All photos in this post are by Roberto Campos

Broad Ripple homes tend to blur together as you pass one after the other, some catch your eye for their uniqueness. John Zeps' house catches your ear.

The music from a band playing is seeping outside from the basement, descending into the basement the sound grows--guitar and drum parts churning out.

This just isn't any basement. It's the Vibes Music Recording studio which is housed by Zeps. On this weekend in particular Jesse Lee, Jeb Lambert and Dustin Carmichael are creating an EP in a Weekend.

EP in a Weekend is a series by MFT that takes Indiana musicians who have caught our attention and challenges them to write and record and entire EP in one weekend. No songs are written before the musicians get together.

With Sharlene Birdsong engineering and recording the project as well as co-producing the EP with Zeps, all that's left is to make the EP.

No small task.

"We tried to fight back from doing completely what all of us knew," Lee says. "We were trying to purposely do something different than what our inclinations would be, or our first reactions would be playing together."

Lambert (a member of Vacation Club) and Lee (a member of Pravada) have toured together in the past, but never played music together, and neither of them had played with Carmichael. 

A custom-built practice room hosts this endeavor. Mic cables, guitar pedals, drums, guitars--everything they need is there.

"Jeb and I really like 90s girl-punk riot girl kind of stuff, and we had talked a lot about that before and I think that influence really comes out on the third track, 'Sno Bunny,'" Lee says. "It was really fun to play around with a bratty girl-punk sound on the vocal that we did."

Creating songs off of riffs and ideas from their surroundings, Zeps plays a particular role in producing the trio through the EP process. In one particular moment Zeps comes into the practice/recording space and says, "You guys sound like Spaniards!" an observation which became the project's name.

For songs like "Skater Die", Zeps' basement, its novelty items and interactions during the recording process inspired lyrics for songs. "Skater Die" features lyrics that are made of interviews from hardcore bands in DIY skater zines. 

"For me, as a lyricist, I put things together with certain rhythms that I want," Lee says. "Timelines can benefit the process sometimes because it makes you just immediately work. I took note of the surroundings, what was being said, things like running themes in between recording."

Though Birdsong played on MFT's EP in a Weekend #9, this is her first time helping to engineer the project. From her experience, there can be a bit of awkwardness in the beginning as the musicians involved figure out how to work together. That sense of awkwardness wasn't present for the Spaniards.

"I think our basement [Vibes Music Recording) fosters creativity and is place that feels comfortable to make music," Birdsong says. "That’s where Indiana music is made, in a basement, so it kind of already has a homey feel."

For Lee, he's enjoys all of the songs that were produced this weekend. There's not one that he particularly enjoys over the other. The EP in a Weekend experience challenges, Carmichael, and himself, something that he took into his next recording project with Pravada. Pravada's next full-length is due out early summer.

"I liked the deadline aspect of the process," Lee says. "At one point we were measuring the tape that we had left. Having limitations like that are kind of fun, to have that challenge."

Be sure to listen to the Spaniard's EP in a Weekend project here.

For more pictures from the recording session scroll below.