The 88 Record New Song On Their iPhone

The 88 have eschewed fancy recording equipment for an iPhone. That’s right, the indie rock trio don’t need your wall of sound, not when they have the ability to pump live drums, guitars, bass, piano and backing vocals into their iPhone to record an entirely new song.

That song, “Love is the Thing,” is now available at iTunes.

Actually, The 88 incorporated FourTrack, a new $9.99 application for the iPhone, which lets you record music directly into the device.

Watch a video of The 88 recording “Love Is The Thing” on an iPhone below.

The FourTrack from Sonoma WireWorks’ FourTrack allowed the band to record a total of 14 different parts for “Love Is The Thing.”

Writing about the project on The 88′s website, keyboard player Adam Merrin explains:

“This Spring, we were on tour opening up for the B-52s, with shows all around the East Coast. One day while we were driving, Keith [Slettedahl, singer/guitarist] was browsing through the applications on the iPhone and came across FourTrack.

“We thought this app would be a great way to record song ideas while we are away from home. So we downloaded it, and I thought it would be a neat experiment to record the full band on a phone. I was very curious to see how it would sound.”

Whether or not the song was touched up here and there prior to release, we don’t know, but still, it’s pretty darn impressive.

From a USA Today story about the band, we learned that drummer Anthony Zimmitti used his daughter’s toy drum set.  Guitars and bass were on small practice amps, and Merrin used a cheap Yamaha keyboard.

The tune was recorded at Zimitti’s Los Angeles house, for a total of 16 tracks altogether. Four Track has a Wi-Fi feature to get the files off the iPhone, and Merrin took those and remixed the song in Pro Tools, a popular program for recording audio.

The 88 are currently on tour with the B-52s.