Audio Media International Issue 4

Contributor spotlight

ANDY PRICE

Andy has Bylines for Guitar, NME and Uncut. He writes our cover feature on p8.

BEX APRIL MAY

From MTV to Metro, Bex interviews some of the biggest artists. She talks to Bastille on p30.

SIMON LUCAS

The biggest audio reviewer in the world takes a look at the Chord Mojo 2 DAC on p38.

@AUDIOMEDIAINT

Daydream believer

Adecade ago, I had the privilege of putting together a magazine for the V&A ‘David Bowie Is’ exhibition with Sennheiser. The deep dive into his history was daunting and complex and I had to rely on many sources to help me put together the magazine including a Rolling Stone journalist who knew far more about Bowie than me. The body of work, different recording styles, collaborators, venues, fans and looks were like ten bands in one artist. This makes the creation of Moonage Daydream all the more impressive. Part film, part audio experience, both combine to place the genius of Bowie in a realm no magazine or film ever has. Principal Sound designers John Warhurst and Nina Hartstone have helped the team behind the film create something truly special. Their story starts on p8. Elsewhere in this issue we discuss making videogame music with Jesper Kyd and take a look at two new gadgets that you’ll want on your desktop: the AMS Neve 88m and Chord Mojo 2 on p38. Finally, we took a trip to Wakefield for part 3 of our look at Tileyard North, part of Europe’s largest recording community. It’s a breath-taking size and, combined with Tileyard London, offers a bold view of the future of music making and creative communities. If you haven’t discovered it, our Tileyard North story starts on p34. We hope you enjoy the issue and if you have your 2023 plans sorted, we have a special offer for all 2023 advert bookings on P34.

This issue is also online: audiomediainternational.com/magazine

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“The success of Moonage Daydream is impressive”

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“It’s the first time I’ve created an album with Atmos in mind”

Steven Wilson is the go-to guy for Dolby Atmos audio. Having remixed a string of classic albums, from the likes of King Crimson, Hawkwind and Roxy Music, as well as new releases for Tears for Fears, Def Leppard and his own band, Porcupine Tree, he’s at the forefront of the spatial audio revolution.

But other ambitions remain. Talking exclusively to AMI, the award winning musician, producer and engineer says he hankers to compose for the silver screen.

“Top of my list of unfulfilled ambitions is to score a movie,” says Wilson. “I’ve never been invited to do that. I’ve scored a game, which was a lot of fun a few years ago. It was called Last day of June. It was based on one of my songs, Drive Home, and it was a beautiful game.

Wilson admits that while he’s not a gamer, he greatly enjoyed the process. “I wasn’t sure what to expect, but it’s really beautiful. The soundtrack came out on vinyl a few months ago.”

“One word that gets thrown at my music a lot is ‘cinematic’, so it almost seems like a no brainer that I should have done more in the world of cinema. When I started out most of my income was coming from TV commercials. I love the idea of music and image working together. In many ways that’s the ultimate art form. It’s incredible.”

Just don’t expect a blockbuster anytime soon. “My life is pretty full as it is, but I like to think that one maybe I’ll retire from touring, and do a movie.”

As for the immediate future, Wilson is heading back out on the road.

“Porcupine Tree is going on tour for the first time in 12 years, and probably for the last time as well. We’re going to do about two months of shows in America and in Europe, to present the new album, Closure / Continuation. Then I’ll be releasing my new solo project, which is almost finished. It’s something which Dolby Atmos is going to be a very big part of. It’s probably the first time I’ve actually created an album with Atmos in mind, thinking in terms of what I could do with Atmos rather than it being something I think about in retrospect.”

Wilson is excited for its release. “I think it’s the best thing I’ve ever done. It’s certainly the most creative from a sonic point of view - a very conceptual 54 minute epic. ”

Steven Wilson discusses Porcupine Tree tour and Atmos workflow

Photo: Lasse Hoile

For all the latest tech, trends and breaking industry news visit: audiomediainternational.com

MQA MQair SCL6 codec certified by Japan Audio Society

The Japan Audio Society (JAS) has certified MQA’s latest scalable codec, SCL6, for use with its Hi-Res Audio Wireless logo. It will be marketed as MQair.

The new codec aims to improve wireless audio quality by focussing on the time domain, which it says is a critical factor when it comes to our perception of high-resolution sound.

“High resolution isn’t necessarily defined by the big things, it is shaped by small elements in the sound that convey details, separation, colour, and space,” explains Bob Stuart, MQA

Founder & CTO. “Our reference for transparency is air itself. With MQair we can extend the MQA ecosystem to wireless devices.”

The technology is another solution to a better audio experience from consumers, says MQA.

Working over Bluetooth, Ultra-Wideband (UWB) and Wi-Fi, MQair supports both MQA and PCM audio up to 384kHz. The encoded data rate can be scaled from 20Mbps to below 200kbps. Benefits include low latency, and extended battery life.

Wireless devices now account for a huge segment of music listened over headphones, earbuds, and wireless speakers. According to market analyst Futuresource, Bluetooth speakers and wireless headphones are forecast to have a combined annual retail value of $69bn in 2022, with wireless headphones securing a market penetration rate of 85 per cent.

David Arnold on scoring

“I can’t believe I became part of this film series,” says composer David Arnold. “I did five Bond films – Tomorrow Never Dies, The World Is Not Enough, Die Another Day, Casino Royale and Quantum Of Solace –and it still feels like an enormous honour.”

Arnold is in Abbey Road Studio Two, reminiscing as part of a 60 Years of Bond shindig - the themes for Spectre and Skyfall were recorded at Abbey Road.

Arnold says that his first encounter with Bond was at a Christmas party when he was eight. “I saw it projected at a children’s party and within the first five minutes I had heard John Barry’s extraordinary strings for that amazing opening song, Nancy Sinatra singing, and saw a giant spaceship eating a smaller space ship; a hollowed out volcano and ninjas!

“I’ve always said that when you’re from Luton, everything seems exotic, but this was truly exotic. Ever since then Bond has been a part of my life. Bond has become a cultural touchstone. An icon. It’s remarkable.”

“A common criticism of song writing can be ‘this sounds like a Bond song.’ Whenever a new Bond movie comes out, someone will produce a list of songs that could have been a Bond song but weren’t…

“Yet it’s evasive. McCartney’s Live and Let Die sounds nothing like Billie Eilish’s No Time to Die, and neither of them sound like The Spy Who Loved Me, yet they’re all Bond songs.”

“Working over Bluetooth and Wi-Fi, MQair supports both MQA and PCM audio”

007: “A common criticism of song writing can be ‘this sounds like a Bond song’”

CRAFTING MOONAGE DAYDREAM’S AURAL UNIVERSE

Not merely a new music documentary, but a bonafide cinematic event, Brett Morgen’s Moonage Daydream is an immersive deep dive into David Bowie’s creative consciousness. Andy Price speaks to sound designers John Warhust and Nina Hartstone to learn more about their work on this sensory experience.

don’t know where I’m going, but I promise it won’t be boring,” David Bowie once said. Now, over 6 years since his death, Bowie’s legacy continues to inspire astounding work. Moonage Daydream, the incredible career-spanning film from acclaimed documentarian Brett Morgen, is a prime example. Assembled via spruced up archive material, multitrack stems from Bowie’s unrivalled back catalogue and some mind-blowing sound design, the film tells David’s story via his own words, coupled with never-before seen footage to build out dazzling sequences – augmented by some truly out of this world sound design Key to the sound design choices made throughout the film were John Warhurst and Nina Hartstone, winners of the Academy Award for Best Sound Editing for their work on 2018’s Bohemian Rhapsody. Personally sought by Morgen to expand the size of the film’s sound for IMAX, we spoke to the pair about being involved in such a huge project.

AMI: Hi John, Hi Nina, firstly, how did you become involved in the Moonage Daydream project?

John: What happened was there was a section that is no longer in the film. It was concert footage from the Station to Station era. Brett did a sort of temp mix of what he wanted it to be in IMAX. When he got to the IMAX theatre, it didn’t sound anything like what he imagined in his head.

It was actually the projectionist at the theatre who said to Brett (as an example of how to do it), ‘have you ever seen Bohemian Rhapsody?’ He played Brett the Live Aid section of that film, which we had mixed for IMAX. He then gave Brett the name of Paul Massey the mixer, as well as our names. So Brett got in touch with us.

AMI: Did the project appeal to you from the get-go? And were you big Bowie fans?

Nina: Of course everyone knows and kind of loves Bowie, I’m in my fifties so he was a part of my growing up, a bit like Queen was. I’m more of a Bowie 80s girl really. I found it absolutely fascinating to have the chance to have that deep dive into Bowie’s head and listen to a lot of his early music. It got me into him to be honest. Particularly his philosophical ideas. He was so before his time. So many of his thoughts are really appropriate in this day and age.

AMI: We imagine there was a lot of archive curation time - sorting and sifting through the mountains of archive material. How long did that process take?

John: So a lot of that had happened before we got involved, it was almost a locked cut before we started. Brett had limited finances so didn’t want to start each process until he was sure he was ready I guess.

One of the first things that happened was that we had a spotting session with him. It was an opportunity to meet and chat to Brett. It was

during the pandemic so we did it on Evercast. Normally we have a spotting session and sit down for an afternoon and scoot through the film, talking about scenes. It normally takes two or three-hours, So we had a two hour session set-up, but after two hours we hadn’t even got five minutes into the movie.

But, the thing was, Brett told us later that those sessions were a chance for him to hear what we thought of the film. It started up a very in-depth, detailed discussion, sometimes about the overall sound concepts. During this wide-ranging conversation we were allowed to share thoughts and perspectives. There were like nine of these sessions to get through the whole film.

Nina: In terms of the archive material, Brett shared so much of it with us, as well as the stems of the music. So we began pouring through it. There was some fascinating stuff – snatches of conversations from backstage or between takes in recording studios, and crowd noises from different stages of his career. We were trying to understand every part of Bowie’s journey.

John: It’s the same for any artist, they have some fans that go with them, but in the 1980s Bowie attracted a new type of audience. These audiences changed over time, so we had to kind of track that and make sure the crowd noise wasn’t just random, but appropriate for each era.

AMI: What was the principal technology you used for most sound design tasks? Did you work within Pro Tools?

John: Yeah, I mean it’s pretty much a given that the entire industry works on Pro Tools. From the theatres that we mix in to the editing software that we use, to the music studios that we’re working with as well. It’s definitely the most advanced software for this type of work.

Brett Morgen and the cast of Moonage Daydeam on the red carpet.

Nina: I use iZotope’s RX for everything, especially for cleaning up all the archive material from years back. There’s massive amounts of varying quality. Trying to get as much out of those recordings as possible. It’s not the most exciting or glamorous thing to talk about, but I used that a fair bit. We also used Sound Particles to try and create bigger and more immersive sounds.

John: There was a lot of Altiverb in there too, I’m also a big fan of the Universal Audio UAD software. Then there’s the classic Serato pitch and time that’s always a winner for speeding up and slowing down. Mainly a lot of reverbs and manipulation elements.

Paul Massey and Dave Giammarco mixed it for IMAX, and they did a hell of a lot of work making it sound huge. They used a lot more reverbs. There’s also straightforward mixing going on where they just panned things to areas of the room.

AMI: There were so many amazing, memorable parts of the film, one part I really loved was the re-arranged Sound and Vision clip. How were those song re-arrangment calls made?

John: There were so many things in the multitracks that surprised us. Tony Visconti was a big part of it.

He was delving into his archive and sending us multitracks, all the original recordings and mix stems. Once you start to peel back some of that stuff you start to realise what’s actually packaged into it.

For example, on Ashes to Ashes, David’s talking all the way through it. Once I discovered the talking track that’s now all I can hear everytime I hear the song. A lot of those mash-ups were overseen by Brett, then it was just taken to another level or we moved elements around.

We incorporated pieces of Bowie into the sound design as well. One of the themes you hear threaded throughout the movie is made from the train-like synth tracks from Station to Station, there’s the countdown from Space Oddity near the start, and when there’s Metropolis-esque shots of a city after the Messiah has arrived there’s all these choral

“There were so many things in the multitracks that surprised us. Tony Visconti was a big part of it. ”

chants, well they’re the backing vocals from Move On. It was taking parts of Bowie’s back catalogue and making it so there wasn’t any delineation between sound design and his music. The whole thing worked together as a unit.

That’s one of the things we talked about a lot, about composition. It all needed to come from the same unified source – Bowie’s music. We kept that as the core of everything. That was a lot of fun, obviously.

AMI: Which aspects of the film were the trickiest to get right, and did you work on any sequences that got left on the cutting room floor?

Nina: Oh, a huge one!

John: Well, we probably shouldn’t say too much as it might see the light of day in the near future. But yeah, there were some big things we did. One sequence we did a lot of work on…

Nina: It’s often difficult when working in sound design. You try some things and they work, try other things and they don’t, but then other approaches springboard you to new ideas. That was some of the great fun of the collaboration with Brett, trying things out and then being led down other paths. This was certainly one of the most creative endeavours I’ve ever been part of. It was very freeing.

AMI: So Brett gave you a lot of leeway?

Nina: Yeah, definitely. All bets were off. We could try anything, it didn’t have to link to the picture. We were describing not just visuals and sometimes not even visuals, but often we might have been trying to describe the feeling or sensation of being a Bowie fan, or what was going through Bowie’s head. It gave you an awful lot of capacity to go as far as you wanted creatively. Brett was always encouraging of that.

John: [To Nina] Do you remember when we were in one of the spotting sessions and he said to us ‘we could put whatever sounds we want, wherever we want, and the fact that we’ve put it there, makes it correct’? I remembered this idea from studying contemporary music – that if someone intended a sound to be music, then the listener has to accept it as music.

One of the things I learned about Brett is that he loves sounds that have wood in them. So you’ll hear throughout the film the sound of a tenpin bowling ball rolling down a bowling alley and then whacking down the ten pins, or the sound of a wooden rollercoaster clunkily, creakily going up the tracks then being released. These sounds are very musical in themselves. Because it wasn’t connected to the image, they took on a much greater role of being a musical score – alongside Bowie’s music of course.

Bowie might be describing ideas like ‘chaos’, so we’d naturally look for sounds that had this type of tension/release arc to them. You can create a build or a release. The sound design really started to take over the film.

Nina: Brett’s a very 360 degree thinker. He really wants the viewer to feel everything that existed in that moment *outside* of the image that we’re not looking at. Brett doesn’t see it as just the cinematic screen. He wants the audience to stand in the middle of it and have a 360 experience of it.

John: I think Brett saw this as almost one of the projects of his career. He did say how important this film is as a piece of work that he’d always wanted to do. He spent five years of his life in total piecing together all these millions and millions of assets in the archive, finding not only the bits he wanted to use, but assembling the story of them.

AMI: What are some of your favourite moments in the film?

Nina: I love the Cracked Actor sequence, it goes completely chaotic. I didn’t know the song until I started working on the film and now I love it. I got really into that. There’s so much energy in there. There’s so many different layers. I think every time you watch it your ear zones into different aspects of it.

John: For me it’s the beginning, the first ‘reel’ of the film essentially where it goes from the fairground ride of the intro with Hallo Spaceboy, then we arrive into what Brett would call ‘Bowie’s church’, with a silent audience as Bowie arrives on stage, then we go into that medley of songs which finishes with All the Young Dudes, then back into space.

I just love how it’s assembled. It was such fun working on that section.

I sort of felt that by the time we got to the end of reel one we were exhausted! It was a lot of work and we were constantly fiddling with that intro to make it as awesome as it could possibly be.

AMI: It’s a struggle to think of anything comparable to this documentary, it really feels more akin to putting on a record than just watching a typically factual-based documentary

John: When I first started working on it people asked ‘what is it, like a Bowie biopic?’ The best way I could describe it was being akin to a Bowie ‘installation’ really. Also, other documentaries have loads of talking head interviews. There’s none of that, it’s all in Bowie’s own words. You could do it if he was still alive because you could interview them. But the fact that we made this posthumously is quite a feat. For me that was the brilliance of it. It didn’t feel like a documentary.

Nina: That helps to make you feel less like you’re on the outside looking in. Those documentaries have a

sort of glass between yourself and the subject. Brett was very much keen on placing us inside Bowie’s brain, experiencing the world through Bowie’s perspective.

AMI: It seems like the film has been really well received, are you happy with the response it’s been getting?

Nina: Oh it’s well deserved, there was a lot of hard work to make this. Having spoken to Brett at the beginning and understanding that he was looking to make a Bowie experience, I think he’s definitely achieved that.

John: When we first started working on it we weren’t sure how long it would be in IMAX for, so there was a bit of uncertainty on that front. We weren’t sure if it would go streaming on Amazon within a week. So we were a bit concerned that people would only experience it on TV. But the fact that it’s come out so wide is great. If you want to see this, I think it deserves to be seen on the biggest screen possible. It’s not the same on your TV or iPad. It’s brilliant that it’s gone out so widely on IMAX.

I’m especially pleased for Brett with all the positive reviews, he’s put a huge chunk of his life into the project and I’m extremely grateful that we got to be a part of it.

Moonage Daydream is showing in select IMAX venues and is available on Blu-Ray from Dec 5th 2022.

VENUE PROFILE: THE TROUBADOUR

HOLLYWOOD’S MOST LEGENDARY VENUE HAS FACED NEW CHALLENGES OVER THE LAST FEW YEARS…

Once revered by dyed in the wool folkies as an intimate hub of new talent, and later transforming into West Hollywood’s all-round musical nerve centre, The Troubadour has been acclaimed for both its genre-spanning heritage, and its superb sound set-up.

Since its opening back in 1957, The Troubadour has seen the likes of Bob Dylan, Elton John, Eagles, Joni Mitchell, Guns N’Roses, Motley Crue, Coldplay and Radiohead grace its stage, delivering – quite often – important, intimate shows. Concurrent to its reputation as a premiere music venue, The Troubadour has a parallel legacy for standup comedy, with many thousands of era-defining comedians performing sets. They include such comedy heroes as Lenny Bruce, Steve Martin and Richard Pryor.

TROUBADOUR HISTORY

The Troubadour was first established following a trip by its founder, Doug Weston, to London’s then newly-opened Troubadour Cafe. The Earl’s Court venue and cafe was then a hip hotbed of beatniks and folksters, and both name and overall vibe convinced the American nightclub-owning pioneer to launch his own spin on the idea. Opened originally in a

different location on La Cienega Boulevard, before moving to its permanent home on Santa Monica Boulevard a short time later. Weston conceived the club as a place to spotlight Hollywood’s folk talent (underscored by its name, and the idea of a ‘troubadour’ – a wandering tale-teller) but the array of artists performing there soon diversified.

By the sixties, it had drawn the likes of Bob Dylan, The Byrds, Joni Mitchell and Neil Young, performing shows that would go straight into the history books (the venue was the site of Neil Young’s first solo show). Its reputation for both top-tier sound, and a buzzing atmosphere was reinforced in the 1970s, when the likes of Led Zeppelin, James Taylor and Tom Waits graced its stage, the latter of which was discovered during one of Troubadour’s many amateur nights.

Throughout the 1980s, the Troubadour became noteworthy for being a more heavy metal-leaning locale, with the likes of Metallica, Warrant and Guns N’ Roses serving up gigantic riffs. The latter band’s career was kickstarted there after a particularly hell-raising set caught the eye of Geffen Records.

From the 1990s into the 2000s, the Troubadour solidified itself as a genre-agnostic cathedral of talent, with alternating

evenings of world-class alternative, pop, metal and comic acts taking to the stage. By the 2010s, the 500-capacity club’s reputation was so immensely high that Billboard named it one of the top five venues to play in the US. Rolling Stone went even further, declaring it to America’s second best rock club. Impressive stuff.

THE TROUBADOUR’S SOUND

In 2015, Troubadour underwent its first major sound re-fit for nearly two decades, and was outfitted with new L-Acoustics ARCS II speakers, carefully installed by Rat Sounds. The California-based sound company had to study the unique characteristics of the venue in order to determine the best ways of implementing ten asymmetrical hangs. Rat Sound’s Dave Rat and Paul Freudenberg had to carefully consider how to incorporate these state of the art speakers. The venue staff were overjoyed by the clarity of sound that the L-Acoustics setup brought, testing it out with a variety of heavier punk artists. The results were astonishing, and the venue’s engineers were wowed by the extra headroom the L-Acoustics system provided. The setup was completed by a flown L-Acoustics 115XT HiQ which provided a centre fill, a 12XTi for balcony coverage and four SB28 dual-18-inch

subwoofers to underscore the low end. Upstairs or downstairs by the stage, the sound was improved by the set up which very much proved what innovations had been brought to the table.

THE 21ST CENTURY

Despite this upgrade, and the venue’s prestige as the go to 500 capacity venue for breaking artists, The Troubadour has faced a whole new raft of challenges as the 2020s dawned, not least the Covid 19 pandemic. Maintaining its independence from the larger promoters had previously been to The Troubadour’s advantage, yet with its doors being forced to close, the venue realised it had no safety net. Like many venues around the world, Covid forced The Troubador to look at the books and consider an unknown and unpredictable future.

Needing a cash injection, the venue started a GoFundMe page, and requested donations to help it stay afloat. “It looks tacky, but it’s a reality at this point. It’s not a joke,” General Manger Christine Karayan told the Los Angeles Times, “If we’re going to survive this thing — and that’s a big if — we’re going to need all the help we can get, from any direction we can get it.”

Thankfully, the appeal was successful, and $70,000 was raised to help its staff and infrastructure. They were aided by Elton John and comedian Bill Burr – both of whom owed much to the venue, and both drew attention to its plight.

After 13 months of closure, the venue re-opened in June 2021, with 15 straight nights of performances. Since that time, The Troubadour has found its footing once more as one of the US’s most integral venues. This year it has welcomed the likes of FINNEAS, The Black Keys and The Chainsmokers on to its stage. Its floor and balconies again filled with music-loving patrons. Thanks to new booker Jordan Anderson, future dates include The Courteeners, John Craigie, Sammy Johnson and newcomers Noah Cunane and Maybe Jacy.

“In 2015, The Troubadour underwent its first major sound re-fit for nearly two decades”

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LONESOME DOG STUDIOS

AMI: How long have you been running and why was your space set up?

We opened at the start of 2016. I was in the rap rock band KINGS OF THE CITY. We had disbanded, after our lead singer died of lung cancer. I had spent 2013-2015 finishing the album we had made, in my bedroom studio, and once it was released, I was at a life’s crossroads. Around the same time, my old friend Hak Baker had been released from prison, and wanted to start making some new styles of music together. He egged me on to find a space where we could work properly.

That and the need for some sort of life’s fulfillment, I found a space and setup Lonesome Dog Studios. It was named after the song ‘Lonesome Dog’ on the KOTC album ‘No Snake’. It is a homage to our lost friend.

Ali “Bla Bla” Bazrcar, founder of Lonesome Dog Studios, speaks to Audio Media International about the last six years in the studio business in Kingston, London

AMI: Who helped you build, tune or upgrade your space?

When I first moved in, there had been a studio there previously, and they had built their own style of “room in a room” structure in the warehouse unit. I took it over, did some basic decorating and sound proofing, with the help of my friends. After a couple of years, there was flooding, which damaged most of that structure.

I had the choice of abandoning ship or starting fresh. It took a good 18 months of building, bit by bit, myself and hiring some contractors here and there, but we finally achieved our studio look. The whole time we were building the new studio, we were running sessions as well. There was even a time where some clients had to climb a ladder to get up to the vocal booth upstairs. I produced some of my biggest songs to date, in that magical chaos.

AMI: What artists, presenters or other creators pass through your doors?

We get a good mix of singer/songwriters, bands and rappers passing through. We have had our fair share of artists that are popping, but name dropping is lame.

AMI: What’s your USP as a studio based on feedback from artists and completed sessions?

We are Lonesome Dog, every artist feels at home with us, should they feel like a Lonesome Dog too.

AMI: Who’s on the team?

Myself Ali Bla Bla, founder of LDS. Prasheen Naran (senior engineer), Guy Buss (our veteran mix engineer) and our collective of young engineer/producers: Aftrmind, Oisin Flynn, Sykotix and Fraser Holloway. We also have an extended roster of content creators.

AMI: Studios have experienced massive change in the last few years and there’s many different types - where do you fit in?

I always tell people interested in similar things, there are easier ways to make money. We just have our unique space, which is available and accessible by the everyday independent artist. Other than offering services, we have been building a collective and online community, which we are very proud of.

AMI: How would you describe the overall vibe of the studio and what’s the balance between creating a great sound vs a great vibe - can they exist hand in hand without compromise?

At the moment, we have a massive kitchenette/bar in the control room! We are firm believers in vibes equals great sound. Our studio is also designed in a bohemian psychedelic way, and the furthest thing away from the majority of generic corporate style studios. It’s not for everyone, but the people who do come, sure do love it.

We would describe our studio as that scene in Wayne’s World, where Wayne is walking through the desert and meets Jim Morrison.

AMI: How do you feel about remote collaboration in your studio with apps such as Audiomovers, do you embrace it or does it change the magic in the room?

We do not fear change, and have been working hard behind the scenes, building towards online a lot more. The future of music will involve a lot of remote, virtual reality etc… and we must adapt to and enjoy the changes coming!

Imagine if we did the interview years ago, you might have asked, how do you feel about recording into digital instead of tape?

AMI: Can you share a list of the gear you have and the room types and dimensions?

have an SSL Matrix Hybrid Mixing Console at the heart of our setup, a 25 m2 control room/live room, and a 8 m2 vocal booth upstairs with lounge area.

Can artists stay at your studio and if so what’s the set up?

don’t offer overnight accommodation, but have a shisha style floor mattress bed upstairs, should anyone need a quick nap! AMI: Talk us through your rooms and why they are designed in the way they are

We have an open plan ground floor control room/live room, and up the spiral staircase, we have a vocal booth and lounge area. It was the best use of the space available to us, with of course real estate being so expensive in the London area, every inch counts.

AMI: What’s your dream recording project or client?

Everyday I’m recording my dream projects and clients, my friends and their music, my dream would only be for that music to be heard by the people.

“We would describe

studio as that scene in Wayne’s World, where Wayne is walking through the desert and meets Jim Morrison.”

ROLI: THE FUTURE

From expanding the potential of MIDI control with the Seaboard, to a series of snap-together Blocks, ROLI – now re-christened ‘Luminary ROLI’ remain at the forefront of 21st century musical expression. We recently caught up with the company to go deep on their latest movements, and to learn more about their multi-dimensional philosophy…

Multidimensional Polyphonic Expression (MPE) has transformed how many of us think about MIDI control. Previously, triggering samples, performing virtual instruments and exploring the nuances of synthesis was a relatively static affair, with our trusty pitch and modulation wheels the only way to alter sounds. MPE instruments – with their five dimensions of control per-note (as opposed to global adjustments to the whole MIDI signal) allow for a much wider scope on which to compose and create.

Spearheading the MPE revolution, ROLI released their squidgy-keyed Seaboard – one of the most successful MPE instruments ever, before a decade’s worth of exemplary control surfaces and forward-thinking ideas cemented the company as one of the industry’s most pivotal. Following a re-brand last year, the company – now dubbed ‘Luminary ROLI’ – continue to implore everyone to dive deep down the well of multidimensional expression. We had a chat with the company’s Principal Sound Designer, Rafael Szaban, to learn more about the beauty of MPE…

AMI: Can you explain to us how using unique MPE control surfaces like the Seaboard explode the possibilities of MIDI control?

In a nutshell, MPE controllers like the Seaboard provide expression as seen in various acoustic instruments, where we have intuitive, direct and powerful means of expressing the sound with our fingers without the usual limitations of

standard MIDI controllers. It’s about bringing the natural way in which acoustic instruments behave to the electronic MIDI controller, as much as possible. This is done via five fully polyphonic ‘dimensions of touch’ – velocity (STRIKE), polyphonic pitch-bend (GLIDE), polyphonic slide along the key (SLIDE, which is CC74 for the uninitiated), polyphonic pressure (PRESS) and polyphonic velocity release (LIFT).

AMI: So, MPE is fundamentally about enhancing musical performance first and foremost?

To make a simple comparison, we can make a very powerful and expressive sound on a traditional MIDI keyboard by utilising velocity, aftertouch, a modulation-wheel, pitch-wheel, perhaps a pedal as well. We could even add some MIDI faders assigned to all sorts of parameters in the sound. On the surface it looks like a powerful set of controllers that we can use during a musical performance.

The problem is that all of these controllers are separate entities, they are disjointed, they require that we lift at least one hand to access them, but what if we desire to keep on playing with both hands uninterrupted and still have maximum expression? Not possible. Moreover, many of these controllers will affect all the notes played, so for example, the pitchwheel when used will affect all the notes we play, so will the modulation-wheel, and the pedal, and the faders. This is not how acoustic instruments capable of polyphonic playing behave.

AMI: So per-note expression smashes what conventional MIDI keyboards are capable of?

Bending a string on an acoustic guitar bends that string only, but our pitch-wheel bends all of the notes we play. This is the fundamental limitation of standard MIDI. Fortunately, this is where MPE comes to the rescue. It offers a smarter way of interacting with electronic sounds by offering fully polyphonic expression, where each note is independent and crucially, directly accessible by each finger. We no longer have to interrupt our playing in order to lift one hand and access a pitch-wheel, or the mod-wheel. We do it right on the key. Each key independently. Or all keys at once. It’s up to us.

And because this type of continuous-pressure (PRESS in Seaboard speak) is fully polyphonic, it also transforms all manner of purely electronic sounds

AMI: What does this greater directional freedom mean for synthesis?

Simply put, it’s a whole new world. It’s a new way of bringing life to purely electronic sounds. The potential for beautifully ‘alive’ sounds is immense. From truly abstract electronic sounds to imitative hybrid electro-acoustic sounds, MPE allows intuitive and powerful expression not possible before. This is where powerful synthesis engines shine and come to life as we use many synthesis parameters and assign them carefully to all those 5 dimensions of touch. But we don’t have to even strive for some complex and unique sounds here. Sometimes simple is just as good. For example, take the average ‘analog’ style pad or brass patch. Playing a sound like this on an MPE instrument allows us to imbue it with tiny pitch detuning, pitch imperfections, fluctuations in tone, which add that ‘organic’ analogue quality. If this floats your boat, you will be in expressive heaven.

AMI: Is there a downside though, does learning to work with MPE require more care and attention?

We have the choice but there are more subtle but still fundamental differences. For example, MPE controllers like the Seaboard that are based around continuous-pressure are capable of expressive sounds that are not possible with aftertouch, which has been the mainstay of all good, traditional MIDI keyboards. Aftertouch allows us to use pressure on the keyboard to add expression, but the way aftertouch works (be it the channel/mono-aftertouch or the more rare polyphonicaftertouch) is very jerky. The response is almost like an on-off switch, it comes on very suddenly. We press down on the keys and nothing happens until suddenly something happens. It’s difficult to control it in a natural manner. And again, this is not how for example a string behaves when we bow it or when we blow into a flute mouthpiece. Here, the bow and the breath is smooth and the intensity of the bow/breath is very easily controllable by the musician in this ‘continuous’ manner. This is what continuous-pressure is about. It offers the same liquid smooth means of expression via pressure.

AMI: So continuous pressure allows notes to be manipulated just like their acoustic brethren?

Yes, Suddenly, all manner of sounds are possible. Acoustic imitative sounds come alive. Strings, reeds, woodwinds, brass, voices, all come to life through the use of continuous-pressure.

Because all five dimensions of touch interact with each other as we play, the sounds need to be carefully balanced. How it’s done depends entirely on the type of MPE controller we have, as each will require a slightly different approach to finalising of our sound, where we balance it to the specific playing surface of the actual MPE controller and our preferred playing technique. And so a sound made for the Seaboard RISE will require a different approach than the same sound made for the Linnstrument. And this is how it should be since each MPE controller is really a unique instrument and the sounds need to be fine tuned to each separately.

AMI: Your synth, Equator 2 certainly seems to be the most MPE-aimed engine we’ve ever seen. Can you talk us through its history?

Equator started its life as a purpose made MPE software plugin. Let’s go back in time however since the vision behind Equator was to run it also as a DSP engine on the Seaboard GRAND. So Equator was the first MPE software synth (MPE wasn’t even born back then) that existed as a DSP engine in a hardware MPE instrument and as a VST/AU plugin. Now we have Equator 2 which took the best bits from Equator 1 and added a huge list of new features, redesigned features, as well as an immense

“It’s about bringing the natural way in which acoustic instruments behave to the electronic MIDI controller, as much as possible.”

new sample content, including samples of some truly unique analogue synths.

So at each juncture, Equator 2 was being designed with MPE in mind. This translates to one immediate and unique feature: the expression curves. The ‘expression-curves’ are the centrepiece here. As you look at Equator 2 you are immediately greeted by a set of five expression curve ‘busses’ right in the middle of the GUI. Each ‘bus’ has four separate expression curves. Why is this so important? The expression curves allow us to manipulate the sound, to fine tune it to the playing technique and the actual MPE instrument we are using.

In order to balance the sound through this complexity we need to shape it, that is, we need to shape the modulation we have assigned everywhere so that the sound is musical and playable. For example, pressure and release velocity (PRESS and LIFT) are intertwined and in order to manage this combo of pressure vs release velocity we need specific expression curve shapes. The same applies to sliding along the key wave on the Seaboard RISE, or how we interact with continuous-pressure, or how we use the ribbons on the RISE. In each example custom expression curves are needed. And so, they play centre stage in Equator 2.

AMI: Beyond the movement controls, its synth engine is particularly impressive in its own right. Can you talk us through them?

Equator 2 is loaded with powerful synthesis options from a deep Wavetable synthesis engine, 6-op FM where even samples can be used as FM sources, sample playback, to granular synthesis with some unique features like the ability to trigger samples with LFOs and envelopes. This allows for some very cool pseudo wave-sequencing sounds in a granular patch. The actual flexibility of the whole engine is impressive as well, with each oscillator having its own resonant multi-mode filter followed by two non-resonant LP and HP filters which can all be sent to two master resonant multi-mode filters, or not (that’s eight polyphonic resonant multi-mode filters and 16 nonresonant filters). The signal path is very flexible with a mixer that allows various signal permutations. This is all very deep, but it is key to some very complex MPE sounds, which are all made that much sweeter by up to 16 effect modules!

AMI: Do you think that range of shaping control, and the depth of its engine, are Equator 2’s main USPs?

I actually think the main selling point for me is that despite all this power, Equator 2 makes it very easy to access and use. The way we can ‘draw’ modulation around each dial, the way we can explore outlandish MPE sounds by layering up to six oscillators, where one can be a Wavetable sound, another could be using a sample of an analogue synth, two more oscillators could function as an FM-pair, yet another be a granular sound, all of this could be happening in one preset. This is so powerful; especially as we add the expression curves that can shape this ‘wall of sound’ to our liking. This is rather special in my mind.

“Equator 2 is loaded with powerful synthesis options from a deep Wavetable synthesis engine.”

Our new generation of active reference near and mid-field monitors and subs take monitoring to the next level. They deliver a forensic level of detail that allows you to work faster, without fatigue and with complete confidence, knowing that your finished mix will translate technically and emotionally anywhere.

Every cutting-edge element of their new ground up design has been created for the highest possible resolution with the lowest possible colouration, so they are packed with innovation such as all-new drivers, sophisticated DSP & Class-D amps, and our latest ATL™ bass-loading and Laminair™ air flow technologies. With digital connectivity and configurable via the inspired SOUNDALIGN network interface, these scalable solutions can grow with you with the option of active subs to create one of PMC’s unique XBD systems for extended bass and dynamics.

Whether you’re recording, mixing, or mastering in stereo or the latest immersive formats, with our monitors you’ll know why we are regarded as the absolute reference and guarantee the best possible results.

Hear more – make contact sales@pmc-speakers.com www.pmc-speakers.com

LOUDER THAN WAR

belt,

As the architect of some of the very finest scores to grace the last twenty years of video games, the name Jesper Kyd is synonymous with both quality and individualism. His work has been acclaimed by both gamers and those who just like to wallow in solidly written, dense soundtracks. With the Danish-born’s frenetic, epic soundtrack for the upcoming Warhammer 40,000: Darktide building anticipation for the first-person shooter’s release, we caught up with Jesper to delve into his idiosyncratic scoring approach, and drill into the conflicting disciplines of writing for both interactive entertainment and films.

AMI: Hi Jesper, first off, let’s talk about your work on Warhammer: Darktide, it’s a really awesome soundtrack, and a dazzling fusion of genres and sonics. What was your starting point?

Jesper Kyd: The starting point was the lore of Warhammer, the more I dug into the world the more awesome I found the lore is. I can’t think of a franchise out there that has better lore than Warhammer. It’s just unbelievable. They’re been going at it since the 80s and keep adding more to it. One of the first things I was told by the developer was that they were looking for music that gave you a sense of ‘machines that were alive’. I wanted to deconstruct that idea.

So, the game takes place 40,000 years in the future, on a planet called Atoma Prime. There’s a city called Tertium, which you go into to eradicate the bad guys (called Chaos). This city was built thousands of years ago, but the inhabitants there have forgotten how its machines work, they only really know how to maintain them. So they look at this machinery as something almost sacred.

That gave me a good way in; what I found worked well to illustrate that was using vintage synthesisers. They don’t sound fresh out of the box, and they all sounded aged. Each synthesiser is pretty unique once it has aged a significant amount. All the components inside have got slower. So I started creating electronic music with these vintage synths, making stuff that sounded a bit anarchic.

Not only did some of these sequences that I created sound more organic and alive, but they also sounded like they were barely keeping up. That added a funk to it. I was using these old drum machines and analogue sequencers as well, to create this kind of swing, it added to the feel that the instruments were being performed as opposed to being perfectly sequenced in a DAW. That’s an important part of it.

AMI:The main theme in particular, kind of sounds like a smashing together of fantasy and sci-fi, with

With a hugely respected body of work under his

video game maestro Jesper Kyd’s pulse-pounding new score for Warhammer 40,000: Darktide finds the composer harnessing

the unpredictable magic of analogue synths from the 1970s…

shades of both Danny Elfman and Hans Zimmer. How long did that theme take you and how long was the whole process?

The whole thing took a few years (on and off), but the main theme was the first thing I created. It has a really intense bass-line running through it. In the game, you start at the bottom, you are what the developers called a ‘reject’, so this idea that you work yourself up from the bottom led me to incorporate a lot of folk music instruments and acoustic performances to celebrate where you came from, to remind you of who your character is, no matter how high you rise in there ranks.

Also you get hired by the ‘Imperium’, and that’s when things get epic. We had a big live choir which we recorded in Budapest with the Budapest Scoring Choir - it helps give the sense that now you’re a badass for the Imperium.

That first track took a while to create, because I wanted to build it using analogue sequencing, I wanted to build the score around the idea that the electronics sounded as organic as possible. The analogue sequencers I used were the Roland 104 and an old ARP Sequencer. They’re really interesting instruments that definitely sound like they have life in them.

AMI: There’s so much incredible synth-texture on this soundtrack, pieces like Immortal Imperium have a real savage, industrial grind to them. What were some of the key vintage synths you used to build up this aural universe?

Key synths I’d say were the Yamaha CS-80, that was a big part of the sound, also the Prophet 10 from the 1970s – that’s probably my favourite keyboard of all time.The Roland SH-5 and SH-1000 are a big part of it, too. The latter has such a cool sound, the filter on there is unbelievable. I think it was Roland’s best ever filter.

The Korg Monopoly is pretty great, my Octave Cat is an original, from the 1970s – that’s one of the most out-of-control instruments ever. I also like to use Waldorf stuff. But I tend to always lean on my big Eurorack system, which is featured heavily in the score.

AMI: What is it about that older gear that made you want to use it for this game? Do you think those analogue sounds outshine more modern synths?

I do use modern synths as well, but when you play these new instruments that are trying to emulate older instruments there is a difference that you have to appreciate. If you were to do a quick comparison between them, things sound pretty close. But when you do things the ‘wrong’ way on a vintage synth, real magic can happen. When you do the same on a modern keyboard, it doesn’t have the same effect. They emulate how you’re ‘supposed’ to use it. Those experiments into the weird just don’t go as deep on a new synth.

AMI: That sounds exciting and explorative, but there must be a lot of challenges to using this older gear…

I think the biggest challenge is the fact that they are old. The CS-80 came out in the beginning of the 70s, so that’s got some years on it. They don’t always have MIDI, so you’re trying to really capture a performance. Other times, I build in like a CV Gate, then suddenly you’re able to sync things up with Cubase and with your modular, then everything runs in tempo, which is a huge help.

AMI: It seems like the role of a video game soundtrack composer is changing constantly. What have been the biggest shifts you’ve experienced over the last decade?

I think that the emphasis on music in games is growing. Developers are aware of how important music is. I feel like in film and TV, you don’t need to tell people that music is important, because without it a certain genre of film won’t work. But, for video games, people are really catching on to that now. I get that totally because the gameplay needs to be fun first and foremost. The music adds a huge amount of depth, but I think people are catching on to the fact that people will want to keep playing the game more if it has a good score.

AMI: What are the major differences between writing for games and say your work on filmswhich do you prefer?

Jesper: I don’t think I can live without doing both, if we start with video games, the amount of creative freedom that you can achieve is astounding. For the games I work on, I get asked to do my thing and I get really creative on those projects. I think that’s what I’m known for as well. In film, it’s very important that you can transition between cues very fast. You might have ten seconds of ‘walking’ ten seconds of ‘danger’, and then two seconds of ‘elevation’. It’s about always enhancing what’s on the screen.

Jesper’s score for Warhammer 40,000: Darktide is out now alongside the game.

HOME RECORDING IS ON THE RISE THANKS TO NEW HARDWARE AND OLD TECHNIQUES

Recording music at home has always been an outlet to express creativity, but thanks to advances in technology, home recording has never been more popular, according to AMS NEVE Product Specialist Joe Heaton.

Joe has a lifelong passion for music, and has spent the last 20 years as a sound engineer, even building a studio in his own home, before joining world-leading audio engineering company AMS Neve four years ago.

Home recording is experiencing a boom like never before, and thanks to new advances in technology, the end result can sound better than ever before.

Recently, artists and producers all over the world have set up studios in their homes to keep up with bills, and harness their own creativity, and the audio engineering industry has taken great strides of innovation to advance home recording.

The great thing about home studios is that they are completely customisable, to suit any budget and available space.

While some have chosen to kit out a spare bedroom, or corner of their lounge, with a pair of small studio monitors and a laptop, there are also those who can afford to build an entire annexe, fitted with top-spec analogue consoles and the best possible monitoring systems.

Recording studios almost always try to provide artists a comfortable space to be creative in, but nowadays it can be almost impossible to distinguish between a home studio recording and a track produced at a professional facility.

Gary Barlow entertained the nation during lockdown with his heartwarming ‘Crooner Sessions’ duets, and is a massive fan of home recording.

Last year he said: “Recording music at home and in a studio is different for me.

“I’ve had both scenarios in my career but I’m always drawn back to my own house and surroundings, because it takes the seriousness out of recording.

“With sound engineering, there are no rules, except use a Neve preamp.

“Recording should be fun – never serious.”

Anybody can set up their own home studio, but they do need to follow a couple of rules in order to get the best sound out of their set-up, by creating a good listening environment and monitoring system, and getting the right gear for their budget, whether it’s a thousand pounds or a million.

Modern room-tuning and even gear-tuning calibration software programs are widely available at reasonable prices, and studio monitoring technology has also significantly

improved over the past five years, meaning even an entry-level system will provide a flat frequency response and a great soundstage.

The next thing to focus on is the gear itself, and thankfully, home recording equipment has come on in leaps and bounds in recent years, so this can be tailored to suit personal tastes, and budgets.

Studio gear can be transparent, allowing the music to pass through without imparting any tone or ‘colour’, or it can be used creatively to add weight.

However, most producers would recommend a hybrid approach, which can easily be achieved at home, by combining digital and analogue gear in just the right way, giving life to mixes and helping tracks stand out.

Microphones are the first piece of gear in any recording chain, and selecting the right one can be difficult, but there are many premium mics available at prices to suit any budget.

As microphones turn soundwaves into electrical energy, the next stage in any decent home set up, echoed in every professional audio studio, is the preamplifier, which is almost as important as the mic itself.

Preamp-microphone impedance matching is an important consideration that is often overlooked, but this allows the very best performances to be captured by the microphones.

Selecting the right preamp includes crucial choices and considerations about the final sound, and a lot can be said about using the preamp to add colour at this, the first gain stage.

Crucially, a transformer at the preamp’s input stage creates magic, making anything recorded through it sound more real and musical.

People can even now bring the legendary sound of Abbey Road or Capitol Studios into their own home set-up for around £1000, thanks to the new USB-powered plug-and-play Neve 88M preamp and audio interface.

The analogue-to-digital converter (ADC) within an audio interface is the last stage in the signal chain before the sound is processed by digital audio workstation (DAW) software, and while there are many converters on the market, a transparent digital platform through a high-quality audio interface is considered essential.

ADCs that allow audio to translate through the system without decreased frequency bandwidth, or dynamic range restrictions, create better sound, as does adding analogue equipment to enhance the tonal character of the recordings and mixes.

At the end of the day, it’s never been easier to produce studio-quality music at home, with a little time, effort and knowledge.

“People can even now bring the legendary sound of Abbey Road into their own home set-up”

FROM BEDROOM TO FESTIVAL

Technology is crucial to everything British modern pop-rock legends Bastille do. That’s particularly true of late, as the band’s latest album, “Give Me The Future,” and its recent three-part expanded edition, “Give Me The Future + Dreams of the Past,” is a sci-fi exploration of the way our lives are entwined with technology: “every minute of every day,” frontman, founder and songwriter Dan Smith tells us.

Aside from being BRIT Award winners, having sold more than eleven million records worldwide, and having just released the new album to rave reviews, the band has been on a near-constant touring schedule across the UK, US, Europe and festivals all over the world - all while recording and producing, too.

So, when we sat down recently with frontman, founder and songwriter, Dan Smith, during their world takeover, we were intrigued to know how his favourite audio production tech makes it all possible.

Speaking with Smith on the road at the massive Sziget festival in Budapest, we discover the essential production tech he takes on the road, how tracks go from tour bus bunk to Will Smith-starring blockbuster, and get well and truly amped for festival season 2023…

AMI: We’re speaking to you at Sziget festival, which you’ve played multiple times - why are you such a fan of this festival?

We’ve been touring this weird world we’ve created with this album around the UK, Europe and America since the album came out earlier this year. and it’s fun to bring the concept show to a festival stage and see how people react. Sziget’s amazing. We’ve had such a good time there over the years. More than anywhere else in the world, it reminds me of Glastonbury, and is potentially the closest festival to it, in terms of how it feels to play Glasto. The lineup’s always ridiculous, and it goes on for a whole week, which I think is very impressive - so if you manage to survive that, hats off to you.

AMI: What can we expect from the live show?

I really love this show. It’s a lot of fun to play. It involves me sort of lying down on a therapist’s couch pretending to go into an inner tech world, which always makes you feel like a bit of an idiot, but so far, it’s been great! We’ve tried to put together a show that expands the world of the album, but also looks amazing and is fun to watch.

Bastille’s Dan Smith talks to Bex April May about high-production tours, low-fi songwriting and becoming a movie montage cliche

So, yeah, hopefully, hopefully hopefully people at Sziget will be into it.

AMI: Tell us about the tech you use in the show…

This tour specifically is so dependent on tech and electronic instruments. We have multiple laptops running at any one time, with loads of synthesizers coming out of them. Our drummer Woody’s drum kit is a kind of hybrid of acoustic drums and digital drums and pads, and at one point he uses an entirely electronic kit. Will, who plays bass and guitar, has even got a keyboard on this tour, to help him play sub-bass synths and various other things. For better or worse, we’re all teched up to our eyeballs. And that’s just in what you’re hearing - that’s before you get into the visuals at all. If there was a power cut on stage, we’d have to change tack very, very rapidly.

AMI: Speaking of touring, what tech do you always take with you when travelling?

Always a nice pair of noise cancelling headphones. The new Apple AirPods Max headphones are pretty great. We’ve been mixing all of our albums in spatial audio, and they are set up for that kind of totally 3D immersive mixing, so they’ve been really helpful on the road, sending notes back and forward for mixing albums. I got them for work purposes but actually they’ve also been great just to listen to albums and watch movies with as well.

AMI: You’re still songwriting, even when you’re on tour. What’s your go-to equipment for music production on the road?

I always bring my MacBook Pro - I’ve made all of our music right from the beginning on my Mac. I started in GarageBand and now I’ve moved on to Logic. It’s great, I can take it anywhere. All I need is my laptop, and then I have a little AKAI MIDI keyboard that plugs straight into it via USB. Then, I’ve got a Shure condenser mic which also plugs straight into my laptop - that’s basically all I really need. Obviously that doesn’t make the finished, mixed and mastered record, but for writing on the road, it’s perfect. it’s just like such a nice easy setup to start building a song.

AMI: Which Bastille tracks have you made that way while travelling?

So many of our songs started life in a weird backstage room somewhere, or on the tour bus. I remember writing “World Gone Mad”, which is a song that we did for the movie “Bright”. I was writing it in this funny little backstage room, and it ended up being in a film, and we got to make this mad video for it in LA with overturned cars and Will Smith!

AMI: That’s quite the journey…

I guess that’s because our music has always come from this bedroom-recording world, there’s always

quite a strange journey from these songs that start life literally in my bedroom or in a bunk on a tour bus. I remember making some songs when we were in Argentina, playing a bunch of festivals a few years ago, that ended up being on our second album. There’s a song we have called “The Lesser Of Two Evils” that we did in a rainy industrial car park outside of a venue in Germany. I feel super lucky to get to travel and be able to make music like we do. It means that a lot of the songs, even if they’re not about the place that we’re in, have these associations in my mind of like where we were when we started to make them.

I think it doesn’t need to be complicated. And I’m not saying that I can do it all, by any means, but as someone that can’t play guitar, it’s nice to be able to have a way to still be able to write on the road.

AMI: What’s your favourite way to listen to music?

I’m very easily distracted. I think we all are, with the constant barrage of information coming through our phones. So, to listen to a full album, I like to go for a run, like when I was training to do the London Marathon a few years ago. It was a really nice space to like catch up on loads of albums I hadn’t gotten the chance to properly. There’s also something nice about listening to music while being on the bus. I like to put on my AirPods, connect to Spotify on my phone, look out of the window and take in all of an album. It sounds like a depressing film montage cliché, doesn’t it?

More info for 2023’s festival at szigetfestival.com.

Photo below by Sarah Louise Bennett

INSIDE TILEYARD NORTH

PART THREE

As Wakefield’s Tileyard North approaches completion, the team are keen to warmly receive creative businesses, entice talent with TYX, and establish a fresh and collaborative community. By Andy Price.

Since the very inception of Tileyard, a vision of a tightly-knit community where work, networking and socialising are blurred, has been a fundamental aim. “Our focus is on building a community. And, it’s the curation that creates the community.” Nick Keynes explained to us recently. “If someone wants to take up space at Tileyard the most pressing concerns for us are ‘who are you?, what do you do? And what will you bring to our community? That’s far more important than the rent that you’re paying. We want to know what value our tenants can bring beyond paying for the space.”

The type of tenant curation marks the Tileyard team out as being more than just your usual property managers. Actively seeking out the right people to make a difference to the personality and inter-connected ethos of Tileyard, is more akin to recruitment than simply space-filling. This attitude is just as intrinsic to the populating of Tileyard North. The first member of Tileyard North’s Community building team, Katie Hopkins, explains to us how her new role is fixed on building relationships with the surrounding creative community, sparking conversations with possible collaborators and residents. “Engaging with creatives in the North and establishing key connections here in Wakefield, I look after our enquiries and get to know the artists, innovators and business leaders that are interested in calling Tileyard North home.” Katie explains,

“I support and pitch ideas for campaign delivery, meaning my role spans social media management, design, and copywriting too – being involved in most aspects of communication as we gear up for our opening later this year.”

Beyond the rental of office space, additional elements of Tileyard such as Tileyard Education and the TYX studio membership offer the means for a far wider range of talented people to get involved in the Tileyard community with the latter providing 24/7 access to the new studio facilities, almost like a gym membership.

A HOME FOR TALENT

While Tileyard North’s studios are nearing finalisation, down at the original Tileyard site in Kings Cross, a bespoke TYX facility is up and running, with several other spaces nearing completion. Many of its seven music production studios are being harnessed by its pool of creatives. “We started building [TYX London] at the end of 2020” explains Jack Freegard, TYX’s Managing Director. “We opened

around three months ago. Initially building began without any real idea of what it was we were building, until TYX kind of got superimposed into what it has now become.”

Jack tells us that the London TYX spaces serve as a test site – a proof of concept – for a model that will be next rolled out in Wakefield, and beyond… “We’re trying out different ideas, different types of rooms. We’ve got a room which we’re calling ‘the influencer suite’. It’s a content space really. You can do live-streaming, gaming, product demonstrations, interviews or podcasts. It’s a multi-use space. We’ve got a modular, multi-use desk, Black Magic Pro 4K cameras and Aperture lighting, so it’s all fully equipped for 4K live-streaming and recording.

“You can do live-streaming, gaming, product demonstrations, interviews or podcasts.”

It’s all set up in a very easy-to-use way.” Also available are conventional flexi-desks and workspaces.

TYX is intended to be accessible to all, and welcoming to those who aren’t particularly technically minded. “The studios and spaces are as simple as can be. The production studios are set-up so it’s just one USB cable into your computer.” That being said, the studios are still kitted out with some choice gear, spanning Neumann KH310 monitors and TLM 103 microphones, Prism Lyra 2 interfaces, a dense microphone locker full of classic condensers, and a synth trove stocked with the likes of the Moog Grandmother, Arturia’s Polybrute and much more.

The flagship space of TYX’s London complex is undoubtedly the Atmos suite, which will soon be mirrored at Tileyard North. “Tileyard North will have an Atmos room too. In the TYX London Atmos room we’re now doing Atmos referencing for labels and record playbacks. Apple have been coming in here doing playback sessions for TV series and things like that. A lot of the time it’s the people who might be mixing at home using headphones but they’re coming here to get a proper Atmos reference and to finish it off.” Says Jack.

A BIG DRAW

Even more than the original site, the Tileyard North team have gone the extra mile when it comes to establishing a vision of how Wakefield’s new creative hub will embrace businesses. “From a communications perspective, it’s been valuable to develop strategies and material aligning the Tileyard London voice with the personality of Wakefield and the site itself.” Katie tells us, before revealing that interest in the yet-to-be-completed site is rising daily. “We have had a huge amount of interest in space at Tileyard North, whether that be our creative office spaces or music studios, and we have even been inundated with event enquiries as we look forward to hosting live experiences in our event spaces on site. As we continue to announce more residents joining the community, I can only imagine the pull the hub will have for other businesses, freelancers, artists, and musicians here in the North.” Katie says.

Beyond the offices, workspaces and TYX studios, the draw of bigger industry events will also be pivotal. “We’ll be doing large scale concerts, award shows, food courts and things like that.” Jack Freegard explains. “We don’t want Wakefield to think that this is a London company that has come up to the North and is imposing itself on the community, we want to embrace the community. It needs to be owned by the community and that’s very much ingrained into our hiring policy. Further community managers will be from within that community, managing the growth of our creative spark that already exists in the north of England.”

This is confirmed by Katie. As first of the locallyrecruited community managers, she has already been heavily invested in Wakefield’s creative scene for years. She tell us of the strength of the city’s talent, and how their already-collaborative spirit will slot in well with Tileyard North; “We realise that there really

is a force here in Wakefield for music and the arts, and a passion and love of support for one another. We hope Tileyard North will bring these like-minded people together, inspiring meaningful conversations and creating cross-industry connections with our residents. Of course, we’re aiming to facilitate collaboration between our residents at Tileyard London and the future residents at Tileyard North, closing the gap between the North and the South.”

A NEW DAWN

While the Rutland Mills site itself is still requiring some further development before it can open completely, the day that Tileyard North’s phased opening can get underway is drawing closer. With all eyes on the first Education cohort beginning their studies in late 2023, prior to that, a series of events and previews will undoubtedly pique the interest of the northern creative sector. “Connections are hugely important. When you’re approximated together you get happy accidents.” said Nick Keynes, “[At Tileyard] you’re constantly bumping into people everyday and you can ask them what they do – forging connections that will likely come in useful. They’re beyond meaningful. What Tileyard is fundamentally about is talent incubation and we want to create an environment where talent can thrive.”

We’ll re-visit Tileyard North once the site gets up and running, but for now, we suspect that, this creative hub, built on the interconnected ideas and enterprise of businesses, students, artists and producers will give the North’s talent a space to grow.

For Parts 1 and 2 of our Tileyard North features, search Tileyard at audiomediainternational.com

EQUIPMENT

Chord Electronics has been setting audio standards and establishing bewildering control methods since its inception in 1989. And with the original ‘Mojo’ DAC/ headphone amp, the company arguably legitimised the entire ‘portable DAC’ sector – even if it was a pretty chunky device by ‘portable’ standards.

So successful was the  Mojo from the moment it hit the market in 2015, in fact, that it inspired a slew of imitators (most of them a fair bit more portable, admittedly) from companies both venerable and upstart. Imitation is a form of flattery, certainly, but unless the Mojo 2 can put some distance between itself and all the very many alternatives it’s ‘inspired’, it could well find itself flattered into irrelevance.

BUILD QUALITY

The majority of Mojo 2 is made of anodised aluminium – which feels almost as good as it looks. The casework itself is 23 x 83 x 62mm (HxWxD), but its rounded-off corners help it feel nicely palm-sized. Whether or not it’s pocket-sized is a different question, and whether or not its weight of 185g is pocket-friendly is yet another question.

It looks and feels like a premium product, though, no two ways about it. And if you’re not the one who has to interpret the dozens of different colours in which its polycarbonate control ‘spheres’ can glow to find out what Mojo 2 is up to, the control interface is uniquely decorative too. If you are, though, lots of luck – the size of digital file Mojo 2 is dealing with,

Simon Lucas takes a look at the Chord Mojo 2 and Dave Gale plays with the AMS Neve 88m GEAR REVIEW

volume level, EQ setting and more besides are all indicated only by variations in colour.

Mojo 2 is a strictly hard-wired device. The addition of a USB-C input is very welcome, and there are digital coaxial and digital optical inputs as well; analogue audio is available via either (or both) the two 3.5mm outputs. The battery is good for roughly eight hours of use between charges – Mojo 2 still has to be charged using the elderly microUSB standard, which is a pity, but at least it doesn’t (unlike the product it replaces) get disconcertingly hot while it’s charging.

SOUND

And here the gripes and criticism come to a screeching halt. Attach Mojo 2 to your laptop, smartphone or whatever at one end, attach an appropriately talented pair of headphones at the other (or an analogue connection to a full-size system) and the difference this DAC makes to the unassisted sound of your source player is never less than significant. In the right circumstances, it can be profound.

The Chord Mojo 2 is on sale now, and it’s priced at £495.

It creates a big, well organised soundstage. It has absolute authority over dynamic shifts both broad and fine. It expresses rhythms with the certainty of James Brown. And it knows exactly what’s going on even in the depth of a mix – no detail is too fleeting or too minor to elude it. And it does all of this while maintaining an attitude that’s all about entertainment rather than analysis.

At the bottom end, bass sounds are deep, swift and packed with information. At the opposite end of the frequency range, treble is similarly substantial, similarly rapid and similarly stacked with detail. And in between, Mojo 2 can reveal all the character, all the attitude and all the details of technique that your favourite vocalist has to give.

Integration of the frequency range is smooth, with nothing overstated and nothing underplayed. There’s a unity and coherence to the way Mojo 2 presents music that gives a strong impression of ‘performance’ – even if the music you’re listening to never previously existed outside its creator’s laptop and headphones.

Naturally enough, the bigger and more informationrich the digital file you serve it, the more convincing and confident Mojo 2 sounds at its output stage. But it’s by no means snobby – if a bog-standard Apple Music stream is what it’s given, it’ll do its utmost to make the best of it.

In short, it seems unlikely in the extreme that you can make a more significant pound-for-pound difference to your digital audio experience than the one Mojo 2 can give you.

“The Mojo 2 has absolute authority over dynamic shifts both broad and fine.”

If you’re looking for a stereo-based interface, which will provide a quick and easy route to tracking, with one of the classiest signal paths available in this format, the 88M is something of a winner. The 88M oozes quality in bundles.

When it comes to exemplars of the audio industry, there are few companies as revered as Neve, but can they apply that same status to their new audio interface? We bus-power-up some classic mic preamps.

In case you’d missed it, ‘Vintage’ is not so much the next big thing, as the beautiful-newthing that has been rediscovered, yet again! While there is a quest for ever quieter and more discrete audio interfaces, there’s also a great demand for vintage sounding equipment, from hardware to software emulations.

BOXING LARGE AND CLEVER

Neve’s new 88M audio interface perfectly straddles both ubiquitous territories, with a sense of the old, through the re-versioned use of preamp technology, but with the contemporary angle of a bus-powered interface.

Before we get into the sonics, let’s consider what we have in this box. Firstly, and most obviously, the 88M is a reassuringly weighty device, at 1.675Kg. That’s quite a number of bags of sugar, and might suggest that while it’s slightly larger than many other similar desktop audio interfaces, (it offers a 18x20cm footprint) it’s going to feel pretty heavy in transit. Place on your desktop, and the rubberised feet keep it securely in place, while its tolex-style wraparound finish looks classic and stylish.

The front of the interface provides 2 x mic/line/ DI inputs, via XLR/1/4” jack connectors, with 4 pots which double as push-button switches. Due to the added functionality, the pots don’t feel quite as sturdy as they might if they were just dampened pots, but the ‘made in the UK’ quality shines through. Each of the input channels toggles between mic/

line/DI input, with phantom powering available from a button next to input connector.

The presence of a see-saw monitoring pot allows easy balancing between incoming signals and DAW playback, with the ability to dictate your signal priority, along with the option to switch to mono, proving to be flexible for playback and tracking possibilities. These elements are very simple to access, which is just as well, as the 88M does not offer any accompanying software, to fine tune your interface preferences.

Around the back of the interface, there are monitor outputs on TRS 1/4” jack only, with send and return insert points for both input channels. You may also extend the number of inputs via the on-board ADAT light pipe, making the 88M a perfect partner for outboard mic pre’s with ADAT functionality, which include Neve’s own excellent 1073 OPX, albeit with the optional digital card fitted.

NEVE’S CLASSIC NUMBERS

If you buy into this device, you’ll be dialling in to Neve’s history, which might make you wonder why they haven’t placed their legendary 1073 pre amp at the front end? Put simply, it all boils down to power; one of the major party tricks that the 88M has to offer is its ability to run solely on bus power, which is to say that it powers directly from your computer. This explains the presence of the heftier USB3 connector to the rear, with included cables for conventional USB A and newer USB C connectivity, supplying the 88M with the appropriate amount of power. It still blows my mind that you can bus-power an interface such as this, and connect a condenser microphone using phantom power.

USB power has its limits, which explains the move toward a tweaked incarnation of Neve’s very own preamp circuit, culled from the legendary 88RS console. There is a reduction in headroom, over a fully powered channel, but it’s impressive and useable nonetheless, being reliant on the very same input transformers.

SONICALLY NEVE

I used several different mic’s, in different recording scenarios, to get a flavour of what the 88M could offer. Beginning with a U87, tracking was a total cinch.The low-latency monitoring proved to be impressive, with more than enough headroom for vocal work, both at the channel and monitoring stages. Some like their playback loud; that’s not me, although I would defy anyone to suggest that the 88M cannot crank to high enough levels.

While recording vocals, the depth of capture feels impressive, with what I would describe as a full-tone, particularly in the middle frequency band. My other day-to-day interfaces do feel different, with a suggestion of greater brightness in the upper frequency bands.

Reaching for a Coles 4038, paired with a Fet Head transformer, I picked up a trombone and layered up some tracks. In this scenario, the Neve sounds fantastic. Its classic calling pays enormous dividends here, where the richness of mid-register tone lends itself beautifully to the sonority of the instrument. While the presence of some mighty channel preamps will provide one reason for the tonal colour, it’s worth noting that the 88M uses a SABRE 32 convertor, which is not the more usual D/A and A/D convertor, found in other interfaces. Under all circumstances, it’s a class act, but as with all timbral colours, you may well gravitate to your preferences, possibly directed by the music you choose to record and produce.

Further recording explorations yield a very solid sound-stage, which is wide and detailed in all respects. Everything just feels like it slots into place. As my time with the 88M increased, I found the overall sonic makeup really great to work with, although referring back to my usual day-to-day high-end interface, the 88M definitely presents what could be regarded as a slightly more vintage or classic tone, which is very desirable. There can be no doubt that the 88M is a class performer. One point, that you will either love or hate, is its total reliance on hardware operation. The lack of Neve software could feel like a moot point, dependent on how you choose to use the device. If you’re looking for a stereo-based interface, which will provide a quick and easy route to tracking, with one of the classiest signal paths available in this format, the 88M is something of a winner. The 88M oozes quality in bundles.

Neve 88M – £1075

“The low-latency monitoring proved to be impressive.”

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