Drugstore Fanatics is a band from Los Angeles, their 2009 Self-Produced/recorded album “What’s Born In The Basement” was documented in two ways; A PDF (How We Made A Studio Grade Album for $190) with detailed explanation of the recording process and a series of YouTube videos (see below). You can get their album free (10 songs, 192kHz mp3) or for $5 in higher quality (320 mp3) with 5 bonus tracks.
I say this album sounds F**king great, whether it cost $200 or $20,000 to make. They did have great gear to start with and generous friends to help but they really put in the hard work and excellent performances to make phenomenal recordings in their home studio.
They also have several of their songs available to Remix. Submit your remix to be included on an upcoming release. I’m going to use some of these as standards for my own recordings, especially the bass.
I’m a little late finding out about this band, but I have to say I’m really impressed.
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Wow. I had never heard these guys before until now. I just bought the $5 download. Well worth it! It’s also a great example of how a little hard work can go a long way.
There is also an Easter Egg in this album. If you take the hidden track after the last song and convert it to mono, you hear a totally different track. It’s crazy!!!
They did a great job, and it seems like they learned a lot, but they spend way too much time emphasizing how much money they spent.
Their accounting is very suspect, and they already had a studio and a lot of really good gear and pros to help, the same gear you’d find in a commercial studio. If someone gave you unlimited time for free in a commercial studio you could make an album for nothing too.
Not to take away from their work, they should just concentrate on the finished product.
In a way, yeah. I mean, 3 good pres and a few mics is not really a commercial studio, but I guess they played on the budget thing as a gimmick just to get their point across, and I’m happy they did because that’s the only way I heard about them.
This album sounds great but I wonder why they didn’t count mastering as part of the cost of making the album when they wrote about it in their book. Definitely a well put together album though and them documenting and writing about how they did it made it appealing enough to listen to for me.
Gotta give respect to these guys even though it’s not my type of music. Hard work always pays in the end.