Unsquare Dance, Performed by the Feenbrothers. A One Microphone Recording.

Audiophile DXD (352.8 kHz) download from The Feen Brothers. Download available at http://www.soundliaison.com/ This is our second One mic recording. It was not planned as such. The Brubeck concert was scheduled long before we had even thought about recording only using the Josephson 700s. But what happened is kind of a follow up to the story behind our first one mic recording; Carmen Gomes Inc. “ Don’t you Cry”. Paul and Mark van der Feen, had heard the first trial recording we did with the Josephson 700s and really liked the sound, so when the four brothers arrived in the studio for the sound check, they insisted that they wanted to record that way too. Frans was very skeptical as he thought the Brubeck repertoire, with it’s great dynamic variation between the tunes, did not lend itself to such a minimalist approach. But Paul said not to worry; “find the sweet spot and we’ll play in balance.” It took about three hours to complete the sound stage by carefully moving each instrument closer or further away as well as left and right in relationship to the microphone. The four Feen brothers are very different personalities. Where the brotherhood truly shows is when they start playing; anything and everything seems possible. A good example is in the piano solo on “It’s Raggy Waltz” where Mark’s iPhone, used for reading the setlist, falls into the piano and for a full bar creates a distortion effect as it vibrates on the piano strings. Somehow the flow of the solo is not interrupted. The incident is merely a bump in the road, that sends Mark down a slightly different path, closely followed by Clemens and Matthijs. And in “Gone With the Wind” Paul starts off a capella, following a sudden inspiration, forcing his brothers to create a completely different arrangement of the song on the spot. Such pure joy of playing is infectious, listen to “Unsquare Dance” where the audience joins in clapping along in 7/4 meter! On this recording the audience is rather more present than on our other live recordings from Studio 2. We prefer not to have more than 80 people present in the studio. That number leaves us room to move around, change a cable or re position a microphone if needed and so forth. But as fate would have it, the computer system keeping count of the tickets sold for the concert, had some kind of a breakdown so instead of 80 tickets, 110 were sold. Extra seats were brought in, so the audience ended up being very close to the band, creating a very lively atmosphere. And as Frans noticed during the extended applause following the end of the concert; “Look at that phase meter, it is practically straight in the middle. A completely phase coherent applaus! Paul van der Feen - saxophone Mark van der Feen - piano Clemens van der Feen - double-bass Matthijs van der Feen - drums Recording and mastering by Frans de Rond. Produced by Peter Bjørnild. Filmed by Max Boeree