Dan Shaw, recording and mixing engineer at Enmore Audio has shed some light onto the process of recoding Wells mastermind, Alastair Cairns cover of Lana Del Rey’s Born To Die. Having already reached 12,000 plays on Happy’s Exclusive Tracks, the eerie rendition has given Wells the opportunity to flex his creativity, and the outcome is nothing short of haunting. Here’s what Dan had to say: PS5 Australia.
“Wells (aka Alastair Cairns) has been a friend of Enmore Audio for the best part of a decade. Alastair is a singer-songwriting from Surry Hills whose sound ranges from solo, Americana-tinged folk to spacious and atmospheric rock. Al’s track record reflects an open and adventurous approach to sonic experimentation and he wanted to break new ground with his take on Lana Del Rey’s Born to Die.
We wanted to take an uncluttered approach to building the sounds for this production. The harmony is simple, the chords move slowly, so it allowed for experimentation with reverb tails and delays. We tuned the acoustic guitar to the open chords in the pieces, so the guitar has a broken-down sound, with open strings rattling throughout.
The guitar also doubled as a percussion instrument. We hit the sound board with a soft mallet and let the strings ring out. Coupling it with the simple piano countermelody, and ably assisted with a liberal dose of reverb, the haunting atmosphere of the original was evoked.”
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