record

Sam Pura on the Making of The Story So Far's "Proper Dose"

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I recently reached out to Sam Pura, owner of and chief engineer at The Panda Studios to see if he could answer a few questions about the production of The Story So Far’s new album, “Proper Dose” via email. Surprisingly, he responded within hours, and requested a phone call instead.

My first thought was, ‘holy shit, that’s way too much pressure’, but nothing good comes of just hanging out in your comfort zone, so I pushed it a step further and asked if we could record the conversation for my podcast, Reminiscent. I do the show with my best friend, and we mainly talk about music from the genre, so I figured a break from the normal weekly routine would be well accepted by our listeners. Again, much to my pleasure, he agreed, and we set a date.

Proper Dose Album Art. Available Now

Proper Dose Album Art. Available Now

Within 2 minutes of the recording, I realized why he preferred a phone call to an email… there was a hell of a lot to talk about, and an email wouldn’t do it justice. I originally planned on asking a barrage of questions focused on the production from a technical/production angle, but the 80 minute conversation took a different direction. The first 25 minutes or so were heavily focused on the headaches and industry politics that hindered the initial progress of the album, as well as the overall sound.

I was able to get a couple of straight answers out of Sam about the recording processes, although he claimed at one point that he didn’t want to give away too much of his IP, or intellectual property. That’s totally fine with me, but it made me have to rethink the entire point of the interview in real time, which was difficult, as I don’t typically do this kind of thing.

However, the interview turned out better than I thought, and as it’s too difficult to type out all that was discussed, I’ll just drop a link to the podcast below. Really, there was an awful lot going on, and I’m super glad we recorded it all.

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