The first time you used a producer was just recently. You never had anyone officially produce. Bryce [Goggin] [#40] is probably the closest.
He had a lot to do with how our last album [Brighten the Corners] sounded. He did a great job- he's definitely creative. So he gets credit, but he could've been called the producer of the last album if he had really pressed for it, but we were sort of against that title anyway. We still are, we don't think we ever get produced, but by this point it's sort of old. So it was like, "Nigel wants to be producer? Well it's fine with us." We've done this for five albums now, and we wanted to work with him too.
He's creative.
He's really creative, and he works with Radiohead, which I think is a really cool band. We found out that Nigel wanted to record with us. We didn't request him, he just said he would do it and we were excited cause we knew that they were a cool band, even though I hadn't listened to Ok Computer all that much before we got a hold of him. We decided we wanted a producer and he decided he wanted to do it and we didn't want to ask anybody. We didn't want to look and he'd asked. So I called him up and he was a really nice, friendly guy. He had just done the Beck album [Mutations] and I like Beck.
That's a good sounding record.
Those are two really good records and the two coolest popular bands, just about. We were originally going to do it in Sonic Youth's studio [Echo Cañon], because we were just supposed to record on the cheap, like we always do. "They'll have a bunch of different little toys," cause they're Sonic Youth. Their studio had a good tape machine, like the two inch 16 [Studer]. We went there with Nigel and started to record there (this is after rehearsing at your place, and Steve's for a while). Nigel couldn't get his head around it. All he brought were some speakers and like one microphone. He just wanted to use everything else there. But it was really weird. The faders are backwards.
You pull them down for the sound to go up?
You'd be surprised how that can freak you out. Things like that. There were weird things you had to do with playback and listen back, and there were no headphone mixes per se. We left and were going around to other studios in New York, cause there are inexpensive ones in Brooklyn that are still cool. He didn't care about working in the nicest studio. But he knew, cause he mixed REM at RPM, that he liked it fine. He said, "We should go check it out." We were all sitting there like, "We can record anywhere." It's just a professional, impersonal studio. That's where we did a lion's share of the recording. It's very comfortable but, I mean, I wouldn't go back there really.
You got an advance from Matador for the first time ever too, didn't you?
Yeah, this was more expensive then any of our other records. The last one wasn't cheap either, just because of flying and paying Bryce and then mixing. It wasn't as much as this one, it just kind of started getting expensive. Again, for me, I just wanted to get it done. Done well- I didn't really care at this point. I just figured we could be irrational for once in our lives. Just do that big thing and see if it's fine, but still, that being said, we were still kind of grasping. We only did twelve days there or something. Basically we wanted to have all the drums and everything, but the vocals done, and we didn't quite do that. So we went to London to do the vocals and mix it. Get a break. We went to this place where Nigel was a tea boy and started his stuff. He met Radiohead there, when they were doing The Bends, at RAK. That's when he agreed to become their mate. When John Leckie was passed out or something. He was there helping.
Being a tape op.
Totally. So we were in the third room. It was like Bernard Butler was there, from Suede, in the big room. Stephen Street was mixing Crissie Hynde's album. We were the underdogs in the cheap room. That's where we did the remainder of the recording. In this room it was really cool, API board with a big upstairs with a big glass partition. That's where the producer stayed, kind of in a control room or a disco booth, but up top. The studio was down below. We did three songs there with another drummer [Dominic Mercott, of the High Llamas] because we didn't get a couple of good performances on a couple of songs. We finished it up, and we were going to mix there, but Nigel got paranoid about it and didn't like it. So we went to this other place that's even nicer. That was a pretty cheap place it was like 200-300 pounds a day. Which is like $450, but we could stay there too. It had all this nice stuff. It had more of a vibe than RPM but it was also an impersonal studio. But that stuff never really bothered me that much. Doesn't matter if it's impersonal or not. I just want to do the record. I don't need to have all this vibe necessarily.
You're comfortable with the recording process. You started out with the recording process.
I mean if you saw where we did Crooked Rain... it wasn't like that guy was going to get all these jobs like when they came to see that place. It was just a room, like a black room, with drums and a couple of keyboards in the back. There was like not a poster on the wall. Just cereal bowls and..........
No lava lamps?
No. You just want stuff to work, and I guess you want it to sound like what it really sounds like outside the studio. That's really important. So the place we went to was called Mayfair and that's where we mixed it. Nigel got a deal, because he works there a lot. That was nice. That was more of a place where they have cable TV and big menus to order from. That sort of place is fun, but they do make you pay for it. Everything's marked up 200%, not just the tape. So we finished. Nigel did most of the mixing himself, he wouldn't let us touch the board. It was the first time we didn't touch the board when we were mixing.
You were there though.
Yeah, we were there, except he remixed a couple of them. Where it was virtually the same mix. "Carrot Rope" and "Billie" he did again one more time. He was a multiple pass guy. He had a different style than Bryce or me. We just sort of go through and mix it and that's it. It was this existential battle where we conquered the song right then in the spirit of the moment and it was done. But that means we did go back and do a couple of them again. Nigel was sort of the same way, but he had more of a hit or miss style. It seemed like he would just do it, take a pass and mix it in two hours. Then he would take it to his house and decide there. Some songs he did over and over. Like "The Hexx," he might have done that one too much actually. It's hard to say, but just about everything he did more than once. He ended up automating, it was pretty easy automation. He did it really quickly, it didn't take long like SSL style. He ended up doing that and he did a really good job I think.
