Glory Glory Man United by Matt Dixon, October '10

Photo by Amelia DeMarco.

Well, it's just about Halloween so we thought we'd interview Halifax's Glory Glory Man United about their critically acclaimed release ZOMBIES!! Check us out with the themed interviews.... cheesiness aside, this band rules hard. Do yourself a favour and get into Glory Glory Man United while you still can...

Pop Song Automation from Zombies!!!
 

1. First up, the obligatory zombie apocalypse survival question; the living dead have been reported outside Gus's Pub and Halifax will soon be overrun by the living dead. Name five things you'll pack in your zombie survival kit that will ensure your escape from the city:
Bridge tokens, map to Moncton (it's too scary for zombies there), Sugar-free Red Bull (tm) (don't want to get fat), baseball bat with a nail in the end, and a copy of the original Dawn of the Dead for educational purposes. Survival ensured.

2. Now to the why, you recently released your full length record entitled ZOMBIES!!! and blew everyone the hell away; honestly this is one of my favourite records to come out all year. Could you talk to me a little about the process of putting the record together and the care that went into it?
We started tracking drums at the Rock Garden in Halifax (a great rehearsal space owned by our friend Rob MacArthur, he also runs From Here to There Records, which put out our EP Friends of the Seen) in January 2009. We did six of the drum tracks over two days, using a pretty simple setup (we recorded everything ourselves, so inability required a pretty simple setup). Once we had the drums, we started building the rest of the tracks, adding bass, guitar, vocals, synths and percussion at home over the next couple of months. Our good friend and studio pro Andrew Watt would listen to the raw tracks as we went, to make sure the sounds were usable - this was our first full length and also our first home recording experience so we really wanted to do it right. And cheap. But mostly right.

We had the first six songs pretty much finished by March 2009, and two rough mixes (Pop Song Automaton, Fish) under our belts to convince us the process was worth continuing, and did another round of drums at the Rock Garden for the last four tracks. By this time we kind of had our mic placement all figured out, and it was more just a matter of performing well on the record and figuring out how to shape the tunes.

This was a completely different studio experience for us, mostly because none of the actual tracking took place in a studio. We had as much time as we wanted, and the three of us were living together at the time (along with my girlfriend Amelia, who just loved the mic'd amp camped out in our hallway for a week at a time) which allowed tons of flexibility to record when it suited us - often clad in underwear, usually before going to work. The only part of the process that was stressful at all was tracking the vocals, as they had been disappointing for me on our previous recordings. For Zombies!!! I would worry about them for days before doing a song, then usually once I worked up my nerve to try I would end up being pretty happy with how they turned out.

We had finished tracking in August 2009, and spent a few weeks with Andrew mixing in the fall, in between recording sessions for his new album. He did an amazing job of transforming home recordings into a professional sounding album and we owe him big time. We got it mastered by J LaPointe (North of America member and local mastering guru.. works with everyone from Joel Plaskett to Money in the Banana Stand), and we spent the next few (many? it finally came out in July) months figuring out what to do with it.

Listen to Glory Glory Man United:
myspace.com/ggmu

GLORY GLORY MAN UNITED ARE ESCAPING HALIFAX
TAKE A LOOK AT PAST JUNNNKTANK INTERVIEWS HERE