Chevrolet recently had Detroit rockers The Gentlemen Mutineers record some of the band’s latest single, “Detroit Throttle,” inside a 2014 Impala in order to show off the car’s quiet interior.
For the clip, lead singer Frankie Turner belted into a Blue Microphones Snowball while Grammy award-winning engineer Mark Pastoria of Harmonie Park Studios captured the result on his laptop computer. Turns out Ryan Romanik’s harmonica and Julian Lambert’s trombone were also recorded in the car as well.
According to Chevrolet, the Impala uses a variety of materials to minimize wind, road and engine noise, ranging from an acoustically laminated windshield and front-door glass, to liquid-applied sound deadener applied to the floor pan and trunk, to triple-sealed doors with acoustic perimeter water deflectors and other goodies, the most notable being active noise-cancelling technology used in high-end headphones.
Well, that’s modern technology for you; after all, it was much harder back in the Nineties when people first started recording in cars.
Yes, someone actually tried this before. In fact, in 1996, roots rocker Ben Vaughn recorded an entire album on his driveway, inside his 1965 Rambler American. The appropriately titled Rambler 65 resulted in one of the funniest assignments I’ve ever covered—click here to find the goofy story from the January, 1997 issue of Pro Sound News, plus Vaughn’s ultra low-budget mockumentary of the recording experience. Enjoy!
