budeboy - buːdbʌiː

Sound of Jura studio space

I can’t really tell you that much about recording studios. I’ve not used them very much. I’ve recorded a lot of music, but I haven’t rented studios much in order to do it.

I’ve already said that I think a recording studio is generally a room with an electricity supply. I’d say that’s about it in terms of solid requirements. The power could come from a battery, and I’ve worked in places where it did, but in general, a metered supply from the mains is dead handy.

One battery driven studio was a place called Ox’s Cross in North Devon, near Barnstaple where I worked in about 1982. It was owned by Harry Williamson, son of Henry, the author of Tarka the Otter and Salar the Salmon. Harry was making music with Gilli Smith of Gong in their project MotherGong. I think Henry had built the place. A big house he never slept in really and a timber lodge that he’d used as his dwelling, which became the recording studio after he passed. There was a shed in the garden where he sat and wrote the books. 

And there was no mains electricity, but there was a generator and a rack of batteries. The generator provided power you could rehearse with, but if you had it in mind to run the tape machine, you had to go over to the batteries, because the 50HZ flutter on the tape transport was very audible. Batteries gave you 3 hours, until they started to flag and the tape speed dropped. Not long by today’s standards for many things. Especially lengthy mixing sessions.

Some people build studios. More power to their elbow. I decided not to do that, but to adopt the ‘find a room and plug everything in’ strategy instead. Mainly on the basis that, if I had creative energy, I’d rather use on making the music than on building a room to to make it in. This doesn’t mean that you don’t mess about with equipment and layouts and so forth, but if you can get avoid the construction project, then that’s a lot of time and energy saved. 

So my studio is in the classroom of an old, one room 19th century school. It had been substantially renovated by the couple we bought it from, to become the massive living room of their house. As a potential music making space, it was irresistible, and with a little nifty carpentry, I knocked up a small control room in the space where the old cloakroom was. Took about a week, and I was in business.

When I was recording in London, I worked in my house, either in the bedroom, where a couple of my kids were borne too [!!] or later in a spare bedroom which I could turn into a small ‘project’ studio. There was little to talk about in terms of a genuine acoustic, and I had little interest or more importantly, budget for   experimenting with microphones in order to work with those acoustics. My own particular dogma has been to move air in order to get the sounds for the records. Factory sounds, and synthesised sounds rarely get a look in - so this led to a predilection for tampering with the organic sound until a desirable sound design had been arrived at. It could often involve lots of processing. On the other hand, my compadre[s] and I would also go and find acoustics in which to record sounds for further use - railways tunnels and stations, factories, vans, churches. Often gathered on a pair of Tandy PZMs, or an adaptation of Tchad Blake’s in-ear technique. The results of all this are out there to be found. I’ll point out a few of the places at some point

I think this has all come about because Carlos Seixas, a redoubtable and genial mainstay of the Portuguese music scene, a Womexican and a gentleman, had an enduring penchant for an album I produced on Jura in 2010 for Albert Kuvesin & Yat Kha called Poets and Lighthouses. 

Then, in the middle of 2014, I got a message from Carlos to tell me about a young Angolan singer who wanted to make a new album, and he thought my studio [aka front room] on Jura might be the place. Ideas, CDs, links and thoughts were exchanged in Santiago de Compostela at Womex ‘14 and, on the basis that I really did think this artist could write a song and sing it, the pot boiling process of getting a project to happen saw it bubble slowly into being.

Anyhow. I’ve just been in Portugal, to pick up where I had left after my first encounter with Aline Frazão, a few weeks ago in Germany. I saw two gigs there that sealed my decision to work on her album. 

The second gig, a solo set in Bremen, was brim full with charm, talent and potential. The first, with a couple of musicians to share the load in Karlsruhe, was a clincher. Taking the stage with Aline was an electric guitarist of diffident and tellingly creative delicacy, Pedro Geraldes from Linda Martini. It seemed that he’d been working with Aline for about a week. It was all a bit up in the air.

I’d fallen for him the moment I saw him turn round in the sound check to reveal his Fender Jaguar. It’s not a guitar you pick to work with because it has the ease and silkiness of a Stratocaster, or the Route 1 directness of a Tele. It’s a confusing and awkward thing in a way. I think it picks you. You don’t have much to say in the matter. Certainly goes for my example, that sought me out in 1979, nearly as old as they get, September 1962. Despite being Fender’s top of the range instrument once, it remains a curate’s egg of a guitar. A jangling, plinking, throbbing, shattering obliterator of all conventions that are AXE. It casts shards of sound one minute and washes all mellifluous texture the next. 

It sounds trite, but in a few seconds of watching and listening to him work that instrument, and with a kind of ‘Fellowship of the Jaguar’ welling inside me, and despite the newness of the situation for all concerned, I just knew he’d be the right person to bring to Jura with Aline. I’d gone to Germany with an instinct that I’d have to find a way to bring something with an edge to the music. Here it was, and some - a subtle and tangential foil for her effortless singing and deft nylon guitar playing. Aline is a performer who has charm, intensity, command of an audience and great talent as a singer and musician. All things that are an exciting prospect as a producer. She also has ideas and a deep desire to explore, develop and refine her métier.

So Lisbon. What a city!

At least, I think so. I don’t know, I can find myself being taken round places in such a way that I just don’t get to grips with where I am. Didn’t matter too much though. I spent 4 days in the company of, variously, Aline, Pedro, Angolan wunderkind Toty Sa’Med and film maker Mario Bastos, as we rehearsed, ate, walked and talked our way through a stimulating and thoroughly enjoyable creative sojourn amongst the blooming jacaranda.

A danger in this bloggism is that writing things down somehow fixes them and the fluidity of the creative investigation that one might be recording, and its iterative imperative - the need to make mistakes but move organically and unpredictably forwards - might get jinxed. I’m loathe to report too much on the process, but I’ll say that, for me, one of the most crucial parts of working on the production of someone’s record, and the part where one feels most useful, is in the listening to, reflecting on, responding to, and asking questions about the artist’s intentions with the music.  If, indeed, they even know. Not in the recording environment, but in rehearsal. Production is not all about dialling in reverbs, compressing the fuck out of drums, or knobbing about with Ableton Live or Reason, it’s really also about spending a bit of time with the story and the journey of the artist and their music. 

So, Aline, Pedro and I spent three days on the rehearsal and dissection of about ten songs. There were things to point out, decisions to encourage and a couple, and only a couple, of things to leave to one side. Then, on my last day in the city, we started the recording process proper. Aline told me that my time in Lisbon would coincide with one day when we could have Toty Sa’Med to work with. He’s an old friend and collaborator of hers, and a much touted young talent of the Angolan music scene. He’s got a lot on his shoulders. A rising star with many eyes on him, but essentially what appears to be a free flying musical spirit. It was my job to try and cage it for a few minutes of the new Aline Frazão album. 

I asked that we go somewhere that wasn’t a studio. Could Aline find us a space with some atmosphere that would give something to the record? One day it’ll come out where, but for now, I’ll say that in the middle of a heatwave, we found our way into the subterranean depths of one of the city’s iconic cultural centres to set up a location recording*. We captured a song from Aline and Toty. A piece of magic, at least on the basis of early assessment. We’ll see how things unfold. 

By the way, Aline Frazão is providing her own take on the process, so we’ll see how the accounts tally up. Look out for http://cadernodejura.tumblr.com

....how this goes.

I’m prompted to get this started because...Christ knows, but a few people I respect said it was worth a shot. 

For now, there’s stuff to tell, so I’ll try and do that, and if I run out of steam, then  nobody give me grief. Please.

I’m going to have to go through a preamble here. I don’t think I can plunge into this without it.

I work in music. I have done for years. I’ve done it alongside a rich mix of other things, the biggest of which has been attempting to play my part in the raising of a family. But, they’re far too important to have their affairs dragged into this. We’ll focus on the sound and noise, and see if that gives enough road for this writing vehicle to bump and splutter along. 

That’s a picture of me up there with my guitar. I play guitar, electric guitar really. That electric guitar mainly. You can see there’s a harmonium. An emigrating composer friend gave it to me as he departed for Australia. Now, it’s on every record I’ve made in the room you can see. On Jura. Thanks for that Rick. Your bestowing that thing to me, as we humped it into my camper van, was to be an inspiration to many.

Especially The Mekons. They came here in August last year, and we made their album in about two and a half days, and then they played in the Village Hall. It was mad and bad. And then an equally short ration of time was handed to me to mix the record. It’ll be out soon. I’ll not steal any more thunder from them though, but here’s a picture or two. Lu & Sally, and with his back to us, Eric.