Why I Oppose Music Playlists

It seems that since 2016, there’s been very few articles and little data on the statistical usage of playlists as a primary source of music consumption. Notably, Spotify is very frugal with the distribution of their listener’s habits, but I think a lot can be drawn from the UI changes of streaming platforms in recent years. It’s quite hard for my eye not to be immediately drawn to a selection of brightly decorated squares with ‘Discover Weekly’, ‘Spotify DJ’, or ‘Daily Mix xyz’. There isn’t necessarily a problem with these being presented to me - it makes sense, I suppose I should go listen to more of what I was listening to - but it has me thinking more widely about the impact of playlists on the act of listening, and whether there is something lost in that?

My position, to begin with, is that I dislike playlists - I think because I don’t understand them. Since I was small, I was always used to owning music in the form of CDs, often sourced cheap from charity shops or Poundland (of all places, yes they used to sell them!). I think since then, I've always been an avid album listener - a habit taken from my family’s own habits. Even when I was gifted an iPod Nano - a tiny little square music player - I was still conscious of listening to albums and loading on all of my music from my ripped CD library. If anything was digital, it had its origins in something physical. I don’t think much of my listening has carried through into adulthood, but I'm sure whatever I did listen to helped form my listening habits today.

Nowadays playlists outweigh albums for the majority of listeners, an understandable statistic given the rise of streaming services. But what are the consequences? It is not uncommon now to see an artist promote a new album through a monthly release of singles, culminating in at least half (if not all) of an album’s tracks being available before a full scale physical launch. In some ways the advantage is clear, draw in your listener while the physical copies are manufactured, culminating an audience before release. On the other hand, it speaks volumes about the need for artists to manufacture their music for the algorithm, all to attract a wider audience. I think this has a much more worrying implication: if a playlist encourages similar listening, by appeasing its listener, it cuts out a huge variety of music that instead seeks to challenge a listening ear. I worry then that playlists, while offering thousands of songs, potentially leave you listening to what is essentially the same type of music over and over. It puts your listening in a box and risks leaving you disengaged.

So as an album devotee, how do I use playlists? Well - I like to think of them primarily as mix tapes - which in turn I think are their own love language. There is a certain romantic appeal (at least for me) in the challenge of curating a mixtape for a friend. To start, you have the consideration of the person and their listening habits, then which songs you feel reflect an artist’s discography authentically, and then further to that - the actual challenge of making the songs flow in a meaningful order. There is a conscious thought and dedication to the practice. You have to be measured and conscientious in your approach, and I think for many pre-streaming era generations, this may have been a fantastic method of discovery. Maybe you remember someone by a song they gave you, maybe that song reminds you of them? Maybe you shudder from the song… I suppose there is a drawback too.

My other use is distinctly unromantic, it’s to collate/organise songs from a production level. It gives me fast access to particular sounds, textures, or songwriting techniques that I like or look to draw upon - a sort of inspiration manual if you like. These playlists I'll mark with ‘REF’ and then follow it with an associated context, for example: ‘REF Building Songs’ for songs that start small and grow big. So, this approach is more a more objective use for playlists - it’s just cataloguing, but also speaks of my treatment of the ‘format’. To me, they are just folders for songs. Perhaps that too is negligent to the songs, reducing them in some way by throwing them into a room of similar tracks. It’d be like meeting many copies of yourself - I’m not sure I'd like that.

Returning to mix tapes briefly, this idea of ‘flow’ or continuity between songs is something that artists themselves pore over when finishing an album. The order of the track listing can be a painful process, from discerning what will be the opener and closer of an album, and then deciding what kind of journey the listener’s ear will go on in between. Flow is incredibly important as it determines the emotional momentum of an album. Sometimes you may want a rocker to counteract a ballad, perhaps starkly, or maybe you’d like to front load the album with more energetic tracks before leaning into the more nuanced, challenging songs. The idea of being ‘challenged’ to listen is incredibly important for albums - most of my favourite artists have always pulled me in with singles (as they are often designed that way), but have left me more enamoured with the weightier, less immediate tracks that don’t make their appeal so clear on first listen.

I’ll admit - the only time I have ever used the ‘skip/do not play’ function on Spotify is on Father John Misty’s more recent Mahashmashana, on the track ‘Screamland’. In a way, I hate this feature because it is an extension of my own avoidance for a song that I dislike. The trouble is - I’ve tried with this track, and for me it just feels very disparate compared to the rest of the album. It’s a very overdramatic, over compressed, pop-style track that stands apart from the eloquence of its surrounding songs. I realise - if I owned the vinyl, this would open side B - so would I strategically place the needle, or maybe I'd prefer side A? Alternately, would this song sound the way it does if it were only available on a vinyl? My cynicism here stems from my assumption that the track was designed to sell the album, probably through playlists. I remember speaking to a colleague at the studio I was working at upon the album’s release, he was much more of a fan than me, and his thinking was that the song is a necessary pop epic to widen Misty’s audience. I’m not sure I can agree. For me it pushes me away from the album. I suppose if it were a vinyl, I’d have to strategically key in a scratch to make it jump the track. I am mostly joking, such a thought makes me shiver… if you love ‘Screamland’, then I'm sorry for my slander!

Another confession - I haven’t used this feature just once - I’m sorry. In fact I remembered while typing this paragraph that I also used it on Wilco’s critically acclaimed Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, on the track ‘Radio Cure’. I admit - I remembered while typing the previous paragraph, so treat this as cheap shock value. I found ‘Radio Cure’ mawkish at first, I wanted to like it but its disparate composition left me struggling to find a way in. I can say that since, I appreciate the song more - it’s still my least favourite on the album, but I can now enjoy the song’s eventual payoff in its final two minutes. In the end, I got past my fear of that dreaded ‘skip’ button, mainly because I felt a guilt I was doing the album a disservice as I became more invested in it. There is an irony here, because the album’s publishing was fraught for its lack of commercial appeal, eventually being published under another label, but one which was also owned by Warner. So I too, am a little complicit in its dismissal. Since release, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot is considered Wilco’s masterpiece. So I wonder, would this album be received well if it came out today? What if it was released song by song and then dropped into discovery playlists? It’s an album filled with unusual songwriting techniques, cut up sounds, samples, and other oddities that make it so unique. So I suppose my questioning is whether I would find this album as fulfilling via a playlist, and would I risk dismissing the album if I had only heard ‘Radio Cure’? In contrast, playlists are organic, mutable things - albums are not. I’ve owned REM’s Automatic for the People since I was twelve years of age, but it took me another decade to actually engage with it. Maybe that’s not the speedy response that Spotify wants from its users.

So is it now the role of the artist to write music that appeals to the playlist format? Is there now a greater calling for each song to be a single, and if not - is that artist expected to suffer less of an audience for it? I fear it cuts out a good deal of indie artists, or relies upon them to manage a much smaller, but more invested fanbase. Of course streaming services are not the be all and end all of audience discovery, especially when the payment to artists is so low, but it does seem to place further odds against artists that don’t appeal to the algorithm. This is all my own supposition - maybe this method actually caters for a wider breadth of listeners, and if you’re old school like me - well you can also get by.

I do still believe the album format is sacred, if I like one track, I then make it my objective to like the next, and another, and another… until I like the whole album. If not, I'll try another album by that artist, to see if my way in can be found elsewhere. I enjoy being challenged in my listening, but of course I don’t like everything I hear. I don’t tend to engage with pop for example. I think that’s fine - that’s just my taste and I listen as I wish, but how would an algorithm accommodate for that? A lot of my artists I discover retrospectively, going via critical praise on magazine websites, and that makes me wonder - how do I find an artist that is new? It seems my ‘newest’ listening is discovered through Youtube Radio Shows, like KEXP. Not Spotify. Tiny Desk is another wonderful example - it’s about the artist, in the purest form, but should discovering music be that boutique? I fear I'm now making a shopping list of questions that can’t really be answered.

So maybe the album and playlist can co-exist for me. Maybe the album should come first, and enable the creation of a playlist. I have a shared playlist with a friend - where we both contribute songs we feel one another may enjoy - it’s convenient and over one year has reached around 150+ songs. With that, I have definitely discovered new songs and artists I enjoy. So there’s an argument in defence of playlists, you just need to find the use. However, these songs have only stayed with me if their associated album maintained my expectations. So, maybe then the album is still the anchor that dictates the appeal of my listening. On the flip side, playlists are wonderful time capsules for your listening habits - whether those be university party lists, or collations of specific songs that provide nostalgia for a time or place.

So to conclude, I wonder whether I can find a way to engage with playlists with the same interest as albums, at least for me. For many others, they may find the album format harder to engage with than the playlist. An album requires attention, and an hour or so of your time, a playlist can be functional - I can compose it for a run, or a party. Maybe they are two separate beasts, not to be compared.

Bowie’s Blackstar - Ten Years On

It’s now been ten years since Bowie’s death, and the release of his final (and in my opinion most accomplished) album, Blackstar (2016). The radios this week have been endlessly chattering about the impact of Bowie and his works, and it makes me wonder if anyone has really accepted his passing yet - it seemed monumental and I remember the day clearly. I’m not one for hero worship, or celebrity culture, but I do have a strong admiration and respect for artists and what they create, and I suppose in that line of thinking Bowie seems like such a behemoth in the music world for all of his personas, reinventions, and approaches to his musical style. His influence is everywhere. Blackstar however is an album that itself is inspired by many modern artists, such as Kendrick Lamar, Death Grips, James Murphy (LCD Soundsystem) - and of course, Elvis Presley - with the titular ‘Blackstar’ having its own multitude of meanings and contexts across the album but perhaps most concretely coming from Presley’s own lyric: ‘When a man sees his Blackstar / He knows, he knows his time has come’. The album has had so much written about it already, and my thoughts on writing this were largely governed by my overwhelm of such a topic, but it seems like now is a good time to discuss and revisit the album in any capacity. 

I should note - it’s an album that hasn’t left my listening rotation for a long while, perhaps since release, and I find myself coming back to it frequently - despite its seven tracks, it always offers something new - whether musically, lyrically, or in the form of the recorded performance. I think since its release it’s been wrongly recognised, or penned as an album which serves as Bowie’s own eulogy or bowing out, but I think that is only the literal interpretation. The songs offer more reflection on life as a whole, for all its anxieties, fears, regrets. It’s as though Bowie’s address Lazarus is a theatrical vehicle with which to explore the struggles of life and its varying perspectives.

Blackstar

The opening track, Blackstar - noted as a symbolic star in the track listing - functions as the opening, and central piece of the album. It opens to a dark, ambiguous tone - predominantly Phrygian, before assembling itself over a skittering drum beat (Marc Giuliana), taking on a mysterious tone as Bowie’s vocals simmer with a despondent tone:

‘In the villa or Ormen, in the villa of Ormen

Stands a solitary candle, ah-ah, ah-ah

In the centre of it all, in the centre of it all

Your eyes’

This section is largely governed by small melodic ranges, with the bass and saxophones climbing in steps, to my ear the tonal centre seems ambiguous and gives the track an unsettling atmosphere. I’m particularly intrigued by the reference to ‘Ormen’, Norwegian for serpent, as well as relating to worms/maggots - evident imagery of death. Subsequently, if the candle is taken as a symbol of the soul, Bowie seems to be invoking a sense of ritual over his life, with his audience being his central witness. It’s quite the opening for just a few lines, half of which are in repetition. I am intrigued as to whether the intention was to denote the relationship between audience and soul as integral to the existence of Bowie’s identity (and perhaps not David Jones). If you listen, alongside the music video, there is deliberate imagery of a star studded skull - many of which take as Major Tom - and with the same mention of ‘eyes’ is scenes of an eclipse. Given Bowie’s lack of faith in Christianity, I wonder if this imagery is consciously pointing towards something Gnostic instead. With some brief research, I was unaware that Bowie had his own obsession with Alistair Cowley during the 70s - often during a drug fuelled craze, and would draw pentagrams upon the floor. The idea is a little surreal, but I wonder if this opening verse is instead playfully pointing towards something more satanic - a double reading between what might be a traditional Christian interpretation and an occult ritual. ‘At the centre of it all’ is a specific reference to Cowley’s The Star Sapphire, a form of sexual ritual (from what little can be found online). This thinking gives rise to the second verse’s exposition: ‘On the day of execution / only women kneel and smile’. In the video Bowie wears a blindfold as though awaiting his own execution - presumably a reflection of his own feelings towards his terminal illness. At the same time, Major Tom’s body floats towards the eclipse and we are me with images of women with tails. It’s all quite bizarre, but I suppose that is it exactly - the scene is a very alien, perhaps Bowie way, of representing what is a fallen angel. I view this as Bowie playing upon his own canon to dramatise the death of Bowie as a person, but maybe not an idea? 

Before long the procession ends, fading away from this experimental jazz tonality to a lighter section, introduced with synthesised pads and strings. Bowie adopts the past tense, dispelling the song’s mystique and narrating the aftermath of this ritual:

‘Something happened on the day he died

Spirit rose a metre and stepped aside

Somebody else took his place, and bravely cried

(I’m a Blackstar, I’m a Blackstar)’

It’s an unexpected change, as though the song’s drama has moved to a new act, without any explanatory scene to precede it. The rhythm section returns, this time in a more conventional pop structure (F# Major I believe), before Bowie ironically plays upon legacy:

‘I can’t answer why (I’m a Blackstar)

Just go with me (I'm not a film star)

I’ma take you home (I'm a Blackstar)

Take your passport and shoes (I'm not a popstar)

[…]’

In echo to the first section of the song, the harmonic structure mimics the single tone movement from a C7 to a C#7 (I had to figure this with a guitar at the behest of my theory-less ears!), and so refashions the original ‘unease’ into a sleazy swagger. I find it easy here to miss the underlying scene portrayed by the lyrics - that is, the sense that a man is being beckoned by death without explanation, all while the chorus of backing vocals embarks on a series of star-based negations. This series of negatory exclamations refocus the mystery of the ‘Blackstar’ as an unknowable identity - a sort of apophasis in the sense that Bowie is mocking himself by stating everything he isn’t, to elevate himself to something greater - a sort of ironic God status through stardom. I think here, Bowie is making the point that many of these Hollywood ideals of stardom are hollow - all while musing upon the idea that he too will be replaced by another star figure. In a way, the movement towards a more traditional pop-structure perhaps underpins this ideal of Western convention - e.g Christianity and celebrity culture, alongside something more spiritual - such as Bowie’s previous address of Gnosticism. I wonder if the repeated exclamation of a ‘Blackstar’ is Bowie playing with its meaning once again - against the backdrop of his stardom/legacy. 

Blackstar itself takes several immediate meanings: it refers to cancer in terms of radiology, or the process of a star collapsing into a singularity, or a rebirth/eclipse in occult mythology. Through Bowie’s interest in Gnosticism, he uses this section of the song to practice ‘Gnosis’ (an intuitive process of knowing/discovering oneself). So, as one set of lyrics describe a sense of death and legacy, the choral refrain is simultaneously employing ‘gnosis’ as a means of salvation while rejecting/negating the hedonism of other ‘star’ roles. Consequently, the rising spirit of Bowie is more of a detachment from an audience’s idea of ‘David Bowie’, than it is David Jones himself toying with the idea of performance and performative identity.

Once again, the song shifts back into its original Phrygian tonality, and if you’re watching the video - some kind of ritual takes place? Major Tom’s star studded skull is brought to the centre circle of a group of vibrating women, just as some sort of Lovecraftian creature ‘dances’. I don’t know how to explain it. It’s really bizarre. By this point my interpretation goes awry.

Lazarus and Beyond

In contrast, Lazarus moves away from the drama of Blackstar with much more plain, direct lyrics. The opening is laid down with simple drums, and a guitar line that harks to something in the style of Peter Hooke/Joy Division, giving the impression of something floating about from a high perch. Before long the song’s defining saxophone line enters and so do Bowie’s vocals:

‘Look up here, I'm in heaven

I’ve got scars that can’t be seen

I’ve got drama, can’t be stolen

Everybody knows me now’

To me, Bowie sounds a little detached from himself - as though these lines are a separation between the ‘drama’ of an audience, and perhaps however Bowie views his own act. In a way, I feel the song’s voice is more David Jones than it is Bowie. The scars and drama, which are unveiled from secrecy, seems an admission that all the cards are left on the table -as though Bowie’s usual adoption of another persona has been exhausted, he is only himself. Even more directly, an admission of his terminal diagnosis - I don’t know, I equally don’t want to read that literally perhaps, even if it’s very plainly there. Maybe then, being ‘known’ is an admission of the album’s more autobiographical nature, and by extension The Next Day (2013) too. 

I’m intrigued by the next lines, again there is the acknowledgement of great ‘height’ but with the effects of medication, as though tightrope walking:

'Look up here, man, I’m in danger

I’ve got nothing left to lose

I’m so high, it makes my brain whirl

Dropped my cellphone down below

Ain’t that just like me?’

Even if not from a spiritual perspective, Bowie is positioning himself for a fall whilst acknowledging his more literal experience of being disconcerted by heavy medication. I’ve always been intrigued by the cellphone line - finding it quite out of place in the song’s weighty images, but I realise it isn’t. I wonder if Bowie uses the cellphone as a counterweight to his fall, like a reversal of an ascension. On a functional level, you could interpret the phone as a loss of communication or connection to the world, but I wonder if Bowie is more alluding to the metonymy of phones - as a representation of modern life. In some ways they define who we are, storing a good deal of our personal information as well as providing our online personas. Maybe it’s also a letting go of the anxieties of modern living, I'm not sure.

The phone is contrasted by the natural image of a bluebird, one that allows the song to finally achieve a simple rhyme as well as a fulfilment of this ‘Lazarus’ image. Typically bluebirds can be associated with renewal, dating back to ancient times, so I wonder if Bowie is using this as a simplistic means to counteract the ‘scars’ of the song’s opening. A metaphorical way out from his precarious position. 

The bridge offers a deliberate americanism: ‘I was looking for your ass’. With the backdrop of New York, and exhausted money, I wonder if Bowie is again invoking the Lazarus figure in a throwaway sense - ‘your ass’ simply referring to searching for Jesus, or perhaps even the Donkey he arrived on. With Bowie’s opposition to organised religion, the image then seems to demonstrate the result of desperation - of being without money, or having foolishly lived like a king. Again - I’m unsure.

Outside of these two monolithic tracks, Blackstar offers other more esoteric tracks - adopting different, often characterised perspectives in perilous situations. ‘Sue. (Or in a Season of Crime)’ is composed as a manic frenzy, retelling the story of the play Tis a Pity She Was a Whore (contrary to the album’s track with the same name). Amidst frantic drumming and deranged guitar phrases, Bowie croons with desperation over the sickness of Annabella (Sue) before her deceit and murder. A moment which reveals the influence of Death Grips, transforming the song into a wailing cacophony of driven guitars and low synth bass. Here the season of crime relates to the lack of atonement for any of the play’s victims. The song is wonderful and bizarre, it leaves me wondering why Bowie chose to condense an entire play into a song whilst also embarking into experimental jazz - no less, I really like it. The same mania can be found within the album’s second track: ‘Tis a Pity She was a Whore’, again referencing the same play but this time directly. It’s again, its own whirlwind into a world of androgynous promiscuity, and what I gather is Bowie’s own ironic attack on his own infidelity. 

Off in its own world of bizarre, ‘Girl Loves Me’ presents itself as a discordant love song - constructed half from Nadsat (the language of Anthony Burgess’ A Clockwork Orange) and half from Polari, a gay slang from 70s Britain. The discordance of such language reflects Bowie’s own confusion in the face of heavy medication, with the bass pulsing like a bad headache. It features what I think is my favourite lyric on the album: ‘Where the fuck did Monday go!?’ - it’s both comedic and distressing. Amidst the mania of the previous two tracks I've mentioned, the composition of this song - notably the consistent shuffling drum beat, offers a more regimented approach to the album’s songwriting - moving to something more angular, almost Krautrock-esque, instead of the manic jazz elements felt elsewhere. 

The final two tracks then I think are a movement away from the album’s various dramas and to something more directly emotive/romantic (I am undecided). 

’Dollar Days’ alone is it’s own delicate musing on fate - weighing in on the anxieties of life as Bowie complicates the triumph of the opening lyrics:

’Cash girls suffer me, I’ve got no enemies

I’m walking down

It’s nothing to me

It’s nothing to see’

Quickly the mobility of ‘walking’ is mirrored by ‘falling’ as Bowie grapples against a continual juxtaposition of his life’s success and regrets, coming to no real conclusion. Continuously Bowie seems to be trying to guise himself in immortality just as the cracks show through. Eventually life is positioned like the ouroboros (serpent devouring its own tail): 

‘Dollar days, survival sex

Honour stretching tails to necks

I’m falling down’

The song pounds with desperation, as it slices through Bowie’s attempts at defiance. Bowie’s suggestion, is that even as individuals we are all weakened by our own cyclical habits of self destruction - perhaps by idealising the superficial - dollars and survival sex. Instead Bowie wants to advocate for something greater:

‘Push their backs against the grain

And fool them all again and again’

Bowie’s own assessment of his acts of creation, or art, is his way of raging against the dying of the light, of trying to grapple with something greater. He expresses an indefatigable desire to creature, and ‘fool’ or deceive in a way that is revealing or spectacular - not ephemeral.

In desperation, the track eventually falls into its own cruel irony: ‘I’m dying to’, over and over. At once Bowie is alluding to his desire to make art, even as he did while undergoing treatment, and at the same time he’s reminding his audience that he is ‘dying [too]’. Bowie is sickly playing upon his condition, with gallows humour.

I think ultimately, if this song is in address to his fans - Bowie’s suggestion of ‘Dollars Days’ reveals a sense of fragility in the spotlight: ‘can’t believe for just one second I’m forgetting you’. Bowie’s desperation, in part, comes from a desire to be recognised by his audience - otherwise the idea of Bowie holds no weight. But at the same time, there is a part of Bowie that hates the exposure - David Jones presumably. Here ‘I’m trying to / I’m dying to’ reminds us of that. It’s multi-faceted, Bowie’s own reclusive nature following his career break (around 2004) reflects this - ultimately there was a desire to move away from the probing nature of interviews, as well as being continuously defined by critics and the media.

For me this is the most emotionally compelling song on the album. 

‘I Can’t Give Everything Away’ sends the album out bittersweetly then - mostly carried by its own titular lyric and a flurry of gliding saxophone lines, this time over programmed drums. 

I wonder if the defining line: ‘I know something’s very wrong / The pulse returns the prodigal sons’ is its own reflection on Major Tom, or Bowie’s persona as ‘the alien’ / an extraterrestrial, now leaving - having completed the ‘pulse’, a sense of moving somewhere else - now optimistically I'd hope. I love that as a final track it features saxophone heavily, David’s first instrument. 

Blackstar is such a phenomenal album, even outside of it being Bowie’s final work, and it impresses me with every listen - I am still filled with awe when I hear the sequence of tracks. If you’ve never listened, now may be a good time to. If you have listened, maybe go check out the ‘No Plan’ EP, featuring extra tracks from the sessions - those are special too. I hope this has been a mostly insightful entry, it’s hard to balance analysis, personal opinion, and musical knowledge across a whole body of text - doubly so when the album you’re discussing is so monumental, but I hope this provides some interesting thoughts on a fantastic album. As I watch the Blackstar video again, I'm as ever taken with Bowie’s charm. Til’ next week.

You can also find these entries on Substack, here.

Where is the Idea of a Recording Studio Headed?

Perhaps a musically existential start to 2026, but I had a friend recently ask me what the value in studio recording is when home recording exists. Which, on the surface seems simple - good spaces, equipment, an engineer - but realistically is a very valid question when on paper, home recording seems a much better long term investment.

I think for now - the concise answer is that recording costs are more prohibitive these days, especially for bands, and with the advent of home recording, the role of the music studio has changed. Most of the time, a professional sounding recording can be achieved at demo stage, with any DAW. For example, a studio is advantageous for recording drums - especially if paying for a good acoustic space to record in, but direct recording can be achieved at home for synthesisers, bass, guitars even - especially with the existence of modelling amps. With a little effort, and treatment, even vocals can be recorded at home. And what about the cost? Well - everything you’re paying for your will own, and have no time or rental pressures. With any luck, the final cost of recording an E.P can simply be the mix and master. 

You can trace the transition from studio to home studios slowly - if we go back to The Beatles, they recorded at Abbey Road for free because EMI owned the studio, and they were of course one of EMI’s recording artists. Imagine Studio 2 being your office - pretty good right? Aside from actually being The Beatles, having carte blanche access to any equipment, facilities, and time must have been quite convenient (I suppose this is an understatement) - but at the same time, the studio had to be the space for writing and recording. Beyond the stage and the rehearsal room, the live room was the sole place for new songs to be written, worked upon, recorded, and mixed. Fast forward a little, Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon (1973) was recorded across 6 months in Abbey Road’s Studio 3, with breaks for touring and other commitments. The album was developed on tour, before being fully realised in the studio with the availabilities of new technologies. In this instance, studio time could be spent on experimentation. Fast forward again to 1997/8, if you watch Radiohead’s ‘Meeting People Is Easy’ you’ll note a five minute excerpt captured across a day in Abbey Road’s Studio 2, culminating in Thom Yorke’s frustrated assessment of the day’s challenges:

‘We’ve been actually working all day and the only thing we’ve got that’s any good is the bass and the guitar.’

(Meeting People is Easy - clip here)

This isn’t necessarily a point of comparison as one artist’s approval of their work can vary massively, but there is definitely a shift in attitude towards studio time. The disappointment with just ‘bass and guitar’ as a day’s work demonstrates the heightened pressure of studio time being a highly productive and organised environment for the working artist. By this point, the opportunity to record in a major studio seems to point towards having the full arrangement and performance of a song worked out well in advance - something that admittedly, is always a great approach to any studio time nowadays, given there are always unforeseen bumps along the way. 

So these days it’s hard to find many music interviews where budgets or studio challenges aren’t a prominent talking point. It’s evident that streaming has completely rearranged the sales model for music - which is it’s own can of worms, but artist’s recording budgets, especially without labels, are mostly determined by their own wallets - even touring can pose a financial loss even if it grows a fanbase considerably. This isn’t the focus of my thoughts for today but is definitely its own issue worth discussing. What is perhaps a silver lining is that home recording is now (relatively) inexpensive and accessible. It’s not uncommon to hear of modern pop artists reporting that all of their songs began with their producer in a bedroom sized space, often building a melody or rhythm track within software. Only then do they record in studios (if needed) to capture the full composition - such as orchestral sections, full-band tracking, or select vocal tracks. With the wonders of direct recording, you can arrive at a studio with 80% of the track already recorded. So I think it’s safe to say that the role of the studio has changed - not beyond its original purpose, but the recognition of a studio as the sole place to record is much less prevalent. In fact, studios are now almost boutique - surviving for their analogue equipment, the sound of their live space, or the knowledge of their engineers. The studio is perhaps now a space to fast-track your recordings to be immediately professional, as opposed to a reliance upon audio correction software - all of which is equally valid if it is more accessible, after all, it’s the art that counts.

Studios perhaps offer a seal of authenticity and a quality guarantee to a recording. For example, the constant innovation of phone cameras offer pristine photo quality to everyone - you can now photograph your cat in however many megapixels you like - but funnily enough they don’t make you a better photographer, they just give you the access to the means of photography. So with this thinking, the studio still is very important - and I think this is where I lie. I know that if I am approached to record, by a band, I can have a confidence that I will be able to help them realise their composition into a finished track - having access to a studio will only make this easier and guarantee those results with less effort. So the studio is less essential, but still the best option - budget allowing, it would just seem that the hierarchy of recording has become flatter. At the same time, it seems the hierarchy of artists to labels, audiences, and streaming platforms is more complicated than ever. 

From a mixing perspective, access to plugins has become a wider and cheaper market. The home studio is evidently the place to be from the perspective of software developers - take Universal Audio as an example, their plugins have moved away from hardware reliance (DSP) and are now constantly marketed towards artists, creators, amateurs, and professionals - with endless sales and new products. My most recent favourite is the UAD Oceanway Studios plugin - I can take a flat vocal (say recorded on an EV RE20) and simulate it through a U47 in Studio A. It’s obviously not the real thing, and I try to avoid the ‘digital’ side as much as possible - it’s always going to be Pandora’s box - but, if it sounds good it sounds good right? If I can use Superior Drummer 3 to keep my neighbours sane, but get a full-fledged drum recording - well that’s great for the demo stage? So I think now my approach is often to treat the demo phase of any recording process as a chance of getting as close to ‘finished’ as possible, and then real drums can come later if really needs be. With that in mind, the affordability to technology is much more egalitarian.

So my friend also hit me with the term ‘garage recording’, a term I love for its Mad Max style connotations - which of course is a bit fake, or at least in the UK where we tend to opt for living rooms over garages - real estate limitations and all that…

But if we go with that, my mind goes straight to De Stijl by the White Stripes, an album recorded (not digitally) to 8 track tape in Jack White’s living room, and with a guitar pedal as a compressor. Not exactly classy, and if you listen it shows, but the music is good so who cares? I’m not really getting to a point here - so let’s do that. Nowadays you can choose any space, any medium, and whatever instruments you want to record as much or as little as possible. It might not be good, but you have the option. Personally, I think that’s too much option - it’s overwhelming, I will always opt for a day in the studio because I am essentially in a race to set up, tend to any requests by whoever I'm recording, and keep the tech rolling invisibly. The pressure is real, and it’s a great rush. Equally for the performer, they’re working to a budget and are forced to come as prepared as possible - the studio is definitely not a place for writing anymore. However, it is a space that allows for fun and the feeling of a ‘science experiment’, with unexpected results often coming from technological limitations. I think in some ways, well a lot of ways, that’s a good thing as it keeps you within a ballpark of creativity as well as ‘traditional’ (whatever that is) recording approaches. Even being in a separate room to the artist, and having a talkback system via a desk, it all changes the way you interact and the psychology between a producer and performer. I wrote about that when I started this blog, so I’ll try not to go over that group again. 

Maybe then, studios are moving towards something akin to a ‘clinic’ for bands. The recording space may not be a huge commercial hall like Abbey Road’s Studio 2, or Oceanway’s Studio A, but instead a small live room on an industrial site. But you go because you know the producer has a sound or approach that you think works for your sound, and then in that case the studio simply becomes tied to, or an extension of the producer’s style? Maybe then that is the happy medium between the fully-fledged commercial studio and the living room.

Abbey Road’s Student Studio, The Custom 75, a little dream of a place that I was lucky enough to use as a student…

I’ll leave this with a photo I took of the ‘Custom 75’ student studio while studying at the Abbey Road Institute. It was a wonderful space to have access to, and of course a gorgeous desk and no budget pressures other than availabilities with other students! But you don’t necessarily need this for a ‘professional’ recording, it just helps. I do miss working on a desk though, that feeling never changes - the terror of using what is much like a massive mechanical calculator but for sound… which eventually you conquer and then can’t live without. There’s a perfect limitation - if it doesn’t fit to 24 tracks, then it isn’t worth recording? No?

So to answer my question - I don’t think studios are necessarily something that is going to go away, but their role has been complicated by the accessibility of recording in one’s own home, as well as budgets. Studios are costly to run, and of course costly to hire, but the results are fantastic. It’s a shame that so many major studios have had to close their doors in recent time, you lose history with them, but at the same time these large spaces cannot become museums either - to constantly be looking over their heritage is its own form of death. I do hope that ‘organic’ recording can become popular again, or maybe affordable, in the future. I’m just not sure how we’re gonna get there - maybe without Spotify to start.

Oh and one more thing - Studio 2 sounds amazing, you can’t buy that anywhere else and that’s a hill I’m prepared to die on. Sorry!

Portishead’s Dummy, A (Mostly) Mono Masterpiece

Dummy, 1994

Much like everyone else (I hope), I’m in that stage of post-Christmas-pre-new-years where I’m full of food, not quite sure what day it is, and flip-flopping between being asleep and being well… somewhat awake.

Anyways – this week, given I just remembered today that I should be writing – because I thought it was Saturday… it’s not Saturday, it’s Monday.  

So – my listening this week has mainly been Portishead’s Dummy (1994), it’s been a long while since I’ve listened so revisiting it has been a refreshing experience. In fact, I tend to gravitate more towards ‘Third’ (2008) for its slightly more alternative sound. ‘Dummy’ is an album that doesn’t really seem to date, which in a way is funny because its sonic identity largely sits in a vintage sound as is – but I guess that’s part of the effect.

Having done a bit of reading beyond the recording processes, I was intrigued to see that Geoff Barrow (sampling, production, Fender Rhodes) met Beth Gibbons under Thatcher’s Enterprise Allowance scheme, and within a year were recording their first ideas in Neneh Cherry’s kitchen. Before long Adrian Utley overhead Barrow and Gibbons while recording and became involved – forming the core trio that make up Portishead.

Since, ‘Dummy’ has been recognised as a pillar of the Trip Hop genre and its emergence in the 1990s – a melding of hip-hop and electronica, with a sonic identity that revolves around texture and sampling (often movie soundtracks/dialogue!).

Sampling Cubed? - From Tape to Vinyl to an Akai

For an album that is full of processed (and often looped) sound, I was surprised to discover that the album is full analogue – being captured on tape. Maybe that isn’t surprising given the overwhelming sense of Lo-Fi that pervades the album, but to have no interaction with any digital medium (even at mix stage) surprised me.

Take the opening track ‘Mysterons’ (presumably a reference to Captain Scarlet), the track is immediately dark and gritty: the 808 kick drum feels claustrophobic from the abundance of compression applied to it, laid alongside guitar and piano lines that distort – likely from kissing tape more than once. Gibbon’s vocals compound this with oblique lyrical lines to conjure a sense of apathy – maybe ‘did you really want?’ is a question some people may have asked upon first listen. It’s a lot to take in.  

The drums are where things get interesting from a production perspective. They were recorded by Clive Deamer, live to tape (16 inch), and were then transferred to vinyl – unusual but maybe not unorthodox – until – they were then kicked, scratched, and abused in every way possible. Doing so dulled sharper elements of the kit, as well as adding all forms of textural crackle and crunch to the sound. These affected vinyl discs were recorded back into an Akai sampler (S1000, gifted by Massive Attack to Barrow) to be cut up and run as breaks/grooves. Consequently, the drums on Dummy have a very unique, saturated sound that would be near impossible to reproduce. It sounds like a lot of work but the result is great, and of course the silver lining is that no samples have to be cleared – much unlike the sufferance of Del La Soul’s 3 Feet High and Rising…

Mono, mono, mono.

Another thing to note – even from this first track, is that the album is mostly in mono. There’s a very small amount of difference between the L/R signals, but the majority of sources are mono as a consequence of the Akai’s storage. I raise this point because there is always endless discussion of multi-channel listening formats – the latest is Dolby Atmos – but my opinion is that mono is in fact as reliable and sturdy as it gets. I love stereo, don’t get me wrong – I have two ears (thanks bilateral symmetry!), so I suppose it’s good to use them – but there are advantages to mono: notably, the huge low end of ‘Mysterons’. Load this track up on a good HiFi system and the perceived weight of the kick is quite hefty. Also… go check Pedestal, that song goes really low.

The same sense of depth can be found in the affecting track, ‘Roads’, a title which I presume is inspired by the signature sound of the Fender Rhodes piano used on it. The first 50 seconds are populated just by the chord sequence alone, a fantastic chance to bathe in the modulating tremolo of the Fender Twin guitar amplifier it was recorded through. From a quick online read, the amp was recorded with the bass cranked to max and the tremolo is out of sync with the track’s tempo… not that any of that matters. 

The vocals on this track really define Gibbon’s style, and emotional affect, I’d be lying if I said this song didn’t get the hairs on my arms standing within the first few lines. Again, Gibbon’s oblique lyrics place us in the aftermath of despair, in an act of quiet rebellion:

‘We’ve got a war to fight / Never found our way / Regardless of what they say / How can it feel, this wrong?’

 They were recorded on an AKG C414, a microphone which harks back to its C12 ancestor – used on the likes of Sinatra amidst many other famous singers. It’s probably the only hi-fi source on the album, down to the level of hearing Gibbon’s lips part before lines. It adds a layer of intimacy that really enforces the track’s sound. It just really is one of those songs that is immediately recognisable, one that commands the attention of your ears wherever and whenever.

Roland RE-201 Space Echo and Dub Influence

Thus far I’ve mentioned a lot on what makes Dummy unique, but it’s also worth noting some overlap with its contemporaries – united with Massive Attack in particular, for the use of dub textures, all thanks to the Roland RE201 space echo. ‘Pedestal’ features this effect on the vocals, adding a fake doubling where Gibbon’s vocals shadow behind her. It sounds as though its used again on ‘Numb’, adding an extra sense of dimension to the wireless snare (I believe?) throughout, as well as a signature self-oscillating loop around the 3:30 mark. The sound is reminiscent of Lee “Scratch” Perry’s own sound experiments – go read about his – shall we say – ‘baptism’ of tape loops.

I should note I also love Gibbon’s use of different vocal personalities across this album – ‘Numb’ definitely has a (deceptive) nervous edge, mixed with a New York accent. It goes from innocent and sweet to something quite sinister as the lyrics progress. Oh and that simmering vibrato!

Glory Box

I’m not sure why I’m giving this song its own section – it deserves it, but so do most of the tracks on this album. When I mentioned earlier about clearing samples and Dummy being mostly a DIY album, this is the one track (to my knowledge) that uses a very obvious sample – Isaac Haye’s ‘Ike’s Rap 2’. I say obvious, I think ‘Glory Box’ is almost so well known that it seems like the original source these days. The track wasn’t even supposed to be on the album, being perceived as ‘too commercial’ by band members – a song which sold fantastically but that isolated Portishead from the song itself, at least emotionally: ‘you think you’ve communicated with people, but then you realise you haven’t communicated with them at all – you’ve turned the whole thing into a product, so then you’re even more lonely than when you started’.

It’s a fantastic song and I can’t find fault with it – the lyrics are plain but emotive and I think the chorus is one of my favourite vocal performances ever: ‘Give me a reason to love you’, it oozes anguish. Runner up goes to ‘Through this new frame of mind / A thousand flowers could bloom’. I think its easy to forget that the entire track is built around the same descending bassline found in Hayes’ sample, and yet it melts away amidst everything else going on around it. The angry, subdued guitars too – distorted wah – looming like an argument waiting to happen, all before transitioning into a guitar solo that feels worthy of the song it occupies. 

The part I always forget is the bridge at 4:10, its short but sweet, briefly punctuated the song with a new ‘room’ so to speak – one built around hard pumping drums, cut up and sampled once again. Oh, and there’s another use of space echo on the vocals!

I should note there’s an incredible cover by John Martyn (and his voice, which would be Guinness if it were a drink) that takes the song more towards a blues direction, again reframing the song with the flipped image: ‘give me a reason to be your man’.

Or, Tricky’s ‘Hell is Round the Corner’ – another Trip-Hop staple. Same Isaac Hayes’ sample but a completely different song, which is also worthy of merit. Again – this is another album I could talk about at length, maybe the closest you can get to Dummyin the Trip-Hop sphere. 

DIY Albums

I mentioned earlier having an appreciation for the ‘DIY’ approach to the album, but more on that because I think this really is my overarching point for why this album is so acclaimed. If you look at the songs, most of them are composed quite minimally, often with the same instruments, and then samples layered over the top. However, the actual range of textures, sounds, spaces all feels quite different between tracks – e.g take the clanging whirlwind of percussive bleeps on ‘Strangers’ (which in itself transitions into its own faux-30s break), and the (possibly most) pop-like ‘It’s a Fire’, or the electronica of ‘It Could Be Sweet’. I’m inspired by the idea of an album that is constructed out individual musical performances, that themselves are then disassembled and reconstructed into something new. I think that is in part why Trip Hop is very much its own unique alternative genre, one that is described as capturing the melting pot of culture in 90s Bristol. The genre is technologically defined by its use of sampling (notably the rolled off top end, due to sampling limitations) as well as being a chameleon of musical influences. Dummy I think achieves most, if not all of this. But, on top of this I’d argue the most defining factor of Portishead’s sound is Beth Gibbon’s affected singing style, something which refocuses them into a band more than a ‘group’ so to speak. It should be noted that both Massive Attack and Unkle both relied on guest vocalists for a lot of their albums – not a bad thing per se, but something that makes Portishead feel that bit more special.

With that thought, I wonder if it would be possible to create an authentic Trip-Hop album now, given it is a genre defined in part by technological limitations as well as its own niche geographic social context. I suppose you’d have to start by moving to Bristol, then maybe buying the now widely overpriced and unreliable devices of the time, and then … buying tape? Hm.

---

A Little Experiment

So I was a little curious about the drum sound, and thought I’d see if I could have a go at creating something similar. I made a short drum loop with the intention of then loading the drums with digital emulations of tape, vinyl, and the filter section of an Akai sampler - oh and Space Echo too.

I think I was a little too light with my processing but here’s the results, I’ve tried to level match where possible:

Plugins Used:

UAD Oxide Tape - On each drum track

Waves J37 - Drum Bus. Not perfect, but used for tape saturation. I lack any plugins that emulate 16 inch tape.

Waves Vinyl - Drum Bus. Emphasis on crackle/input stage.

Imphonik RX950 - A fantastic plug-in that emulates the Lo-Fi effects of the Akai 950 sampler. It turns out the S1000 does not in fact roll off top end.

UAD Galaxy Tape Echo - ‘Drums from Mars’ preset, used as a send.

The Pro Tools session and plug-in settings.

I think in conclusion, the effect is cool but maybe very reliant on the context of a track and so is hard to mix in without surrounding elements!

---

Recommended listening beyond Dummy:

‘Third’ – Portishead, 2008

‘Maxinquaye’ – Tricky, 1995

‘Psyence Fiction’ – Unkle, 1998

‘Mezzanine’ – Massive Attack, 1998

‘Protection’ – Massive Attack, 1994

‘Splinter’ – Sneaker Pimps, 1999

Audio Jargon Clarification, for the people that actually go outside on a daily basis:

Hardware Saturation – this is a form of controlled distortion that is imparted when an audio signal’s input cannot be reproduced at output in a linear fashion. In small amounts, the effect is a ‘smoothing’ of a sound, that is caused by a very soft compression as well as generation of additional harmonic content. The result of saturation (and perhaps what is important amidst this further jargon, yikes) is that a signal sounds fuller/thicker – but too much and the signal begins to sound brittle and gritty, which in this case contributes to Dummy’s sound. Saturation is a bit more nuanced than this, but this works for now!

Tremolo – an effect achieved by a mono signal varying in volume across a rate (either set or also varying, e.g against a waveform), or in stereo – a variance of volume between the left and right sources.

Less Conventional Recording: Re-Amping and Pedals

A shorter entry this week but one with more of a production focus. Notably, mixing and recording with pedals…

So, if you’re a guitarist, it’s quite likely that you’ll be familiar with the wide array of weird and wonderful little effects boxes that are available on the market. These trinkets often come with a single prescribed effect, sometimes with the adjacent belief that they may you play better (oh how we have all fallen for that one…), but often these little obscurities or niche tonalities can be really useful when mixing, especially to get unique flavours or sounds. So a little on how we might incorporate this process into a mixing or recording situation:

Re-amping 101

The first thing to consider is the types of signal that might be encountered when re-amping. Primarily, there are four forms of signal level that can be encountered:

• Microphone Level - This is the weakest of the four, and put simply, is the voltage generated by a microphone when it converts acoustic energy into an electrical signal. It requires a pre-amplifier to be brought to line level.

• Line Level - These are the highest level signals that exist before amplification (by a speaker system for example). They are the level of signals sent out of musical recording equipment.

• Instrument Level - This falls between both mic and line level, it is louder than a microphone signal yet still requires its own amplification - hence why electric guitars are typically accompanied by an amplifier in a live/practice setting. Once again these require a pre-amplifier to reach line level.

• Speaker Level - this won’t be spoken about today but it’s good to know about - this is the signal level that exists after amplification to feed a speaker. It is a much higher voltage than the aforementioned signals.

Hopefully that makes some sense - but a rule of thumb is that line level tends to exist outside of instruments, with the exception of synthesisers or drum machines. Typically line level is reserved for ‘professional’ recording and mixing equipment, such as that of an interface or mixing desk.

So why is this relevant? Well, when working with pedals we need a device known as a ‘re-amp’ box which allows for the line-level signal sent from a recording device (e.g an interface) down to an instrument level again for use with pedals or amplifiers.

My Radial Re-amp Pro. You don’t necessarily need this one! They even offer a model that works from a headphone output - handy if your interface lacks line outputs.

From here, the rule of thumb is to route your audio from your DAW/Software via an output on your interface, through your pedals, and then once again back into your interface (if recording direct) or into an amplifier and a microphone. I’ve crudely drawn the signal flow here with an indication of associated signal levels with each stage:

Routing the signals….

In my case, I routed my signal via Pro Tools as a send from the Line Outputs of my Universal Audio Apollo Quad interface, through to the Re-Amp, through the pedals, and direct back into the Interface’s instrument level inputs.

An example of the re-amp box connected to an Earthquaker Devices Arpanoid, and Transmitter pedal.

A Few Experiments

So here are a few examples of how you might go about using pedals on various sources, first piano, then drums, and then a guitar (well … sort of). 

Want to skip these? Maybe just listen to the Piano’s Blackhole Example, or ‘Drums 2 Tape Delay’ - those are the best…

Piano

Pretty standard right? Just piano in a room. Here’s the same recording but sent through an H9 FX pedal with the ‘Tape Delay’ setting. The result is definitely unusual but adds a good deal of vibe and atmosphere.

Here’s another, this time with the Earthquaker ‘Transmitter’ pedal - an infinite delay that correlates with a pre-determined frequency. It’s really weird, and slightly spooky - sort of like something you’d hear in one of the Silent Hill games…

NB: A limitation here is that the piano is recorded in stereo, but consequently the mono nature of the pedal requires either two passes of recording, or to simply convert the piano also to mono (as in this example).

Final piano example then, the H9 ‘Blackhole’ preset, an infinite reverb that adds a lush, spacious effect to the piano - with its infinite decay the reverb almost behaves like its own instrument, layering on top.

Drums

Next up - drums - here’s a dry loop recorded straight from the kit.

The dry loop is a bit bland, so I used a spring reverb to add a little dimension to the snare.

Things get really cool with tape delay though…

Guitar/E-Bow

Another method I employed, was to use an E-Bow on a guitar to generate a single pitched drone, and then feed it through to the Earthquaker Arpanoid pedal. If by now you’re wondering what I'm on about - put simply the E-Bow is a device to infinite sustain a string through magnetic vibration (I think), and the ‘Arpanoid’ is a pedal designed to take a signal and repeatedly pitch it against musical scales. Frankly, it’s not that musical but I like the effect in its own right - it reminds me a little of the ZX Spectrum loop used at the end of Radiohead’s ‘Let Down’.

(I won’t include the original drone, as I’m presuming - dearest listener - that 10 seconds of C4 is not the best use of listening time.

Other Ideas and Uses

These examples only really scratch the surface of what’s possible - in no ways are you restricted to using just one pedal, or keeping the same settings, there’s always the chance to modulate settings or parameters or just use the pedals very briefly for select moments in a recording - it’s a can of worms once you get started. That being said, I do think these often can add fun to a recording session, or sometimes just add a bit of flavour to a source to give a track more personality/creative direction. I’m a big proponent of making decisions early during a recording session, as it saves any space for overthinking and forces you to trust in your creative decisions - so this can contribute massively to that. Commit to sounds early and use that to avoid decision paralysis.

You don’t even need to use pedals! Re-amping can extend to other uses, such as placing a guitar amplifier in a large space and using that (in conjunction with a mic) as a reverb chamber. Or, send the vocals straight through the amp - a la Julian Casablancas - for a sound similar to ‘The Strokes’. 

Or stay in the box, and save yourself the bother - but where’s the fun in that?

My Album of 2025 - Jeff Tweedy’s Twilight Override

I start this week’s post slightly sleep deprived as I depart from Bristol and back to London, so bear with me! I hadn’t quite planned what I was going to write about this week but then it occurred to me that I should probably write about whatever I’ve been listening to on and off lately – which since its release has been Jeff Tweedy’s Twilight Override, a triple (!) album. It released in September this year, after a stream of singles being released across the year and has been received with much deserved praise. Wilco were in fact a new discovery for me this year, having briefly heard Yankee Hotel Foxtrot in 2023, and since have become my most listened to band of the year. Anyways – here’s some writing that’s hopefully not too delirious…

Despite its colossal size, Twilight Override, is an album that really can be left on loop, listened in sections, or in shuffle all quite seamlessly. The songs meld together in any order and seem to sit amongst themes of light and dark – in their most basic form – with Tweedy’s intention being to create as a means of combatting the darkness of everyday life – the metaphorical override of twilight.  If you’ve read Tweedy’s memoir, ‘Let’s Go (So We Can Get Back)’ or ‘How to Write One Song’, then you may already be aware of Tweedy’s discipline towards songwriting – especially the habit of creating, and always trying to stay in an imaginative space. Upon the album’s release Tweedy made a statement: ‘when you align yourself with creation, you inherently take a side against destruction. You’re on the side of creation and that does a lot to quell the impulse to destroy’. Personally, I’m really rather fond of this sentiment, especially the idea that creating music should be rewarding on a personal level, perhaps as a way to counteract the anxieties of life and its often analytical restrictions. I’m always conscious that stepping into the mindset of creating is one that is inhibited by fears of perfectionism, or time-pressures, or sounding ridiculous – but really I think that is where the liberation lies, if you can temper the doubt beforehand!

Notably, one of the album’s online marketing approaches was to promote fans own contributions in the form of verses for the song ‘Feel Free’, one of the album’s singles, a beautifully uplifting tune that functions as its own mantra for creation. Over its seven-minute runtime, Tweedy accompanies the refrain ‘Feel Free’ with tiny vignettes of everyday life that vary in level from the persona, to moral, to communal. The result is an accumulation of images both comedic and tragic, that are all relatable. Perhaps most poignantly, Tweedy’s final command: ‘Make a record with your friends / Sing a song that never ends’, relating his own existence within the album to his listener. If then, ‘Feel Free’ captures a little of Tweedy’s own experience, that is recording Twilight Override with family and friends, I feel the song also functions as a wider microcosm of the album’s shades. It’s an album entangled with all the worries of life, but with often uplifting and real resolutions to compliment them.

Take for example – ‘Parking Lot’, a laid-back track that feels like the evening of a summer’s day, where Jeff finds himself witnessing various versions of himself inspecting his (supposed) coolest self as he looks over a broken-down sports car. There’s an undeniable comedy to the scene, but the line that catches me out is 'I or the me I most am / Drives by in the backseat of my parent’s car’, mainly because it acknowledges a sense that a lot of us feel – that somewhere we are still often viewing the world from the same perspective we might have when we were children, whether consciously or not. There’s a negligence to engage with the most confident version of ourselves, perhaps because it is blocked by so many other internal identities, even if this overconfident self is a ‘show-off’ a lot of the time. There’s an engagement with the idea that we are all constantly different versions of ourselves daily. ‘KC Rain’ acknowledges a similar perspective, with the hilariously self-deprecating lyric: ‘Like an old welcome mat, I’m filthy and I’m flat’. To be downtrodden and low, only serves to uphold the high of the chorus: ‘I’m high in the evening / When I’m sleeping / I’m with you’. The song’s ‘cosmic luck’ (as Tweedy puts it) offers an insight into reaching for something greater than one’s own circumstances, or more specifically to Tweedy – the guilt of leaving one’s own hometown for something greater. Once again, another young Jeff recounts the anxiety of a broken-down car with a prom date in ‘Forever Never Ends’. The scene is painted out lyrically with the perspective of teenage neuroses, worried about being caught drunk on the highway by police, who rather comedically, drive on by without a second thought. To follow, there is a sudden eruption of joyous guitar lines that to my ear are reminiscent of George Harrison’s solo works.  Tweedy’s thought that ‘forever never ends / I’m always back there again and again’ reminds us that often we revisit unpleasant experiences with a weighty introspective attitude instead of considering them from an indifferent, external view.

Alongside these tracks, exist more serious concerns with more existential topics – Tweedy is often grappling with mortality. ‘Too Real’ is lyrically sparse but haunting, addressing the need for a high in a claustrophobic mind. Likewise, ‘Ain’t It A Shame’ addresses the shadow of depression over a sunny day. These tracks are gloomy but honest. I’m always fond of Tweedy’s ability to engage with subjects in such an emotionally direct manner, even ‘Throwaway Lines’ employs its own reflexive irony by using said ‘throwaway lines’ to shadow any deeper feelings that exist beneath. I view it as a sort of complicated love song – a confession of being preoccupied with one’s own struggles in the presence of a loved one. I think in acknowledging ‘throwaway lines like, “I love you”’, Tweedy somehow finds a way to communicate ‘I love you’ with a deeper feeling – in fact, it’s everything around those lines. From the outset Tweedy’s voice admits: ‘I don’t want to write about / All the things I’m still working out’ – if the song is a conversation, then the guarded tone of the lyrics serve as their own confession of love. Tweedy suggests that being seen underneath the performative love of ‘throwaway’ phrases, allows for a more honest love that comes from seeing someone truly – for all their worries and complications. Again – it’s that very sizeable ‘grey’ area of life and its feelings that I feel Tweedy grapples with so well on this album, and that contributes to it feeling like such a comforting listen.

My personal favourite – or current favourite (always subject to change!) is the titular track – ‘Twilight Override’, a song to tackle those moments of overwhelm. Tweedy’s vocals open over simple lap steel and acoustic arpeggi, searching for a more permanent fix than getting stoned: ‘My mind is moving fast / Faster than my stash can last’. This fix comes about in the chorus’ self-soothing refrain: ‘override’, which then beckons in Spencer Tweedy’s galloping drums and a pulsing bassline, assuring the song with a rhythmic stride. With this, hope emerges: ‘Now I see clear because / I was not where I thought I was’. Tweedy offers the effect of the mantra, shifting his perspective away from the song’s initial anxieties into a more optimistic territory. ‘I’ll need to find a new past’ acknowledges the need to recontextualise the past or leave it behind and embrace the present. It’s uplifting. The same attitude manifests in the final track ‘Enough’ (where else could it be placed!) that is the sort of song I’d use to wake up in the morning. There is no existence of ‘I’ in this track, instead Tweedy outwardly defiantly questions his listener over and over: ‘Has it ever been enough? / Has it ever been okay?’. ‘Enough’ is a defiant call to live life to the full and to never settle for less, whether in the best or worst of times. To me, it feels like the clarity of mind that comes after a bout of anxiety, a rational line of thinking that can only come about from the irrational. I suppose Tweedy, like many of us, is an overthinker – but in the best of ways.

Really, I’ve only talked about a portion of the tracks here – if I were to write about all of them, in full, I’d be here for a while and you’d likely have got bored reading. But really, I think this is an album that asks for repeated listens, it covers so many shades and so eloquently. I haven’t even spoken about the alternative rockers like ‘Mirror’, ‘No One’s Moving On’, or ‘Stray Cats in Spain’, all of which provide their own energetic response to the album’s sense of nervous anxiety. Twilight Override is an album that commands your attention and that I could easily listen to all day, in any order.

Beck’s ‘Sea Change’ - A Perfectly Produced Album?

Beck’s 2002 album, Sea Change, was admittedly the last of his discography I listened to fully and in fact dismissed at first (yes, this is a theme in my listening), and since has become my favourite of his by a mile, and easily one of my favourite albums of all time. I even had the fortune of seeing it performed live with an Orchestra at the Royal Albert Hall this year, which was as good as it sounds… expect lots of gushing to follow.

Notably the album was received with mixed reviews on release, with Rolling Stone awarding 5 stars but NME leaving the album at a 6.9/10. As a retrospective listener, I can see how this might have been informed by the sudden change in tone from Beck’s previous chameleon like approach to his music.

The album is different to much of Beck’s prior work and much more honest, especially when considering the pop-pastiche of Midnite Vultures (1999) which came before – an album that’s also great, but in so many different ways. It’s perhaps only with 2014’s Morning Phase then that there’s a retrospective link to the more introspective nature of Sea Change. I can only imagine many contemporary listeners would have been surprised by the serious, heartbroken Beck that now laid out his songs with a direct and emotional attitude. According to Beck: ‘I wanted economy in the lyrics and I wanted the songwriting to be very, very straightforward’. This is something I’ll discuss throughout, but for now I believe it’s a core component of the album’s emotive power. Unlike the sampled, energetic tracks found on previous releases like Odelay (1996), Sea Change draws from more folk and country influences to focus its subject matter.

From a recording point of view, the songs were largely drawn up as demos just a week before recording with the album being ready for mastering two weeks later. The studio of choice was Oceanway, with Nigel Godrich producing once again after previously working on Mutations (1998). According to bassist Justin Meldal Johnson, the tracks were mixed on the same day as recording, and onto tape: ‘I will confirm that the mixes on that album and Mutations before it were done largely on the small monitor section of the console, and rather quickly’. Personally, I think that is quite a feat of engineering given the mixing stage of an album can sometimes occur across a timespan of months. Moreover, the album was mostly recorded live in the room by the band, with minimal overdubs being reserved for bells or additional key sections. With that in mind, the result is phenomenal, the album has a natural and vast sound with a lovely HiFi sheen. I very rarely hear a similar quality on other records. I think it reminds me that the process of capturing good music doesn’t need to be complicated – sometimes it really is just talented individuals in a room captured with good recording fundamentals and a little technological glitter. The album is my go-to for testing new listening systems, and I think the drum sound on ‘Paper Tiger’ is the best I’ve heard.

Speaking of that song, ‘Paper Tiger’ is a song I would describe as classy. It opens with James Gadson’s drums and Beck’s plaintive, 3D vocals before developing into something much wider by the first chorus – a definite antithesis to the song’s opening simile:

‘Just like a paper tiger’

Immediately, J.M.J’s bassline springs into life to quicken the song’s pace as strings simmer in the background, climbing to a crescendo before dropping back into the calm of the verse. To me this song is perfect – everything locks beautifully and the build is such a wonderful pay off. Around halfway there is even an orchestral solo – I wasn’t aware those were allowed in the three minute ‘pop’ song but that’s cool right? I also suggest you go listen to Serge Gainsbourg’s ‘Melody’… there is a definite influence here!

In contrast to the swagger of ‘Paper Tiger’, the song’s emotional centrepiece – ‘Lonesome Tears’ lands directly into the desolate landscape of failed love:

‘How could this love / Ever changing / Never change the way I feel’

The lyrics abandon Gainsbourg for Hank Williams, employing simple, direct expressions complimented only by simple wordplay. Beck’s lyrics move into apathetic territory – tears that are beyond feeling to capture his overwhelm. Any spot of light quickly falls back on itself: ‘Lazy sun your eyes catch the light / With promises that might / Come true for a while’. The choruses swell into a dramatic orchestral wall, eventually being led into a lengthy bridge that features a soft synth – one that purportedly came from an early Pro Tools plugin (a refreshing change in the face of expensive studio equipment). During this bridge you start to wonder if there is a sense of light emerging, but instead the song is enveloped in a storm of further orchestral swells, this time modified by Godrich’s use of pitch-shifting delay (AMS DMX-1580S I believe, for you audio geeks out there) to create a stereo whirlwind. On top of this, the orchestra employs a Shepherd’s tone to give the impression of an ever-building pitch, stretching the song’s dramatic payoff further before eventually succumbing to the cacophony. It feels similar in scale to the Beatles ‘Day in a Life’, replacing lyrical overwhelm with sound.

The same despondency stems from the opening track ‘The Golden Age’, which once again belies its title. It’s a delicate, slow-paced track which I find a soothing escapism in, despite its sighing chorus:

‘These days I barely get by / I don’t even try’

The song’s composition matches its lyrical resignation with purposefully lackadaisical acoustic strums over atmospheric guitar slides and an emotive, descending glockenspiel. As an opener to the album, it feels like a late-night car drive under city lights, or a late-night walk – a solace without any real direction, just feelings. It sets a great precedent for the rest of the album’s tone. This leads into other songs such as ‘Guess I’m Doing Fine’ which offers a more typical set of country and folk tropes – calling upon muted birds and worn battlements to build an emotionally weighted track about being locked out from joy.

For me – I think ‘Lost Cause’ is perhaps the most pop-centric song of the album, moving away from a personal tone into a more universal break-up song. Despite that, it still features a good number of esoteric features – notably a harpsicord, mixed in amidst a flurry of backwards vocal loops. The structure is built simply around repeating A/B structures, but I think that’s it’s strength as a lighter track amidst the weight of surrounding tracks.

Side C begins with one of the few songs not written around the sessions, ‘It’s All in Your Mind’ dates back to 1993 in much the same form. It only came to be from Beck allegedly strumming it between a take and Godrich quickly becoming ecstatic. It’s another emotional sucker punch, reaching out to save someone from the distraction of their own mental troubles, perhaps futilely:

‘I wanted to be your good friend’

Another favourite of mine follows on, ‘Round the Bend’ opens quietly with cello in an ethereal canyon of sound – to my ear, a dark reimagining of Nick Drake’s ‘River Man’. I even wonder, with its wide cinematic strings, whether it could contend as a bond theme if reapproached with a faster tempo – but of course, I don’t want it to, the dramatic presence is glorious.

Amidst the wide landscape of strings, the song is composed very minimally without any percussion to punctuate it. The only sense of pulse comes from a distant acoustic, flitting between major and minor across the same C chord. Here, Beck really showcases his point about economic songwriting, with a deeply emotive song composed primarily around two elegant chords. I’m particularly fond of the orchestra’s migration from drone to melody around 4:15, it’s beautiful. In some ways it feels like a more mature evolution of Mutations’ ‘Nobody’s Fault But My Own’, moving on from a first-person perspective to an apathetic third person:

‘We don’t have to worry / Life goes where it does / Faster than a bullet / From an empty gun’.

Beck’s despondent voice resigns to the speed of life, assuming everything is fatalistic:

‘Loose change we could spend / Grinding down diamonds’

Everything that could be possible is still met with defeat. Much like the chords, the song seems to be perpetually caught in two minds without moving on. More deeply, Beck seems to be grappling with the way love can fail when there is no emotional reserves, even if the will persists.

‘People pushing harder / Up against themselves / Make their daggers sharper / Than their faces tell’

By the third verse Beck moves beyond a sense of ‘You’ or ‘I’ to cynically observe the ways individuals become cruel to one another, instead of moving towards reconciliation. All of this loops back to heartbreak in the final lines:

‘Babe, it’s your time now […] ‘Round, ‘round, ‘round the bend’

The song leaves you wanting to believe in a sense of moving on, optimistically, but there’s no guarantee it’s not met with more emotional apathy. It’s safe to say Beck is lacking much hope here. It’s moments like these that I find most fulfilling in lyrics, and songwriting – it’s the aporia of the drama – the sense of resolution but at a cost. It always feels like such an effective way to conclude a song whilst maintaining the dramatic complication of its subject matter.

Thankfully – there is finally a shade of light met in ‘Sunday Sun’, a song which opens yet another sonic room to the album. If the album begins at the somber night of ‘The Golden Age’, ‘Sunday Sun’ offers a psychedelic sunrise as an antidote. I think it’s most immediate intrigue is built upon it’s contrasting timbre to a lot of the less album: it’s the only track to feature a drum machine (a somewhat lovable, yet tepid CR78 – no disrespect!)  underpinned by a tense leaning piano line. Finally, the fatalism of ‘Round the Bend’ is repurposed into acceptance:

‘There’s no other ending, Sunday Sun’.

Even if tinged with a sense of mania, the songs builds up and up into a new maelstrom of strident drum fills to crash (or park, less dramatically) the solo car ride found in the album’s opening. Such deranged hope feeds into ‘Little One’, the penultimate track of the album where the album’s title is derived: ‘In a sea change, nothing is safe’. Finally, ‘Side of the Road’ closes the album with a delicate, hushed acoustic track that parks the album’s opening. The distance has been covered, the weight is lifted, ‘let it pass on the side of the road’.

Sourced via Instagram: ‘Today Marks 20 Years of Sea Change’ - Beck, 24 September 2022

Geese and the Return of From the Basement

I was delighted this week to see the return of Nigel Godrich’s From the Basement series. As any Radiohead fan worth their salt knows, From the Basement is responsible for some of the best raw, band focused live studio recordings going. Like most, my first exposure was to those fabled In Rainbows – era sessions, but I was quickly led on to watch the other videos and discover many of my favourite artists today. The original idea stemmed from older music shows of the 70s, such as Old Grey Whistle Test, with Godrich’s intention of capturing artists in a relaxed, pure studio format – no interviews, no comping of takes, no biased lens – just the music itself. For me, this gives a sort of timeless quality to the show, especially in a time now where music videos are less popular than they used to be and most content is consumed in small mobile formats on low budgets. Of course there’s nothing wrong with that, it’s wonderful to see how inventive artists are becoming with their self-promotion and I’m met with inspiring content with my fingertip. However, I do find it sad to think that often the larger corporations won’t dedicate more resources or budget to music-centric programmes. It feels almost as though the middle ground has fallen out a bit and I find myself mostly scavenging on YouTube at American radio channels. I know for sure that my own musical knowledge would be weaker if From the Basement didn’t exist – I can name several of my now favourite artists through the show, such as Squid, The Raconteurs, and Idles being most recent. All these artists have carved their own sonic niche, and so I know that whenever I watch an episode, I will be challenged in my listening and may not even immediately like what I hear. Anyways, I believe there’s a reasonable suspicion that should arise when a song is immediately enjoyable, and sometimes it is just a good song, but a lot of the time – as with albums – I eventually find myself in more of a love affair with the less immediate tracks.

So with that sentiment in mind – I think I’ve come full circle this week with my discovery of ‘Geese’, the next best big post-punk band to come on to the scene. A band which admittedly I was aware of back in 2023 (with 3D Country) but that wasn’t the right time for my then-unenlightened mind. My renaissance has since come about with the parade of music chatter about the new album, Getting Killed, cheery eh?

The opening track of the episode, ‘Trinidad’, is punctuated by disorderly Hendrix-style flourishes amidst ticking drums, ones which later explode to Cameron Winter’s almost jubilant yell: ‘there’s a bomb in my car!’. From that moment I was sold, and seemingly so was Nick Cave in this week’s Red Hand files, who extolled the universality of the opening lyric: ‘I try, I try, I try so hard’. I think it’s this juxtaposition between verse and chorus which had me listening to ‘Trinidad’ so many times over, before finally venturing into the rest of the set. It’s a song that starts in media res, with a tense atmosphere that continuously teases its chaotic payoff – or rather, the kind of song that puts all worry out of your mind at the start of your day – at least if you’re me. The subject matter – from what I can tell is a rebellion against mundanity, with metaphors of sensory deprivation in the face of everyday life: ‘when I went deaf / I used my eye / They stood me in line / Till I went blind / Get in Asshole, let’s drive’. In the face of dulling monotony, the chorus’ car speeds on as its own vehicle of personal liberation and into a cacophony of blaring guitars. It’s brilliant. On some level I wonder if the song’s sentiment is a wider reflection of the band’s image and experiences with recording – though maybe only coincidentally. Winter himself said in a recent interview with Rolling Stone that he ‘was unhappy until the last possible moment’, even having lost a day to finding a handclap sample amidst a library of thousands of files. While the latter part may sound comedically precise (trust me, it’s a real issue!) I think it reflects more widely on the fraught nature of writing, recording, and producing a full album as a band in the current day. I have seen interviews with Winter describing the way in which money disappears quickly over recording days, and having to continuously promote, perform, and evaluate a project during that becomes a herculean task. Thankfully the result is fantastic but that maybe doesn’t feel that way once a thousand people listen and try to pin it to every genre, texture, or style imaginable. I’m conscious I’m too participating in that… sorry Cameron. I digress.

In contrast to ‘Trinidad’, the next track ‘Husbands’ offers a slower pace with Americana lines layered over a walking drum rhythm section. I think the great focus here is Winter’s vocals, they’re raw and emotive, building and carrying the song as it details the disintegration of a dwindling relationship. This is partially in contrast to the denial of ‘Au Pays du Cocaine’ – the song title itself playing upon the projected paradise of Bruegel’s The Land of Cockaigne.  Here Winter’s plaintive vocals repeatedly offer transformation and idealised scenarios as an alternative to reality, backed up by a lullaby of dreamy guitar lines and mellotron chorus. With their relaxed pace, these tracks feel as though they were drawn from a lost 60s album – I think it’s hard not to hear the influence of the Velvet Underground on these tracks, whether directly or spiritually. A win for me. Lyrically, I’m enamoured with the universality of the lyrics – repeated mantras such as ‘will you know what I mean?’ or ‘you can change’ all contribute to a bigger picture whilst seeming direct and every day. Actually, ‘you can change’ is pretty much the tragic mantra of denial that underpins ‘Au Pays du Cocaine’, as though repeating the phrase will instigate any real change for the song’s voice. I always think a song’s power lies in its ability to become personal to a listener and take on its own meaning – even if it wasn’t perhaps intended. I can’t think of many other formats where you can send someone a song to explain a feeling or mood.

There really is a wide range of influence across this set, and Geese’s music as a whole, with so many colours, structures, and images that keep me finding new musical relations across their songs, and in a way that’s a pleasant reminder rather than derivative. My thoughts immediately went to Can upon hearing ‘Islands of Men’, with its 70s Motorik rhythm underpinning the song. Likewise, the final track ‘Bow Down’ comes across as a gritty funk-oriented offering, riding the band out with an electric energy. Every song feels honest and natural in its construction, something with extends into the band’s live chemistry. The set is remarkably tight, it’s exciting to watch a band be in so sync with one another and it makes you wonder how the songs ever came from 30-minute jams once presented with the potent energy of the final tracks. On rewatch I’m amused by Dominic Digesu’s (bass) nonchalant look of approval around the one-minute mark and then the intense concentration between Winter and Emily Green at the beginning of ‘100 Horses’. All of this is underpinned by Max Bassin’s powerhouse drumming, and touring member Sam Revaz’ keyboard layers on top. If I haven’t praised enough – I’d end by saying that this episode of From the Basement encapsulates the joy of being in a band, or recording a band, or being in any musical space. It’s the small discrete moments of being totally immersed in a performance and locked in with fellow musicians that is one of the best feelings. Is it safe to say I’m a Geese convert?

You can watch the set here.

Pieter Brugel - The Land of Cockaigne

First Response: Avoiding Decision Fatigue in the Studio

Behold, my first entry into the world of blog-posting and the perilous descent into the murky depths of self expression! So with it comes my recent thoughts on ‘first response’, or rather my term for acting intuitively and trying not to think too hard in the studio. Tread lightly…

I always feel that the greatest challenge of any recording session comes about in the face of direction and decision making: there’s always the inevitable rush of set-up, the ‘thrill’ of finding why that one input fails to show up, and of course trying to capture the same purity and emotion of a demo track. But, there is always that certain point where the voice of doubt creeps in, wondering whether the entire direction of a track is working.

My remedy to combat this is to always consider what my gut-feel, or first response is to an idea. In basic, does this support, develop, or further the sense of emotion in a recording, and if not then does it need to be poured over? That’s not to say that no idea should present itself immediately, but when in a pressured recording environment there is a need to quickly capture a shape or outline of a recording. It is always crucial to make decisions fast and early, and to stop that conscious brain from influencing a response which most of the time is subconscious. In fact, I’m always chasing for that part of a performance or song where you just find that point of transcendence - where you feel or experience something that commands your attention or hits you with an emotional punch that you never saw coming.

So, if you’re like me - prone to chronic overthinking - it’s these sort of moments where you have to acknowledge that responding quickly with intuition to ideas is far better than adopting a rational approach. You can save that for later, and trim the fat once it’s there in the first place. The goal is to get a shape, and lean into it - like a sculpture. You’re always making thousands of decisions every minute anyway and, on some level, you’re already filtering ideas down so that they’ll pair together later. In my mind, I’ll be recording a track and thinking of where the key element is - what is it I want to push forward and make my listener pay attention to? What’s the focus of this verse, and what part is integral to this idea? From there, other elements tend to fit better as they’ll purposefully sit back to support or reinforce an idea without taking the limelight. I always find mixing to be the worst part of a project, so if you can get that locked in place before the session is over - you’re onto a good foundation.

Speaking of spotlights - I often try and remind myself that when recording an artist, the first three takes are likely to be the most emotionally engaged. As a producer, you’re really just trying to frame a song in a way that facilitates its message, so chasing the ‘correct’ take nearly never exists. Instead, it’s better to re-contextualise an idea if it’s becoming turgid, maybe with guiding questions - ‘sing it as if you were…’ or ‘what if the voice isn’t who they seem?’ - simple ideas, or twists and turns, just to get a performer thinking from an outside angle. It’s often not even reliant on a good question so much as reversing or breaking out of habitual thinking - especially when the artist is attached to a demo. From here, any technological decisions should just be to reinforce any sentiment being expressed.

Maybe this approach is also futile, but I wonder if redirecting an urge to repeat an idea into an urge to reframe an idea is better for maintaining the pace and enthusiasm of a session, and often the best ideas seem to emerge unexpectedly, not by following a devised formula. Ultimately - I try not to think in terms of comparison, or with set objectives beyond ‘complete the track’, because I find it stifles creativity. It’s far better to just build on decisions, quickly, and if the final result isn’t what you want - flip it over and start again. But to some extent, it guarantees a final result, and in any session - both the producer and artist’s fundamental goal is to create something beautiful, not mediocre. I think it’s inevitably easy to be critical ‘in the moment’, when a new idea is proposed - but often when revisiting old ideas there is an ability to listen with fresh ears because you’ve established that critical distance from the core emotion of an idea - instead you become more impartial as a listener.

So then, I fear, as my overthinking sets in, that a lot of this sounds hideously saccharine, but I do believe there is something concrete in putting intuition and emotion first in a creative endeavour. Ultimately, you can wear a theatrical mask in any performance, but at some level it’s still your own character looking through a lens, and hopefully with some hard work you end up with a song that resonates with someone.