Innersounds Meets International Feel (Interview)

Punted by Greg Wilson, I particularly liked this interview.


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September 18, 2010

The following is a transcript of an evening’s conversation with Mark from International Feel.

Mark operates as label owner and producer in charge of all output on the label. Mark was in Uruguay, I was in London.

There is a podcast which captures some of this if you want the Cliff Notes version.

Topics discussed that night ranged from label management to the future of music technology, music formats and many points along the way.

My thanks to Mark for his time and his patience, and to you for taking an interest in reading. If you are thinking of starting a new label or getting into the music business you will find some insights from a 20 year + career and they may just help you with the decisions you will face.

What are your thoughts on how the home studio set up has replaced the old style of studio for hire with technicians and professionals who knew how to mic a room or get a certain sound?

I think just on a person level (and I can’t remember who said this) but the only way to live your life is slap bang in the middle of a contradiction.

And I think that’s a really good place to be. And often when you talk about anything, whether it’s this, or geo-politics, or whatever, it may be the truth is always somewhere in the middle of two opposing extremes.

So I can think back to my own musical career and I can think about going into a studio in Sheffield in 1983/84 and part of it was the day out, buying sandwiches, the they had really nice easy chairs, and it was just an incredible experience. And those were the days where if you wanted a reverse re-verb effect the Tape Op literally swapped the tapes back to front. But then the down side to that was obviously that it was quite expensive and I had just started working so it was a case of saving up for a long while and the guy I was in the band with saving up for a long while. And then you’d get in the car and you’d be ten minutes on your way home and you’d be listening and you’d be going:

“Where’s the kick drum? We could hear it in the studio – but where’s it gone?!”

And there’s nothing you can do about it.

I’m a great believer in that old doctrine that it is very important for individuals to control the means to production, so on the one side you’ve got the old way of doing it, which is studios and the pros and cons of that, the other side of the coin is that any kid can buy a PC, get some cracked software, put up a myspace page and call themselves a “producer”. And that is a term that’s used far too liberally, and is used far too much in general terms. Inasmuch, as there’s a whole craft to writing music and recording music. For every John Lennon, Prince, Aphex Twin the other 99.9% of us, not “struggle” but we spend 80% of the time figuring out what we don’t want to achieve and do, and the other stuff comes in the 20% of the time, pretty much through learning a craft and dedication and hard work.

You’ve got to learn how a compressor works you’ve got to learn how a reverb unit works – it’s not vital – because at the end of the day if music is truly amazing and truly inspirational, nobody really gives a fuck about the sonics – it’s an interesting human condition. You know if you listen to Selected Ambient Works 1 by Aphex Twin there’s hiss and there’s all kinds of stuff – nobody ever remarks on that because of what it did at the time for music.

So, as in all things, there has to be a balance.

And I think it’s great now that I can have a little PC-I card I can slot into my Macbook and it’s got all the universal audio plug-ins on like the emulations of the Roland Space Echo and all the Urei 11 76 compressors and all of this kind of stuff and I think that is incredible, but it doesn’t become the be-all and end-all at the behest of a good idea. And I think if you’ve got a really good idea everything else is kind of irrelevant.

So, predominantly the studio has had its day for the majority of music other than rock music or band music where you need people in a room. Because something happens when there’s a group of people in a room, that doesn’t happen when a kid is sat in front of a computer. Equally, something good can happen in that environment as well. I think it is whatever works.

One thing I always try and do with a lot of the releases we do in the studio here, is try and get as good as sound as I can – but not get to the point where I am spending a day on a hi-hat because that kills creativity and it just leads to a migraine, and I am very lucky that I work with a guy who records under the name Lopazz for Get Physical, a guy called Stefan Eichinger, and he is also a mix and mastering engineer, and he has a beautiful studio in the South West of Germany and he mixes a lot of my stuff.

By mixing what he does is I send him stems and he takes those and puts them through an analogue deck to give them width and depth and a real nice panorama. And then he masters them on analogue equipment like the Manley stuff and he knows what he’s doing – there’s a big difference between him using Manley mastering equipment and me using it on a Universal Audio plug in card, ‘cause he knows how to operate it.

And that for me is the best of both worlds.

The fact that I can end this conversation and in two minutes have a full studio running on my laptop that is ten times more powerful than the studio I made my first album on as an artist in which was only 15 years ago.

That is incredible.

But it is like anything. Somebody sat in very dire financial circumstances would say money would solve all their problems, yet look at the outcome for many many many many lottery winners. Because they don’t understand what money is. Money is only a mechanism. Money will not buy happiness; money will buy freedom of choice – that can buy happiness. So all this beautiful technology can liberate the musician, but it is what they do with that liberation.

And I’ve spent a lot of time this year with the ipad controller, really looking at how I work, and looking at the work-flow behind what I do. And that in itself, particularly when you are as addicted to music technology and synthesisers as I am, is a very seductive thing.

I once read a thing about U2 and it said when they get stuck in the studio, The Edge will keep playing guitar overdubs, just to kind of keep a sense of momentum. And I could almost do that with music technology: I could keep investigating whether I should have that synth, this synth, what about this sound, how do I apply that reverb treatment, at the end of the day you’ve got to say

“Listen, are you a professional, or an amateur?”

And I don’t mean that as harshly as it sounds, I mean this is what I do for my living, and my income comes from topping up a catalogue of songs, producing and remixing artists and running a label. And so at some point I have to say to myself “Stop the fuck, and get to work and do some music”. Because of all these things, playing with plug-ins, auditioning plug-ins, demos of plug-ins can create a very undisciplined environment where quite literally you don’t make any music.

If you speak to the editors of Future Music or Computer Music magazines, the biggest thing they get in the mail-bags from people just doing it in the evenings and at weekends, is “I can never seem to finish tracks”

And I went through a whole period of that last year, I understand it, but ultimately you’ve got to almost nail yourself to the chair and say “Enough. Make music”.

And that can be done whether it’s in a big studio, a small studio, a project studio, or in front of a computer.

Are we losing some understanding of good musicianship? There has definitely been a change in the way people play and make music; do you feel we are losing something of the craft?

I was recounting a story last night about me ending up in hospital as a kid with a fake case of appendicitis to avoid piano lessons because my teacher was this 80 year old who would make me sit with a board behind my back to keep my back straight and smack the undersides of my wrists if my hands dropped down in position.

Can you imagine that today?

I think a lot of this comes back to learning a craft.

Music is like swimming with dolphins whether you are listening to it or making it – it is incredible therapy. Like looking at a large body of water with the sun cast upon it. But I think to do it and try achieve some level of professionalism or achieve some kind of career out of it, without wanting to put in the work is just a big disconnect.

You know what’s the definition of insanity? It’s doing the same thing twice and expecting a different result second time round. You literally have got to put something in to get something out. So I look at my own musicianship, if you like, and I know that I spent a large part of my early childhood learning the piano and thinking ‘The sun’s shining outside’, but I am really glad I did now, because can you imagine sitting down with the computer and these endless possibilities and not really understanding what a chord is? What counter-point is? What harmony is? And all of those things.

Again it is not necessarily an inhibitor, but I believe in all things we’re reaching a very key cusp of many things in many different areas of society; where we are almost at tipping point and lots of knowledge is being lost. I think there has to be more emphasis placed on oral history whether it’s family history or social history or music history. And I think we are seeing much poorer musicianship and we come back to the four people playing in a room and the instinctual, spiritual connection between them that produces something.

And I’ve got to be honest, 99% of modern dance music I hear I classify very simply as “ring tone music”.

Putting a group of samples together at a high tempo is not music and it never will be music and if that sells it is irrelevant, it is irrelevant to what I do, it is irrelevant to my life, it is irrelevant to the business life of the label.

And I totally and utterly choose to ignore it as much as I totally choose to ignore what a government does because I find it irrelevant to my life.

And so musicianship I think is important, it’s not the be-all and end-all, it is a shame that the craft is dying, it is a shame that people don’t understand how to engineer records properly, that they don’t understand arrangement. I was taught at great length by very talented people how to orchestrate – is that useful? 90% of the time no, but I tell you what it is a great get out of jail free card when you really need it and your back is up against the wall.

It is sad to see the knowledge going and it is sad to see kids calling themselves producers and filling my soundcloud drop box with fucking demos that are a pile of shit! (laughs)…

But music making is great, I can sit down at a piano or synthesiser and play for ages and have great fun with no pretence in that moment of coming out with a song. I suppose my bone of contention is with all the kids that just want to make digitally sampled shitty inorganic ringtone crappy music and then get it mastered as loud as possible, that’s not where we should be at, we should be at more womb-like organic approach and not at this spiky, digital loud buzzy samples that we downloaded of the internet on cracked software – that’s not music that’s zeros and ones and there’s a big difference.

I think it’s acceptable to use drum samples (it’s being bloody convenient if we are being honest) and I’m not talking about drum loops necessarily, but I would never really programme a conga when I have got 200 conga loops that have been recorded in a good room and I can add vinyl noise to it if I want, but I would never consider beyond the percussive elements for using samples there’s just no point.

So what’s the future of music technology as you see it? Some Japanese producer friends of mine reckon we should get back to tape cassette and away from digital – and yet you have some information about the ipad controller that you have been working on; so where is it all going?

Well the only track I have ever written that a mastering engineer has never touched was one that I recorded to an old cassette tape because at the time the DAT machine was in for repair – and the engineer said ‘That just sounds perfect I’m not going to touch it’ (laughs)…

I think in a lot of ways technology is very seductive and enticing, but it’s a bit like when you first get a synth.
As a kid you want to press one key and hear Armageddon or the orgasm or Heaven’sGates, as you get older, you want to get a good compressor, you want to make sure you have a good soundcard, you want to make sure that you have good cabling with good connectors. That you have great speakers, that your studio is set up so well ergonomically it’s like an extension of your arms and hands.

And so in a way whilst I don’t want to dissuade future technology – I think we are almost there.

The synthesiser hasn’t been bettered since the mini Moog, compressors haven’t been bettered since Bill Putnam, you could argue the same for the Pultech EQs and the Urei EQs and amplifiers. I use Abelton now all the time having originally used Logic, and I think Abelton – as a studio tool – has a fair way still to go and I’m lucky enough to be chatting with those guys and hopefully having some input about how that can work as more of a studio tool and not just as a specific live performance tool. But pretty much everything is there.

And I’m not sure how much further we want to take it - we come back to the thought that a good idea is a good idea – and that is timeless.

The ipad interface was very much the last piece of jigsaw for me. I’m at the stage where I can programme a synth with my eyes shut, I know how to work Abelton as it currently stands with my eyes shut – well 90% - apart from the odd little tip and trick that you always seem to chance upon. And in addition to that all I have spent this year doing – apart from making music and running the label – is looking at how to enhance and streamline my work-flow, and the ipad application is very much the end point of that process.

And where I’m at now (and I’m very much nearly at the end of this particular process also) is how to build a second portable studio that’s extremely compatible with the fixed room studio, so that I can work between the two, because I’ve noticed on a personal level since I’ve been in Uruguay all my good ideas have originated from a laptop and sat not in a studio. They have all been finished in the studio; but all the good ideas have never been originated there because I think you can sit there and look at the computer, and sit in the room and go ‘Hmmm what shall I do then?’ whereas it’s better just to be sat reading a book and have an idea and just whip a laptop onto your lap with a little mini keyboard and get that basic sketch down.

So the ipad right now for me has taken everything I wanted in a controller – like the bouncing balls sequencer from the Tenori-On, a clip launcher that shows forty-eight tracks in one go, the way devices are controlled, the specific mini moog editor for the synth I use the most, and it’s kind of like apart from Abelton’s work-flow enhancements, where else can technology go that it could be really exciting, because again, there are people that are far more interested in the technology than in the making of the music, and I have periods when I’m like that, but at the same time it’s equally important to get a balancing act and I think that for me; technology is going to keep going and computers are going to get faster and smaller just like mobile phones did and the ipad’s going to get more powerful and there’ll be DAW software inside the ipad within a couple of years for absolutely sure, there’ll be an Abelton probably in there, there’ll be a Logic or Garageband in there.

Will it aid music creativity?

No.

Technology in the short term has just about run its course in practical, useful terms, and I have no desire really to investigate it much more. I’m at a point now where I’ve spent 7 or 8 months making not that much music and doing a lot on studio ergonomics and acoustics and designing – being the only Alpha and Beta tester on the bloody ipad interface – so I am now very ready to actually compile a new body of work, quite quickly and quite intensely, knowing that I have developed the technology, practically and on a personal level to take it as far as I think it can currently go at the moment.


Link to interview here.