Archive for the ‘Interviews’ Category

Newer Entries »

Chris Tipton – Founder of Upset The Rhythm Collective

Thursday, August 3rd, 2006

Chris Tipton: innovator and instigator

The UTR collective first came to Sissy’s attention a year or so ago when we found ourselves at one of their events by accident; a friend from the states was in the UK to do a gig and Sissy turned up to see him to find a whole new underground scene that seemed to have evolved organically and was thriving without any corporate involvement. Months later, Sissy managed to get an interview with the collective’s founder, Chris Tipton, backstage at the Luminaire in Kilburn as he prepared for the evening’s gig.

SISSY: How long have you been promoting gigs?

CHRIS: It was about 3 years from last December.

SISSY: How many of you are involved in the collective?

CHRIS: There are about 11 people I suppose. I came back from holiday in San Francisco and Los Angeles; I’d seen a lot of shows over there and saw how differently things worked, how it’s a lot more community based. I came back to London with the idea of setting up some different shows for bands that I really loved. So it was really those two main reasons that got us started; seeing how things were done in the States and going to too many bad shows in London of bands that we liked.

SISSY: So you were the founding member of the collective and the one with the vision?

CHRIS: Initially, yes. But I got lots of friends involved and now it’s a really great community type thing. There’s a main core of about 4 people who book the bands and tours, run the website and mail outs etc… myself and then a whole group who help with the shows, the sound, putting up the bands, promoting the shows etc. We book tours for certain artists because it’s so expensive to come to the UK so if there’s a band that we want to do a show for in London, we usually have to organise a week of dates elsewhere to justify the expense. There’s loads of hidden costs in touring that people don’t see, like work permits and things.

SISSY: How did you all get together?

CHRIS: We’re all of a similar age, and basically we all met through contacts when we moved to London; none of us were from London, we all moved here after university.

SISSY: Are you also a musician?

CHRIS: I think everyone in the collective is also in bands. I think that’s a key thing. I play a bit of drums and some guitar and keyboards.

SISSY: Do you play at the Upset the Rhythm gigs?

CHRIS: We try not to because it’s a bit nepotistic. We try and find shows off our own back through other promoters. We usually end up playing shows that our friends put on in spaces or at clubs and stuff.

SISSY: One-off events rather than established venues like the barfly?

CHRIS: Definitely, we don’t believe in that type of stuff anyway… it’s all kind of corporate and horrible and a bit of a ‘closed shop’ scenario.

SISSY: So would you say that the collective has a political ethic behind it?

CHRIS: Very much so. If anything it started with finding fault with shows that we’d been to in the UK; Gigs with bad line-ups, expensive tickets, inappropriate venues and using soundmen who didn’t know anything about the music. We’re into getting people to come who really want to see the bands, and in the most ideal place possible.

SISSY: With the bands that you book, is there a policy to keep the billing as left field as possible or will you book anything as long as it has an anti-establishment vibe?

CHRIS: I guess the only overriding factor is whether we like it or not. I think we all have pretty left field tastes. We tend to do shows in 3 or 4 veins; we do a lot of noise shows, a lot of free folk stuff and lots of U.S. indie guitar bands, for example tonight we have the Microphones and Casiotone, which are two of the most premier singer-songwriters from the U.S. indie scene.

SISSY: The U.S. indie scene seems to have become a lot artier and less concerned with technicality than it used to be.

CHRIS: I think in the last few years a lot of bands have formed just to have fun playing lots of shows with their friends, not necessarily to be experimental or groundbreaking but just to have some fun.

SISSY: Can you tell me any of your musical influences; what inspired you to get into music in the first place?

CHRIS: My mum and dad got me into music; my dad was into glam rock and my mum was a punk. When I was growing up I thought they were really normal and I didn’t realise, but then I discovered their record collection and it was really good. I suppose I got into music because I wanted to have something in common with other people that pushed back the boundaries. I think everyone involved in the collective is really obsessed with music and with searching out new and different types of stuff. The bands I got into that we first put on shows for in the early days were Deerhoof and XBXRX; I would say they are one of my favourite bands and I saw them play in L.A. just before I came back to the UK

We’re not a profit-making organisation so we don’t take any personal gain from the shows but we try and make the shows pay for themselves so we can attempt riskier ventures. We can afford to bring XBXRX over to the UK and front all the airfare for the shows. It’s a bit of a dream come true because they’re seriously one of my favourite bands. If you haven’t seen them, what they do live is like a dance party kind of thing; it’s guitar, vocals and drums played really free but very rhythmically as well. It’s a bit similar to Magik Markers, but loads more spontaneous and fun because they have balloon cascades, silly string and water bombs. They were hugely influential on why I wanted to put on shows. When I came back to London from the States and went to gigs, everyone was standing 3 metres away from the stage, not clapping and just being too self-conscious. We wanted to try and break down the distance between audience and band. I think it’s all about the space where you do the show more than anything… if it’s somewhere inappropriate it makes you behave differently, though obviously London creates lots of problems in trying to find exciting, unusual places to put on shows.

SISSY: What are the main venues that you put shows on at?

CHRIS: Loads of different spaces; one is Barden’s Boudoir in Stoke Newington. We have a long history with that place. It all came about because we were looking for a space to do a show for a band that are friends of ours, Lightning Bolt, who were over here to do a show at the Electric Ballroom but they wanted a place to do a fun party show. We couldn’t find an appropriate space… no one was into the idea of having a band play randomly on the floor somewhere, and we wanted to keep costs down and make the tickets as cheap as possible, like around £3. One of the collective was talking to this Turkish guy who owns the whole block in the street and he showed us Barden’s Boudoir, which was just an empty basement at the time. We did the Lightning Bolt show there, which worked out really well. A few months later they decided to turn it into a proper venue. We did quite a few shows there and the best thing about the place is that we’ve got to know the guys that run it and they are really cool and let us use it cheaply, which means we can afford to pay the bands more money and perhaps book riskier acts as a result.

SISSY: It just goes to show that if you go into something with the right spirit, others will be happy to get on board and help out.

CHRIS: It’s true; enthusiasm can go a long way to making things happen. We started out with nothing and now we have enough contacts, experience and resources to put bands on tour and pay for backline.

SISSY: Do you still put on shows at Barden’s? And what other venues do you use?

CHRIS: We still do the occasional show at Barden’s Boudoir. We also use this place (the Luminaire in Kilburn) because it’s got incredible sound; the guy who runs the venue called Andy is one of the sweetest people you could meet. He really cares about the bands that play here and hurries around looking after everyone. We don’t do regular nights anywhere, we just put on shows as and when there are bands we want to put on. Barden’s is good for things that are a bit risky and the Luminaire is good for things that are a bit more established because it costs a bit more to hire, it is also good for stuff that requires difficult sound set-ups. We’ve also used a lot of found spaces, like people’s basements. We started off by doing shows in a wine bar on Great Portland Street called Needles. The best show we did there was Deerhoof, which was our first show. They were doing a support tour but need their own headline show, so we put them on and it turned out really hectic! We did six shows in a row there and then it became impossible because the guy who owned it didn’t really understand what being a venue owner was all about and couldn’t see the potential benefits… he preferred two people drinking wine to a packed venue. We were a bit naive about the amount of people that would come to our shows to begin with; for Deerhoof we were really worried, thinking we would only be able to pull about 50 people but then 300 people turned up to this 100 capacity venue!

We’ve also used a Salvation Army hall on Oxford Street… we put on a gig there a few months ago for The Evens which is Ian MacKaye from Fugazi’s band. We’ve also used a few churches for different things as well; one we did was this very reclusive guy from Texas, Jandek, who plays outsider folk music. I find churches are great for certain shows, they don’t really work for loud music because of the natural acoustics but anything vaguely atmospheric works brilliantly. And churches tend to be readily available and staffed by surprisingly enthusiastic individuals. We started off by checking out all the venues in the back of Time Out but soon discovered that most of them are fully booked with club nights or are pay-to-play. Politically we didn’t want to get involved with that, so we were left with 5 or 6 possible venues, which always seemed to be booked up weeks in advance.

SISSY: Would you say your politics extend to other areas of your life as well? Are you anarchists or socialists?

CHRIS: Our politics are part of who we are and what we do. Some of us are politically active but it’s hard to define what we are… we believe in everyone having a really good time so maybe we’re hedonists rather than anarchists! We’re very anti-corporate so all the promoters and artists tend to be doing a similar thing. We’re not motivated by money and we distance ourselves with those who see promoting as a kind of vanity project to make them feel cool because they put on bands. I also feel strongly about elitism in the underground scene – we have a really wide range of people that come to our shows because we work hard to promote our shows to people that might not necessarily come to see certain artists or types of music.

SISSY: Now that UTR has become successful, how will you progress in the future and continue the spirit of it without selling out as it gets bigger?

CHRIS: Next year we’re hoping to do some kind of festival in Central London, which will be a challenge; there’s not many interesting events like that in Central London.

SISSY: It’s true that London is lacking in scenes with the DIY ethic; most small towns have lots of bands all helping each other out and setting up events.

CHRIS: Absolutely… out of London, everyone’s writing fanzines and making mix tapes for each other, bunches of kids supporting each other. I think we’re one of the only organisations doing that stuff in London. There is Eat Your Own Ears and All Tomorrows Parties who are trying to have the same sort of ethic but their focus is more mainstream. When you deal with people from All Tomorrows Parties, you find there is a huge gulf between what we do and what they do even though it seems similar at first glance.

SISSY: Do you have a fanzine associated with UTR?

CHRIS: No we don’t have anything that’s like physically printed matter, just the website. The key things that we’re going to work on in the next few months are, we have videos and photos and written accounts of every single show we’ve done which must be between 60 and 70 by now. We’re going to upload this footage to the archive part of the website. At a lot of the early shows, no one could see the band properly because we didn’t use stages, so we realised we should film it all so people could see it. It’s taken forever to get round to it but we’ll get there soon.

SISSY: As interest in the website rises, will you be tempted to increase revenue by taking advertisements on the site?

CHRIS: It seems unlikely. Any money we make is generated by people’s goodwill and by people coming to shows and it can be annoying to go on a website and be inundated with ads. It doesn’t really fit with out ethic, though I’d have no problem with promoting artists, independent stores etc.

SISSY: What are your other future plans?

CHRIS: As well as the festival we plan to do, we’ll be working with the art magazine Frieze in October to curate the music programme for the Frieze Art Fair. It’s the biggest thing we’ve done by a long way and it is really exciting. But it is all a bit secret at the moment!

SISSY: Do you have a label associated with UTR?

CHRIS: We do; we’re on our 8th release now and it has been an honour to work with such fantastic artists.. Rough Trade always put our records on their shelves. We distribute in UK, Europe and the US through Southern Records Distribution. The label is now on an equal footing with the promotion in terms of our priorities.

SISSY: What do you think the effect of the development of the internet has been?

CHRIS: I think it’s been great; having a mailing list has been the most helpful thing ever. To start with we’d just email our friends about forthcoming gigs and that grew until it took 3 or 4 days to email everyone on the mailing list. Now we’ve had to bite the bullet and buy some software to do it automatically because we have several thousand names now. It’s been great to have a website so we can tell people about bands and they can click on links to the band’s websites and hear their music. It’s a good way of hearing stuff you wouldn’t usually listen to.

……………….

After the interview, Sissy stuck around to see some of the gig; first on was un-assuming French-Canadian Genevieve Castree who goes by the name of Woelv. Her set consisted of minimalistic, beautiful, haunting songs performed a cappella or on acoustic guitar. Genevieve tackles controversial subjects such as her objection to Canada’s high spending on the winter Olympics when there are areas of extreme poverty, neglect and deprivation close by, and her thoughts on the use of atomic weapons and why much of the world persists in developing more. She performs her songs in French but the spirit and sentiments seem to transcend the language barrier. Her voice has an ethereal quality and very individual style; an easy comparison would be a folksy Bjork but Genevieve’s material is far more uncompromising and leftfield.

Next on was Casiotone For The Painfully Alone, the brainchild of American film school dropout Owen Ashworth. Owen performs alone with a synthesiser, using a juxtaposition of cheesy retro and contemporary sounds as a lo-fi backing to his heartfelt and often amusing anecdotal lyrics. The effect is both hypnotic and hugely entertaining.
Warez had to leave at that point, missing headliner Phil Elvrum from US Psych-popsters the Microphones, but we’re sure that in the spirit of all things UTR, it was another uncompromising, unusual performance by an eclectic, leftfield act that would be lacking an arena and outlet in the uk if it wasn’t for UPSET THE RHYTHM.
See upsettherhythm.co.uk for details of forthcoming events and releases, and to join the mailing list.

Tags: , , ,
Posted in Interviews | No Comments »

Paul The Girl – Talented Singer/Songwriter

Thursday, August 3rd, 2006

Paul The Girl

Paul the Girl is a unique and talented singer songwriter who invites the inevitably easy comparisons with PJ Harvey and Tori Amos simply because there’s precious few other female artists to compare her to. In reality, she’s much more diverse and complex, embracing a multitude of influences from jazz, blues, pop, rock and folk and she plays guitar like she’s been possessed by the ghost of Jimi Hendrix! As you might expect from someone who defies categorisation to the extent that Paul does, she’s rejected the traditional record company route and embraced the DIY ethic, releasing her new album ‘Little Miss Weird’ on her own Inconvenient Records label.

SISSY: How did you first start playing music?

PAUL: When I was at school I started on classical guitar; there was a teacher who came and played folk and classical guitar so it was quite early on, maybe around ten. But I didn’t take it very seriously at the time.

SISSY: Did you come from a musical background?

PAUL: My dad was into classical music, always playing records and my brother played the clarinet.

SISSY: When did you make the transition from classical to electric and rock guitar?

PAUL: Around 15 or 16. I suppose it was prompted by mates at school being into top of the pops and stuff, and then discovering bands, what was out there.

SISSY: Where are you from?

PAUL: I was born in North London but I went to school in Macclesfield.

SISSY: How did you develop your style?

PAUL: I spent quite a long time in cabaret bands before I started to properly write my own songs. I was playing a lot of different styles, from James Brown to chart music. We played gigs at British army bases in Germany and RAF bases all over the place. I started doing that because I’d gone to college after failing A level music, to retake it. I wanted to play electric guitar but I didn’t have any real experience, I was still only trained to play classical. There were too many guitarists on the course so they said I could do it if I played bass. There were a lot of cabaret bands looking for bass players, and my dad said ‘if you want to do music, you have to think about earning your living’ so I answered an ad in the paper and went to an audition at Pontins in Wales, then joined a band.

I was briefly in an original band in Manchester but it didn’t work out, so then I started to write my own songs on an old computer. It was on drum machines and all on midi because you couldn’t record audio on computers then; I just used sounds from here and there and sequences.

SISSY: Did you move to London from Macclesfield?

PAUL: No, initially I moved to Runcorn, then to Chester, then eventually to London. When I recorded my first album I was in Chester and I was looking for a place to move out to. The studio I’d recorded in had a sort of big guesthouse with 10 bedrooms and the studio was in a separate building. The guy who was running it was renting the rooms out and I’d got to know some of the people living there so I moved in. It was a bit like a little community.

SISSY: Did your first album get released?

PAUL: Yes, through Arista. I was sending demos out to people, then the A&R guy from Arista was living in Nottingham and he came to one of my gigs in Runcorn.

SISSY: What was that album called and is it still available?

PAUL: It was just called Paul… by Paul. I have a few copies left but I’m thinking of getting it re-pressed. It was a very studio-based album; it has much more of a sequenced sound than the later stuff. The album didn’t get put out until quite a long time after it was recorded and it didn’t get promoted very well. Then I moved down to London and that was the beginning of the end of the deal with Arista.

I’d never been to London before so it was all new to me; I started going to lots of gigs, looking for musicians to put a band together, meeting lots of new people and then I did a few gigs. I recorded another album which didn’t get released; it had much more of a band sound as I was using musicians I’d met in London.

SISSY: What did you do after the deal with Arista fell through?

PAUL: I started working with different musicians, writing songs and recording new material. I normally write the songs on my own and then get the band in to play the parts. Then in 2003 I released an album called Electromagnetic Blues.

SISSY: How did you go about making your own album?

PAUL: There’s a guy I know who’d got into Logic Audio and I learned how to work with that. Then I booked a day in a rehearsal studio and started off recording a day’s live drums and bass for 2 or 3 songs. We also recorded some drums and bass in my flat which eventually upset the neighbours… on my new album there’s only 2 tracks with live drums on and one of them is kind of Keith Moon style, so I was saying to the drummer, ‘think Keith Moon’… the neighbours definitely didn’t like that!

SISSY: Did you use the same musicians on your new album as on Electromagnetic Blues?

PAUL: No, it’s all changed as they’ve become successful with their own bands. (Mercury-nominated jazz band Polar Bear and jazz/indie band Acoustic Ladyland) I seem to end up playing with jazz musicians because they know what they’re doing… I write the parts out and they sight-read them.

SISSY: What music do you like to listen to?

PAUL: I guess I would have to say Jimi Hendrix as a guitarist but I listen to all sorts of stuff. I like Roy Harper, Johnny Dowd, John Martyn, Tim and Jeff Buckley, the last Strokes album because I like their songs and vocals, and there’s an American guitarist I like called Paul Curreri… I’ve got one of his cd’s.

SISSY: What’s the new album called?

PAUL: It’s called Little Miss Weird. It’s much more of a solo album. This one was recorded in my flat and I did it all on Logic version 4.8. I stick to that older version because I know how to use it well.

SISSY: How does this album differ from the previous one?

PAUL: It’s better sound quality because I’ve got a 24-bit sound card now, and it’s better produced. This album has a lot more space on it and more acoustic songs although there are some rock-out tracks as well. I think the songs are better and the singing and guitar playing are better as well.

SISSY: Did you try to get a label to release this album or did you intend to release it yourself from the start?

PAUL: I decided I’d do it myself and it’s being distributed by Cargo… they also distributed the last album.

SISSY: Can you tell us how a distribution deal works?

PAUL: I sent a cd of four songs I’d recorded to Cargo and I thought they weren’t interested because I didn’t hear anything back. Then I sent them an album when it was finished 6 months later, and they said ‘yes, we really like it, we’ll distribute it for you’. I don’t think there’s a standard type of deal, it’s more about building a relationship with them. Last time, I paid for the pressing of 1000 albums and they took a percentage to distribute them. This time, they paid up front for the costs of pressing and duplicating cd’s and artwork, which has to be paid back out of sales. They take a % fee of cost price (as opposed to retail price) for distribution. The only thing is they don’t do any promotion at all so I have to do all that myself. I don’t have a press agent or a plugger; I just concentrate on building up relationships with people I’ve met. I sent 200 cd’s out in advance of this release to press and radio, you have to do that about 2 months before you release something, then start chasing them up and annoying them. Being able to send emails has made that process easier because you can think about what you want to say instead of getting flustered on the phone.

SISSY: Have you got a booking agent to help you get gigs?

PAUL: No, not yet.

SISSY: You seem to be getting a lot of critical acclaim… is it translating into record sales and big audiences?

PAUL: A lot more people seem to have heard of my last album than the amount sold would indicate; we’ll have to wait and see.

SISSY: What’s your verdict on the effect the internet is having on music?

PAUL: I think it’s mostly a good thing. If you think about how things were 20 years ago, musicians didn’t have anything like it so in some ways it’s made it a lot easier to reach other people, to get in touch with them. But you still need DJ’s, journalists and tastemakers as filters, I think. Now you can hire pluggers and press agents to get publicity for you instead of signing a huge percentage away to a label. Doing it the way I have, by sending lots of advance cd’s out, the difficulty is in maintaining a campaign; you have your album launch which you can make into a bit of an event but you need to have something planned to do next, to follow that up. If you have someone else working on it they can make suggestions on what gigs to do and plan what interviews to do to keep up the momentum.

SISSY: Do you think it’s harder for female musicians?

PAUL: Yes, female musicians can tend not to get taken so seriously as their male equivalents. You have to prove yourself more, but on the other hand you can stand out more because there’s not so many of you.

SISSY: Any message for the masses?

PAUL: Buy my albums and come to my gigs!

……………….

A few days after this interview, Sissy went to Paul the Girls’s album launch gig at the 100 Club in Oxford Street. The support act was Duke Garwood (who also plays sax with the Archie Bronson Outfit) performing stripped-down jazz-blues on acoustic guitar in a Tom Waits-esque manner. He was joined by a drummer who provided dynamic expression on pots-and-pans style drums. Duke’s material is authentic and moody, but Sissy couldn’t help thinking it would be more suited to a more intimate environment.

Paul the Girl was joined on stage by a double-bass player, drummer, mandolin player and Michael J. Sheehy on guest backing vocals and guitar. She effortlessly breezed her way through a set of songs from the new album and a couple of old favourites from Electromagnetic Blues, seemingly thriving on the occasional moments of chaos caused by the lack of intensive rehearsal. The lyrics on the new album are particularly sharp and satirical and the music ranged from full-on rocking out to subtle jazz-influenced whimsical pieces. As ever, Paul’s usual self-deprecating demeanour was transformed and beautified by her music to the point where you couldn’t take your eyes off her. One song in particular, ‘Down the Lane’ stood out as having huge commercial potential, which we hope will translate into reality. It’s rare to find a talent as unique as Paul’s that hasn’t already been oversold; in her case it’s definitely been undersold.

You can buy Paul the Girl’s records and hear her music at:
paulthegirl.com and myspace.com/paulthegirl

Tags: , ,
Posted in Interviews | No Comments »

Fiona Brice – Violinist, Orchestral Arranger and Composer

Wednesday, April 5th, 2006

Fiona… perfecting her bowstrokes!

When you’re watching Top of the Pops and one of the main acts appears with a glamorous, blonde, all-girl string section in the background, the chances are that one of them will be Fiona Brice. Fiona is an orchestral arranger and violinist, who works mostly for pop, rock and indie bands and also does occasional theatre work. She’s played for loads of famous bands including Sugarbabes, Ronan Keating, Kanye West, Enya, Sophie Ellis Bexter, Boy George, Spiritualised, Harry Connick Jnr, Westlife, Simply Red, Russell Watson, and Gorillaz at the Brits 2006… the list is endless! She also does string arrangements for artists in the recording studio and has recently worked on albums with Placebo and Ed Harcourt.

SISSY: What training did you do?

FIONA: Initially I did all the grades up to grade 8 on violin and piano and I did theory as well. Then I did music A level and from the age of about 10, I always played in local orchestras at a Saturday school. I went on from school to do a Music and German degree at King’s College, London in conjunction with the Royal Academy of Music, for three years.

SISSY: How did you go about finding work?

FIONA: Well I’d always written music for the piano ever since I was a child, and when I was at college I was a bit disillusioned with the course I was doing; it was a composition course predominantly with performance aspects as well, but the teachers didn’t seem to be interested in you doing original music outside of their classical curriculum. Then just because I was in London, I met a load of different, interesting people outside university and that was how I started playing for bands.

It almost happened by chance; a friend of mine had a boyfriend who was in a band and asked me to play violin for him. It was a complete change from the classical world I was used to; playing rock music!

SISSY: Did you join any type of agency to get session work?

FIONA: When I graduated I just needed to earn money and I’d never really understood how I could earn a living through music, so for a while I just did temporary office work and played gigs with friends in the evenings. Finally I couldn’t handle that anymore so I took a bit of a leap; got a loan and started really concentrating on trying to work as a musician. Then I sent CV’s, photos and CD’s to anyone in the music business that I could think of who might get me work playing violin. Luckily I got taken on by someone I still work for… it’s a company called Wired Strings run by Rosie Danvers who’s a cellist. She puts together or ‘fixes’ string sections for all the TV shows like Top of the Pops and CDUK. I also occasionally do work through an agency called Session Connection… in fact I probably get TV and touring work through about 5 different people.

SISSY: How can someone starting out find these agencies and get work?

FIONA: The best place is to look on the internet. A lot of the agents, like Session Connection for example, operate in a similar way to modelling agencies; they only open their books once a year for new people so you have to send your details in at the right time.It depends on what you play as to whether they take you on; if it’s a more unusual instrument or something they need a lot of you’re more likely to get taken on, for example there’s not many viola players around. If you’re a male guitarist it’s hard to get on someone’s books because there’s so many of them but if you’re a female harpist… you might be the only one and you may be able to find a niche!

SISSY: Can you tell us about a typical session on Top of the Pops or CDUK?

FIONA: The first time you do it, it seems really fun and glamorous but after you’ve done it a few times, the novelty wears off a bit! You usually get the booking about 4 or 5 days before the shoot and you get sent a CD; you never get sent sheet music even though we can all read it and it would make things easier! You have to pick out your part by ear. Even though you’ll probably be miming on the day, as a string player you have to co-ordinate all the bowing with the other players so it looks right on camera, so you do have to actually learn it properly.

If you’re doing CDUK it’s a really early start; you get to the studios at about 8 in the morning, then you do a camera rehearsal, which takes about 15-20 minutes. Then there’s 4 or 5 hours to wait around until you’re actually on camera. The main artist we’re playing for will generally be there for the rehearsal unless they’re someone really big and they’re too busy doing interviews or something. The purpose of the camera rehearsal is to get all the shots lined up so they know who is doing what at each point of the song. When you turn up, you’re expected to look all glamorous even though it’s early in the morning but before the take you have to do your hair and make-up and change into whatever clothes they’ve asked you to wear… basically it’s hours of preparation and waiting around followed by the actual shoot which is 3 minutes of intense activity, then you go home!

Top of the Pops is similar, except sometimes the camera rehearsal is the day before the shoot, which is ok because you get paid for two days!

SISSY: Do you always mime for these TV programmes or do you sometimes play live?

FIONA: It’s usually a mime although I have done it live as well. I’ve done a lot of work with Kanye West recently and he insisted on us playing live… we’d learnt the part anyway so we may as well! It’s just more hassle for the soundmen in the studio and they generally prefer not to do it. It does give it more of an edge if it’s live because you want to perform well; that’s what you’ve been trained to do so you feel better about it. When you’re miming you don’t really feel like you’ve done a gig.

SISSY: Do you know all the other session string players in London from working on the same jobs?

FIONA: I do now. There are a lot of string players in London because there’s quite a lot of work but you do tend to see the same faces over and over again. With the TV work, there’s a pool of about 20 or 25 people I would expect to see over the year, plus the odd new face here and there.

SISSY: Is the session work well paid?

FIONA: It’s not a good as people think! For an appearance on Top of the Pops or CDUK you might get around £160. And although that’s for a 3 minute performance, if you bear in mind that you have to be there for about 7 hours of the day it doesn’t work out as that much per hour. People might think that you must be rich because you’re on television but it doesn’t work like that.

SISSY: Can you tell us about your touring jobs?

FIONA: I’ve toured with lots of indie bands, which usually means getting in a splitter van and travelling around on a really low budget. But I’ve also done some big tours, like the Sugarbabes, and I’ve just finished doing a three-month tour with Simply Red, which is the other end of the spectrum with a really big budget.

SISSY: Can you tell us more about the Simply Red Tour? And have you got any gossip about Mick Hucknall?!

FIONA: He is a very good performer; charming onstage but not charming offstage! I can say that now because my contract’s finished! He has a bit of a reputation, which is fairly valid in my view! On the tour, we started off in the UK and Ireland doing arena size gigs, which were an average of 10,000 capacity. Then we went to Europe and did Germany, Italy, Switzerland, Hungary, The Czech Republic; it was quite a long tour and a bit tiring on the travel front, but loads of fun!

It was a really big band; it’s quite unusual to tour with a band that size. It was a 12-piece girl string section plus the band itself, which was about 9 or 10 people. So there were at least 20 of us on stage! Plus there was a huge entourage; we had 5 tour buses just for the band and entourage, and a whole convoy of lorries with the set, the stage and all the equipment.It was all brilliantly organised though. When I saw the schedules I couldn’t believe how someone had sorted out the logistics of a tour that big.

SISSY: Who are you playing for at the moment?

FIONA: I’m playing violin for Vashti Bunyan who’s a cult folk singer. She’s a really interesting woman with an amazing story: In 1968 she was a young singer/songwriter; she had songs written for her by the Rolling Stones; she was produced by Andrew Loog Oldham and she released a record which went nowhere. So she got very disillusioned with the whole thing because the style of music that was taking off was rock and roll, and she was writing fragile little songs. She made one album, but then she basically packed up and left to go travelling for the next 20 years in a caravan. She shunned the music industry completely because she wasn’t interested in it.

Then a few years ago, the master tapes of her original album were found in a cupboard at a record company and got re-released. There was a resurgence of interest in her and she’s just released a new album. I have done a few live gigs with her before, including the Barbican, and now we’re going to be doing some European shows. She’s got a cult following here and in Europe; apparently original copies of her first album sell for around £900… it’s so rare that I don’t think even she has a copy of it! I think it’s brilliant that she’s re-starting her career now, in her 50’s. She’s been through so much in her life that she doesn’t care about the bullshit; she’s just carried on doing her music through everything. And she’s a lovely person to work with.

SISSY: Are you currently working on any arrangements?

FIONA: I’m doing some string arrangements for a couple of bands, and I’m writing my own string quartet. It’s classical, but a bit more like film music because that’s what I’d like to do next; write for films.

SISSY: Who do you admire in the world of composing for films?

FIONA: Michael Nyman is a good composer who has crossed over to the medium of film scores brilliantly. I also admire the big names; John Williams, Danny Elfman.

SISSY: Can you tell us a bit more about composing and arranging… how you got started and who you’ve worked for?

FIONA: One of the things I learnt for my degree was how to read an entire orchestral score, and how to write for every instrument. I mainly write for strings because that’s what I play but I have written for brass on albums in the past and I can write for anything if necessary.I’ve recently worked on Placebo’s new album and done some tracks for Ed Harcourt. I’ve also just written some arrangements for the Feeling who are a new band on the scene, and I worked on Clearlake’s album… they’re signed to Domino Records.

SISSY: With pop, rock and indie bands, do you get string players in to record the parts or do you do it on keyboards with string samples?

FIONA: Mostly we get musicians in. With the Placebo album, I wrote string arrangements for 4 tracks and I had quite a lot of freedom in what I came up with. The band had to approve what I’d written so I did demos on computer using a programme called Sibelius, which is for classical scoring. Then I had to fix the players that I wanted to do the session and get them ready. We recorded it at a big studio called Angel studios in Islington. We had 18 or so players and I was conducting, as I don’t actually play on a session like that because I’d be wearing two hats; it’s best to concentrate on the overall thing. It basically involves being the musical director; it’s my responsibility to work with the producer to get the sound he wants in the allocated time. One of the tracks I worked on is going to be released as the European single, which is great!

SISSY: How do you get paid for working on an album? Do you get ‘points’ (a percentage from sales) or a fee?

FIONA: You’ve got to be super-famous to get points on the album. Again, it’s actually not very well paid compared to how much the band are going to earn out of it. For string arranging, you can get paid between £500 and £1500 per track depending on how much work you have to do. I know quite a few arrangers and the going rate seems to be going down lately! If you’re the musical director on a session you will get some royalties as well through MCPS but the players just get the musicians union rates which is £110 for a 3-hour recording session. If the track they play on is released as a single, they also get what’s called a buy-out fee of about £500. But if you think, the record might sell 2 million copies and the players only got a hundred quid, it does seem a bit unfair!

SISSY: I know it used to be essential to be in the Musician’s Union before you could do TV or recording work. Is that still the case?

FIONA: No, you don’t have to join but it can be worth it. They have improved over the last few years; I used to think they were a bit of a dinosaur and completely out of touch but recently I’ve found them quite useful. On jobs where I’m arranger and I have to fix the string section, I’m liable to the musicians for their fees so if the record company doesn’t pay me I could be in trouble. The MU gives me access to legal help to protect me in these situations. And they’ve got some good schemes like free equipment insurance.

SISSY: What are your favourite composers?

FIONA: On the classical side of things, my favourites are probably mostly modern composers like Bartok, Shostakovich, Lennox Berkeley as well as older classical composers like Mozart… my tastes aren’t particularly avant garde. Lots of film music nowadays is influenced by Bartok and Shostakovich.

SISSY: How do you start a composition?

FIONA: I don’t write in a particularly organised way. I might sit down at the piano and come up with an idea, then I’ll use the academic skills I’ve acquired to develop that idea. Sometimes it ends up being rubbish, sometimes not. When it’s good I get a really good feeling about it, it’s a very instinctive thing. If the idea is working, I write quite fast.

SISSY: Do you think that knowing lots of music theory can sometimes inhibit the creative process or the ability to improvise?

FIONA: When I was at college they always said you have to learn all the rules before you can break them and I did find that a bit limiting. While I was there, I stopped writing songs for 3 years because the skill involved in writing songs wasn’t valued at all; they only valued classical composition skills. I think that now, most people would recognise that writing a hit song is actually quite a difficult thing to do and is worth just as much as an art form.

SISSY: Which of the acts that you’ve played for have you enjoyed doing the most?

FIONA: I really enjoyed playing with Kanye West, because it was such an unusual combination of musical styles. I worked on a DVD for him called Live From Abbey Road which was just Kanye with a 17-piece string section. I was involved with the scoring for that as well and it was really exciting because it felt like we were doing something new.

SISSY: With the compositions you are writing now, how will you go about getting interest in your music? Is it very different to the process involved in pushing your music if you’re in a band?

FIONA: A lot of composers just write for the sake of it; they don’t try and push their stuff to get released or make money, they write because they need to write. So I started writing because I wanted to, but now I’m looking around for funding or some kind of Arts Council grant. It’s hard because not many people are interested in giving me money to write a string quartet. So what I’m going to do is, I have lots of friends who are very talented string players and I’ll get a quartet together to record the work. I’ll pay them out of my own pocket because I believe players should always get paid. Then I’ll take the recording and do almost the same thing a band would do; shop it around and see if I can get some interest or some funding for a bigger project. One thing I hope it will achieve is I’m looking for a manager at the moment; I’m at a level now where I need to do that for the writing and arranging side of things, not the session playing… if I had to give someone a percentage of my session fees I’d end up with nothing! And I’d like to aim for getting some film and TV work if possible.

SISSY: Are there many people who work as arrangers and musical directors?

FIONA: I know quite a few people who do what I do but we all have slightly different styles; in fact Ed Harcourt’s new album is a really good example of that because he used 4 or 5 different string arrangers on the album. I did 2 tracks and at first I thought there would be too many strings on the album but because we all have very distinct different styles of writing, you can hear the diversity. I should mention that the string-playing world is a very competitive world, it’s not easy and people will steal jobs and take your credit if they can, just like in any business, but I’d like to think there’s room for every one because we all have our own different styles.

SISSY: Do you think it’s true that there will always be a certain amount of work for string players because it’s less subject to the whims of what’s fashionable than other styles of music?

FIONA: There does always seem to be work around if you look for it. It can be very diverse things, like for example last year I was asked to write some incidental music for the stage production of Billy Elliot, and then I was back doing sessions on CDUK. Or I might get asked to arrange music for someone’s wedding… it’s a really weird range of work! One thing that isn’t so great is you often don’t get the budget to do exactly what you’d like to do. When you think back to the 60’s, most tracks were recorded with a big orchestra… there are loads of string players on things like the Beatles because that was the done thing. Now there’s a lot of cutting corners, like having less players and double-tracking them. You’ve got to be working for a really hot selling band to get the funding agreed for a big string section or orchestra.

SISSY: Has the internet and computer technology had any effect on the world of classical music?

FIONA: I think so, because people have access to so much more music now. There are things you only come across because you can hear it on the internet. For classical music, it’s meant that distribution costs are less so classical artists can sell CD’s over the internet and it’s more cost effective for them, especially as they don’t have big marketing machines behind them most of the time. There is some great software that’s helped with writing classical music; the music publishing programme Sibelius is brilliant because you write the music in a score, similar to using Word for writing letters. It produces scores to publisher standards and you can hear back what you’ve written. They’ve just improved the programme so now you can sync it up and listen to the score over a track you’re writing for. The orchestral samples it uses are a little limited, but at least you can hear what you’re doing, and print the finished scores. I think lots of schools are starting to use it now for GCSE and A level music. If I need to do anything more complicated, I use Logic or Pro-tools. Even Garageband is useful, because I can quickly hear what I’m doing and add reverb to the strings so it sounds better when I play it to someone.

………………

Fiona has to leave us at this point; she’s off to the gym to keep fit for her busy schedule. We wish her luck with her composition work; hopefully she’ll have something on line soon for everyone to check out!

Tags: , , , , ,
Posted in Interviews | No Comments »

Kieron Pepper – Multi-Instrumentalist and Prodigy Drummer

Wednesday, April 5th, 2006

Kieron… people wonder where he gets his boots from!

Kieron Pepper is a multi-instrumentalist who’s been playing drums for the Prodigy for the last 8 years. He’s previously had various recording and publishing deals with a couple of his own bands and also does some production work. He plays drums, keyboards, bass, guitar and sings; in his current band he plays bass and sings dual lead vocals. Sissy hooks up with Kieron in Camden Town just before Christmas 2005, in between the London Prodigy shows and a quick jaunt to Italy. He asks our advice on a fine pair of green boots… we agree he should buy them. Boots successfully purchased, we retire to the pub to ask him a few questions:

SISSY: How did you get started playing music?

KIERON: My grandma gave me an old reed organ when I was 9. It had this really bad thumping noise when it started… a bit shoddy but I loved it. I actually only got rid of it recently when I moved and I was gutted to lose it! That was the first instrument I ever played on.

SISSY: Did you have any music lessons?

KIERON: I had about 5 piano lessons but I had to stop because I was cheating! I wasn’t reading the music properly, just reading it once very slowly and learning to play the pieces by ear. The only thing I actually learnt was how to hold my fingers correctly on the keyboard. I used to do it during lunchtime at school because it got me out of doing sport! I was always hanging around the music block at school, playing keyboards. I decided to form a band at 15 with my mates and no-one was playing guitar, so I picked up an acoustic guitar and worked out what the strings were, what the notes were and using my knowledge of the keyboard figured out which were the black notes and white notes, then I could work out chord shapes myself. A year later I bought a guitar chord book and gave myself a pat on the back because I’d worked out the chords correctly!

My first band was The Changelings with my best mates, who I still hang out with! We were very inspired by the Velvet Underground, the Doors, the Cure and The The. It had this very strange sort of 80’s and 60’s thing going on… 10 minute psychedelic guitar solos with Casio keyboard in there. So I was playing guitar and keyboards and singing. Halfway through the band, Dan who was the drummer, decided he wanted to sing and play guitar and I was more into just being in a band rather than cause friction so I said ‘ok, we’ll swap round, I’ll be the drummer and you be the singer.’ So that’s how I got to play drums!

We carried on doing the band through the 6th form. We played our first gig in 1989 at the YMCA in Chelmsford. We were doing lots of gigs around the area but I don’t think we ever actually made it to London, although we were really ambitious!

SISSY: I guess that’s kind of cool in a way; you learnt to play all the instruments by necessity?

KIERON: Yes and I loved playing the drums. I’d originally got Dan into playing the drums at school but when we swapped he had to teach me how to do it properly because I was playing open handed with my left hand doing the high hat.

SISSY: What band did you play for next?

KIERON: After the Changelings I went into a band called Garp, which featured lots of samples and beats so I learned how to play to a click. I was their third drummer; I took over from a guy called Julian who used to drum for Nitzer Ebb. At the time I was into bands like EMF and Jesus Jones, but my transition into the electronic and dance world came via the Soup Dragons, I was a massive fan of theirs. They went through all these different changes; like they were a garage band, then they had a 60’s phase, then they started using loops.

SISSY: Did you get signed?

KIERON: Yes, Garp released a single and a couple of EP’s through a small label called Sugar Records.

SISSY: Can you give any advice or tips on learning to play to a click?

KIERON: Persevere! And don’t say that you’re a drummer who doesn’t need to learn to play to a click; if you want to get work in a band whether you’re sessioning or if it’s your own band, playing to click will save time in the studio that costs money. Especially now that editing is done on things like pro-tools, you need to have everything to a click so you can chop it around. With the Prodigy I don’t use a click live, I play along to sequenced stuff and I can stay in without a click because I’m so used to it!It’s best to choose something high-end that cuts through for a click sound; whether it’s a rimshot or a bell doesn’t matter. When you’re tight with it, the click sound seems to disappear. It’s something you kind of settle into and eventually you get a natural click in your head. When you’ve been playing for a long time you can experiment with playing behind the click or in front of it so you get a sense of being laid back or pushing the feel. Also you have to maintain a groove with the band and make it work with the click.

SISSY: I’ve noticed that when a drummer plays to a click, the bass player has to fit to him rather than them grooving with each other. Do you think that’s a bad thing for the feel of a song?

KIERON: It depends on the band. If the bass player and the drummer have been playing together for a long time they get this affinity and strength of timing that becomes second nature; they lock in so you have to be careful not to let the click destroy that.

SISSY: What other bands have you been in?

KIERON: Garp finished and myself, Jay on guitar and Johnny on bass broke away to form Real TV with Fraggle from Back to the Planet playing guitar and our mate Robin on keyboards. Real TV was more organic; we wanted to break away from all the loops and samples because by the end of Garp we were using them so much that it took away from the actual songwriting process. We liked bands like Compulsion (the band that Jacknife Lee used to be in) and anything punky or funky. We were part of that early 90’s hip hop-rock scene with bands like Skunk Anansie, Rub Ultra and Dub War. We were into jamming our songs out and changing stuff. We went through lots of phases over the course of the three years we were together; we lived in a house together and maybe spent too much time in each other’s pockets. It got to a point where we’d been trying to get somewhere for a long time; we were all skint and it was hard work. We didn’t get signed but it was strange because as soon as we split up, loads of offers came in! We were the only unsigned band to play Phoenix festival in 1996; we were on around 6 in the evening so it was a great slot and a bit of a coup at the time!

SISSY: You obviously had a big live following so why do you think you didn’t get signed?

KIERON: Because of the songs. We were a great live experience… Jay the singer (who later joined Grand Theft Audio) would get up on tables and go mad; really explosive stuff but we never made any decent recordings because the songs were too anarchic and there weren’t too many hooks in there. You’ve got to have a combination of both; lots of energy live and great songs to record as well.We decided that Real TV was going to end, and around the Christmas of ’97 we were going to do our local venue as a farewell gig, so we had in our minds that we were going to do something different within ourselves. Once we’d booked this gig we were rehearsing for it and in the November I got a phone call saying ‘do you want to drum for the Prodigy?’

SISSY: Did you already know them?

KIERON: I’d met Liam through living in Braintree in Essex. I had the little mini-album Real TV had recorded on DAT and I wanted to listen to it. I bumped into Keith Flint in town and asked him if they had a DAT player and if it would be possible to bounce it down onto CD for me. He said it would be cool because he’d heard of Real TV through the local circuit. So it was cool, I went round and met Liam and we got on straight away; we became mates and used to hang out a bit… we discovered we knew lots of the same people from the area. I think because we got on, he felt at ease with asking me to play drums for him rather than trying to work with a stranger. He took a bit of a risk as well, lots of people like the crew were all saying ‘it’s a really bad idea to have live drums, it’s never going to work, we’ll have to change the whole set up on stage.’ But Liam had faith in it and when I was given the opportunity I thought I had to make it work… I knew I could do if I had the chance!

When Liam called me about playing for them, I offered to go round to his house to learn the stuff but he was in Germany. So he flew over the next day with the songs and I learned the set for two weeks. The next thing I knew, I was on stage in Newcastle in front of 9000 people!

SISSY: What other projects have you been involved with?

KIERON: Since I started playing for the Prodigy in ’97, I’ve always continued writing my own stuff on guitar and programmed pieces on my old Roland W30 workstation, which is the same as what Liam used to use originally. And in 1998 I played keyboards and samples for tech-rock crossover band No Santa, which was bass player Charlie Beddoes’ band after she left Rub Ultra.

I’ve done lots of other bits and pieces, but I’m currently forming a new band with Jim Davies who played guitar for the Prodigy and for Pitchshifter. It’s essentially a rock band but there’s beats and loops and stuff going on. Our original demos came out sounding quite metal and when we went out live playing ten dates around the UK with Bullet for my Valentine, just to find out how it would sound, it was great fun. Jim and I are both on vocals and he plays guitar. We have another guitarist called Paul Fletcher and our drummer is Jason Bowld. I’m also playing bass guitar and using a vintage 1970’s keyboard called the Firstman Bass synth, which is like the pedals from an old Wurlitzer organ, but I play it with my hands through a Black Cat distortion pedal.

We’re really excited about the fact that the songs are really good, very strong. Jim wrote lots of the music just with guitars, beats and simple bass. He did it on Logic Audio, which I hadn’t used before; I had a go and started flying on it! I ended up producing the demos for our band, just the instruments and then I started hearing really catchy melodies for 3 or 4 choruses so then we sat down and came up with the lyrics for the verses which in turn gave Jim the confidence and inspiration to write his own melodies and lyrics.

SISSY: Have you got a name?

KIERON: At the moment we’re called the One Condition. We’re not sure if we’ll keep it though because at the moment everything’s in a transitional period. Once we’d done the gigs and realised that we were leaning a bit far to the metal side, we wanted to bring the emphasis on the beats back up… it’s still early days so we’ll see.

SISSY: Is it true that Jim stopped playing for the Prodigy so he could concentrate on this band?

KIERON: Yes, he’s got total faith in this, that it’s time for him to do his own thing.

SISSY: What are your plans for the project in the near future?

KIERON: To basically continue working on the recordings, because the songs aren’t going to go away so we’re using the vocal melodies and reworking some of the parts. With the musicians we have we could play any style so we just have to make the recordings sound fresh and relevant, then reproduce that live.

SISSY: Can you offer any advice to people who are starting a band?

KIERON: If you’re forming a band, the most important thing is to find good people, who can do their job better than you could. Communication is a key thing, being able to talk about things you aren’t happy with. Don’t waste time burying your head in the sand just for the sake of harmony. If your mates in your band are as serious and committed as you are then they’ll understand if you want to question things to make it better. It’s the same in life generally, communication is so important.

SISSY: What about advice on sessioning?

KIERON: Learn to appreciate every style of music; you might not like something but learn how to play every style so you’re adaptable. And don’t settle for what you think is good enough, because someone might want you to try playing something in lots of different ways. It’s essential that as a musician or as a singer you can do everything really tight so rehearse to a click. And be aware that a producer might want to push your boundaries and expect a lot of you.

SISSY: Can you remember the first proper gig you saw? And what your early influences were?

KIERON: I think it was U2; they were definitely an early influence. And early 80’s bands like the Cocteau Twins, the Human League, Adam and the Ants and Blondie. I think the first single I bought was the Eighth Day by Hazel O’Connor, which was a bit strange for a little kid! I used to get off on the sounds that were used on records and the flamboyant style everything had in the 80’s. Although I don’t feel the need to have big hair and big production on the things I do! But maybe the melodies influenced me; I’ve always been into darker melodies. The minor melodic scale plays a big part in a lot of things I do. When the Queens of the Stone Age album Songs for the Deaf came out I was actually gutted because there were a lot of riffs and tunings (like tuning down to C) that were like some of my ideas.

Sometimes I wish that I’d pushed my own thing a bit harder rather than concentrating on the session side of things; time is precious when you’ve got something to prove and you’ve got songs that you think are relevant. Soon enough you’ll hear someone else playing something like one of your riffs on the radio… there’s only so many notes you can use so it’s bound to happen sooner or later!

SISSY: So would you say that while being a session player is great and you get lots of experience and good times, at the end of the day you’re not going to get any long term security out of music unless you co-write a successful song?

KIERON: That’s true, but it could turn out that you have a really good relationship with the person you’re sessioning for and end up writing with them. For example, I did some sessions playing guitar with DJ Hyper where I made some suggestions for parts and I ended up with writing credits on two of the tracks.

SISSY: What equipment do you use?

KIERON: These days you can do everything on a computer but I think that’s lazy. The only advantage it gives you is that you can save sounds. But there’s something about an old keyboard, especially the old Roland keyboards, that sound great. When I could afford it I bought some retro synths like an SH 101 and a Jupiter 8; that’s how I make my sounds.Since I’ve been playing for the Prodigy I’ve been using Mapex drum kits; they’re phenomenal kits, made of maple. The kit I’m using at the moment is the top of the range one called the Orion Classic. Their best starter kit is called the Venus… or the Mars; they’re all named after planets! The Mapex Mars kit is a bit similar to a Pearl Export, which is a good basic kit.For recording guitars I still use my old Peavey T60, which I think is the first guitar Peavey made. Generally I’m into Gibson sounds; I was never into the more twangy Fender sound at all although I do like the Nirvana Jagstang sound because it’s sort of in between a Fender and a Gibson. The Peavey T60 is a bit like that in that it has a sound of its own. It’s heavy but also quite bright. There’s enough different configurations on the knobs and switches to get a range of sounds out of it. When I’m writing I tend to use an Epiphone semi-acoustic guitar. It’s a really slim one that I bought in Australia and I love it. The neck is nice and thin like an electric so it’s easy to play.

With basses, I play a Fender Jazz and an Ibanez, which is a very metal bass; it’s got a slim neck and active pick-ups. For recording I mostly like to use the Jazz because it’s got an old school sound. My favourite pedal for bass and keyboards is the Black Cat distortion pedal I mentioned earlier which is made by a guy in LA. I heard he did a runner or something due to financial difficulties so it’s really hard to get them now. I bought one in a little place down Sunset Boulevard. The first one I had, I was doing a session for Sergio Galoyan who wrote the Tatu stuff and I left it in my car with a rare Spectre bass guitar while I went for a quick drink and when I came back someone had broken into my car and stole the bass and the pedal! The next time I was in LA I went to the same shop and luckily they had one Black Cat pedal left. Spectre basses are quite metal; kind of between a Musicman and a Fender… I really loved that bass!My favourite guitar pedal is a Hughes & Kettner Rotosphere that simulates a Lesley cabinet but for distortion I tend to use amp distortion… the best thing to get a wicked guitar sound is to get a good old amp like a Vox AC30 and crank it up. With amp distortion you can still hear the strings whereas if you’re recording with a distortion pedal it just adds noise and fuzz and you can lose definition.

SISSY: Can you give any good tips on getting sounds in the recording studio?

KIERON: For drums, get a good drum sound from the room; it doesn’t have to be close miked or it can just sound like you’re hitting cardboard boxes. Although if you’re recording on computer you can make a good sound out of anything! But if you want to go for an old school recording technique, I just use three mics positioned left, right and above which is good for that Beastie Boys retro sound. If you want to get a bit more involved then you can close-mic the bass drum and the snare so you have more control in the mix. PZM mics are really useful for ambient sounds and Neumann mics are great for vocals. Also there’s a great new microphone called the Blue Baby Bottle, which is good; you can really shout and it still sounds great because of the compression on it.

SISSY: It’s been great to talk to you, to finish can you tell us any rock and roll stories from your travels?

KIERON: Unfortunately not! All my stories are X-rated or barred!

…………………

We finish our drinks and head off to do some last minute Christmas shopping in Camden market.In between touring with the Prodigy and his own band, you can sometimes find Kieron teaching a Live Performance Workshop at Brighton Institute of Modern Music where they do excellent courses for drummers, bass players, guitarists and singers. As well as tuition on their chosen instrument, part of the syllabus is about getting the students to come together to learn how to be in a band. The topics covered include everything from the economics of the music industry to learning what constitutes a good song and how to construct one. All the lecturers are top-notch musicians with experience in well-known bands. Check out www.bimm.co.uk for details.

A couple of months after this interview, we hear from Kieron again… he’s joined new band Dead Kids whose first single has been released on Fierce Panda records. You can check them out at www.myspace.com/youaredeadkids We asked Kieron for a few words on how it all happened and this is what he said…

‘got asked to join dead kids end of march in a phone call from adam (bass) player, i said i’d think about it once i’d heard the trax. put the phone down. 5 mins later phone rings. it’s eddy temple-morris from xfm, and he asks if i’ve joined dead kids. i say i dunno, then he goes into a rant that lasts about 10 minutes, saying i’d be perfect and this was an opportunity not to be missed. i put the phone down, ear glowing and heart racing. hadn’t been this excited since howlett asked me to join prodigy. you have mail. the mp3’s of 2 dead kids trax arrive on my computer. i listen. i listen again. i’m hooked. i’m in. two days later we rehearse. a week after that, we tour. i’m home.’

Tags: , , ,
Posted in Interviews | No Comments »

Nick Moore – Management, Promotion and Labels

Wednesday, April 5th, 2006

Nick on sabbatical

Over the last fifteen years Nick Moore has at various times successfully occupied many different roles in the music business including promoter, manager, consultant, founder of the Barfly organisation (now called Channelfly) and he’s also run his own label. Nick is a somewhat maverick entrepreneurial character who constantly seeks fresh challenges. Despite the slight cynicism that inevitably accompanies his extensive knowledge and experience of the music business, Nick retains an enthusiasm and passion for the industry, and whilst being fully versed in the ‘old school’ approach to building a band’s career, he’s always been quick to embrace new technology and new ways of doing things.The Barfly has consistently provided A&R men with an easy option for the last ten years; until he left recently to travel the world for a year’s well-earned sabbatical, Nick and his partners’ good taste, commitment and hands-on approach have ensured that the barfly has almost always been the first to back new talent and give them exposure to the industry.

SISSY: How did you get started in the music industry?

NICK: I was always in bands as a kid, playing guitar and keyboards. I started promoting when I was 16, just sorting out our own gigs. I realised that if I booked the other bands as well then we’d pull more people. On my first day at college we had a guy from the student union come and talk to us… he said he was the Entertainments Officer and he booked all the bands. I said to my friend, ‘that sounds like a job for me!’ In 1990/91, I became Ents Officer for the student union at Wolverhampton Poly which is now Wolverhampton University, then I promoted gigs for a year at clubs and pubs in Wolves. In those days I was putting on bands like Ocean Colour Scene, Blur, the Manic Street Preachers, the Shamen and Carter the Unstoppable Sex Machine when they were on their way up; one Blur gig was the night before they went top 40 for the first time.

SISSY: What prompted your move to London?

NICK: My friend Ace, who later became the guitarist in Skunk Anansie, phoned me up and said ‘what are you doing Nick? My band (called Big Life Casino) are getting stuff together and we’ve just started a club called the Splash Club’ so I came to London to help them with that; there were four of us involved; myself, Ace and his other band members Julian Wright and Ben Jammin. We started doing nights at the Water Rats in Kings Cross which is a pub owned by the Grand Order of the Water Rats, a kind of Masonic lodge for entertainers!

SISSY: Did you have any kind of goal or manifesto in mind when you started the Splash Club?

NICK: Back in those days most of the small venues operated a ‘pay to play’ policy where a band had to pay something like £30 each to play a gig so that the promoter was guaranteed income without having to make any effort to promote the night. So our main objective was to stop the whole pay to play rip-off and coming from a musician’s background we had the ethos that we wanted to make sure there was a decent PA and lights and that the bands were treated properly. The Splash Club actually took off pretty quickly because everyone wanted to play there. I was very fortunate in that this was around 1993 so I stumbled upon the start of the Britpop/britrock scene. You could say that the Splash Club helped to break bands like Kula Shaker, Skunk Anansie, Rub Ultra, Feeder, the Bluetones, Echobelly, Gene, Travis; Oasis played their first London show at the Splash. The club was very much geared towards getting bands to come down and see other bands; we thought that was pretty important to get the scene going. I think at the height of the Splash Club you’d see a lot of ‘faces’ in the audience so suddenly it became the place to play if you wanted to get noticed.

SISSY: What made the Splash Club leave the Water Rats and change its name to the Barfly?

NICK: Eventually the Grand Order of the Water Rats perceived that we had ‘outstayed our welcome’ due to a series of controversial events! One incident that contributed to us leaving was that we allowed notorious queen scene impresario Matthew Glamour to host a night called the ‘Mint Tea Rooms’ that was pretty outrageous; two guys were on stage ‘wearing’ a double ended dildo and someone from the News of the World was there. They ran the story and alleged that there had been 16 year olds in the audience. Then one night we put on an anti-nazi gig and loads of skinheads turned up to hijack the night and a fight kicked off. So the Water Rats people said they had problems with some of our more ‘avant garde’ evenings!

We moved to the Falcon in Camden and Ben Jammin who had ended up being my key partner in the Splash Club decided to do his own thing. So I started the Barfly with Jeremy Ledlin and Be Rozzo as partners, and we also started the Fly magazine (which is still going strong) to do reviews, features and interviews with the bands playing at the Barfly.Around this time I also set up Blue Dog records which I ran but was funded by V2 and signed the Crocketts (now called the Crimea) to the label. The Barfly eventually outgrew the Falcon and took up residence at its current home, the Monarch on Chalk Farm Road. Now there are 5 other Barflys around the UK, all aspiring to perpetuate our original ideal of treating the bands well and maintaining high standards.

SISSY: What prompted you to branch out into managing bands while you were promoting and booking at the Splash Club?

NICK: Primarily an eclectic hip-hop/art rock band called Rub Ultra. We’d given them a few gigs and they were inundated with interest from the record companies. I had met their bass player Charlie Beddoes a few times at the club and she would ask my advice on dealing with the industry. It seemed like a natural step when they wanted me to become their manager.

SISSY: What attracted you to Rub Ultra?

NICK: They were a wicked live band, really powerful and chaotic on stage so you never knew what would happen next! Will Matthews the singer had this way of talking where you never quite understood what he was saying but you felt like it must be really cool anyway! For example, he would describe Rub Ultra’s music as ‘bubble over crunch with a cosmic fruit centre’ or ‘testosterone crackle with a feminine underbelly’!

SISSY: Who else did you manage?

NICK: My partner at the time, Kate Dale and I also managed bands called Goya Dress and Elizabeth Bunny. Rub Ultra and Goya Dress both signed their first deals in the same week so that was a good week for me… I suddenly had more money than I’d ever had in my life before! Elizabeth Bunny got signed as well but then their record label folded so nothing happened for them. Later also on I co-managed Talvin Singh with Sarah Withers.

SISSY: Did you prefer the experience of managing bands to promoting?

NICK: It was all good fun at the time; it was such a rollercoaster ride, the scene was really happening at the start and there were lots of ups and downs!

SISSY: Speaking as a promoter, manager and label, what qualities do you look for in a new band?

NICK: It’s got to be something that excites you musically, something you want to work with. It’s hard to quantify why you like one thing and not another. The best advice that I could give a new band trying to make it is to try and look at themselves objectively, step outside their role in the band and try to see the overall thing how someone else would see it. Bands often make the mistake of thinking that they’re being obvious about what they want to convey when the reality is that it’s very unclear to everyone else. Sometimes the simplest, most obvious songs will be the ones that define your sound and identity. It’s a good idea for a new band when they first form, to sit down and say ‘what are we trying to do?’ and agree on a direction or recipe for the music. Otherwise they can end up trying to cross over too many elements and confusing people. Its not that you have to be tied to one direction for life but you should be focussed. Problems can arise when there’s more than one key songwriter in a band; the musicians need to work to get a good balance and blend the different elements convincingly. Bands need to establish their own democratic process and all have a clear understanding of their objectives to prevent falling apart further down the line.

SISSY: Obviously the music industry is undergoing some major changes at the moment. How do you see things progressing in the future?

NICK: I actually think that the costs of recording and making videos have come down so much that it’s allowing the record companies to become the marketing companies they probably should have been all along. Bands along with management and production companies will effectively make an album before they even approach a major label. I think the future is very few A&R people looking for acts; there used to be about 40 A&R scouts but now there’s only about 10, partly because there used to be 7 major record companies but what with recent mergers and buy outs there’s only 4… everything is owned by either Warners, EMI, Sony/BMG or Universal.

SISSY: Is it true that the major companies are waiting to have a lot of the early stages of the work done for them instead of developing a band?

NICK: Absolutely; there’s no such thing as a development deal any more. Most people can raise enough money to get some songs recorded and in fact there’s plenty of examples of people recording albums in their bedroom on their computer. You can now release material and promote it through the internet. This can only be a good thing for music, because A&R departments in this country for the last 50 years have been run by middle class public school boys with a narrow view of what should sell and a lot of more cutting edge artists have come through in spite of, rather than aided by this fact.

The internet has allowed the music business to become a more democratic system, rather than an act becoming known because a major company has assigned them a huge marketing budget and to an extent manufactured their success.The old system seemed to work for many years because a lot of people were making a lot of money from it. Now that there’s less money to be made, companies can’t afford to be as wasteful as they were in the past. Now, A&R departments are more likely to look at a band to see what kind of profile they have already; have Radio One or XFM picked up on them, are they being written about in any music papers and most importantly, what’s the web presence? How many hits are they getting on websites and how many downloads have they had. The majors are monitoring peer-to-peer sites and if a band gets a significant number of fileshares, the record companies will be all over them. In a way that’s not that different to 50 years ago in the USA when early rock and roll artists would sell records in one state and the majors would view local success as an indication that an act was worth signing and releasing nationally.

SISSY: Who are your heroes, both musical and business?

NICK: I grew up listening to the classics… the Stones, the Beatles, Led Zeppelin, the Who, the Clash, the Pistols etc and I saw a lot of Jazz gigs as a child because my dad was into Jazz. When I was at college I was really into Billy Bragg and the whole idealistic political thing. I probably saw him play more times than anyone else, other than the bands I’ve managed.

When it comes to business, I’ve always loved Fiction records and admired Chris Parry who founded it. He previously worked at Polydor and when he was there, signed Sham 69, the Jam and Souxie and the Banshees so he had great taste. He originally signed the Sex Pistols but lost them due to Malcom McLaren’s shenanigans! He left when Polydor wouldn’t let him sign the Clash and started Fiction records where he signed the Cure and the Rebel MC amongst others. He also helped fund other projects; I believe he helped Derek Birkett with funding for One Little Indian records when they wanted to release the Sugarcubes, and he helped Neneh Cherry get started on her solo career. Chris was a real music fan and he was brave enough to take risks on things he really believed in and help them to develop without interference.Andy Ross who ran Food records is another proper music fan… he signed Blur, Jesus Jones and Shampoo. He’s got his own label and management company now called Boss.

SISSY: What are you up to at the moment?

NICK: I recently started a management company with my brother Dan called Moore Bros Music. We’re currently managing up and coming indie rock band Seeing Scarlet and a singer songwriter called Jack Rubinacci. Various people employ me as a consultant and I also have a ‘behind the scenes’ interest in a record company and publishing company.

……………………

Whatever path Nick chooses to pursue, we’re sure he’ll be at the centre of things for a long time to come. Like his heroes, Nick’s a genuine music fan and innovator. Co-founding London’s top underground venue has given him an excellent reputation but also a lot to live up to in the eyes of those who grew used to looking to him to recommend ‘the next big thing’. Let’s hope he can meet the future challenges that this pressure brings!

Tags: , , , , , , ,
Posted in Interviews | No Comments »

Fritz – Studio Designer and Acoustics Expert

Wednesday, April 5th, 2006

Fritz… auditory visionary!

Fritz from Unit 11 studio design has been designing and building recording studios, both professional and amateur for about 20 years and has become an expert in all aspects of soundproofing and internal room acoustics. Fritz is an extremely intelligent guy who approaches each project as a personal vision. He works on every aspect of each job himself, from designing to building to choosing the décor and is reluctant to delegate anything in case the quality of the results should be compromised. Sissy interviews Fritz over a pint at his local pub in north London after a hard days work on his latest commission; a studio at Westminster University.

SISSY: What led you to become an expert in this field?

FRITZ: As a teenager in New Zealand I was playing in bands and couldn’t afford to go into a recording studio so I built my own! And then I became interested in the physics of it. The science of sound is fascinating, all about waves and nodes and interference patterns.

SISSY: Did you need to learn any specific skills?

FRITZ: Yes, I had some training in building skills which is an advantage otherwise you have to employ someone else to do it for you and there’s certain aspects of soundproofing where you really need to know what you’re doing. It’s no good simply chucking stuff on the walls; you have to think about the structure.

SISSY: What’s the best way to soundproof a room?

FRITZ: With soundproofing, you can either build a massive structure which is very expensive and impractical or you can use the ‘room within a room’ technique which is sort of opposite to what most builders are used to doing; they want to make things rigid and structurally sound but the idea of a ‘room within a room’ is that soundproofing is achieved because there is no physical or mechanical connection between the inner and outer rooms. You have to ‘float’ the floor on insulating materials and then work upwards.

Air is the best thing for sound insulation… the bigger the cavity between the external and internal rooms the better. You need a minimum gap of at least 2 inches otherwise the trapped air in the cavity effectively becomes solid, so you get the mechanical transmission of sound. When floating doors and walls, high-density rock wool is ok or there are other products available like neoprene and rubber balls and different types of suspension but it’s so expensive that the client would be better off moving to the countryside with no neighbours and no need for soundproofing! In London or any big city, people are living like colonies of ants stacked up above each other, which is why I constantly get work soundproofing. If you have the luxury of space then all you have to worry about is the acoustic side of things.

SISSY: It sounds like there’s a lot of demand for your services?

FRITZ: Yes. I’ve done some work building studios for big companies like Sanctuary and Warners but what with modern recording techniques, computer hard disc recording etc and the cheapness of everything I’m more in demand by private individuals wanting to build a home studio set up. You can get all the equipment for a professional sounding studio for very little money now which is why lots of big expensive recording studios are going bust or closing down. In a way it’s a crying shame because the quality of the rooms was much better, they had well designed live rooms and the control room was big enough to get good acoustics.

SISSY: Is it possible to get good results in a home studio?

FRITZ: In your average spare room, which is, say 11ft square, there is something called a standing wave whereby the physical size of the room relates to the wavelength of the sound that the room resonates at, in the same way that an organ pipe resonates at a certain frequency depending on its length. With a smaller room, assuming it is soundproofed, the walls will reflect most of the sound energy back into the room and you end up with a situation where if you play a low note, there are areas where you can’t hear it and areas where it’s really booming. The room needs to be large enough to conform to certain ratios; Bolt’s ratio (like the Golden Ratio in geometry) whereby the height isn’t a multiple of the depth, which isn’t a multiple of the length of a room. Basically, if your room is a cube, that will suck! It’s a bit of a fallacy about having weird angles or splayed walls because all that does is skew the standing wave in an unpredictable way. A random oblong or L-shaped room can work best because at least that is predictable and you can design in acoustic treatments to accommodate those predictable problems.

SISSY: Are there many people in your field doing the same job as you?

FRITZ: No, there’s hardly any. There’s a bunch of main companies who do larger venues, famous companies that have been going for years like Monroe, AKA, Recording Architecture but there’s very few who caters to the smaller market, i.e. Programming suites and home studios. Those jobs aren’t profitable enough for the big companies… the most I’ve had as a budget for a domestic job is in the region of £30,000.

SISSY: What advice could you give someone wanting to build their own studio?

FRITZ: One important thing to consider right from the very beginning is air conditioning or a fresh air supply. If you build a soundproofed room, you’re building a really good oven! Sound insulation provides heat insulation as well so it’s a big concern. Air conditioning can be very expensive so you need to include extra costs in your budget for it. Also you will need to consider the fact that air conditioning can make noise and account for that.

SISSY: If someone wants to build their own studio in a bedroom or garage, how much would it be likely to cost?

FRITZ: That’s very hard to say because it depends entirely on the amount of acoustic and soundproofing problems they are going to encounter. Also there are degrees of how far you can take the whole thing. If you want to build a basic room within a room of around 10ft by 16ft using a fairly lightweight shell with 2 or 3 sheets of plasterboard, with high density rock wool as insulation, doors that are properly sealed and windows that are correctly glazed, all the materials you need to use can be bought from your local builder’s yard for between £3000 and £4000 but then you need to build it yourself or allow for labour costs on top. When I take on a job my price can vary enormously because all the problems relating to ‘will it be properly soundproofed and is it going to sound good’ vary so dramatically.

Recently I designed and built a room for a band with a large PA system and drum kit that was on the other side of a wall about 4 ft away from where someone had to sleep and couldn’t be disturbed which was a challenge! We used about 8 tonnes of materials for a 4m X 5m room. If someone says they want absolute silence outside the structure, you get diminishing returns; The basic soundproofing cost around £5000 but we had to spend another £10,000 just to eliminate that last little bit of extraneous noise. You can get quite good results reasonably easily but getting total silence is very difficult as sound is such a pervasive medium. Think of it this way… if you lie awake in the dead of night when everything’s completely silent, you can hear a sparrow fart in Hackney!

SISSY: Can you explain how to get the right acoustics for a control room and live room?

FRITZ: You mustn’t confuse the soundproofing with the room acoustics. Internal room acoustics is treating a room to make it sound the way you want it to sound… for a control room that would normally be ‘flat’ with no big lumps or peaks as far as the EQ is concerned. That is to say, if you record with a microphone in a live room, the thing you are recording is the exact thing coming out of the control room speakers with no added acoustics.

The ear perceives as natural a sound with a small amount of room reverb, as opposed to a completely dead room with no reflections, known as an anechoic chamber. These were popular in the 70’s; if you walk into an anechoic chamber it’s like stuffing your head into a pillow, which is no good for a control room where you’re monitoring sounds and listening to the mix. To a certain extent the ear relies on some reflections in a room; if you put an amplifier in a field, suddenly you can’t hear anything unless you crank it right up, because there are no reflections.

If you have a glass window in your control room, you need laminated rather than normal glass; normal glass pings if you tap it where as laminated just thuds so it’s less reflective. You also need to angle the glass away from you so the high frequency reflection doesn’t bounce straight back in your face! When building a control room, the ratios I mentioned earlier are the most important thing. Then you need to suspend bass traps from the walls or ceilings to take out any harsh frequency reflections… you can buy stuff off the internet like ‘Studio in a Box’, products that use things like foam or Oralex, a whole plethora of stuff you can buy off the shelf and stick on the wall with Velcro and it will do mid-range to high frequency attenuation on the room. It’s the same if you hang duvets on the wall… or the old favourite, egg boxes! The cheapest, most effective method I have found is to use Rock wool covered with fabric. Don’t confuse any of these acoustic treatments with soundproofing… they’ll do little to stop the neighbours complaining!

Something that’s become increasingly popular is RPG systems. Basically it involves attaching slotted boxes to the walls, which resemble bookcases. The theory is based on thinking of sound as being like a ray of light, and the boxes radiate the wave in a diffuse pattern, like if a mirror is covered in dew, you can still see reflections or patterns when you stand to the side of the mirror, not just directly in front of it. The effect sonically is of diffusing or ‘smearing’ the sound across the bandwidth. You can buy these off the shelf and they do have some merit. In a small room they can make it seem as though the walls are further away than they are.

When it comes to recording, making a good live sound requires a more artistic interpretation of a room, and to some extent it’s a question of taste. For a live room where you do want natural reverb, you need to think about the materials you use for the surfaces of the walls as the absorption coefficient determines what frequencies will be bounced back. Some people love the sound of bathrooms because the shiny surface of the tiles reflects all the frequencies back into the room.

Personally I like the sound of good quality wood floors with some carpet to take out the harsher top-end frequencies. On the walls, tongue and groove panelling can sound really good; the small grooves in the wood resonate in a pleasing way because it’s an irregular, chaotic surface. For a drum booth, you need character and flavour. A hard irregular surface like slate tiles or concrete is good with areas of absorption like fabric or carpet panels to control high frequency reflections.For recording vocals you do need a very dead room or anechoic chamber so that you can control and add your own reverbs afterwards.

SISSY: If someone wanted a career designing and building studios, what’s the best route to follow? Are there any courses available?

FRITZ: As far as I know there are no real courses for the structural side of it; Guildford University does a course in Applied Acoustics which teaches some of the scientific and mathematical principles involved, but I don’t know of anywhere that specialises in the musical side of acoustics. There are some good books that you can use to teach yourself; How to build a Recording Studio by Paul White is a good place to start. Try looking at Studiospares.co.uk or in music shops. Obviously some building experience is useful but other than that you just need a feel for the subject and an interest in sound. Go into a room and put a sine wave on your stereo, then walk around and listen, use your ears and you should be able to hear the nodes or peaks and troughs of the sound waves as you walk around. Then you’ll know where in your room the sound is ‘true’ and where it’s being corrupted by reflections. You can also buy room analyser kits, which you plug in to your system and they will work out how your room is behaving, but they won’t tell you how to fix it… that’s where I come in!

Tags: , , ,
Posted in Interviews | No Comments »

Flood – Pro-Active Producer

Wednesday, March 29th, 2006

Flood… crazy about tape!

Flood has been a legendary producer for the best part of two decades; he’s mixed or produced countless credible acts including New Order, The Smashing Pumpkins, Tricky, PJ Harvey, U2, Nick Cave, Depeche Mode, Nine Inch Nails, and Tom Jones. His early engineering credits include the Jesus & Mary Chain and Soft Cell. Sissy was lucky enough to meet Flood as he was mixing the new Placebo album (with producer Dimitri Tikovoi) and he was happy to answer a few questions…

SISSY: I’d be interested to know how you got started in the music industry and what led to the path you’ve taken?

FLOOD: Well I started off playing in punk bands and running my own ‘disco’ as it was called then, around 1976, 77. We played small places outside London; I was still at school while I was doing that.

SISSY: Did you get anything released?

FLOOD: We tried! We nearly got one single released… we did it ourselves and then it went to Eddy Grant’s pressing plant which went bust while our master tapes were in there so it never saw the light of day.

SISSY: People would probably pay good money to hear that if it turned up somewhere now!

FLOOD: Hopefully they’ve destroyed all the evidence!

SISSY: What instrument did you play?

FLOOD: Guitar… very badly, which was ok because it was a punk band. We were called Seven Hertz.

SISSY: That’s quite high tech for 1976… and kind of prophetic of your later career in a way?

FLOOD: Yes; it’s a little bit worrying actually!

SISSY: What prompted the transition from playing in bands to producing?

FLOOD: I’d got really bored at school and I’d been reading all those magazines like International Musician. There was a big long article about recording studios and one section was about what was involved in being a tea boy/tape op at a recoding studio, written from a perspective of trying to put people off. But when I read it, it made me think… Wow! I’ve got to do this. So I went to the careers master at school and said ‘I want to work in a recording studio’ and he said ‘Err, I don’t really know what that is, so just stick to whatever you’re supposed to be doing’. Then I pretty much ignored everybody and did my own thing; I completely flunked all my exams, which then gave me the excuse to pursue my own direction.I phoned up about 40 studios and asked if they had any jobs for tea boys. I got an interview and three days later I was working.

SISSY: Which studio was that?… Does it still exist?

FLOOD: It was originally called Morgan Studios which later metamorphosised into the Power Plant and then became Battery Studios. I started there in 1978.

SISSY: What sort of bands did you see come through the doors while you were working there?

FLOOD: Well the first week, there was Black Sabbath, Thin Lizzy, another heavy metal band called Money and Jack Bruce (from the band Cream) was in doing some solo stuff.

SISSY: Cool! So you learned your skills working on the best stuff. Did they train you as you went along or did you just have to learn by observing, looking over the shoulder of the engineer?

FLOOD: At that place there were four studios with 6 or 7 in-house engineers, 10 assistants and four runners or tea boys of which I was one. So when I was on the day shift I never even saw the studio because I was doing all the menial tasks but on night shifts I got to sit in on the sessions and assistants would take me under their wing. Slowly, you’d build up to learning enough to do your first job.

SISSY: What do you think of the fact that to some extent, that whole thing has declined now that there’s less call for old-style recording studios because everyone has access to cheap, good quality home-recording set-ups? Do you think it’s a bad thing that there are fewer opportunities for people to train up and learn their skills?

FLOOD: I think it’s a shame because there’s experience that people can pass on and lots of that knowledge is being lost.

SISSY: How long did it take before you were recording things yourself?

FLOOD: I worked at the first place for about two and a half years and I graduated to being an assistant, then moved to another studio where it was all film soundtracks and adverts. Then I got another job as an assistant engineer and worked my way up to being an engineer over the course of about 6 years.

SISSY: So you had a long apprenticeship and really got to know your stuff?

FLOOD: Absolutely, it was invaluable.

SISSY: What do you think is the main cause of changing the old way of doing things?

FLOOD: Computers and digital technology. It doesn’t matter whether you’re talking about photography, music or art or even in the book world; it’s the same thing. I’ve talked to lots of people and what seems to happen is, in the beginning with new technology, you have this massive thing where suddenly anyone can do it, almost going back to the punk ideal which is really good, but then the longevity starts to suffer so you find bands getting stuck after they’ve made their first great album and they can’t move on. Because it’s not just about having all the gadgetry, it’s also about having the experience to be able to work and interact with people and about knowing how to get results when it isn’t all going smoothly; the discipline of how to do things.

SISSY: Do you think that in the same way, the Punk movement could have been responsible for making record companies think that you didn’t need real musical talent as long as you had an attitude and a marketing angle, paving the way for more manufactured acts?

FLOOD: Possibly, although I think that’s more to do with the late 80’s and early 90’s when there was a boom in the marketing and PR side of things. When people ask me what I do, I say I make music to be bought, not sold! Because on one hand, you’re crazy if you think you’re just making art; it is ultimately a commodity but on the other hand the music has to be good and should create its own demand.

SISSY: Do you have principles on what type of artist you’ll work with, based on that?

FLOOD: It’s whatever I’m interested by but I seem to weed it out by meeting people or events pointing things out to me. I can’t do anything just for the money, there has to be something artistic or emotional about it. The music has to move me and I’ve got to get on with the people. If you then accidentally make something that sells shed loads then great!

SISSY: Have you been asked by record companies to basically ‘polish a turd’ and use your reputation to help sell something?

FLOOD: Yes; on numerous occasions but I just turn it down. I’m lucky enough to be in a position where I’m able to do that.

SISSY: Now that there are less opportunities to train in a recoding studio, what do you recommend as the best way to learn to engineer and produce?

FLOOD: It’s very difficult. And things are still changing at the moment, which makes it even more difficult. There’s only about half a dozen multi-studio complexes left in London. But what’s starting to happen is a lot of the old multi-studios are re-opening where there’s say 4 studios and they’re all separately owned. So one way of doing it is to try and apply for a job at one of those.
A good thing to do is to get together with a couple of like-minded people and try and do something yourselves. You don’t have to have all the bells and whistles on to start; experience is essential in the long term but to get the ball rolling all you need is naivety, passion and a desire to explore. If you say you want to go into it to make loads of money then get an admin job at a record company or publishing company! But if you’re doing it because you love music and want to learn, if for example you’re somebody who’s more into programming then hook up with someone who’s a great musician so you can cover all the bases. You can start doing that in your bedroom on your computer.
I know that now you can go to college and do a course in production or sound engineering so that’s another way… I’ve taught in a couple of colleges, mainly in Ireland and it’s a great idea but there really is no substitute for experience… you can’t describe to anyone what it feels like and what you’re thinking about or all the different situations that arise that you should be able to take care of.

SISSY: In your own studio you have lots of vintage equipment as well as state of the art computer and digital stuff. Do you prefer one to the other?

FLOOD: It’s strange; I like both extremes for different purposes. All the vintage stuff there is old synths, which have great sounds. But I love high-end digital effects so my whole thing is based on flip-flopping between old and new and getting the best of both worlds.In the last ten years we’ve had this ‘old is bad, new is good’ attitude and it’s only now that people are starting to realise, there might have been a reason why something worked its way through for 30 years and why people were doing it like that.

SISSY: Which software programme do you think is best?

FLOOD: To be honest, I’d much rather have a tape machine!

SISSY: Do you believe that tape has a better intrinsic sound?

FLOOD: Yes, but also for me the most important thing is the psychology that goes behind it… I could do a whole interview on that subject! Briefly, its because you make decisions instead of leaving everything till the mix so your options are more limited about what you can do. Sometimes the more limits you have, the greater your creativity.

SISSY: As in necessity is the mother of invention!

FLOOD: Absolutely; for example if you’ve got one microphone and one amplifier you can still make an album but you’ll have to try harder to use your creativity than if you’re in a huge studio with endless possibilities.Limitations can make you more disciplined and you won’t spend so much time concentrating on small sections, you’d be listening to the whole. Also because there was no ‘undo’ function, everyone involved had more responsibility, like if the little tape-op sitting in the corner screws up on a punch… nerve-wracking experiences like having to drop in a 100-piece orchestra 2 minutes before they go into £10,000 worth of overtime! It promoted team spirit and more of a sense of focus… the music was really important. If you were faffing around or not really paying attention you’d get caught short. And good mistakes can happen with tape that will end up being kept because they’re better than the original idea.

SISSY: Having said all that, when you have to use a computer, what do you think is the best programme?

FLOOD: From an engineer’s point of view, Pro Tools is probably the best. It’s one of the main industry standards now and if you want to learn quickly go to Digidesign.com and you can download a free 8-track version of it. It’s a very cut back version but the basic principles are there.

SISSY: Do you have any other favourite bits of kit that you can recommend?

FLOOD: My favourite microphone is the Shure Beta 58. There hasn’t been a vocalist in the last 15 years from Bono to Polly Harvey that hasn’t recorded with a Beta 58.People say ‘how did you get that amazing vocal sound’ and it’s just that microphone which is affordable but sounds great.

SISSY: What speakers do you like to have for monitoring?

FLOOD: Speakers are very much a matter of personal taste but at the moment we’re listening to things through a little Panasonic ghetto-blaster; we call it ‘the box of truth’… if it sounds good on that it’ll sound good on anything! What you’re trying to do is to give the same feeling from a track through every different set of speakers so it’s a good idea to check your mix on lots of different systems.

SISSY: What’s the first big gig you went to see?

FLOOD: It was pretty weird actually, my first ever gig was Tangerine Dream.

SISSY: They’re quite influential now aren’t they?… it’s almost like you’ve come full circle! What were your other early influences?

FLOOD: Before punk I was a total pop head; I loved T Rex, Bowie, all the glam bands. And because of my friend’s older brothers and mine we got into prog rock stuff like Tangerine Dream and Yes. Then when I was about 13 somebody sold me this dodgy compilation and on it was this one track that stood out like a sore thumb… it was Search and Destroy by Iggy Pop so I started to go in that direction; the MC5 and all the godfathers of punk. When punk actually arrived, I was ready and waiting!

SISSY: Are there any acts around at the moment that you particularly like?

FLOOD: For me 2005 has been an inspiring year because I love emotion and passion to come through in the music but I also love great pop. So bands like Arcade Fire, Kaiser Chiefs, Hard Fi, I really like them, it’s great when bands like these are getting in the top twenty.

SISSY: Have you got anything lined up in the near future?

FLOOD: In 2006 I’m going to be producing the Killers with Alan Moulder.

SISSY: Do you think the internet has had a damaging effect on the industry?

FLOOD: No; my personal opinion is I blame CD’s. I think they are one of the things that are killing music! It’s the way they sound, the fact that they look so trivial, so small and they’ve changed people’s music habits. Like you’d never listen to 70 minutes of music any more… everyone’s attention span is so short because you can flick through an entire album and dismiss it based on having listened to 30 seconds of music.Downloads, I think are brilliant because it encourages people to be pro-active and you physically have to download it. Whether it’s peer-to-peer or a commercial site doesn’t matter. Also you can check out a band; download a track for 79p or something whereas if you went to a record shop and you’re looking at a CD thinking it’s going to cost £15, you’re not going to take a chance on it. So the internet encourages people to listen to new stuff… if you think the first track is good, you’ll buy another one.

SISSY: In what ways do you think the industry is changing?

FLOOD: I think everything will settle down eventually. At the moment the majors aren’t developing any artists and they’re starting to find out that you can’t do that or you end up with no new bands. At the moment, a lot of producers and small production companies are acting as development agencies. Myself, my manager and Dimitri Tikovoi have been working with a singer called Tigs for 2 years and it’s only recently that she got signed after we’d already made the whole album. So maybe that’s how things will be in the future, or maybe the record companies will start to develop bands again… I hope so!

……………………

That’s where we leave Flood to finish mixing the forthcoming Placebo album; as we leave we bemoan with him the demise of the great british intelligent novelty pop single in the vein of the Timelord’s ‘Doctor Who’ or Frankie’s ‘Relax’. Flood agrees that it’s essential that we shouldn’t forget the fun element, and that one of the most important things is to just enjoy making the music!

Tags: , , ,
Posted in Interviews | No Comments »

Emiliana Torrini – Icelandic/Italian Singer Songwriter

Friday, March 24th, 2006
Emiliana picture by Alexandra Bone

Emiliana picture by Alexandra Bone

Emiliana Torrini first got famous in Iceland almost by accident when she was a teenager. She recorded some songs for fun which generated lots of interest and resulted in some offers to record professionally. She was then ‘discovered’ by Derek Birkett and Arni Ben from One Little Indian records and asked to come to the UK in 1998 to record the album ‘Love In The Time Of Science’ produced by Roland Orzabal of Tears For Fears fame. This album was trip-hop in feel and received worldwide critical acclaim and some commercial success.

Since then, whilst writing material for her current album, Emiliana has collaborated with a number of other artists including the Thievery Corporation and has written songs with the Sneaker Pimps.

The emotional poignancy and evocative quality of Emiliana’s voice makes it particularly suitable for use on soundtracks and she was invited to sing on the soundtrack of the Two Towers from the Lord of the Rings trilogy. She’s also had songs featured on UK TV series Footballers Wives and Sugar Rush (set in Brighton where Emiliana currently lives) and a car commercial, to name but a few.

In 2004 Emiliana and her producer Dan Carey co-wrote ‘Slow’ with Kylie Minogue, proving that Emiliana is a truly diverse songstress who can express herself in many genres and styles.

Sissy catches up with Emiliana Torrini as she takes a break from touring and promoting her album ‘The Fisherman’s Woman’ released on Rough Trade early last year. ‘The Fisherman’s Woman’ is a collection of beautiful, subtle songs played on acoustic guitars, lap steel, harmonium and glockenspiel. It cleverly blends elements of folk, soul, country and pop. Since January 2005 she’s been performing songs from the album with her band in Europe, the USA and Iceland and so far the gigs have been well received. In a couple of weeks she’s off to Australia and Japan to promote the album there.

SISSY: So what’s your opinion on the ‘internet revolution’ currently changing the shape of the music industry?

EMILIANA: I think that the internet is such a brilliant new way for music. Because when I was growing up and had MTV at home, I’d stay up all night to record a video or record the music on tape just to be the first to be able to play the new band next day; everything has to be your own discovery and the internet is the way for the younger kids to do that now. They want to discover something new for themselves that nobody’s heard, bring it to school and play it to their friends. That’s what it is to be young, always the first with something. The internet is almost the new punk because people are sick of everything that’s going on in the world; people feel that governments are failing them, the media is failing them, there’s war and horrible stuff going on and people are sick of it all. They’re sticking their fingers up to all of it and saying ‘No! We’re going to find our own way and take what we want.’ People have had enough of being fed what the media wants them to hear. I think it’s brilliant that there are websites where you can get some exposure for your music and end up doing your own tour without a record deal or press or anything, and still fill a 3000 capacity venue just on your reputation through the internet. It’s like a treasure chest; I think your instinct when you’re growing up is to say ‘what’s behind that mountain?’ and always to search somewhere further. The internet opens up a lot of treasure hunts that you can explore for yourself.

SISSY: What was the first gig you went to see?

EMILIANA: My first gig ever was Rage Against the Machine when they played near Reykjavik. I wasn’t allowed to go so I had to sneak out; we had to hitch a ride to the concert but there were hardly any cars on the road. Eventually these guys stopped and we were pleading with them to take us. They said ok, but only if we travelled in the boot! So they put us in the boot all squashed with a big tyre, then they drove somewhere onto a street that had loads of speed bumps and they drove up and down over the speed bumps for about half an hour before they took us to the gig!

SISSY: I guess that gives a new meaning to the term ‘headbanging’!

EMILIANA: Definitely! When I got back I tried to lie to my mother that I hadn’t gone but I was wearing a t shirt I’d drawn on; a picture of a bug or something, and the ink had run because the gig was so hot and sweaty. So by the time I got home my face was all covered in black smudges from where the colours had melted!

SISSY: Growing up in Iceland must have been very different to growing up almost anywhere else in Europe.

EMILIANA: I think it was. We didn’t have so many distractions so we would do more things like make up stories, go exploring and have adventures.

SISSY: What’s your favourite story?

EMILIANA: I remember once when it was a festival day or some kind of celebration and everyone was walking on the beach in Reykjavik, holding balloons in a big procession and a whale had come ashore and got stuck on the beach so he had died. All the people walked around the whale and my friend Siggi who is a big show-off climbed up onto the whale and was shouting down ‘Look at me! I climbed the whale!’ Everyone pretended to ignore him and carried on walking along the beach but suddenly there was a scream and Siggi had disappeared! All that could be heard was some muffled noises. Nobody could find Siggi for ages so eventually a man climbed up on the whale to get a better view; then he saw an arm sticking out of the whale and heard Siggi squeaking that he had fallen into the whale’s vagina! Lots of people had to get up and pull him out. He’s never got over that experience; now everyone calls him Siggi the whale vagina miner!

SISSY: Wow! That’s an amazing story! Your experiences must have given you lots of material to write about.

EMILIANA: I started writing music relatively late in my career; I always considered myself to be just a singer of songs… I don’t care who writes them but if I like the song I want to sing it. And then I wanted to write but I thought I couldn’t write at all because I wasn’t that type of person. Then suddenly I was a songwriter but it was a fight to become one!

SISSY: I heard a rumour that you originally wrote your single ‘Sunnyroad’ for Johnny Cash but that he died before he could record it.

EMILIANA: No, that’s not true at all! After the song was finished I thought it would have been amazing to offer it to him… I think it would have really suited his voice, he was such a great character and brilliant artist.

SISSY: Judging by your recordings to date, you seem to like lots of different styles of music and it’s hard to categorize you.

EMILIANA: I feel like it’s a real comfort when people don’t know where to place me, because when people seem confused and have no idea where to put me then I can be whatever I want to be. It makes me feel I must be doing something right; it’s not that I’m breaking any new ground as far as the listener is concerned, but I’m constantly breaking new ground for myself and discovering new things when I’m writing.

SISSY: So is there any unifying factor to all the diverse projects you’ve been involved with?

EMILIANA: I just take part in the things that I like, but usually it comes down to a good song, regardless of style. In the same way that you don’t want all your friends to be the same as each other or have the same opinions, I’m interested in lots of different types of music and in letting different things happen each time rather than choosing in advance.

…………………

Emiliana Torrini may be reluctant to categorise herself but we think that’s easy; she’s carved her own niche and it should be called Icelandic Soul… soul in the true sense of the word as in music that comes from the heart and expresses raw and sincere emotion. With the help of sympathetic management and an understanding record company she’s been able to forge a career path that seems both credible and enduring. Hopefully she’ll be around for a long time to come; she’s due to start writing for a new album soon, tour schedule permitting so we can look forward to hearing some more of those delicate Icelandic Soul classics in the future!

For more information on Emiliana check out her website at www.emilianatorrini.com

Tags: , , , ,
Posted in Interviews | No Comments »

Newer Entries »