‘James Brown’ News

As you probably know, our James Brown has spent a good chunk of the past two years working with Foo Fighters and poducer Butch Vig.  In 2009 James recorded two new songs for the Foo Fighters Greatest Hits LP, and last year he worked with the band and Butch again recording the upcoming full length LP.  Part of the recording process included having documentary film crew on hand 24/7 and the resulting documentary “Foo Fighters: Back and Forth” will debut this week at SXSW.  You can watch the trailer here, and head over to Pitchfork to see the video for the first single, “Rope” and tour dates.

Last year James Brown worked with The Pains of Being Pure at Heart.  A lot.  In January he produced and mixed the “Say No to Love” single.  In May he did album pre-production with the band in Brooklyn, and in July he engineered the album at Stratosphere Sound with Flood producing.  The “Belong” LP comes out later this month, but you can stream it now over at Pitchfork.

Our James Brown spent 17 days in January at Sound City in Van Nuys, California recording the new Arctic Monkeys album with producer James Ford.  It was essentially recorded live to 24 track analog (excluding the odd fix and overdub) and mixed by Craig Silvey at Sunset Sound in Hollywood.  James says “it were a reet laff” (translation = it was a lot of fun). We can’t wait to hear the results.  Here is a nice shot of James and Alex Turner:

Our James Brown shared the control room with a documentary film crew last year as he engineered the upcoming Foo Fighters album.  That footage will be included in a career-spanning documentary what will be shown for the first time (we think) in Austin at SXSW. Don’t miss it, as there is sure to be wonderful footage of James sitting in a chair looking at a tape machine remote.  Details from SPIN:

Check out an interview about making the new record (with James, Flood & Alan Moulder) and listen to a new song over here at Pitchfork.

James Brown was at The Lodge here in NYC for the mastering of the new Foo Fighters LP he spent the past 4 months engineering.  Here is a nice mention on SPIN.com, which for some odd reason doesn’t list who is in the photo.  I’ve done the work they didn’t and identify everyone below:

At The Lodge (from l-r): Top Row: Joe LaPorta, Butch Vig, Pat Smear, James Brown, Chris Shiflett, Taylor Hawkins. Bottom Row: Nate Mendel, Emily Lazar, Dave Grohl

Our favorite Englishman and Yankees fan James Brown is finishing up work on the new Foo Fighters LP today.  Apparently the band played a surprise set at a bar in Encino last night to 200 people and James says it was fantastic.  Why doesn’t that kind of thing ever happen to me when I’m out drinking?  Below, left to right: Dave Grohl, Krist Novoselic, James Brown, Alan Moulder & Butch Vig.

Pitchfork has another new Pains song up called “The One”.  It was recorded by James Brown and Produced by Flood in NYC earlier this year.  Check it out here.