Listen to the brand new Ha the Unclear track "Julius Caesar"

Publish Date
Friday, 19 July 2019, 9:50AM

Indie off-kilter guitar pop quartet, Ha the Unclear have released a new track recorded with legendary US producer Sylvia Massy (Johnny Cash, Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers, Tool) at Roundhead Studios, Auckland whilst Massy was guest producer for the annual NZ Music Producer Series curated by Greg Haver and part of the Recorded Music NZ’s Tui Series. Final edits were added by Tom Healy (Tiny Ruins, Finn Andrews, Soaked Oats) at Paquin Studios.

The release of "Julius Caesar" comes a week after the announcement, Ha the Unclear have a song shortlisted for the second year running in the APRA Silver Scroll Awards. "Where Were You When I Was All You Needed" comes from 2018's album 'Invisible Lines'.

Sylvia Massy began her career as part of the San Francisco alt-punk scene in the all-female band Revolver. In the late 1980’s she became an engineer at Larrabee Sound in Los Angeles engineering for Prince, Paula Abdul, Big Daddy Kane, Seal, and Aerosmith.

Her production work with the band Green Jello led her to produce the “Undertow” and “Opiate” albums for Tool. She then began work with producer Rick Rubin, which included System Of A Down, Smashing Pumpkins, Tom Petty and Johnny Cash.

After a stint at Sound City Studios, she set up her own RadioStar studios in Weed, California. Massy now travels widely, holding seminars around the world to share her unusual techniques for manipulating sound.

Recording "Julius Caesar" Sylvia used techniques including plugging a guitar into a wedge of Gouda (yes, the cheese), running a guitar signal through a lightbulb, using live satellite delay on the vocals and rewiring an old op-shop phone on the fly to use as a drum mic.

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