When you were quite young, you decided to study recording. What inspired you?
My inspirations were initially very early, when I was probably nine, with the Bowie records. [Tony] Visconti's [Tape Op #29] work; the Trident Studios era. I'd fallen in love with that and T. Rex. These records came out when I was born, so they were out of step with where I was chronologically, but I was in love with them. Then I went further back and started getting into the Velvet Underground and those kinds of records. The film [The Psychology of Analogue] covers how I'd had a childhood where I spent a lot of time on my own in a hospital, and my ears overdeveloped. I was able to pick sounds out easily, hence when I did learn music, I learned it fast. It was only putting theory into my mind that I'd already worked it out. It was the same with being able to listen and hear. The first person to teach me to place mics was Bill Leader [Bert Jansch, Pentangle]. He taught my college course, which was the George Martin Recording Technology course. It was the best college course for learning production, and it was free! I did an audition to get in; it was mentored by George Martin and taught by Bill Leader, at Salford College of Technology.
Which is near Manchester, right?
Yeah, it's part of Manchester. I was lucky enough to go there. The year that I was there, the other people on the course were Humanoid [Brian Dougans] and A Guy Called Gerald [Gerald Simpson]. A lot of people who were part of the dawn of house music were tinkering away, and they were part of those 20 odd kids who were doing that course.
How old were you?
I went to recording school when I'd just turned 16. Then I was working at Strawberry Studios before my 18th birthday.
That was 10cc's studio. How did you get in there? Through the school?
A bit. When I got to the end of the second year, which was the end of the course, I could've stayed on to turn it into almost a degree; but I got the first part of my qualification and I got Student of the Year from George Martin. I got a decent reference, so I got pulled forward for an interview to work at the BBC, and I didn't get the job. I now think that it was probably for the best. The BBC probably wouldn't have taken working-class Northern Irish girls. I think they were looking for a different type of person, at that point.
Interesting.
I walked away from that. I knew about Strawberry Studios, and I was a big Nico fan. I knew Nico had been working with [Martin] Hannett [Tape Op #103] there, and then Nico had died over that summer. I still wanted to go there and work with Hannett, so I turned up and told them that I'd work for nothing for three weeks during my summer.
Obviously, Martin Hannett was still with us, and engineer Chris Nagle – who had been his engineer on Joy Division's Unknown Pleasures and many other records – was there.
Yeah. I continued working with Chris right up until a few years ago, when he kind of retired. I'm still in touch with Chris all the time. Me and Chris worked together a lot after Martin passed. They were both absolutely incredible engineers. They're not that dissimilar. Martin's known for being more outwardly-spoken, shall we say. I think that they enjoyed having me in the room, because I would be very female and buffer-ish about it. When the drummer's doing a take, and they're f-ing and blighting about how not up-to-standard they'd think it was, then they'd go, "We need to move that mic," and I'd wander in and go, "Yes, it's going well!" Trying to calm them down and do the buffering, not letting the musicians see the tension.
There's a bluntness that happens in the studio, isn't there?
Oh, yeah. The psychology of handling musicians is a massive part of it. Knowing when to push them, but not break them. These days, because of all the levels of undo and the safety nets, I don't feel they get pushed nearly as hard as the days that I grew up in. I saw a lot of tears and a lot of fistfights. Now it's that age of social media; just emojis, clap, clap, "Everything's great," and hearts. It's like that in the studio as well! But I grew up with foul language and people not saying, "That was great."
What was it like apprenticing under those two at Strawberry?
A lot of what I picked up, initially I didn't realize the value of it. Techniques, like always bringing my effects back on a channel [not an aux return] so that I can EQ it – EQ'ing your reverbs and effects returns so that you're not creating clouds and lumps. That's my standard way of working. There are a lot of mic'ing techniques that I picked up when I was young that I still use daily. It was great. And the anecdotes and stories. The Happy Mondays saved my life, because I saw them do so many drugs that I've never touched drugs. I'm petrified of touching drugs in case I turn into one of them!
That's... uh, a cautionary tale. How long were you working at Strawberry?
I was there from '88 to '90; just two years. Then I went to a place that used to be called Pennine Sound, which was now Mirage Studios. I continued working with Hannett and Nagle on sessions there. Then I went and did four years at The Windings, a residential studio in Wales. I'd come back and freelance at Suite 16, which was co-owned by New Order. I'd freelance helping set up tech for New Order. The Factory Records lot all knew each other. Tony Wilson was somebody I'd known since I was a kid. That whole clan was very close, and they hung out together in Manchester. Characters were wandering in and out of Strawberry. Lots of people you'd see coming over for a day here and there, finishing off projects with Martin or Chris. Other people passed through as well; loads of other producers and engineers. Ian Broudie and Andrew Weatherall worked out of there. I worked with 808 State. I worked both at Strawberry and in different studios with people like that. We became friends.
How did you get the gig in Wales at The Windings?
The Charlatans. I worked on "Indian Rope." I knew the lads, and I brought The Charlatans into Strawberry and hooked them up with Chris Nagle. I got them my "studio discount," because it would be my first assistant engineer job, as I'd only been at Strawberry a very short time. Then, when they came to do the album Some Friendly, I presumed that Chris and I would be working on it. But I was at Mirage by then. They came and looked around but opted to go to The Windings with Chris, so I headed to Wales to see them all.
That ended up becoming a job, working down there?
Yeah, I went down there initially to see how the record was going and to hang out. Then I decided, "I'd like to stay down here." They offered me a job; I was down there for years. They knew that I knew all the other bands as well. I brought the Inspiral Carpets into The Windings. Colin Richardson had also trained under Martin Hannett in the Happy Mondays days. He brought loads of metal bands in there, like Napalm Death, Fear Factory, and Carcass. I'd be doing an indie rock session – Inspiral Carpets, The Fall, James, and The Charlatans – and then going into Colin Richardson's death metal sessions. He did two Napalm Death albums there.
Legendary.
Lovely lads; but not the kind of thing I'd sit down, have a glass of wine, and listen to a bit of Napalm Death.
How did you decide to open a studio in 2015 that was fully based in analog recording?
I've been recording for 30 years. It was actually back in the late '90s, when everybody was throwing out tape machines, that I sat down and tried to get my head around [Emagic, now Apple] Logic and [Digidesign, now Avid] Pro Tools. It made me want to give up, because I'm not a data entry-type person. I felt it was using a part of my brain that was stopping the rest of my brain from doing the actual job of listening. I struggled with it and kept using tape. Then I set up a full Analogue Catalogue Studio in the early 2000s, in Manchester. Then I hoicked the whole studio in container vans and brought it over to Northern Ireland in 2014. I was already a so-called Luddite. I'd recorded The Vaselines album [Sex with an X] and the Jeffrey Lewis album [A Turn in the Dream-Songs] whilst it was in Manchester. When I came here, I felt that not only could I not subscribe to the digital thing, I also felt that I missed my years of working in residential [studios], like Monnow Valley Studios, Rockfield Studios [see review of the recent documentary this issue -ed.], and The Windings. I missed that creativity of living with the band in the middle of nowhere, everyone having the anxiety levels of riding that emotional roller coaster of trying to capture the magic to tape, as well as hoping that everybody got it right together at the same time. I love the "all together now" aspect.
When I do sessions on tape, even if I'm going to dump them over to Pro Tools where I could edit, people still go, "We'd better get this take down properly."
You just need to tell them the price of tape, and that there are only 32 minutes on a reel if you're running at 15 ips [inches per second]! That's enough to put a boot up their ass. That decision-making that you have to make, where you do a take and you're thinking, "There are only two minutes left on this reel. Do we rewind and go over that one?" I don't think they'll make themselves do that, leave that comfort zone and push themselves that hard, if they've got, "Oh, yeah; we'll keep that one, and the next one, and the next 20 takes."
Are you finding there are clients who push back against using tape? Like, "That's great and all, but we want to use a computer"?
There have been, over the years. It's coming back around. That's why I did the film as well, to articulate why I'm still here recording to tape. I didn't want to be seen as some old person who hasn't got a reason for this, like they don't know how to use the telephone. I do know how to use a computer, but I don't know how to effectively use a computer for recording and listen the way that I can listen when I'm not using the computer.
Right.
My hands have been operating the Otari MTR-90's controls for so long that it feels like driving a car. I don't think; I just do it. It means that my brain is free to think about the music. When I started questioning myself, "Why am I doing this? Why am I still doing this? How can I justify this to others?" is when I started to look so deep into it that I'm now pretty good at justifying what I'm doing.
You're going to get better results for the client, because you're listening deeper.
Yeah. It's a combination: I'm fully listening. Not using my eyes. And there's no such thing as latency. Also, and very, very importantly, the pressure is on the artists to deliver it. That adrenaline rush that they get. This building is designed so that everybody can see each other. We can put amps in rooms. A drummer can have a massive "John Bonham" sound, with a bassist and a guitarist with them all the way up. They feel it. They don't feel like they're trying to fake it in a booth. You can feel that in the performances. I get those moments when I think that the pressure and expense of tape, and the inability to keep all the takes, has piled on and has done a good thing. It does good more often than it makes people snap under the tension.
Right. What about the cost of tape? It's $345 [USD] per reel over here.
I'm on the RecordingTheMasters SM911. It's coming in at just under 300 euros, or about 260 pounds a reel. I can use it maybe three times. I tend to hire [rent] it to them to take the sting out of it for the session. I'll divide the cost of a reel by three, and, at cost, hire it to the client. The average tape cost is just an extra 200 quid on the end of the invoice, which is perfectly acceptable. It removed that argument of, "I can't afford 1,000 pounds for three reels of tape." You know, because you record to tape as well, you session plan like hell to analogue. You make sure what songs we're doing, "Do they all fit on this reel? Don't leave me with 20 seconds short on this reel!"
Right. I used to rent tapes to people. I'd say, "I'll hold on to this tape for two months." I'd always get a call the day after that expired, asking, "Can we remix it?" Does this happen to you?
I hold on to them for a long, long time.
I see the stack behind you.
Yeah. I have two other rooms like that as well. I have a JoeCo BLACKBox recorder and all the looms [cables]; as soon as a session's finished, I get my assistant to archive it all to a USB and give it to them. Even if I'm recording to tape and I am going to mix back off tape, I give them the mono WAVs. That way they'll have the raw files.
On the other hand, it puts another factor back in that says, "Let's commit to these mixes that we're doing off the analog reel. Let's get this right now."
Yeah. Probably only about 40 percent of my clients are happy to mix in analogue, with no recall, and go with those mixes. Many, 60 percent probably, do all their tracking in analogue, but then they take it away to mix it in Pro Tools, or have somebody else mix it. Maybe they might do a bit of tinkering, but a lot of it is mixed very, very quickly from the WAVs.
