to Budapest to record an orchestra and a military choir. And besides all this, the band just played music together. They played the songs that were going on the album. They played songs that wouldn’t go on the album. They played cover songs. It was all quite nice, really.
All this took about a year. The band worked and played and worked, and as Christmas 2006 approached the recording was finished. NEON BIBLE was full of both half-assed punk rock mistakes and meticulously orchestrated woodwinds. Processed strings and mandolin. Quiet rumbles and loud rumbles. But mostly just eleven songs that the band thinks are really good. And that might be of some public interest. So, on with 2007.
[quote][B]U.S./CANADA RELEASE MARCH 6 VIA MERGE RECORDS
The [B]Arcade Fire will release [B][I]Neon Bible, the band’s second album and follow-up to 2004’s [I]Funeral, March 6 on Merge Records in the U.S. and Canada.
[B][I]Neon Bible was recorded during 2006 in Quebec, New York, Budapest and London. All songs were written, produced, arranged and performed by the [B]Arcade Fire. The album was recorded by [B]Markus Dravs and [B]Scott Colburn, with orchestral arrangements by [B]Owen Pallett and [B]Regine Chassagne.
The track listing for [B][I]Neon Bible is as follows:
1. Black Mirror
2. Keep The Car Running
3. Neon Bible
4. Intervention
5. Black Wave/ Bad Vibrations
6. Ocean of Noise
7. The Well and The Lighthouse
8. (Antichrist Television Blues)
9. Windowsill
10. No Cars Go
11. My Body Is A Cage
The Arcade Fire are:
[B]Regine Chassagne
[B]Richard Reed Parry
[B]Win Butler
[B]Tim Kingsbury
[B]Sarah Neufeld
[B]Will Butler
[B]Jeremy Gara
[B]www.arcadefire.com
[B]www.neonbible.com
[B]www.pih.org
1 866 NEON BIBLE (toll free)
das klingt doch alles sehr gut.
--
Dirty, dirty feet from the concert in the grass / I wanted to believe that freedom there could last (Willy Mason)