Welcome to our album!

Most churches are extremely busy over the Christmas holiday; but few will have received a request from a local band to record an entire album on site, turning the pews into a half-decent impression of Abbey Road studios for two days.

Rock and Roll Angels is a band born in church, namely St Michael and All Angels, which perches on top of Windmill Hill with glorious views across the city of Bristol. Shaun McCrindle, who forms one half of the songwriting team for the band, was inspired to create Rock n Roll Angels after a solo performance in the church in 2016. 

Performing songs written on his late father-in-law's Spanish acoustic guitar in the resonant, intimate acoustic of this Victorian church lit a fuse for Shaun to record a whole album's worth of material in this special space. We have subsequently played together as a band in the church on several occasions in the past year and have been able to share our songs with the local community.

Jump forward to Monday 18th December and we are all assembled in the church at 10am, only slightly shivering - the four musicians in the band (drums, piano, double bass and guitar); Jay Auborn, our producer; Spin, our engineer; and two students from dbs Music who will gain valuable work experience from participating. Strong cups of tea are brewed, biscuits distributed and this talented team of people get busy.

Over the next few hours the church is transformed into a mobile recording studio: sound boards are erected and placed around the instruments to minimise the 'bleeding' of sound; microphones of different shapes and sizes are placed and pointed in every conceivable way around the band; a sea of leads flow out from the back of various consoles and boxes with flashing lights, winding their ways into the nooks and crannies of the stage. After a time, we are ready to actually play some music. 

I am personally sat at the helm of a 1917 Bluthner grand piano, the equivalent of driving a Ferrari after playing my usual Roland digital piano at home. I blow on my hands in-between takes to keep them warm. To record in such an amazing space as this  is different to any of my previous recording experiences which have all taken place in 'sterile' music studios. As I look up I can see the faces of angels and saints gazing down at us from the Victorian stained glass windows above and you can feel the history of the building come alive.

On day one, we record around three songs, completing three to four different 'takes' for each one. Everything is live, no overdubs, so that adds to the excitement of capturing a moment in time which cannot be repeated. For those five minutes it takes to record a single song, it's like a fairground ride you can't get off; you just have to hang on tight and enjoy it! The only black cloud on our horizon comes in the shape of the drilling and hammering which starts up just as we begin recording. Further investigation reveals a team of builders on the road behind us knocking two large holes out of the side of a house to put two windows in. It just goes to show you can try and plan for every eventuality but 'these things happen'. The noise abates after a while and we play on.

The recording team sit patiently as we go through the motions, allowing us to listen back to what we've recorded after each take using headphones and giving us useful feedback. As a band, we converse between ourselves after each take: "I liked the feeling of that…I think we could do one more take…I think I hit a B flat instead of a B on the second chorus (Did you? No-one noticed…)" More tea is brewed, more biscuits taken. A member of the church arrives and sits through the last hour with us - even having a single person as an 'audience' is a useful pick-me-up this late in the day. At the end of day one we are very happy and ready to work even harder on day two.

Tuesday 19th December dawns; a gas fire has been wheeled in next to the piano and I gratefully benefit from this during the course of the day. Our two dbs Music students work with us recording a whole day's worth of songs. The more we play, the more we get used to the set-up and the way the sound reaches us from the other instruments (we are lined up across the stage, divided from each other by sound boards) Rich, another member of the church and a fellow musician joins us to take photos, some of which you can see here.

By the end of the day, at six o'clock, we are tired but we have recorded all of our ten tracks which is what we aimed to achieve. The two students have been amazing throughout, maintaining zen-like levels of concentration and always offering encouraging words. We pack away the equipment and then, like magic, it's as if we were never here, the space returned to it's normal state of affairs as it awaits its next congregation to sing carols and light the advent candles.

Our album will be available to download in the New Year - watch this space for details!

Rock n Roll Angels would like to thank Arts Council England for their financial support of this project, dBs Productions in Bristol and St Michaels and All Angel church and congregation.

(Photo credits: Richard Edwards 2017)