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nigelgodrichproducer · 1 year ago

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The Mix Interview from 1997

[just reproducing this classic interview here for posterity's sake - original credit goes to the amazing citizeninsane.eu site]

RADIO DAYS - Andrea Robinson From a student at SAE, to freelance engineer, to producing Radiohead's Number 1 album OK Computer, Nigel Godrich has taken a career path many would like to emulate. Andrea Robinson meets the latest production prodigy.

"They say you can be in the right place at the right time", says Nigel Godrich, pondering the nature of success. The affable 26 year old producer/engineer is having a taste of it after co-producing OK Computer with Radiohead, producing the critically acclaimed debut album from Silver Sun, and engineering for McAlmont and Butler.

"I've been lucky enough to be able to pick and choose. The Radiohead thing is all to do with just meeting them, getting on with them, and having a good vibe. It's been a godsend. I don't really enjoy being in studios anymore, and Radiohead have never really enjoyed recording. So it was quite an interesting thing, because we got together and ended up outside, not in a studio, we ended up in a country house."

Seven years ago, the picture was somewhat different. A former student at SAE (School Of Audio Engineering), Godrich was employed at the now defunct studio complex Audio One. It's not a time he has fond memories of. "I was literally a tea boy. It was a five-floor building, and I had a pager. All day it would be like, 'three teas and two coffees in studio one please', and I was like, 'I hate this, I hate this'. I remember sitting there, thinking, 'I'm on the fucking bottom rung of the ladder, this is terrible'. And telling myself, 'I've just got to stick with it', because I knew I was going to have to go through something like that."

When Audio One closed, Nigel was taken on at RAK, a studio frequently used by award-winning producer John Leckie, and this was to be his workplace for the next four years. It was through Leckie that he got involved with Radiohead.

"John uses RAK a lot because it's a great studio for recording bands, and I was house engineer there, so I'd known him for years. I tape op'd for him, I engineered a Ride album, a Denim album, and then he asked me if I wanted to do Radiohead." That project was The Bends, a notoriously difficult album for the band to make, described by bass player Colin Greenwood as "eight weeks of hell and torture". Godrich doesn't quite remember that side of it. "I had no responsibility on The Bends, I was just an engineer. For me it was just like, hey, they've gone off to have another meeting, they're all looking a bit stressed out and they all disappear for half an hour." Though he was brought in as an engineer, Godrich also got a taste of producing Radiohead when Leckie was absent.: "John went off to a wedding or something, and we did a load of B-sides. It was like the parents had gone away, and everybody had a really good time. And one of them, 'Black Star', ended up on the album." These tracks would eventually lead to more work with Radiohead, but in the meantime Godrich quit his job at Rak to go freelance, and set up dance studio Shabang with partners Henry Binns and Sam Hardaker: "I didn't go freelance thinking I would have a career, I thought I was going to go and do dance music in my studio." But then the phone started ringing, and six months down the line he found himself engineering and mixing on The Sound of McAlmont and Butler...

"That was a really brilliant experience for me, because Bernard Butler, who was producing, is so talented, and it was very inspiring. One of the things I learned from Bernard was to be a bit more adventurous. He was not a studio guy, but he knew what he wanted. One of the things I don't like about music these days is that it's so polished, you lose the character, the bare grit of it. So if somethings a bit wacky, or untidy, it's good. I think I learned that off Bernard." Godrich continued to work on and off with Radiohead, producing more B-sides including Talk Show Host', from the Romeo and Juliet film soundtrack, which was recorded and mixed in four hours, and 'Help' for the Bosnia War Child charity album, done in five hours.

"Those things are the most inspiring, when you do stuff really fast and there's nothing to lose. We left feeling fairly euphoric. So after establishing a bit of a rapport work-wise, I was sort of hoping I would be involved with the next album." Having had a bad time in the studio with The Bends, Radiohead set about creating their own environment for the making of OK Computer. "Pariophone gave them all this money on spec – a huge outlay, to go out and buy gear. They asked me what they should buy, and three months down the line I found myself sitting in front of all this gear. So Radiohead have a mobile studio now - there's a big mixing desk, two massive racks which you just plonk down, plug 'em in, pull the front off and all the gear is there, and a 2-inch tape machine, and it's great. You've just got the freedom to go anywhere, and that was the idea in the first place."

The first recordings for OK Computer were done in the band's rehearsal space in Oxfordshire.

"There's a lot of fruit farms around there, and they leased out this refrigeration unit, a sort of empty metal box. We set up a little control room and did some recording for a month. About four tracks off the album were recorded in this little tin hut. The idea was to get them while they were still developing the songs, to capture them before they got stale. Sometimes they needed a bit more working out and we got better versions of them later on." The recording of the album then moved onto St Catherine's Court, the Tudor mansion near Bath owned by Jane Seymour, where the Cure recorded their last album, Wild Mood Swings (interview in The Mix, July 1996). The set-up was done with a minimum of fuss -the control room was located in the library, and Godrich and the band opted to preserve the atmosphere rather than treat the room's acoustics.

"For the Cure, the consultant people got this stuff to put round the desk for some kind of deadening, but it looked fucking awful. So rather than using something like that, and having to sit and look at it all day, we just had beautiful lattice windows that we could open, and these glorious gardens, and we could hear what was going on; it was fine."

After setting up, Godrich and the band were left on their own to get on with the recording, without even an assistant engineer or technician to sully the landscape. "This was literally the band, me, and a cook. We were like a bunch of kids. We were like, hey, we can just do what we want, which was the beauty of the situation." Most of the album was recorded live, without letting technology overwhelm the task.

"When you're recording a band, it's a bunch of microphones, a mixing desk, and a multi-track tape machine. That's it. There's a bit of computer jiggerypokery if need be. but basically they're a band, and they play together really well." He recalled the scene: "Everybody's in a big room, like it would be if they were onstage. Everybody can see each other, they've all got their own foldback mixer, so everybody's happy, and they can just play.

"A lot of the time we kept the guide vocal, or the vocals were quite quickly thrown down. 'Paranoid Android', the first single, and a few of the other songs on the album, are one takes. It's the kind of thing where if you get too analytical, you try and create a false atmosphere. The vibe is there when you start doing the track, and that's it, that's how the song should be sung, because Thorn's bouncing off everything else, reacting to the bare elements. If you then try to create this false atmosphere where 'okay, now we're gonna do the vocal, you go out there and sing it', it's always going to be a bit weird." Vocals were recorded alternately with a Neumann valve 47, and an Australian Rode valve mic, through a Urei 1176 compressor, and a Pultec valve EQ on a few things.

"With months of hindsight, I actually think the Australian mic is a bit too bright, but if it's a good performance, that's it. Maybe the vocal sound suffered from the fact that it was occasionally just thrown down, but I don't think so."

He displays a similar attitude when it comes to the recording of guitars.

"It's just really, really basic. I'm not particularly anal about miking up guitars and stuff, as far as I'm concerned you stick an SM-57 in front of the amp and it is what it is. If the sound is good out of the amp then it'll sound good. And more importantly, you just want to get everything set up so everybody can play! My engineering may not be the most refined of anybody's, but I have learned that that's not what it's about. It's not about getting the most hi-fi sounding thing, what makes a good record good is the vibe, and how everything just falls together."

The band did have a sampling and sequencing set-up, although loops were used only on 'An Airbag Saved My Life'.

"It's made up of lots of drum loops of Phil playing. It's all a bit sort of tatty; it's roughness is it's strength. The rest of the tracks are live; if there's a sample its a sound that we made, or a sound that Thorn found and had an idea to use."

As for click tracks, they were used for establishing tempos on some songs, and then switched off. "Obviously clicks will hold you back, expression wise. They're useful as a tool, but they can take the performance out of it."

Recording was onto Otari MTR-90II two-inch: "When you're recording a band, two-inch is great, 'cause you can wobble it about and cut it up and that is like another part of recording. I do a lot of two inch editing. With analogue tape you can do whatever you want with it, you can throw it on the floor, you can record it too hot and you know it sounds okay."

Godrich's editing skills were tested on 'Paranoid Android', with its three distinctive sections.

"The heavy sections in the middle and at the end are similar musically, but they were recorded months apart. With the middle section we did different versions of It, and then ended up with the one. And I managed to stick the whole thing together so it runs from one piece of 24-track tape. So I'm sitting there going, "I'm a fucking genius, I can't believe I've done this, I can play the tape from beginning to end and it all works." It wasn't really difficult, but it was really good fun. I had my littie engineering hat on, and was feeling really proud of myself."

One concession to digital technology was made in the form of a Pro Tools system, which was used for tidying up little mistakes. "It's been really handy", he admitted. "But again it's something that you have to learn not to use. Because when we first got it, I was trying to do this and that with it, and ended up sitting in front of the thing for two days. And everybody gets pissed off, and you lose the feeling that you're excited about something. The trick is to do something fast enough and then keep going so you can't get bored with the thing you've just done. You just go and go and you don't stop, and when you go back later and look at what you've done, you can say this one doesn't work but that one is great. The best times have all been really fast, with everyone that I've worked with." While co-producing an album with a band that has a reputation for being moody might bring out the whip-cracking tendencies in some producers, Godrich firmly shuns the role of dictator. He explained why.

"It's just not the right way to work. With Radiohead, we all shared the responsibility for producing the album. It was kind of like mob rule, if everybody was pissed off, we stopped. Everyone was there doing their bit, but my bit just completely covered the technical side as well. I've spent a lot of time in studios, and seen records being made a hundred different ways, so when they were looking for the right way of doing something, I was there to push them in a certain direction." Although he is a guitarist himself, he took a back seat when it came to musical decisions on this project.

"Thom and Jonny are so talented, and between them they took care of that. Part of my role was to not tread on their toes. It's a funny dynamic when you have something that works. It's a real fine balance, and in a way personality management is quite a big part of what I do. When you have a group of people in close proximity, trying to be creative, it can be difficult. With every band I've ever worked with, that's always been the case."

When it comes to mixing, Godrich confesses that this is not his favourite phase of a project. He said: "I feel like I get too into it. I start fiddling with things and I fuck it up. At the end of the day it's okay, but I much prefer the recording." The Neve rooms at Mayfair and Air in London were the studios of choice for this project. Of Mayfair, he said "I've done a lot of work there, because for some reason stuff comes out sounding more exciting. A lot of the time you find in studios you make stuff sound really rrrr! and when you take it out, it's toned down. "I generally take about half a day to do a mix. If it's any longer than that, you lose it. The hardest thing is trying to stay fresh, to stay objective. It's so hard to let it all go and become a listener. But when I hear things, months later, I just think, oh, that's fine. You have to, otherwise you'd shoot yourself."

"With Radiohead, the vocals are obviously important, but I haven't used much processing, just a bit of plate reverb, or a short delay. Some singers just have a great tone, and he's one of them, so it's not hard work. The vocals haven't ended up very loud because it's not a pop record, but it's something I'm very conscious about. I'm always thinking, can you hear what he's saying, because his lyrics are so great."

For monitoring, the studio standard Yamaha NS10's were used, as well as Godrich's own Acoustic Energy AEl's. "The NS10's are a tool; they don't sound nice, but you know what you're listening to. People say I mix loud, but with the NS10's if you turn them up too loud, they're just so bright that you can't tell what the hell's going on. With the AEl's, they're nice to listen to, they sound like my hi-fi at home. They've brought out a newer version with very bright tweeters; mine have the old tweeters, and I'm worried I'm going to bust one, 'cause that'll be it.

"I don't use the big monitors in studios for anything, because they don't really relate to anything. Unless you work in a studio a lot and you know what they sound like, they're fairly useless. They're sort of like...you wanna hear the bass? Put on the big speakers, if somebody's complaining."

And what does Godrich have to say about OK Computer? "It's one of those records that requires some investment from the listener, rather than songs that you get immediately and then get bored with. You have to listen to it a few times, and then the payback is larger. Compared to The Bends it's fairly uncommercial, it's definitely a step sideways, but it's the right thing for them to do. As a band they're very innovative musically, and in their approach to everything they're very open minded. It's an art to them, and that is so refreshing to be around because with the guitar thing people always wanna go backwards.

"I'm so uninspired by the rebirth of the guitar band. It's been a double-edged sword. There's much more innovative stuff in dance music now, but a lot of the guitar pop around at the moment is seriously bad. I would never ever name a name, but," he paused, "I'm lucky to be able to choose not to do a lot of stuff." Silver Sun are another guitar band to receive the Godrich touch; he produced their critically acclaimed debut album, which was released in May.

"They're a great band, they're really quirky, but the guy writes loads of serious three minute pop songs with Beach Boys backing vocals. He did these demos that got him the deal on his home 8-track, and they just sound ridiculously over the top, messy but in a great way, really trashy and dirty. So the brief was to try and recreate that, as well as just to sort of bring it back into listenable territory, and I think we did it quite well."

He's also worked with the Sundays, one of his favorite bands, mixing a track, 'She' for their forthcoming album. "I did one mix for them, but I felt I couldn't really bring anything to it. I'm too much of a fan, and I just wanted it to sound like their other records. So I'll just have to go and buy the album when it comes out."

As for the future, Godrich has turned down a couple of offers while waiting for the right project to come along. "I hate the whole idea that you do work because work is there", he said. "I've got to be really into something to do it, otherwise I would find myself in the position I was in five years ago where I worked for a studio and I felt 'this is a job.' "I'd love to do somebody unknown, for some band from nowhere who I could get on with, and who were good, to inspire me. As far as established bands go, I know something will come. Whatever is right will happen. What I really want to do is make records that people will remember."

His current listening favorites are Pavement, the new Supergrass album, and Joni Mitchell "because I always listen to Joni Mitchell." So it seems that it is possible to be a rising record producer and still be a fan.

"Oh yeah, absolutely. I think that's because I look at what I like and I look at what I do, and I'm just striving to get the two together. I just react to people performing good songs well, and that's something that's going to stay with me." OK COMPUTER KIT LIST MTA series 980 and Soundcraft Spirit 24 Otari MTR 9011 2-inch analogue multi-track Tascam DA88 digital multi-track Digidesign Pro-tools Project 8 track Studer A80 2-track Panasonic SV3800 DAT Neve 33609 Limiter URE11176 compressors Palmer Stereo speaker simulator Drawmer DS201 Noise Gate Pultec PEQ1A valve EQ AMSDMS1580 stereo sampling delay AMS RMX16 reverb Yamaha SPX1000 effects Mutronics 'Mutator' envelope filter EMT 140 Plate analogue reverb Macs running Cubase Akai S3200 sampler Emu and Roland sound modules Mellotron and Moog analogue keys Movement analogue drums Yamaha NS10m and Acoustic Energy AE1 monitors

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nigelgodrichproducer · 1 year ago

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Idles and Kenny Beats on Tape Notes, plenty of Nigel talk

Transcribed some of the relevant bits from Mikko, Kenny and Bowen (apologies for small errors w/ spelling and there are jumps in paragraphs so it's not the continuous conversation):

Kenny Beats:

“I was kind of in shock and I took it as like, Oh, you guys are making a record with Nigel. And they were like, no, you're coming. And I was like, how does this all work together? Yeah. I don't think anyone knew actually. Miko masterminded this whole thing.”

Bowen: “We had just done the, from the basement and we just had a really good time, didn't we? Yeah, it was great. I know it's a really incredible, like I love. Yeah, and then I met Mikko. at a festival in France. Yeah. He was doing Sign for the Smile and he said, I think Nigel wants to work with you guys. And I was like, no, no more people getting involved. Like I'm done with these big producers with their fancy ideas. And then, and then I was kind of like, it is Nigel Godrich, isn't it? Like it would definitely be worth doing. Yeah.

Mikko And then I told Nigel as well, you know, I think they want to work with you.

Bowen: Because I said to Nigel, I was like, I met him for lunch and was like, so I hear you want to work with us. He's like, no, I think Mika wants to work with us. Yeah, I'm fine. Yeah. But you managed to make it happen and convinced all parties to do it. Absolutely. And then did this mean, because I know that you recorded a lot in London, in Nigel's studio in Brixton. So did you come over for that, Kenny?

Kenny: I was there for, I think, two days, I was already in London for some shows of my own and some other sessions and they had just started kind of the pre-writing process with Miko and Nigel and I went over there and I think actually some of the stuff that ended up on Monolith got recorded the days I was there. Yeah, and gospel. And gospel, yeah, so I was actually seeing pieces of things that I just thought were maybe demos or the start of ideas or them kind of getting comfortable with Nigel and Mikko and their process and really it ended up being like some of the coolest things on the record were getting made in those kind of pre-session days or some of the most influential things for the record.

Bowen: What it was really was that like with this album, what I wanted was the production to be really involved in the writing process. What we normally do is we have a load of songs and then I go to Kenny and go, this is the vibe and I'll reference some stuff and then we'll kind of work on like, you know, that's how we did Crawler and we'll work on stuff. And then the vibe of the album comes out in how we're processing stuff at the studio and how it's being recorded. You know, like the wood room in real world was a big thing on crawler and the drums sounded in there. Whereas with this one, what I really wanted was as we were writing the music, it was sounding like we were intending, but also all the mistakes and all the accidents were also coming up and then we were vibing off that and responding to that with the writing, rather than those beautiful accidents that occur in the recording studio just being an artifact that we then embrace in the song. We then used this artifact to then go and write the rest of the song and to finish it. The other thing was that with Nigel we were using a lot of tape loops and it was all about kind of like there was a lot of discovery going on through that. And it's all these like broken bits and accidents that by and large is how we've written before. Like, I mean, our music isn't like accomplished. Normally, you know, it's all about the accidents. The best bits are the squealy bits in the guitar, the chaos and the drums are, you know, just dev in general. Um, so yeah, so it was just about like kind of having those bits and capturing them and then seizing upon them. So that was really, that was the big difference on this album was that everything we were writing was being recorded. And it was also kind of like blossoming out into something else as it was going, which was great. And it all evolved. Yeah. Right. It was also chaos as well. So like from those recording sessions, from those like writing sessions in Brixton, we had like, I don't know, 20 something pieces. They're all just skeletons. We didn't have any songs and the ones that we actually had that were like full songs, we scrapped.

So you're just making that up on the spot in reaction to what was happening?

Bowen:

Yeah. On whatever keyboard you had to hand? Yeah. There's an organ and then this high Prophet [synth]. That's a bit of Nigel Magic there. That prophet. It's just that little thing that just makes it incredible. Oh! Baritone. This was one of my favourite things ever. This tremolo got automated by hand. I think, I think Nigel might've done the performance. Yeah. But this whole, yeah, this was all Nigel doing a take, automating it by hand as it went of, I think Lee, was that Lee or was that you? Lee playing that. It was Lee. Yeah, it was like, it was a take of Lee and Nigel was doing the tremolo as we went and it added, it kind of was the moment where it came together for me, cause there was something missing in the big bits for me, because the fills felt so big, Joe felt so big, the chords felt so big, but. I don't know, there was different versions of guitar stuff going on and nothing quite met it and something about the tremolo having this like rubato thing that doesn't fit in perfectly. It added so much. It was too on the nose for that kind of like big soul kind of chorus. And again, it's that thing we wanted to take something that was recognizable 50s, 60s pop soul music, but do something that is alien and they're robotic and a bit weird and wrong.

Bowen: Joe's a very tender person. He's a very caring like friend. He's a very like soft person often. And that hasn't really come across until this album. And I think he's really, you know, expressed something very tender and melancholic that is beautiful in the vocal on that. So yeah.

Kenny: We gotta give it to Nigel. Joe would give it to Nigel too. Cause there was times where Nigel would say to him, how can someone else sing this song? [Someone] that's not you. Cause with Joe, he is such an unreal performer and he can walk in and just give you this thing that like is one only he can kind of do, especially when it gets to like big scary Joe mode. There's not a lot of people that can compete with that. And there was times where Nigel didn't push him to be vulnerable or push him to be more of anything, just saying, what's another way you could do this? And I like always worked in a way with the band where the way Bowen produces the band and them is that their own thing that they've had since day one, but the way I've always worked with them is just championing everyone's ideas no matter what they are. And so a joke comes to me and says, this is the song. This is how I'm saying it. This is about my child, my life, my parent, whatever these huge topics. I never say, well, can you do it different? Well, can you try it this way? Like I don't do that. I don't do that with when Bowen comes to me with these batshit, insane Ableton I just say, you know what, you guys have made so much stuff that I love that I'm just gonna trust this. Yes, let's do this. You know, what's the worst case? We'll delete it. But it was really, really, I don't know. It was just like such a shock for me to see Nigel say those things to Joe. And then Joe have to reassess something that he had decided was a fact. This is what that song is. And then Joe and I would go in there and it wasn't easy. It wasn't like he went right back in and goes. Oh, here's a falsetto version of a big tough song, but this was a process throughout the album of him finding a new fifth or sixth character for Joe that we haven't heard yet, because we've heard soul Joe on other albums. We've heard bark Joe, we've heard, you know what I mean? Vulnerable poetic Joe. And now some of the things you hear like on songs like grace and on gospel and on monolith, it's almost more powerful than his most typically powerful moments. because of the restraint. And I do think that like conversations with Nigel were big moments there, you know, and Joe would agree with me 150%.

Kenny [on Pop Pop Pop] And so, sorry, the drum, is the drum from an actual bit of John's drumming or is it a loop created? It's two, I believe. I think it's, it's a first clip of John that like, I think Joe kind of mouth like exactly what the beat was. John played it and then there's a separate tom fill that Nigel layered. So what you're hearing there is either me or Nigel playing drums. Yeah. But in the final version, it's two layers of, of John from a, from tape loops that Nigel kind of created. Yeah, that, that was a sick bit.

Kenny: We had a listening with all of us in LA to some of the demos. And then me and Nigel had a separate, just me and him listening day where we were both voicing our concerns with if these would be songs or what was happening. And Nigel played me that and him and I were both just like, no matter what, there's something here and it was one bass note, it was one bass note with the harmonic kind of. And I think there was kind of like the set, there's like maybe two layers of bass that were on the initial initial demo, but it was one note of bass and one drum loop, but it's something about it was like, there's something here. There's something amazing here. But I, but me with so many years of making rap beats and making short loops, I instantly have a fear of not having a B section, not having another piece of the sample to chop, not having another variation of the phrase, cause I know how boring something can get if it's not the best vocal performance you've ever heard when it's that simple. So I think we all got to this point where it was like, is the bass with the feedback in the cool drum thing enough to keep focusing on it after weeks of it just being that?

Bowen: Yeah. So we had the base feedback and there was like these different harmonics. And then we started to create these chords from it that then became the chords across the bed. But at first they sounded bad when it was all feedback. I remember there being trying to the idea of feedback chords came up.

Kenny: And if you know Lee and Bowen, like feedback chords is something that you would have thought would have came up three albums ago, cause they use feedback in a very artistic way. And every album has a whole day of just feedback takes of just playing through the songs, the loudest they possibly can not replaying parts, just to kind of. Fill in bits and here and there. I've never seen anyone do anything like that, but they came up with this idea and the feedback actually against each other. sonically was really hard to read and even hard panned on different sides, one note at a time with a bunch of EQ. It didn't create this kind of big, full kind of cloud thing that I think we were hoping for. And we had a phrase between like the band and I that started the day that this song kind of got figured out, which was, there was a night where there was all this feedback stuff on the computer. People had tried a bunch of different kind of overdubbed versions of what this idea is and Nigel started to kind of do it his way. And he almost was kind of, I think, frustrated with all of us. It was kind of just like, it was, it was kind of like a, “Move!” kind of vibe and walked over, he added a few different things to it that were already things that were in there harmonically, but played different ways and done different ways. And me, Lee.

And Bowen, I kid you not, jumping up and down, like running around the back of the room in La Fabrique, but trying not to let him hear us. So we're like pushing each other, but we're both like, shh, because we're so excited hearing what he's doing. And Nigel walked up to the computer, sat right there for 15 minutes and just started shifting all the feedback, all of the things that he kind of put in. And we were like really punching each other, like what is happening. And we called it full Nigel. So from then on, it was like.

He's going full Nige. Yeah. That was the first time.

Bowen: So yeah, what it was, was like we were, we were at one point and I think Joe had gone to bed and I was like, pop up, pop needs more chords. So we got the Prophet up and I just started playing, trying to find chords. And I was just playing lots of different stuff. Yeah. And Nigel was just grabbing it all. And I was just like, yeah, yeah, yeah. Couldn't like, you know, I was, I was playing all these different like wo note things, three note things, trying to like really expand out and do lots of different stuff. But always a note that isn't already there. I remember it was always like, what note isn't there that could be there. And that kept going on. So like how many notes can fit. And then Nigel just like took it and chopped it all up and put it in. And we were all going, what?

Kenny: To me it was so exciting to see someone who grew up programming drums and doing so much on a computer with samples, because you think of a guy like Nigel as someone who was like this purist, you know what I mean, guy who records bands and instruments in this way, and is basically chopping samples, you know what I mean? He was taking just these little bits of all these recordings that were kind of inconsequential, and he was arranging them in a way where I think there was an eight or nine minute version of it. And we were arguing that it has to be that, because we couldn't figure out where the fat was after Nigel had put it all together.

Mikko and Kenny: This is just all different kind of prophet tracks that have been cut off and put together. So these are all the different prophet things that Bowen worked on and other people worked on, then this is Nigel's rearrangement of all these into some kind of form, layered in with feedback also. Right. So it becomes kind of hard to tell on first listen for people. What's real feedback? What's a Prophet? Where does one thing end? Where does one start? Yeah, we had the profit going for a big muff as well. So that's giving all those kind of distortion overtones there.

Kenny: That's how the outro became such a long thing. You know what I mean? Where the drums end and the song has two or three minutes left. And a lot of people are like, it's done. And then before Joe speaks again, there's minutes of time to just feel it. Cause it really had the sound bath thing. And like that night.

It kind of went from like, oh, it's just a loop to this is maybe what this record is. Yeah. And I think it was a moment with pop where we all knew we had the right team. We all knew there was something there. We all knew we were getting to it and going to find it. But the first few days it wasn't found specifically in any one song. It was kind of like, when are we all going to be like on the edge of our seats and the morning after everybody heard it.

And we weren't exaggerating and everybody felt it in that way. And it re invigorated me on so many other songs. Cause I was like, Oh, this is what this record is. And when Joe and I took our simplified version, a lot of times, like I'd go to Mikko behind the scenes while Nigel's with the band and say like, Mikko, can I get. Guitars is one stem base one stem. You don't need to give me Mike balances. It can be rough. Give me all the drums, all the guitar, all the bass is one thing. And then let me go with Joe. I'll see if I can get a vocal.

And I would go to our room and Joe, especially on this song was like, it needs to feel like me at the club when I'm this age and it needs to feel like this record and needs to feel like, like old jungle and garage and whatever. And so he keeps telling me, turn the drums up, turn the drums up, distort the bass more that it, and I'm in a zone where like, I don't want to like mess up like Nigel's amazing recordings and go back to Nigel and playing something with like a cheap distortion plugin on these like U 47 recorded guitars through vintage amps and all these things. It's like, I was nervous, but Joe's telling me, if you want me to perform on this, I need those stems to get all types of mangled. And so I would do versions of the songs just for him to record to, then take all my processing off and play the original instrumental with Joe's vocal for the band. But this time I played my processed version of pop, pop, pop, in its simplest form. And I did the same thing to the drums that I would have done for a Denzel Curry album, or you know what I mean? Like a rap album I'm working for where I did all this kind of like faux drum machine compression and this and that.

And Nigel heard the drums and was like, Oh no, we got to leave them like this. And it blew my mind as this guy who like mixes on vintage consoles and records this way, this and that, that my plugin bastardized version. was he was so excited about it. And it felt like pop was a moment where everybody kind of found their place in the record, definitely myself included, but also found what the record meant. And it's like such a core memory for me.

Bowen: You're right. Completely. This gets to the essence of what the, the album was, but also how the trio of producers work together. Because we had Nigel going full Nigel. We had Kenny going, Full Kenny. Like, you know, if you hear the vocal ad libs, they're like, fae, fae, fae, fae, that bit, that's all Kenny, that's pure Kenny. The drums, pure Kenny. The big filter bit when it comes in. That's some of the fills, we chop the drums. Yeah. Like that, da, da, da, boom, the bit where it comes back in. Like everyone went Phil Kenny. And then we got like, you know, I did the Apex twin crawler machine thing on the drums and that kind of end bit. And it's just where everyone kind of like.

Kenny: The guys were pushing it. I was pushing it and Milkko was 10 steps ahead of us. So it's like, it really felt like that was the first time we all knew where to go and how, and that we didn't have to compromise. Cause there was definitely this like, this new thing with Nigel of insane reverence and respect. And kind of like the boys being in this position of like, man, we have this view of this record, but we also have this immense respect for Nige. And how do we push our ideas without compromising at all. And then also listen to the guidance, you know? And during this one, it was kind of just like, Nigel became one of the boys during Pop, Pop, Pop. Like Nigel, like there was no conversation and he did exactly what they would have dreamed of that song becoming. And it was just like, I don't know, we found it there.

Bowen: Pop, Pop, Pop was, again, for me, this is something we haven't really spoken about yet, but like, there was a lot of baggage brought to working with Nigel in that like, He's one of the greatest producers of all time. Yeah. And he's changed music like twice. And like, you're trying to show him demos and you're like, I can't show that Nigel Godrich, that's terrible. Or like, you know, you just, you put so much pressure on yourself to write like the greatest thing ever. And then you kind of, you get insecure and you lose confidence and you kind of don't want to, you kind of just like, okay. And so pop-up pop was where I started to feel confident in just, you know, going, all right, can you hook up the crawler machine? I want to do these drums. And I didn't have to like, you know, “Nigel mate, I've got this idea.” And he was into it as well. And that was the sick thing. Everyone kind of opened up and just kind of became cool with each other.

And then I think it probably should have stayed an instrumental ending, but we, Joe did this poem thing, the spoken word bit at the end. And we recorded that actually that's a cool bit, Miko was going to say. We recorded it with a head. So it's binaural and we did, uh, we played it through a speaker in Nigel studio and there's a van drives past just at the perfect bit. It's so sick. Also the, the [AMS] delays. Remember the delays? Yeah.

And it's really hard to say, cause like, look, there's lots of beautiful gear all around us, but like everything is about how you intuitively respond to what you've got and what your limitations are, every piece of equipment that Nigel Godrich owns is broken. It's idiosyncratic. It has its own flavor. You can buy the same thing as Nigel Godrich and it won't be the same thing. It's not going to have it. Also, you're not Nigel Godrich. You're not Kenny Beats. You're not Mark Bowen. You're you. And you've got intent within you and you've got incredible insight that doesn't matter. It doesn't matter what the gear is. Use what you've got. Yes, get excited about new stuff because a new piece of equipment

Kenny: Yeah, we have a definite process. This time we used, um, one of Nigel's 47s, which was new for us because I, I've watched Joe break capsules and I've watched Joe annihilate gear in the past whenever he goes full volume. And I had to learn from that. And, uh, shout out to the techs at Real World who fixed a couple of vintage Neumanns for us very fast and very efficiently because I was nervous that Joe would break Nigel's beautiful mic.

And we recorded the whole album on it minus, I don't know, maybe like two or three sections of the whole record. And it was a new process for me because I had to learn how to space him. And I also, I've never had that supersonic hearing that a 47 gives you for that long, for weeks of time. I've used them in doses here and there, but I've never been on a 47 every single day and it, it taught me a lot about Joe's voice that I hadn't learned recording him for an album before that.

And so it was kind of really cool to hear different things out of Joe's voice that I haven't heard, even having such a like process with him for years, like hearing him on that mic so close, being that vulnerable was a new experience and something I have to like take into account whenever I record him from now on, you know, cause I never knew he could do that or heard him sound like that before. He really responded to that mic. Big time.

Mikko: We compressed him hard on the way in, right. And we had a lot of top end EQ on there. So it was just, you know, getting all that like presence there when you really respond. ..1176 was a compressor. 1176. And then we're using a API EQ 560 to just like 12K, just like all the way up basically.

Kenny: Tube tech is not going to do it for Joe, which is usually my go-to for the rap stuff and a lot of other stuff, but Joe needs like a little more room. I had Joe through a distressor one time, cause I was just, I didn't know what else to do with him. I was so scared.

Mikko: 1176 best compressor in the world. I'll just take 10 of those if I can in the studio. That's 1176 is the one… I'm old fashioned when it comes to that. It's like API preamps, Neumann microphones, but the 1176 is probably the one kind of go-to thing because just for me, compression is the sound of popular music, you know, it's not just there to limit the dynamic range. It does something to the transients. It's like 1176. It's almost like tracing out an image and bringing things really forward. And, you know, I just have that across all over this record, basically. Yeah. Very interesting

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