It’s here: http://www.urchinstudios.co.uk/blog

Hope to see you there.

Urchin x

As anyone who’s visited Urchin Studios will testify, it is probably pound for pound the greatest recording facility ever conceived by any person ever. Within its walls no solo is too virtuosic, no ensemble performance too precognitive, no sonic achievement too technical. Dan has even occasionally been seen levitating in the control room during a particularly heady mix.

But some things are even out of Urchin’s lofty grasp, especially when you need to record a quiet cello, a grand piano and a loud drummer at the same time. That’s why Team Urchin headed for Strongroom for the tracking stage of Amber States’ second EP.

If you haven’t checked out Amber States before you really should as they are excellent indeed. Their lead singer Gavin Bell and I met last year in the early hours of an audaciously boozy gathering. He said “I’m in a band”, I said “I’ve got a studio” and after both agreeing that we were “best mates” said we should work together on some “shit” in the future. Funny thing is we actually did and about two weeks later me and The Cox recorded their first EP.

For their second, they wished to track the whole thing (vocal and all) live with no click: proper Old Skool. So we decamped to Strongroom in Shoreditch for the day to do the tracking. Although it is no Urchin, Strongroom does boast a bigger live room, two booths and Neve console which all came in pretty useful for task in-hand. So we stuck the drums in booth 1, vocals and acoustic axe in booth 2 with the rest of the lads (banjo sometimes guitar, piano sometimes organ and cello) in the live room. To get a bit of Urchin magic into the recording we brought with us the Hayman drums a selection of mics and for vibe, a small plastic panda.

While we set up, to keep themselves occupied the boys did some inventive things with nuts, including these ‘cashew fangs’.

Just a tiny example of some of the laughs that were had

Once set-up was complete the boys performed the songs, with no messing about too. We recorded 4, most of them in the first two takes. Right, easy. Then back to Urchin armed only with the task of making them sound good. Which we did.

If you like vintage microphones or subscribe to Tape-Op/live alone, the following photographs might just be of interest.

Hayman with Fet 47 on the toms. Because we can.

Blurry Piano with single U87. Stereo's overated.

Nick Lee with a Hat

A C12 that we didn't end up using.

For more information about Amber States please visit http://www.myspace.com/amberstatestheband

Woody is a really gent and a pleasure to work with. He’s got great feel, a really deep pocket  and despite being not quite as young as he was in ’72 I can quite safely say that he’s the loudest drummer we’ve ever recorded.

Having recorded loads of drummers over the last four year in the same room and on the same drums it never fails to amaze me how completely different they all sound. When Woody started playing there was a quite profound familiarity in the sound, which I guess is no surprise as a lot of the records he’s played on are etched into my musical DNA. Still though, the session was a real reminder to me as to just how dependent the sound of any instrument is down to the person playing it and also how as engineers and producers we need to be flexible with our technical parameters in order to accomodate the best in each individual player.

In an Urchin first and with the spirit of “it bloody well can be done” which excites us so, we recorded the acoustic, vocals and drums at the same time. We’re happy to confirm that it can be done and is sounding great. We were obviously aided by the fact that Andrew is a delicate and sensitive musician and that fact that these two have played with each other loads and know the music intimately.

Here are a few pics.

This is Scott who has the sweetest sounding Martin acoustic. So good in fact that a Martin mahogany acoustic is now quite high on the list of possibly new Urchin acquisitions. Watch this space. Also the combo of SM7 for vocal and U87 for guitar was just lovely.

This is Andrew who, despite the stylistic requirement insisted on using two floor toms and two splash cymbals and managed to make it work. What a lad.

For more information please visit http://www.myspace.com/evanjack

Urchin’s relationship with Lianne goes back a number of years. I first met her when I was playing in the Paloma Faith band in which, she was singing back-up and around then we recorded a few demos. We always kept in contact, became good mates and she decided (to our delight) to record her debut EP with me and The Cox (who I’ve decided needs a better nickname. Suggestions would be appreciated).

One of the reasons we love working with Lianne is not only that she is a fantastic singer, performer and writer, but in the studio she has the most adventurous and open minded spirit when it come to production and the realisation of sound. As an artist she likes her songs to inhabit a world that is significantly left of the Pop bull-eye and loves to experiment with sound to deliver great songs filled with sonic pyrotechnics and audio surprises. As producers this is massive amounts of fun for me and The Cox.

Earlier this year we recorded a cover version of Everything Everything’s Final Form which you can hear below.

Recording this tune was great for us as we didn’t have much time (just over a day) so we had to work fast, get some interesting sounds together, take a few risks without having the problem of having to think about it. Having too much time can be a real achilles heel in the studio. We may have revised our decision to double track and hard pan the drums during the choruses if we’d had longer to think about the logic of that particular decision but listening back, I think it’s one of the things that really makes it. When working quickly you ask yourselves simply, “does this sound good?” And if the answer is affirmative you move on.

Final Form really set the precedent for the latest batch of recording and we continued with a ethos of working quickly, experimenting and trying to get a real sense of our own personal discovery and performance into the recordings which, I really hope we have achieved.

We also discovered a few cool little tricks we haven’t done before, one of which I will share.

One of the tunes we recorded doesn’t have a bass line and we were wanting the kick drum to have a bit more of a low harmonic presence in certain sections. So, and I can’t remember exactly how this actually came about but we ended up putting a really thin head on our 26″ bass drum and tuning it tightly to the key of the song. We then put that drum in front of a 15″ bass amp and re-amped the original kick drum signal (really fucking loudly) through that amp. This made the drum act like a weird sort of reverb chamber which we duly stuck a AKG 414 into, recorded and mixed in with the original to very good effect indeed. The video below does little to capture both the sound and our excitement during this moment but is worth a watch anyway.

We’ll keep you posted for the release. Mx

Fot those not aquainted with Mr Kroft, he’s an artist that the studio has had a very close relationship with over the last few years with myself and Cox having produced his last two albums.

You can find out more about him here

We started recording this second record in January and that was the session which gave us the first single Memoirs From The Afterlife mixed quite beautifully at Konk by Rich Wilkinson.

So the last 10 day session which ended last Friday the 29th (what Royal Wedding?) was us putting the finishing touches to the tracking. There’s a few edits and mixing to do, but the record should be finished in the next few weeks and out later this year.

Here are a few photo highlights of the last session.

Firstly we got in some Neves. Nice.

And some tape echoes. Both of which we used a lot.

This is Ben. He plays guitar and insists on wearing sunglasses whenever he performs backing vocals.

This is the bass man Robbo. He also did a lot of this.

Coles and Fender Deluxe for guitars. Win.

Messy Studio.

At one point during a long session, these wave forms started to resemble slugs. Always a sign that you need to take a break.

Me and Kroft. Hasn’t he got a small head?

I did a session over the last two days with an artist called Tom Leech who is probably one of the least normal musicians I have met (which is a compliment of the highest order if you’re reading Tom). I knew things were going to be interesting early on when, rather than listen to a reference track, he made me watch this video

(Incidentally, you should watch some of the other videos on MahMahAfro3000 channel. The Stars Wars one’s are especially good)

Without wishing to stylistically pigeon hole, I think it’s fair to say the Tom’s not afraid of The Prog. He’s also old skool with everything (literally) being scored out. His comrade, top all round muso Ben Reed was drafted in and rather heroically worked his way through a series of skid mark inducing charts for three tunes on both drums and bass in little over 4 hours. True man, particularly when faced with this sort of shit.

15/16!

He also brought in a 70′s Gibson EBO bass that not only possessed the quality of sounded amazing DI’d though one of the API’s (plus for the geeks: a little bit of compression on the Disstressor, 3:1 on dist 2 peaking around -5db) but also looks like one of the more treasured instruments from Satan’s own personal collection.

Hell yeah

After completing the rhythm tracks in was two days of overdubs (Tom plays Piano and Guitar) exploring a variety of sonic landscapes that are of not of this planet. Love that shit. Come back soon Tom.

It’s a modern trend to try and get shit as loud as possible and there are times when, against a wall of crashing guitars, dizzying synths and other audio pyrotechnics, our little friend the boomy kick drum is going to get his head kicked in. But, as engineers and producers it’s up to us to make any required sound work, and if a drummer comes to our studio and wants a Charlie Watts type sound, a pillow and a tight gate should not be on the menu.

I was speaking to my friend and top technical guru Al Green (who works at Strongroom Studios where he basically fixes everything) and he rightly pointed out one of the biggest problems about recording drums: Stand in front of any good drummer playing almost any kit and, well it’s going to sound good. Stick up close mics and start to listen to elements in isolation and it’s a completely different story: “Hmmmm. There’s too much boing on that tom” or “There’s not enough crack on that snare.” Start tweaking, and before you know it you’ve lost what made the drums sound cool in the first place.

Last week I was fortunate enough to recorded with Ethan Johns (shameless namedrop #1) and was a master class in keeping things simple: beautifully simple. He got some of the most amazing drum sounds I’ve yet heard using only three microphones. And the sounds weren’t lacking in anything: clarity, punch, dynamics, they were all there and to me there’s something elegant in a simple solution.

On a slightly different note I love this recording

Los Lobos – Revolution

Any of these drums sounds in isolation would have many engineers immediately reaching for their drum key and gaffa tape, but in the mix it’s oddness makes it great. (Although the facts that Louie Perez is a funky bastard and that Tchad Blake recorded it should also be taken into consideration).

So praise be the boomy bass drum, God-bless the ringing tom and sing Alleluia to the one mic drum sound. I now worship at the altar of simplicity where we celebrate all audio anomalies.