Fran Healy

Emily Lazar and The Lodge

23 December 2009

I awoke at 7:30am. These are not rock and roll hours, but, under the circumstances, this being the day of the cut and all, I made the exception. It’s cold in New York City. The cut is the last stage of the recording process. It’s the delivery of the baby and the cutting engineer is the midewife. Our midwife today is Emily Lazar. I have never cut a record with a girl before. Greg Calby had a sweet feminine heart yes, Bob Ludwig could tap into his inner woman but this was the real thing and she’s one of the best.  The Lodge is located on Broadway  around 8th street.

When I arrived, she was just saying goodbye to Rostam of Vampire Weekend. They just cut their record. Hanging on the walls were discs from many great records. Bowie , The Shins, Lou Reed… Emily’s place is set up to make you feel like you are hanging out at her apartment. There was a very cute terrapin in his tank. I introduced myself, got some coffee and a beagle and cream cheese and then we began cutting.

When you cut a record, you give them the tracks and they put them into their system. Then they go through each song with a fine tooth sonic comb, pushing and pulling frequencies, matching volumes, creating spaces between each track. Emily’s technique involves the use of stems. Stems are groups of tracks in your session which are consolidated into single tracks. A drum stem, for instance, would be a stereo track with the mixed balanced drums on it. Then you might have a guitar stem. The bass might sit on its own stem…when all these stems are laid out it gives the cutting engineer more control. I had never cut like this before but  the difference from our mixes to the stems was huge…

We started at 11 and finished at 2.30am… the longest cut in my career. The record sounds massive.

Untitled from Fran Healy on Vimeo.

After saying goodbye, emery and I walked to the corner of his street and after hugs, we went our ways. I am leaving tomorrow 4pm taxi. I get the record at 2pm.

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