We’re meeting early at studio Caporal, the small but well equipped home studio Nicolas Rombouts runs in Antwerp. As we set up our gear and soundcheck, Laurent Orseau is around to make band pictures. In the past we often forgot to document our process, which is a pity. Pictures make up a great souvenir of intense working moments, but they’re also a nice way to take the audience behind the scenes. Check our Facebook page to see the full set.

With 15 songs to record in a three day session and conflicting musician’s schedules, there’s not much time to waste. We need to have four to five songs recorded by the end of each day. We start with ‘The Demon Lover’, a song that’s been in our book for ages, but for some strange reason, never made it outside of a demo version. It’s a up tempo song we know quite well, so it makes an ideal start. But we’re struggling to get a decent version on tape, arrangement wise it’s a mess. After a couple of versions, we decide to move on to ‘Pretty Polly’, ‘The Devil’s Questions’ and, much later, ‘The Fine Lady Gay’. At the end of the day, we’re not entirely satisfied with the results. We need to step up on our game over the next few days.