Recording and Production
The Pixies entered Q Division in December 1987, booking ten working days of studio time in which to record the album. 4AD allocated the band a budget of US$10,000. Albini's producer's fee was US$1,500 and he received no royalties; Albini has a practice of refusing royalties from records he produces, viewing it as "an insult to the band." Along with Albini in the studio, Q Division's Jon Lupfer acted as studio assistant. The recording process took the entire booked period of ten working days to complete, with extra vocal mixes subsequently added in the studio. Albini planned to mix the record "somewhere else", but according to Lupfer, "He was unhappy there with it."
Albini used unusual recording techniques. For Kim Deal's backing vocals in "Where Is My Mind?" and her lead vocals on "Gigantic", Albini moved the studio equipment and recorded in a studio bathroom to achieve real, rather than studio, echo; according to John Murphy, Deal's husband at the time, "Albini didn't like the studio sound." Albini later said that the record could have been completed in a week, but "we ended up trying more experimental stuff basically to kill time and see if anything good materialized." An example was "Something Against You", where Albini filtered Black Francis' voice through a guitar amp for "a totally ragged, vicious texture."
Read more about this topic: Surfer Rosa
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