After the successful release of London After Midnight’s Selected Scenes from the End of the World: 9119, David Lawrie became the band’s new guitarist. Many shows were planned for the summer and autumn of 2020, but Covid-19 soon put a stop to that. To make the best of a bad situation, the band decided to create a series of live-from-quarantine performances. With the rulebook thrown out of the window, preparing a “live from isolation” performance was a challenge – especially with thousands of miles between the band members.
In the end, a series of four live performances we made, with each member of the band engineering their own performance, as well as filming it. By preparing the playback stems, which would normally be used for live shows, each band member was able to record an accurate take. All of these performances were brought together by David Lawrie at Ishikawa Studio, and they were mixed as any other live recording would be.
Under his HARUKO guise, David also pieced the videos together, in order to create a CCTV style composite, showing all four performers simultaneously.
After talking with the organisers of Gothicat Festival, LAM was invited to “headline” one of the instalments of the virtual festival by giving the festival a premiere of the live performance of “Your Best Nightmare.”
Shortly after, inFest Festival ran as an virtual online festival, and the other three live from isolation performances were debuted as part of Stay in Fest.
subsequent album release
After the success of these performances, the band decided to record six further performances as audio only, with the view to release them, along with the audio from the four videos, as a live from isolation album.
The whole album was mixed by David at Ishikawa HQ, with the final touchups being completed with Sean Brennan over the internet, in real time (and studio quality), by using the incredible Listentosoftware by Audiomovers.
The album was mastered by Andy Wilson, and artwork for the album was crafted by Sean Brennan.
We are so proud of how this effort to “make the best of a bad situation” turned into an unexpected project and physical release for fans of the band to enjoy, despite all 2020 in-person shows having been cancelled!
