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Recording in London’s Watershed Studios, Mr. C says he generally attempts to avoid using samples when making tunes– unless there’s a very good reason. “I always feel guilty,” he explains. “I just can’t do it. It’s not my music. I like the idea that it’s all come from within myself. Good vocalists, good engineer, you put yourself in a good environment with good equipment so you can make something that sounds new, something that’s original, that’s an expression of your own sense of sound.” Then he admits: “I did chop up a breakbeat on the drum-n-bass track [‘Polar Shift’]. Also I used a small breakbeat in ‘The Club.’ It’s cheeky little samples. The rest of it is all programmed.” In creating the tracks for Change (End Recordings), everything was recorded in MIDI and put through MOTU’s Digital Performer for sequencing. Analog and digital synthesizers are the main sound sources for bass lines and synth lines. Analog units include a Roland JX-8P with a PG-800 editor, a Jupiter 6, a Juno-106, an Essential Circuits Pro-One, a Minimoog and an Oberheim 4-Voice. Digital units include a Kurzweil K2000R and K2500 upgrade (performing double duty as a 64-meg sampler), two Akai S-3000 samplers, and various vintage E-Mu keys. Dynaudio Acoustics M3 and Event 2020s speakers take care of the monitoring. Outboard gear includes the Eventide DSP4000 Ultra Harmonizer upgraded with an H3000 processor, a Sony R7 reverb, a Roland SDE-330 Space Delay and a Roland SRV-330 Space Reverb. Noisegate and Drawmer compressors are used to perfect the sound, and everything is processed through an analog Soundtracs IL48 desk with big EQs. “I prefer an analog sound on a desk,” he says. “It’s bigger, makes it a lot warmer, a lot richer. I start with a really stripped-down, raw element of rhythms and build on top of that with something musical. It’s fantastic to have co-production with someone like [Nüw Idol]. He’s not into house and tech-house; he’s more of a trance person. Working with an engineer who has a different outlook on music allows you to be creative as a songwriter and an artist, gives [you] that space.” Although he has worked with vocalists in the past, a break from voices for a few years had Mr. C back in philistine mode when recording Robert Owens (“The Club”) and Victoria Wilson James (“Circles of Love”) for the album. Using Neumann microphones, they were recorded directly onto DAT and put back in at the end. “[It] was kind of laborious,” Mr. C admits. “After pre-recording all the tracks, I went into post-production with Pro Tools and worked through a lot of editing, equalization and playing around with things. In the end, [I brought] up all the tracks individually and put down string parts, ambient parts, and drum solos again so I could merge all the tracks together to make a whole CD, as a soundtrack.”  Change has emerged as a whole piece, but with the individual tracks not quite falling into hard-and-fast categories. Known as one of the kick-starters for the “tech-house” sound, Mr. C actually titled one of his tracks “Tech-house” to show its malleable and non-compartmental nature. But one could say that the album is awash with elements of soulful deep-house, crackling techno, synapse-tickling acid house, jittery drum-n-bass, bumping electro, even slight washes of melodic trance. “Very positive, sophisticated, uplifting dance music,” he says of Change. “To me, it’s a good electronic album that’s honest to my belief in music. It’s a good representation of how I want to be perceived. As an artist I wanted to express myself in a different way on an album. I wanted to do something that you can stick in your CD player when you’re on a long drive or something that if you’re having a little dinner party at home, you can have it low in the background. “But if you turned it up, you could play it on the dancefloor. I wanted to capture all those things, which you can’t do on 12-inch singles – 12-inch singles are for DJs to play and people to jump around to like lunatics.” |
In
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