Month: May 2009

“We’re going to party like it’s 1699,” sings Nina Persson on Colonia, the second album the Cardigans frontwoman has released under the A Camp name with husband Nathan Larson (Shudder To Think) and Niclas Frisk. As the lyric and album title imply, the ornate Colonia is loosely based on the theme of love in the time of colonialism and is inspired by cabaret and musicals from the ’40s. Larson and Persson—king and queen of Colonia—are guest editing magnetmagazine.com all this week. Read our Q&A with them.

Nathan And Nina: A Camp has worked with some awesome people on both sides of the studio glass. One who sat on the side with the things with knobs is my man Alan Weatherhead, who mixed and recorded our first album and mixed Colonia. (Our pal Geoff Sanoff recorded Colonia, and he deserves his own post.) We met Al through Sparklehorse’s Mark Linkous. Al was (and is) working out of a groovy studio in Richmond, Va., called Sound Of Music. Mark had been looking for a chance to work with him and spotted this A Camp record as a chance to do so. Al is a great, even-keeled guy with the kind of temperament that is perfect for a recording situation, plus he’s a very intuitive musician, which serves him and the artist he’s working with well. Al has worked as a musician and engineer/mixer for lots of projects, including Sparklehorse, Cracker, Trailer Bride, Clem Snide, Camper Van Beethoven, Magnolia Electric Co. and his current band Hotel Lights, to name but a few. Al was cool enough to let us ask him some stupid questions via email and respond. Read all of it after the jump.

“We’re going to party like it’s 1699,” sings Nina Persson on Colonia, the second album the Cardigans frontwoman has released under the A Camp name with husband Nathan Larson (Shudder To Think) and Niclas Frisk. As the lyric and album title imply, the ornate Colonia is loosely based on the theme of love in the time of colonialism and is inspired by cabaret and musicals from the ’40s. Larson and Persson—king and queen of Colonia—are guest editing magnetmagazine.com all this week. Read our Q&A with them.

Nathan And Nina: We’re fixing up our house, and things start getting really fun once you get to the point where you’re painting walls. This is where it really comes to life. We wanted something really artful and super Old World in our entry hallway, so we found some specialists in the area of creative wall painting: Sandro and Fabrizio, seen here pictured with Nina. They’re fantastic. If you’re based in the New York area and you need any work like this in your world, we highly suggest you contact our man Sandro on his mobile: 914-562-6217. Anyway, we sat down with these fellows and had a chat about what they do.

So guys, give me your names so we know who’s talking.
Sandro: My name is Sandro. I’m from Brazil.
Fabrizio: My name is Fabrizio. I’m also from Brazil.

What kind of painting is it that you do? It’s not just painting walls, is it?
Fabrizio: Well, we do everything, but what we enjoy doing most is the faux-finishes, the art stuff, like this work we’re doing here.
Sandro: It’s a little bit more than the paint itself, you know what I’m saying? When we see customers excited about the result, like with what we’re doing with you guys, it’s just such a nice feeling.

Yes, it’s great. But tell me what this particular process is called.
Fabrizio: It’s called stenciling. You have a pattern, you apply paint, and you repeat that process over and over again. All about detail.

And in the case, say, of our job; how many layers do you have going? How many different colors?
Fabrizio: Well, it starts with a base coat, and then we have to glaze the walls, achieving a different kind of look, and then we start with the stenciling. You got a lighter color and a darker color. And you go over it with a very small brush to get all that detail.

Is it more difficult working with metallic paints, like what we have here with the gold?
Sandro: Yes, because you never know what you get. In this case, we actually have another gold paint that is more flat, and then we have the metallic paint, which we just sort of lightly outline the other gold. So you get this, like, coming-out-at-you effect.

It’s a lot of work, it takes a long time.
Both: [Laughing] Yes.

Now is there a tradition of this in Brazil? Is that where you learned this stuff?
Sandro: No, not really.
Fabrizio: I’ve been here 15 years. I learned it here. I studied this stuff, you know?
Sandro: And I’ve been here six years. [Pointing to Fabrizio] I learn from him.

Huh. So this is like a European tradition?
Fabrizio: Yeah. Well, I think like the base coat and the process there … you might call that something like “Venetian plaster.” But it’s a very, very old technique.

So it’s not like a made-up American thing like they do to make it sound European and old?
Both: [Laughing] No. Well, yeah, kinda, sometimes.
Fabrizio: There’s a lot of stuff out there they call “Venetian,” but it’s like shit you can buy at Home Depot, like premade tiling made in a factory. There’s no …

No real craft or handmade aspect to it.
Both: Right.

Hey Sandro, I know you were working on restoring the Chelsea Hotel. Was that doing this kind of work, this stenciling thing?
Sandro: No, that was a crazy job. Lots of stories, you know. We were fixing a room that had been closed for, like, 30 years. Just sealed off. It was the old “Ladies Lounge.” That was a lot of very, very fine [process of removing] the paint down to the wood, then repaint in the original color—or as close to it as we could get. Had to take away maybe eight or 10 layers of paint to get to wood. Pretty amazing, yeah—the history there, you know. And you had to be so careful to make always the right choices.

Thanks, guys. We think you’re doing a great job, and we can tell you put love into it. Thanks for talking to us.
Both: Thank you!