From left: co-producer/mixer/engineer Joe
Barresi, bandmembers Joey Castillo, Josh “Baby Duck” Homme and Troy Van Leeuwen, and Brian “Big Bass” Gardner
photo: David Goggin
Hot and heavy rock band Queens of the Stone Age, whose single, “Little Sister,” has blazed its way all over alt-rock radio, mastered their new album for Interscope/Rekords Rekords, Lullabies to Paralyze, at Bernie Grundman Mastering (Hollywood). “The new Queens album came to me on a hard drive via Pro Tools,” says mastering engineer Brian “Big Bass” Gardner. “I used my usual high-tech, high-end methods to polish their mixes; we have custom consoles built in-house with all-discrete electronics. My computer is the Audio Cube, and our ‘floating point’ bits are so staggering, no one would believe it. Between our low-level humor and joking around, Josh [Homme] and Joe [Barresi] made sure I didn’t get carried away, and the original integrity of the mixes was maintained. I ended up backing off one-eighth of a dB, but still incorporated my magic dust.”
