What are you working on now, Ian?
Currently I'm working on a couple of new groups, one called Tenshi, which is Japanese for angel, apparently. It's a group of three girls. It's interesting in as much as they play strings as well. There's a vocalist, a violinist and a cellist.
Is that right? Do you have a lot of experience recording strings?
Not large strings, but I've done some small ensembles.
What type of environment are you recording them in? Could you describe what your studio is like?
If it's ones and twos, then I do it at my place. My space is pretty much a control room with a booth. That's the setup I've got myself, so if I need anything bigger than that, then there are other studios I use for different things. If it's a quartet or something, then I'd have to go to another good-sounding room.
Do you ever record in your control room? Or do you use a separate studio space?
Just a booth really, I mean it's about two meters square. It's a vocal booth. But obviously that is pretty much for computer based things or if we're just doing overdubs and mixing. If it's a band, then I need to be somewhere else.
The productions I've heard from you over the years have become increasingly complex, ever since those first singles you did for the Field Mice in 1988. Can you characterize how your production contributions have grown since then? To me your recordings sound wider or more spacious.
Yes, that's interesting, 'cause normally complex sounds smaller, I think... or you know, sounds denser. So it's interesting you hear more complexity and more space at the same time.
For example, compared to the first Field Mice recordings, which use what I think is a Boss DR 660 drum machine...
Yeah, the little box with the knob on it...
...the rhythm tracks you are working on now with the likes of Saint Etienne and Trembling Blue Stars sound infinitely more complex. I'm wondering how that evolved.
A lot of it is just practicalities, really. The first Field Mice records were really done on a shoestring. I think the first couple of singles came from a session I did with them which were demos. They found me from an ad in Melody Maker, and they came in for a day and I think we did six or seven songs in probably about seven hours, eight hours. So it really was, "Start the drum machine, record all the drums, get the bass out, do the bass", and you know I wouldn't have even commented on the drum patterns. It was the first time I met them, and they came in, recorded what they had to record, I mixed it, and there was no time to think about it, really. So, progressing on from that, after they got the deal [with Bristol's Sarah Records] and we got a little bit more time, then we had a bit more time to experiment. Certainly, I think all of the Field Mice recordings were done in a very tight budget situation. It wasn't until we got to the Northern Picture Library/Trembling Blue Stars phase that... basically it's always been tight, but I just invested a bit more of my time and I think that's really what happened.
Did you kind of grow with them?
Oh, yeah, completely! I mean they came to me the first year I'd actually been doing it for a living. I've been recording since the early eighties, really. The Teac 4- track PortaStudio, the very first one — the 144. Basically to buy that, I'd sold a lot of my live gear, because I played bass in bands before and suddenly got very fed up with it! [laughs] I think it's when I did the first demo with my first real band, I thought "Oh this is a lot more fun than touring around pubs and putting big cabinets in and out of vans, doing a half-hour sound-check at 4:00 p.m. for an 11:30 show and that kind of thing."
So you started out in humble beginnings...
For a long time the studio was actually a bedroom in my parents' house, 'till about five years ago, in fact. All the Field Mice things were done there. It was just a 4-track to start with, and I used to use the reverb from the Music Man guitar combo I had. That was the only reverb I had. We'd just run the cables inside the amp and use the spring unit and a digital delay line I built myself from a kit.
So you have quite a technical aptitude.
Yeah, pretty much so, from the ground up. It's funny, I was talking to someone the other day and I was reflecting really that a lot of the most inventive recording I did, not necessarily the Field Mice things, because that's when I started doing it for a living and it got a bit different, but the songs I recorded before that were probably the most inventive because I had so little to do them with.
Is any of this material released?
No. Lots of them were for demos for bands that I was in that didn't actually go anywhere.
So bass was your primary instrument — aren't you also a very capable keyboard player?
Well, learned piano when I was about 13 or 14 — a couple years of lessons, and then I taught myself guitar and then ended up playing bass in my first group 'cause no one else wanted to do it! And that's definitely my favorite instrument, really. It's being the link between the rhythm and the melody. I enjoy being quite melodic.
I know you've played bass on at least one of the Trembling Blue Stars albums, is that right?
Yeah, yeah. And on quite a few tracks on the last one as well, for various reasons. But yeah, the first Trembling Blue Stars one [Her Handwriting], that's me.
Uh huh. And, certainly on the Saint Etienne recordings, I hear a distinctive rhythms and drum programming. Is that coming from you, or is it something that the band brings in? Is it achieved through MIDI sequencing?
The early Saint Etienne records were really loops. Most of it is loops. I think what confuses the issue a bit is that lots of the loops were from early techno records, so a lot of it sounds programmed.
How about on some of the Trembling Blue Stars stuff, are they loops as well?
No, that's more programmed. I mean quite often we'll start with a loop and either replace it or, it will take a back seat by the time the rest of the programming is done.
So you are starting with samplers to get some of those sounds?
Yeah, yeah. A lot of it's sampled in one way or another, whether it's sampled hits or loops. Often a combination of the two, I mean I quite often get frustrated if I try and program a whole drum track. Especially if the idea is that it sounds like a drummer. I just find it really, really clumsy trying to do it with programming. Quite often, putting a loop in there will give you just a little bit of a randomness or a live feel to make the rest of the programming feel more convincing. I tend to be a bit more dogmatic about it now and say, "Well if you want it to sound like a drummer, let's get a drummer and go and record him!" [laughs]... 'cause I end up bashing my head on the wall.
So are you technically proficient with say, like the Cubase and Logic programs of the world?
Yeah, though interestingly, and much to the horror of lots of people who come into the studio, I still use Cubase on the Atari, which looks very limited now but it does the job and I don't have to think about it. I've used it so long now, that it's just like another instrument. It's like picking up a guitar for me. If something comes in on like, Cubase on a PC or Mac or whatever, I really have to think about it and I find it's quite distracting. All of the sudden I am a computer operator, not a musician or producer.
Is there any certain equipment that you have continually turned to over the years which you have kept around?
I've pretty well kept everything I've bought, I think. I try not to buy new gear. It's just getting so ridiculous now, the rate of obsolescence is so fast. I don't have the money to try to keep up. I think you can spend all your time learning new stuff, or software updates and all these kind of things, while not actually making any music. The hard disc recorder I use is Soundscape. Don't know if you know it, it's probably not that popular in the states. It's a British one.
So you choose to record on digital, then mix down to analog?
No, I mix down to digital now.
