Guest Blog: Indie-Psych Rockers LOST COUSINS Discuss Their Full-Length Debut ‘In Scenery’ [Exclusive]

It’s Friday, February 1st and, today, via Pheromone Recordings, the gents in the indie-psych group Lost Cousins, are thrilled to celebrate the release of their debut full-length album, In Scenery. Centred around themes of transition, namely leaving one’s roots for something deeply unfamiliar, the musician’s new recording, both literally and figuratively, sees them grow, mature, and venture into new territory.

Today, to continue the band’s largely DIY ethos, and to mark the release of In Scenery (which you can purchase and stream through the usual sites), we’re stoked to offer an exclusive guest blog wherein the Lost Cousins discuss at length the production and recording of their debut.

And…. End Scene. The Making of In Scenery:

Producing our first LP wasn’t necessarily a goal in itself, although it’s hard to imagine having taken a different path than the one we did. We worked with a few producers over the past few years and learned a lot from them, but it sometimes felt like we were being stretched a little too far in the wrong directions at times. I guess it was a matter of us having our own strong vision for our band and the songs that others may have been pulling us away from.

Check out Lost Cousins’ video guide to “Montreal”.

Starting in 2016, we were able to dive into a lot of experimentation and recording ourselves in our spare room studio to create demos for the songs. All of us living together made things really easy because we were always around, and made collaboration and the sharing or workshopping of ideas an easy feat. It also allowed us to pool our recording knowledge and wacky production ideas, and created a really cool atmosphere of experimentation throughout our set path to write and record our first album.

We spent virtually all of our money on gear to record, and started getting really into various aspects of sound design. It was an easy decision to dive into the world of synthesizers, boutique effects pedals, and we even landed ourselves a Roland RE-301 Chorus Echo straight from the ‘80s. The Chorus Echo quite literally shaped and inspired the vibe of our LP – it’s such a versatile machine that adds an indescribable “magic” to any instrument you put through it – even drums or bass.

Once we had enough songs to put our album together, we opted to re-track the songs at Candle Recording with our friend Dylan Frankland as the engineer. His technical experience and understanding of our vision was invaluable in taking what we had done in our demos to the next level in production quality. We were able to maintain the raw energy and unbridled creativity that characterized our demo process but made big strides in improving the fidelity and quality of the instrument and vocal takes. In many cases on the record, though, we ended up using the sounds from the original demos because the character was impossible.