One Kingdom’s debut album

I started jamming more frequently with a couple friends in Vancouver that have been playing together for a number of years. They call themselves One Kingdom. Jeff Child and Jesse Bentley both sing, write, play guitar and bass. When Jesse is playing guitar and singing lead, Jeff is grooving on the bass and singing harmonies. Then after a few tracks they switch roles giving the set time to breathe while keeping the audience intrigued. It’s a cool blend of catchy pop, folk and reggae with great harmonies and groove.

After a bunch of pub shows we were starting to get pretty tight. With an upcoming show hundreds of miles away and no merch, I decided we needed to record something. We setup on a late Sunday night and tracked 9 songs live off the floor at my studio. I was pretty stoked listening to the raw tracks and decided that I could make it sound like a studio album rather then a demo EP.

I had 8 days to track, edit, mix and master before we needed to submit for pressing in time for the gig in Nelson, BC. It’s pretty amazing what can be accomplished in such a short time. When you know how to sing and play your instruments, every album should take this long to make. I’m a big fan of live off the floor recordings. There’s still a lot that can be produced afterwards but it keeps an integrity to the music that is lost after hundreds of takes and comps that has become the norm in todays studio. I think people like to hear that it’s a human performing. Record sales continue to go down but everyone is still going to live shows. Maybe the record industry needs more live recordings, seems to be what people are still interested in.

 

Here’s the album!