Thrak: the reawakening of the King.

In 1994, nearly after a decade-long truancy, Robert Fripp resurrected the mighty King Crimson, the legendary forefathers of progressive rock who first surfaced in the late 1960s.

Leader and guitarist Robert Fripp assembled a new court of established musical entities for the resurgence. Their goal: perfection. The collective included the resilient Adrian Belew on vocals and guitar, bass magician Tony Levin, drum syncopation master Bill Bruford (an original Yes man), the alchemic Pat Mastelotto on an additional drum kit, and Trey Gunn, a revolutionary instrumentalist of a “different kind” who strikes the Warr guitar. This musical apparatus functions as a tapping instrument, similar to the Chapman Stick, with a harmonic range that is just as wide.

The first new King Crimson to re-emerge was the Bottrill co-produced litmus-test EP entitled VROOOM, which was quietly unleashed onto the public by Fripp’s own label, Discipline Global Mobile. “‘VROOOM’ was done at Applehead Studios, a very small studio in Woodstock, New York, and we had to push it beyond its limits by bringing in another multi-track” reports Bottrill. Based on the triumphant praise and demand warranted by the EP, the full-length ‘THRAK’ became its successor, only this time they converged at the Real World studio.

For both sessions, the task of containing the radiating collective of talent was Bottrill’s prerogative. “The way Robert works is very immediate and performance based so I was required to set them up so they can play live. It was difficult because they had two drummers, a bassist, and Trey on the Warr guitar. Adrian sang and played guitar, and Robert played the other guitar, and his sound is huge. So having to fit all that together was an interesting scenario and trying to actually record it and have everyone be able to hear what was going on was another challenge. Everyone was in the same room except for Pat so as to isolate the drum kits from each other. Otherwise, cabinets were isolated in separate booths. We had a monitor engineer specifically for the headphone mix. He was able to make eye contact with the players since I couldn’t see them because the desk at Real World faces the other way. I’d set up and each time they did a take it would be vastly different - sometimes halfway through we’d edit together different versions. Their discipline is to the point where they are methodical yet non-flippant with their improvisations. They spent so many years playing that they are beyond technique - the pure performance was able to come out because they were in tune and in touch with their instruments.”

”Bottrill amicably departed from the Real World homestead in 1996. Backed by his enormous credibility, Bottrill ventured into another kind of real world his association with The First Day and THRAK projects would escalate him to the next echelon.

The cleanliness of Ænima.

It began with a phone call from Los Angeles. Bottrill recalls with humor and irony how his involvement with the band Tool came about.

“Funnily enough, they called and asked if I would work on [their new album] and they sent me their ‘Opiate’ [EP] and ‘Undertow’ record. I listened to them and thought ‘I’ve never done anything like this before... why would this kind of American metal band be sending me things when all I’ve done was English art-rock music?’ At first I thought they had me confused with someone else, so I spoke to them and asked if they were sure they had the right guy. As it turned out, Danny [Carey], the drummer, was a HUGE King Crimson fan and Adam [Jones] the guitar player’s favorite album had been ‘The First Day.’

The singer, Maynard [James Keenan] was a huge Real World music fan. A lot of the stuff I worked on happened to be their favorites even though they were musically doing different things. They thought I wasn’t an ‘American rock producer’ but they figured they already knew what area they wanted and that I would bring something else to their music. So I met them in Los Angeles, sat in on one of their rehearsals and right away, we hit it off. It was an exciting rehearsal despite the fact that I sat beside Danny’s ride cymbal, which kind of made me deaf by the end of the day. They knew what I could do, they knew what they and their fans wanted, so I went along with their confidence.”

For the most part, Tool creates a genre of music that is their very own. Its fabric contains threads of epic, progressive dark compositions, yet weaves in ethereal and mathematical structures. At times the thematic content deals with ‘disgustipation’, oppression, struggle, rebirth and self-realization. Even though their strange biomechanic arachnid tapestry of sound makes them perfect for post-production tinkering such as sequencing and editing, Bottrill dispenses an ironical fact. “They’re extremely well thought out. Nothing was done to a click track or through a computer. It was all live with overdubs.”

For almost four months Bottrill and the band incubated themselves in Ocean Way and The Hook studios in regional Los Angeles before eventually sealing themselves at Larrabee for the mixing stage. From the first track “Stinkfist”, with its crescendo, one is immediately brought into a spacious yet well defined environment, especially with the lively drum sounds. Bottrill reveals his modus operandi, ”One of the things on that record, as well as with other rock bands I work with, is that I’ll get a small PA in the same room as the drummer and place it behind him facing forwards. The close mic’d signals that are on the kit’s snare, tom and kick are run through the well-EQ’d PA so you get this added volume and weight. When you use your ambient mics they pick up the PA so it becomes overall a much bigger sound with an exaggerated volume. Danny also had extra programmed electronic sounds that would play along with his drumming so we put those through the PA as well so the sounds gelled more together with the kit.” The capturing of the chromatic guitars was done in a logical manner as well, allowing organics to be the backbone for the calculating song structures. “[The] guitars generally took multiple takes, doubling and tripling with different guitars so as to allow for tonal changes by featuring different guitars as opposed to EQing differently for different sections.”