TOOLBOX
FINDING YOUR CREATIVE PROCESS WITH CLEAN CUT KID
For this month’s edition of Artist Toolbox, we had the pleasure of talking with Mike Halls, front man of Liverpool’s Clean Cut Kid. A band with an expansive way of recording, writing and producing their music, we asked Hall all about his creative process, and the recent success of their documentary debut in support of their album Mother’s Milk. YOUR ALBUM MOTHER’S MILK JUST HAD ITS DOCUMENTARY DEBUT THIS MONTH- HOW DID YOU FIND THE PROCESS OF CREATING A DOCUMENTARY THAT FELT REPRESENTATIVE OF YOU AS A BAND? The process was kind of governed by a couple of things.
We had lots of footage of writing, recording and our trip to Nashville, but most of this footage was never going to be visually sufficient to carry the narrative- mainly because a lot of the album’s composition and creation was done in our little flat and tiny studio, plus I don’t find digital film or music very inspiring at all and all the footage was shot on iPhone.
"FINDING A UNIQUE APPROACH TO RECORDING AND ARRANGING A RECORD IS THE SINGLE MOST IMPORTANT THING AFTER THE SONGS..." 14
So I knew from the start that this was going to have be something very unique. The formula was to use hand drawn animation to give the images some dimension, and then heavily lean on foley and sound design to inject all the emotion into the story. What emerged was something much more akin to the way we make records.
YOU’VE JUST SIGNED TO ALCOPOP! RECORDS FOR YOUR NEW ALBUM, TELL US ABOUT YOUR PLANS FOR THIS. The 4th record was a very different process to Mother’s Milk. MM is about 50% recorded on tape, and 50% digital; but this one is completely tracked on 8 track 1/4” mastering tape. What that translates to is a much
