Brow Beaten but Not Out

by Chris Well

"I just wanted to make people aware of the alternative bands in Christian Music," says Michael Knott, executive producer and coordinator for Brow Beat, which features a variety of alternative bands in an acoustic setting. Knott wanted to present the "movers and shakers," so he nabbed such luminaries as The Choir, Undercover and Terry Taylor (of DA and The Swirling Eddies) for the project.

The problem was simply coordinating all of the different acts, working out schedules, studio times, and even studio setups. Knott pointed out that it wasn't enough to set up the studio for one drummer, for instance; since each drummer had a different sound, the studio had to be rearranged for each act.

"All the artists worked together. No one was a 'rock star.' The worst part was scheduling 30 different people."

Knott is happy with the final project, as is Gene Eugene, also credited as executive producer. "Most of the bands knew what they wanted when they came in," Eugene said. "It surprised the heck out of me that it worked as well as it did, with everyone doing their own thing. But I think it works really well as an album."

Knott and Eugene (on loan from his day job with Adam Again) were around the studio when the bands taped. But, essentially, they just laid down the ground rules and then stepped out of the way. None of the bands, by the way, knew what they were doing. "Some of the bands deviated from the 'alternatvive' realm," Knott says, "but they had the freedom to do whatever they wanted to do. So you have Dig Hay Zoose doing some cool lounge stuff with some trippy singing, and then you have The Choir doing some very Choir-ish stuff, but it's still a great song."

One standout track comes from Mortal, usually known for their metal/industrial brand of noise. The bands's singer Jyro, agreed that "Bleeder" was a bit different for them, but shouldn't come as too much of a surprise. "I always write with the piano," he said. "But usually we go into the studio with guitars; this time we took the piano in, which pushed the song in a different direction. We also found harmonies we could only have gotten putting the piano on the track."

Although everyone was given a strict "no electric instruments" policy, they were allowed to fudge in the mixing process. So, some tracks have interesting vocal effects, and some artists used the loophole to double and triple some tracks to layer the instruments. But, Knott maintained, even then all the instruments were acoustic.

"I haven't really dug deep enough yet to find who broke the rules and who didn't," Knott laughed. "But 99 percent of the time, they seemed to follow the rules."