North Atlantic Oscillation | Pete Meighan

“Super exciting new Rock’n’Roll for a new decade” – Zane Lowe, BBC R1.

I’ve been working with North Atlantic Oscillation for a decade now, and what a ride it’s been! If you haven’t listened to the tracks in the TRACKLIST already, let me tell you they are complicated, heavily layered, dense, intricate, and enthralling. I’ve been involved in all three of their albums, as well as on the solo project of Sam Healy from NAO called SAND. I’ve co-produced, recorded, mixed and worked on programming for the band down throughout the years.

DESCRIPTION

“Super exciting new Rock’n’Roll for a new decade” – Zane Lowe, BBC R1.

I’ve been involved in all three of their albums, as well as on the solo project of Sam Healy from NAO called SAND. I’ve co-produced, recorded, mixed and worked on programming for the band down throughout the years. There are samples from each of the NAO albums, including something from the SAND album, in the TRACKLIST. Read on to find out what I did on the various NAO albums.

I recorded pretty much everything bar the drums on this, the debut NAO album. I have a nice collection of amps and guitars that we made use of a lot to create large washes of sound. We would usually do guitars in the morning, vocals in the afternoon. Recording took place in Karma Korner, Dublin.

I also mixed the album, and provided additional production. Mixing was very challenging as all the songs had very large track counts and lots of sounds to fit in the mix. We also spent a lot of time on drum programming, sampling and editing, to create new interesting rhythm sounds.

The album got the band signed to Kscope records, London.

For this, the second NAO album, I recorded vocals and guitars in The Clinic, Wicklow. I also recorded some piano in the home of Mogwai and Tony Doogan, Castle Of Doom Studios. Other guitars were also recorded in Whitespace, Dublin.

Sound design with the guitars was something Sam and I were very interested in, using Ableton Live and various hardware controllers to apply non-standard effects and realtime control to the guitar as Sam played it.

The album was produced by NAO and Tony Doogan, and also mixed by Tony.

The third album “The Third Day” had some bass and guitars done down in Bay Studio, but my primary role was in mixing the album. I mixed the songs to a “clean” standard in Sonar on Sam’s system which he would bring from Edinburgh to Whitespace for mix sessions. Sam then took those mixes away to add his own colour and “distress” to ’em. Again it is a complex recording, full of fresh sounds, craziness, and lots of beauty.

Described as “thrilling and continually inventive”, the album for some great reviews including this one from Clash Music.