„The American Recording“ – what is kind of the title of this text was my
suggestion for the album title as well, because I think it’s a brilliant one
which really fits to the music on one hand and as the album was recorded in
the US it totally would have made sense to me, not taking it too seriously! If
you don’t like this title happy you, because the band feels the same and
didn’t want to put too much meaning in the fact that this piece has been
recorded overseas, which I’m kind of doing now anyway...
„Oh, The Good Life“ is what its called now and the second album after
highly acclaimed debut „Monologue“ (2010) of mixed German duo TALKING
TO TURTLES which has been recorded in Seattle (!) by Jonathan Warman,
who is being descrbied as kind of an upcoming jewel of fame to come. Parts
of the album were recorded at legendary Avast! Studios, where bands like
Soundgarden, Death Cab For Cutie, The Shins and Band Of Horses recorded
their great works as well, other parts at Warmans loft. The mixing was done
by good friend Eric Corson, who also is the bass player in The Long Winters,
and mastered in Omaha by Doug van Sloun (Bright Eyes, The Faint, Cursive,
Azure Ray).
So, enough with name dropping and USA and of course TALKING TO
TURTLES still is TALKING TO TURTLES and so „Oh, The Good Life“ is as
beautiful and weird as the debut „Monologue“. It’s again containing 10 songs,
but what is different besides the sound is the range of the songs as you can
hear.
As I don’t want to make this text a „monologue“ I asked Claudia & Florian,
the Turtles, to write their point of view as well:
„The next record will be recorded in Seattle!“ What a big laugh it was as our label friend
Jörg Tresp confronted us with this plan. A big laugh half about his megalomania and half
about us in the US where we’ve never been before.
Half a year later we saw ourselves in Seattle with a producer named Jonathan Warman,
in an impressing studio called Avast!, to record our first takes of our second album „Oh,
The Good Life“. Everything ok as long as studio owner Steward named some of the
bands who recorded there and as we left the studio we were kind of relieved. Also was
good to record some of the stuff at Jonathan’s loft to come down and this felt a little like
we recorded our debut.
Seeing the recording developing more and more we had some friends of Jonathan
coming in who seemed to play every instrument you can think of like cello, double bass,
transverse flute, french horn, banjo, etc. – unbelievable! They were able to transcribe all
ideas quick and with a lot of feelings as they’ve heard our songs for years.