March 2022 "25% dealt with already"

What a bumpy quick month March was though… i’m pretty sure that on wednesday 2nd we were in the studio working on Antony Sziemerik’s forthcoming single ‘Ventolin’ — now this project gets me excited and not because of the cool music being produced but because it potentially offers a glimpse into the future for me personally.  So there’s Antony, and there’s Robin, and there’s Martin Antony’s brother - Antony’s the singer/lyricist/front man, Robin is the ‘producer’ and Martin plays short, tasteful motifs of guitar.  So what’s my role?  I’m just basically enhancing Robin’s productions with slightly improved mixes, critical feedback on arrangement/instrumentation etc, obviously recording Antony’s vocals and stuff… but, it’s hard to really call me a producer here? Because Robin is the one who’s actually making all the cool music but then again, so do bands when they come to me and i still produce them?  this just highlights that roles and terminology might be a bit loose and the hierarchy isn’t exactly pyramidal but, the main thing, and the ONLY thing and without getting political here, the most important thing in, not just music but the everything - is that we all work well as a team. teamwork, which is individuals coming together to form a sum that is greater than it’s parts.  Antony’s just had some really cool plays on 6music and the hype machine seems like it’s kicking into life, which is why when ‘Ventolin’ comes out - i’m pretty confident it’s going to be a big big big tune, especially if it matches up with some nice warm early summer climates too.

Ellen Lynch has been back in throughout the month aswell… these songs we’re working on are taking more shape and again, when there’s some nice weather sticking it’s head out, these tunes will flourish  - need to take another special mention for Ellen’s voice and singing ability — i’ve heard loads of people over the years gas certain singers up ‘she’s a star bro’ or ‘she’s destined for greatness bro’ and for the most part it’s just a lot of talk.  Ellen when she sings is just pure natural ability and her musical awareness of notes and intervals is probably unmatched in terms of other singers ive worked with. I feel guilty for doing a few takes and saying ‘yeah that’s it’ but truth be told, i only do a few takes just to see what happens, 99/100 we could easily use her first take and it’d be flawless. makes the job easy.

For one of my lessons teaching at Spirit Studios this month I had a ‘guest lecture’ - my first choice was Martin, who owns VIBE and has been the best mentor/sounding board/tech help/morale boosting ‘boss’ any audio professional could wish for, so i was made up when he said he’d do it.  It didn’t disappoint.  I was conscious of making sure there were some good, tangible nuggets of wisdom that would be new to the students, so i set the discussion off about what is probably the most valuable skill when working as a producer/engineer in the studio… musical talent? engineering skills? tech knowledge? or people skills.  Safe to say, after lots of stories, anecdotes and hypothetical situations the consensus seemed to be, it’s people skills which matter the most.  Plus Martin offered a really good tip from his old days working in studios with producers… when they were submitting finished mixes to the label, the producer said to get your vocal level exactly where you want it - then, turn it down by a few dB and send that off. The label almost always replies saying they like it but the vocals are too quiet, so then, you whip out your original mix with your vocals exactly where you wanted them and send them that. pure gold.

J.A.S. aka Jasmine Breese, purveyor of the finest sad girl vibes music this side of Blackpool, I’d produced a beat she’s requested, which was quite specific and it was only the past weekend she was posting stories on her instagram of it getting played in a club in Amsterdam - that’s good turnaround.  The v.catchy chorus would’ve 100% been being hummed by the people who were in that club that night the morning after over their breakfasts and whatever else.

Spent another weekend and another couple of days with The Recreation - chipping away diligently at this album, working hard, lots of concentrating and listening, plus some exceptional playing.  When you’ve spent ages listening to guitar tones, handling a 4 mic + 1 D.I., two amp set up with stereo out hardware reverb units and control room pedal configurations going… it’s easy to forget about the actual playing.  But there’s been no shortage of high class, focused musicianship going down since we began recording this LP.  lots of application and skills.

Special shoutout to my friend Lionel, who brought his band, Vinyl Williams to Manchester on their UK leg of their big european tour - i’ve been a huge fan of his music since he started about 10 years or so ago, and as far as west coast-psychedelic-cosmic-stoner-opal-infused-space-pop goes, there’s literally nobody better in the universe.  Vinyl Williams probably is the most accurate representation of ‘my kinda shit’ all distilled into one sound than any other band are, so to see it all upclose and personal was pretty special. Was good to actually see him in person and briefly catch up too.

Another solo artist Ben Krink came into the studio aswell, we’re working on three singles and we pretty much spent the whole session chasing after specific guitar tones and tracking a few bits of vocals… These songs are going to take extra special care when it comes to tones and sonics and Ben has got an amazing ear and awareness of what he wants and how he hears his music. Looking forward to seeing how these ones turn out.

Aerial Salad were back in, another band working on another album - however this time, rather than let Mike and Jamie go wild in the loud control room, tracking guitars and bass at the same time, in a live and loose manner without headphones, just jamming to the drum track pretty loud through the PA, i called an exec decision and rigged up the bass amp and guitar amp in the live room, but took all the pedals and guitars and shit into the control room — then i was just like, right we need a nice clean tone for this bit, ok let’s double that, ok now let’s turn this pedal on and put some heavy guitars in this bit, lets do some feedback here, lets play that other bit again but with this mad reverb on.  Plus there were lots of the usual reverse guitar shit going down with mad drum loops, space echo feedback and nuke-style limiting of random ambient mics. some extremely cool music is being produced here.

So picking up where I left off saw some more mixing sessions with Baby Daisy - which was kinda cool, because through my earlier years working on loads of rap and hip hop and bits of dancehall and reggae, i’ve got loads of experience of dropping samples and sound effects and just blatantly mixing them dead loud and stuff, and those skills kinda came back into use here, as we decided rather than fill up Daisy’s raunchy sax-led-pop with more lyrics and melodies, i suggested a bit of spoken word at the start and end? it would work well with the whole tik-tok trend of people badly miming along to clips from the shawshank redemption or whatever - and then Daisy had the idea of a door knocking sound effect and trying to place the listener, backstage, at a burlesque show, while all the performers get told they’re on stage in a matter of minutes. It’s very theatric and dramatic, but It turned out sounding dead cool.

One of the final sessions of the month was Toby - of the initial three singles we worked on, we only had vocals to ‘redo’ for the 3rd and final single - however, feelings of doubt crept in, lyrics got changed, melodies altered, bits got redone - but did we make it any better? or did we just make it different?  a classic case of an artist, musing on the products of their expression for maybe a touch too long and letting their own ruthless, inner self critic dismantle the inner workings of a song and try to reassemble it.  I thought it was fucking dangerous how it was originally and i also found it hard to tell whether the new bits that had been changed were good, better, worse or just victim of a classic case of ‘demoitis’ - had i heard the original too many times and that was stuck in my head? and if so, was that bias preventing me from judging these new bits fairly? it was hard to tell, as it always is, so we decided to pause things as they were concerning this third track, formulate a whole new plan, and to dive straight into some new songs.  solid solution.

so that was March, 25% of 2022 dealt with. can't believe i'm gonna be typing up loads again in another 3 weeks.