ESSEX ESSENCE

Formed in Essex in south-eastern England in 2012, Nothing But Thieves broke through with their self-titled debut album in 2015. It was recorded at Angelic Studios just outside of Oxford, and mostly produced by Julian Emery. Broken Machine followed in 2017, produced by Mike Crossey, and Moral Panic in 2020, produced by Crossey and Dominic Craik. Both albums were mostly recorded at Crossey’s place in California, with Jonathan Gilmore working as an engineer on Broken Machine. 

Dead Club City was released in June of this year, and co-produced by Dominic ‘Dom’ Craik and Jonathan Gilmore. The former is one of the band’s guitarists and main writers, and also responsible for synths and programming. The latter is a producer and mixer with credits that include The 1975, Rina Sawayama, Carly Rae Jepson, Beabadoobee, Lewis Capaldi, and more.

Via Zoom from their respective studios in London, Craik and Gilmore relayed how going off the beaten track in their case meant encountering many large-sized rocks, and how they circumvented or climbed them. Gilmore set the scene…

“I began my career working for Mike Crossey from 2011 to 2017. We did the whole of Broken Machine in five weeks, running two studios, with Mike in one studio, and Dom and I working in the other. Mike might be cutting the drums and bass in his room, while Dom and I would record the guitars and add programming before it went back to Mike for the vocals, and finally mix. It was a really tight schedule and thus a bit of a baptism of fire for Dom and I. We’ve been in touch since.

“During the pandemic the two of us co-produced the Nothing But Thieves song ‘Life’s Coming in Slow’ for the Gran Tourismo 7 video game. The sessions were a bit of a circus: Dom was at home with covid and we had to get from initial phone call about the project to finished master in about five days. Audiomovers and FaceTime saved the day! But it turned out well, and I suggested to Dom that we produce the entire next band album together in a similar manner (minus respiratory diseases). I really wanted to support the band in exploring the edges of its stylistic comfort zone.”

COUNTRY HOUSE

After the band agreed for Craik and Gilmore to be at the helm for the making of its new album, the duo, says Gilmore, “pushed for making a record that’s as creative and elaborate as possible and even a bit indulgent. To be able to do that we needed quite a bit of time, so the idea was to find somewhere where we could set up camp and stay for a long period. Dom and I ended up frantically sending each other links to online listings of country houses. We were inspired by Led Zeppelin working at Headley Grange, and Radiohead recording most of OK Computer at a manor house called St Catherine’s Court.

“Unfortunately, because of the British rental market we got priced out of our luxury country house aspirations. Instead, we ended up  stumbling across a place in Essex called Kyoto Recording Studio that was surrounded by a 22-acre farm. I think it had aspirations of being a luxury residential studio, but the studio was extremely basic on a technical level, with some very substantial shortcomings.

“However, the place was affordable for the length of time that we required, so one pre-production aspect of this record was figuring out the logistics of transforming it into something where we would not only be physically able to record the album, but where we also would not go mad. The estate had a country house, and a barn that had gradually been repurposed into a recording studio. But there wasn’t really much diligence paid with respect to the install.

“We had to basically rip out the whole control room, replaced a lot of the furniture, and re-jig everything. I spent two days testing everything in terms of signal flow, and a lot of the cabling was dysfunctional. We replaced the Pro Tools system, all the headphones had faults, as did the guitar lines, and the acoustic treatment was very basic and quite ineffectual. The control room felt like a mixing desk slapped into a conservatory.

“Speaking of which, the desk (an MCI) was a hazard. Honestly, it felt a little like a fire risk. As you can see in the YouTube videos, at one point it started making a rather angry electrical buzzing sound. It had been very poorly maintained, so even though we had it extensively serviced, it basically didn’t work. In the end we just used it for a couple of line returns.

“After the two weeks to sort out the studio, we had quite a slow first three weeks of actual sessions, because we were still hitting a lot of issues. The air conditioning caused electrical buzzing on the mics and we had hornets in the control room. It was pretty rough and ready! I’ve made a lot of records in a lot of different places and these were substantially the most adverse conditions under which I’ve made an album.”

3 YEAR GESTATION

Although the team managed to create a functioning recording environment, there were more problems to come, as we will see later. To illustrate both the challenges and the magic of the recordings at the studio, the band made a series of YouTube videos , which Gilmore referred to above.

In the end, the entire recording process took 130 days, from August 2022 until January 2023. However, this had been preceded by a three year-long writing and pre-production period. Dominic Craik elaborates on the album’s genesis, first by clarifying how he ended up in the co-production role.

“I started playing guitar when I was six, and come from a classical music background. I can read music, and have a traditional understanding of harmony and how chords fit together from analysing chorales and string quartets when I went to music school. I then applied my knowledge of the guitar and the music lessons to other instruments, and learned how you can create an arrangement, and get this kind of holistic overview of entire pieces of music. This led to me writing and producing.

“[Singer] Conor Mason and [guitarist] Joe Langridge-Brown, and I started writing a little over 10 years ago, but discovered that we just couldn’t write songs to save our lives. It took years and years just to get the basics. At the start you think that because you can play complicated pieces of music on an instrument, you’re going to be able to translate that into writing songs. But it’s just not the case. Song writing is a completely different art form. There are songwriters that can’t even play instruments!

“We just kept pushing and pushing, and eventually the songs came. For many bands now, if you’re also recording demos, there has to be someone who can work GarageBand, Logic, or Ableton, even if it’s just for basic recordings. My curiosity was sparked by Logic, and I became obsessed with trying to copy some of the sounds on my favourite records and implement them in our music. It became this weird jigsaw puzzle to put together. I also learned how to navigate a synth, but I’m more comfortable creating sounds than performing on them. I would rather write out MIDI and send it via USB or MIDI to a synth than play it, because I’m not that technically competent as a keyboardist.”

FLESHED OUT

Craik continues by going into detail about the band’s actual writing process. “In general, writing and recording are quite separate stages for us. We try to write over a long period of time because we find that it gives the most successful results. You gain perspective. The more songs you write, the more you can pick from, and the stronger the album is going to be. You can rewrite things, re-demo, change stuff, if you like a chorus lyric from one song but it’s not the right song you can put it on something else.

“Dead Club City was born out of the pandemic, when we were first able to get back together after all the lockdown stuff. It meant that we were all creatively rearing to go. We had a lot of gas in the tank. The beauty of working as a trio with Conor and Joe is that they come up with ideas that are never fully fleshed out, and this has two benefits. The first is that nobody gets too attached to their idea because they haven’t gone down the rabbit hole of fully exploring it. The second is that you get this amazing level of collaboration, with everyone hearing things slightly differently.

“We wrote most of the material for the new album in my studio. It’s always a bit of a free for all, and there’s no tried and tested method. The last thing we do normally is guitars, which is funny because you’ve got two guitarists in the writing room, or two and a half if you include Conor. Inspiration could come from a synth sound, or a drum loop. It’s never the same, and that’s what’s exciting and one of the reasons why our music is so diverse. Only one song on the album was written in the studio, ‘Do You Love Me Yet?” which is a collective favourite, and one of the more experimental songs on the record.”

EXTENDED PALETTE

By the time Nothing But Thieves descended on the studio in Essex, upgraded to suit their needs, everyone brought their equipment, and Craik tons of song demos on Logic. “They were pretty fleshed out,” he says. “On this last record, they were probably the closest they’ve been to the final product. The arrangements were also more synth heavy than ever before. After working on Moral Panic, I started collecting synthesizers, I built my modular synths and have a UDO Super 6, a  Roland Juno 6, a Moog Sub Phatty and many others.

“Synths offer a whole different palette of sounds. Guitars are incredible, but for this album, synths gave me a new and exciting realm of creation. It was amazing to pull up a hardware synth, program a sound and be like ‘that reminds me of Rush or Phil Collins,’ or something, and be able to pull that into our music. There definitely was a lot of inspiration of the music from the late seventies and early eighties, all that synth-and-band hybrid stuff. It was a case of getting our paints and paintbrushes in front of us, and see what comes together.

“I also used soft synths. I’ll take whatever sounds good. Jon and I did a lot of A and B-ing of synths versus soft synths, and for example the U-he Diva is an incredible plugin, really thick-sounding, loads of character, and it doesn’t sound plasticky or thin or any of that kind of plugin stuff. Sometimes the plugins would beat the analogue gear, and you don’t even know why. I like hardware synths because you operate them with your hands and they’re fun to be with, but sonically analogue doesn’t always win.”

JUMPIN’ JACK PATCH

Gilmore: “So Dom brought all his toys and his synthesizers, and I brought in my full recording studio complement of gear and microphones, and all the various drums and accoutrements you need. We installed a Neutrik Jack Patch system whereby we could easily interface between the synths, the guitar pedals, and the hardware outboard, including Dom’s Binson Echorec, Roger Mayer 456 Tape Emulation, Thermionic Culture Vulture, several old nineties effects units, and so on. I’m also a guitarist, and brought my custom pedal boards and a big crate of loose pedals. We probably ended up with about 100 pedals between us!”

Craik: “From the outset we wanted to have a very fluid, quick and spontaneous relationship between the outboard, guitar pedals and synths. If you don’t colour synths a little bit, they can feel a little bit cold and separate next to the guitars. You need to run them through a guitar pedal or an analogue effects unit or an amp, to add a bit of grit, and make it all fit together. In addition to the Jack Patch, we also had a Radial unit (EXTC Radial reamp box), which took care of impedance and level conversions, so we could use easily route synths, outboard and pedals to each other.”

Gilmore: “Between Dom and I we had a great collection of guitar amplifiers: a Fender Twin, a Fender Vibralux, a Mesa Boogie Mark 5, a Marshall Bluebreaker and also some weirder stuff, like a Silvertone 1485 and a Laney Klipp, which we used a lot. We mainly used an Ampeg SVT stack for bass. All the bass performances (and some of the guitars) ran through a guitar amp and a bass amp simultaneously, so we could have that kind of throaty upper voicing on the bass guitars if we needed it, and low end on the guitars if required. In addition to all the guitar amplifiers we would also use a DI, often with pedals.

“All these different layers were phase aligned at the source, so the phase was coherent. That allowed us to make stylistic choices with the guitar, including some really idiosyncratic ones, to give them a lot of personality. We cut all the lead vocals with a Neumann U67. The tonality of that microphone suits Conor’s voice really well. It gives it a bit of a midrange focus that I think is very helpful. It went into a  Rupert Neve Designs Shelford Channel mic pre.  We had a big rack of Neve 1073 preamps for everything else.”

DRUM SURRENDER

The company recorded all the above at the revamped Kyoto studio in Essex, but the issues with the studio proved insurmountable when it came to drum recording, for which decent acoustics are the most crucial.

Gilmore: “I would say that the tone of the rooms was the biggest challenge in making this album, and it meant that everybody had to be on headphones a fair amount during the entire process. We mostly used Shure SRH940s, and also Audio Technica M50s. The control room had a pretty substantial null at around 110Hz, where all the good stuff is, so monitoring sounded really strange. It was quite drastic.”

Craik: “For monitoring, we normally use the Unity Audio The Rocks, which are great, but you can have the world’s most expensive speakers, and in a terrible room it will still sound terrible. It was a bit of a nightmare. We’d gone to the studio with the intention of recording everything there, but the reality was that the acoustic treatments were purely for show. Once we got to recording drums, it turned out the sound was uncontrollable, with mad resonances.

“After trying the main live room and a smaller side room for a week, we decided to record the drums elsewhere, and went to a small east London studio called Baltic. It has a great, very controlled and punchy live room, apart from the fact that they put in an upright piano in the live room, which caused quite a bit of ringing. We added a lot of aggressive compression to the drums on this album, which of course pulls up all sorts of resonances, so we did a lot of work on dampening the room and the piano, like gaffa-taping windows, and leaning chairs against things and so on.”

LOGIC & TOOLS MAKE FRIENDS

Throughout the recording process, Craik used Logic and Gilmore Pro Tools, which led to a lot of sharing of files. The latter explained, “I think it’s fair to say that Logic is a very creative environment for music production, and Pro Tools has an accuracy when working with audio, which cannot be matched. So recording and editing audio was all done in Pro Tools. Meanwhile, Dom was throwing ideas around in Logic. Our Engineer Freddy [Williams] was also on a Pro Tools system.

“It was a bit chaotic, but it meant that there were always three things happening at the same time, and multiple songs would come together really quickly. Conor and I would be recording vocals, Freddy might be editing backing vocals, and Dom might be working on a synth arrangement for a song that we are going to cut vocals for in the afternoon. I think this album is sponsored by AirDrop! All three of us sat in a room together, and along with the rest of the band it was an open forum of coming with ideas. It was quite a fluid process, with the three of us throwing files around. And fortunately we had a huge whiteboard to keep us all on top of what we were doing.”

Throughout the 130-day process, the original Logic demos changed remarkably little. Gilmore: “Because the arrangements were mostly already great, and the songs themselves were already the strongest contenders, it was not like other projects that I work on where pretty much all the demos require structural and tempo/key changes. Our process was re-recording all the main band elements and then enhancing things or modifying things to make them better. We did add a lot of stuff but it was to support and enhance what was already there: backing vocals, additional melodies, ear candy, and so on. I think only ‘Tomorrow is Closed’ and ‘Welcome to the DCC’ went through substantial compositional changes.”

Craik: “Once Jon had finished and finessed the recordings of the vocals and the additional instruments, that stuff would come back over to me and I would do additional production and get a rough mix together in Logic. I built these rough mixes over quite a long period of time, and many eyes and ears went over them, questioning everything. We gradually developed a detailed idea of what we were shooting for and what we’d send to Mike Crossey, who would be doing the final mixes. Once we agreed on a rough mix, we’d send it to the label, to management, to ourselves. Once it was approved, there was this massive transfer of my rough mix over to Pro Tools, and Freddy and Jon would spend days putting on the final touches.”

Gilmore: “The rough mixes reflected where the songs needed to go creatively, and then I would go through everything on a technical level, to make sure that everything we sent to Mike was as bullet-proof as possible, and we squeezed every last percentage out of what we had, with the absolute best drum sound we could get, the best guitar sound we could get, exactly the right vocal, and so on. The rough mixes were mostly delivered with compression and EQ on the tracks and everything else production-wise printed, because the sounds we wanted were all there. The exception would be the vocals which we did deliver with FX prints and live processing on the channel but without any processing committed to the audio. By that point we had usually been through multiple stages of rough mixing, so the production was really the way we wanted it.”

Gilmore might have added that they also made sure the material  explored “the edges of the band’s stylistic comfort zone,” while still sounding like Nothing But Thieves. Despite, or perhaps because of, the adverse conditions, it’s exactly how Dead Club City turned out. As one critic put it, “It is distinctly Nothing But Thieves, but with a fresher, funkier twist and a concept album foundation.”

PRODUCTION VALUES

I can’t comment on how the whistling and the rest of ‘I Ain’t Worried’ came into being as I wasn’t part of that process, but I did have input on the production of it. We liked the cool, natural, ‘indie’ intonation of the whistle so we left it untouched. Tuning is great if you’re doing a super pop record, but the vibe of this song called for those beautiful imperfections to be left intact to give it a more human feel. If you put a song like this right bang in tune it can sound over-polished and may lose its character. I placed a few effects like saturation and reverb on the whistle, and the intro was low-pass filtered for a more lo-fi feel, but after the first chorus a more hi-fi version can be heard coming through.

While mixing I always want to keep the songwriter’s original intentions in mind, and I try to support this with rhythm and tone. In the case of this song, it had a retro-meets-modern sound, so I worked with things like slap echo and vintage-style reverbs. In general, you want to get the vocals feeling awesome before moving on, but in this case I also set my mind to getting the drums knocking a little harder. Recognising these needs is all part of creating an aesthetic for the song.

CLIENTS & MIXING

One thing I’ve learned is that if you want to do something significant to the mix, it’s a good idea to initiate a dialogue rather than surprise the client. While mixing, I’ll regularly reference the original demo because that’s the sound the band will have become familiar with. I also try approaching them with: ‘I’m imagining that guitar in the chorus sounding a bit quieter/louder’, and then ask them how they feel about the idea. Mentally preparing the client for your suggestions means that they won’t be blindsided, which keeps them open to further suggestions. 

There are also mixes where the artist or producer wants you to be bold — to craft a stronger sonic identity for them. Here you can be more creative, but it’s still good to respect the work of the artist and producer, so clear communication remains a key element for success here too. Because I have a long-term relationship with OneRepublic they are incredibly open to suggestions — if I’m hearing something a different way I can easily have that dialogue with them before touching it.

Everyone can suffer from the psychological/creative blockage of ‘demo-itis’, where you start to like something that you’ve been stuck on for a while. It’s the Stockholm Syndrome of writing and mixing. At the same time, people hire you for your taste and decision making, so if they trust you to make those decisions, that’s something you should try to remain focused on.

PRACTICAL PRODUCTION

When beginning a new project, I generally start with whatever grabs my attention — with whatever the heart of the record is. If it’s a piano piece with only a little drumming then I’m not going to start with the drums. I’ll start with the piano, or maybe a vocal. Because the groove is a foundation of ‘I Ain’t Worried’ I started working on getting a rough balance between the drums and bass. I then worked on the guitars, which have a gnarly, ’60s slappy reverb/delay. (I love that stuff!) Then I worked on the vocals, and at the end I looked at the brass stabs and other effects. I always save these effect tracks til last because they don’t really make or break the record.

DRUMS

With regards to the drums, there were three different kicks. There’s a short, click-y kick that I added because I wanted to get a bit more attack. I used the Drum Replacer plugin, found a sample I liked, and made sure that it was properly aligned, and in phase. Using the FabFilter Pro-Q3 I added a little bit of top and some higher midrange, dipping a bit around 250Hz and boosting some lows at 100Hz. Then I had the Oeksound Spiff pushing some attack. That plugin is like a transient designer, it does something really unique and controlled. Finally, there’s the Korvpressor compressor, to give a polished, punchy sound.

The drums and the other drum elements were sent to the ‘All Drums’ bus, where I added the Waves OneKnob Filter in one section, and again with the Korvpressor, and then the Amek EQ. Generally, this bussing process is a polish. If I turn off the effects on the bus, it won’t fall apart, but you’ll definitely lose a bit of sweetening. The Amek EQ200 was adding a little at 8kHz, like 0.6dB for a smidge more forwardness. It’s a breakbeat groove, so I wanted the sound to be punchy and snappy.

BASS

There are several bass elements; an 808 and two Reveal Sound Spire bass tracks; and the ‘Old Bass’ (from the original movie session), ‘Bass Slide’, and ‘Bass Wurl’ tracks. These aren’t all playing simultaneously, apart from the Spire bass and live Old Bass tracks, where the Spire was only adding a little sub content and extension to the live bass. On the live bass I added the FabFilter Pro-MB, which compresses from 74Hz to 346Hz — giving me a bit more stability in that range. Then I had Native Instruments’ Supercharger GT (I love that thing, it’s so badass!), where I cranked the saturation and added a bit more compression. One important thing to keep an eye on is level-matching because you can easily trick yourself when going into a compressor/saturator. When it’s 2-3dBs hotter you can be inclined to think, ‘Wow, this sounds better’, but really it’s just louder.

VOCALS

Getting the balance right between Ryan’s lead vocals and the ‘gang’ vocals was the main challenge. The gang vocals add character, but they also take attention away from the lead singer if they’re too hot. The gang vocals are great and add a lot of hype to the mix, but I wanted to keep Ryan centre stage. The name of the game was finding a level that excited the chorus while still being able to hear the character of the lead vocals clearly.

I generally spend a lot of time on vocals, and in this case, there was a combination of different effects to achieve the sound. For example, there’s some distortion on the lead vocals, using Waves’ Manny Marroquin Distortion plugin. I’ll usually use this plugin on tambourines or drums, but in this case it worked really well on the lead.

I also gave the lead vocals some extra midrange, which I pushed with the Waves Vitamin Sonic Enhancer. I’ve also got the Slate Virtual Mix Rack, with the FG-N EQ, the FG-Stress compressor, and the FG-Bomber, which I used to add transient enhancement. The mix knob of the FG-Stress was at about 18% because I was really slamming it, and the Bomber was only active in the verses to add attack. It sounds like I have loads of plugins on the vocals, but they’re each only doing a tiny bit. All those small enhancements really tend to add up.

The send-effects on the vocals are also a big part of the ‘sauce’. I had a Soundtoys EchoBoy doing some very light quarter note repeats, set to the Space Echo setting — which I think is based on the Roland RE 201. The EchoBoy is one of my favourite delays. I also used the UAD Galaxy Tape Echo, which is so gnarly, it gets me those vintage vibes right away. Then I had the Valhalla Vintage Reverb with a two-second reverb, and high-passed quite heavily. I also narrowed it down a bit as it’s such a wide sounding reverb — a bit too grand for this kind of song. 

I’ve also got a bit of side-chain on the reverb where the VolumeShaper4 created some light quarter-note pulses to add movement to the reverb. After that, there was the SoundToys MicroShift, which is a doubler to subtly detune. I have the same effects on the chorus section too, but they’re balanced a bit differently. And then at the end you’ve got a slap from the EchoBoy, set to StudioTape, 72ms on the left, 92ms on the right. The delay offset is to avoid phase issues, as using the same delay or effect settings twice can get you into trouble. On the delay slap send, I’ve got the UAD Pultec MEQ-5. I dipped out some 300Hz and I pushed 2k, just to make the vocals more present and to have the effect sit a certain way.

For the pièce de résistance I have some extra tails on specific phrases. I copied regions where I wanted more reverb than on other tracks, and added a FabFilter Pro-Q3 before the verb, cutting out low- and high-end, and then applying the Valhalla Vintage Verb. This had slightly longer tails than the send on the lead. I blended the ‘1980s Concert Hall’ and ‘1970s Concert Hall’ as inserts on the chopped regions, with different modulation and filter settings. I also shaped the envelope a bit differently. If you listen to the reverbs, you’ll hear that the ends of certain phrases are a little wetter in verses. This creates depth and contrast.

MIX WRAP

To conclude, on the stereo mix I had the bx_digital EQ3, but not as an EQ. I used it purely for its ‘Mono Maker’ summing tool. It flips everything under 80Hz to mono. I also used two analogue pieces of gear to add a bit of glue and polish. The Dangerous Compressor is hitting the song maybe 2dB in peak sections. I like the way this compressor tightens the punch in a very transparent, 3D way. I also have the Bax EQ pushing a bit of 74Hz and 7.1kHz, and the filter section active at 12Hz and 70kHz.

Where the signal comes back into the digital domain, I applied the Oxford Inflator, which adds a bit of presence and harmonic content.

Next, the UAD Curve Bender EQ pushes half a dB at 20k, just to add some air. (I wasn’t kidding when I said that these things aren’t doing much!) And finally, I have the iZotope Ozone 9 Imager doing some light imaging enhancement to make it sound a little more polished. We then sent the mix to the brilliant — and super-cool — Chris Gehringer, who mastered it for us.

So, as you can see, a lot of my mix work was about balancing the lead vocals and gang vocals. There are tons of gang vocals, especially in the choruses. It’s those gang vocals that give the song that cool ‘sunglasses’ sound I was talking about.

TIMBER TIMBRE

The pandemic standstill and lockdowns also gave De Laet the time and space to finally create his own purpose-built studio, and move out of the make-shift home studio that he’d been working in at his Brussels apartment. The result was his spectacular Treehouse Studio, built by the Belgian company AMPTEC, which opened in March 2021. Despite its name, it is not actually built in a tree. 

“I’ve always dreamt of having my own studio,” explains De Laet. “First of all to have good and reliable sound, and also to be able to work without disturbing my neighbours, because I live in the city. The new studio is built in an old, typical Brussels town house, in the centre of the city. There’s a small garden, and a terrace, and the studio is in an outhouse at the back, with sunlight coming in, which is nice.” 

De Laet and his team have created an Instagram page dedicated to the studio, @treehousestudio.bxl, on which one can admire photos of some of the building work and also of the gear in the studio, including the massive, 49-inch LG Ultrawide screen, some outboard, and an abundance of monitors, keyboards, and acoustic screens.

BOX ’N’ DICE

The presence of all this hardware is quite unusual in a time when in-the-box-setups with just a computer, I/O, and monitors have become the norm. De Laet started out like this, as he explains: “I got into music by playing piano, but I also listened to a lot of electronic music. When I got my first laptop, I started producing music in Reason, and from there I went to Logic. I still use Logic today. I guess I am a self-taught home producer, used to working in the box.

“My first monitors were the KRK Rokit 5, and from there I bought a microphone and then got Yamaha HS7 monitors, which I really like, and which give me a different sound. I then bought a Moog, but I had no idea how to use it. I read the manual, and found that super-fun and interesting. I now have four or five Moog synths, and read all the manuals, and I now work on them in a super-instinctive way.” 

De Laet has over the years acquired more and more hardware, and one of his aims in building Treehouse Studios is to create a setup that is tailor-made for them. “I wanted to be able to just plug and play and be able to use everything super-easily. I did not want to constantly remove cables, move things around, plug things in and out, and so on. So now in the studio, everything is connected via MIDI and audio. I can record all the audio straight into my computer. I can also do sound design, record it, and everything goes super quickly. Using hardware in my studio is almost as easy as using a plugin.”

HARDWARE EASY

According to De Laet, the hardware in his studio has changed his working methods quite dramatically. “When the pandemic hit, I had much more time and also in my previous studio I started connecting all my hardware and used it a lot more. It’s a completely different approach. I really like the fact that you have to commit to what you record. When you create a distinct sound, it is less easy to recreate, which makes it more unique.

“I also like to be able to play keyboards and use my hands when programming synths. Sometimes I simply hit the Record button, and I will have a super long loop, and I will record myself playing for like 10 minutes. After that I will select what I like and create something different from it. This never happens when I use only software. It is a completely different approach.

“Of course, it’s easy to recreate the same sounds with plug-ins. With plug-ins you can also constantly redo things, constantly adapt, and so on. When you use the hardware, because it takes more effort and more time, you think twice before you decide whether you use a sound or not. And if you don’t use it, you might use it for something else. Using hardware can also be a pain, because everything takes more time, but I get more out of it. It is super fun.

“If I don’t have the time to use hardware, I will just open some plug-ins. The thing is, I know what I want, and with plug-ins I can get it done in a few seconds, when I am doing remixes or last minute treatments of things, or the label wants last-minute changes, I do it with the plug-ins. But when I have the time and I like to be creative and inspired, I’ll be using the hardware.” 

MOOG NO. 1 

According to De Laet, the Moog One is his favourite synthesizer. “It is my baby. I can do everything with it. It’s polyphonic with 16 voices, and I like the small screen in the middle, which gives a nice visual aid. It’s very intuitive to use, and easy to understand what you are doing when you turn buttons and link stuff. Another favourite Moog is the Sub 37. I’m also fond of the Arturia MatrixBrute, most of all, its distortion knob, it gives me a really different sound. Another favourite is my Sequential Prophet X.”

Other keyboards at Treehouse include a Moog Grandmother, a Roland Jupiter-X, and Moog Sub Phatty. The studio surely will see more, as De Laet explains, “I’m buying tons of stuff at the moment! More hardware is coming in. I put a picture on Instagram recently of my Finegear The Dust Collector unit, which contains two VC LFOs, two tape saturations, a spring reverb, a delay and a phaser. I can mess with the knobs when I send audio through it. The weirder things get, the more interested I am in buying them, because it means I need to get out of my comfort zone when using these things.” 

Treehouse also has two racks of outboard, on either side of the central position behind De Laet’s desk. The rack on the right contains a Heritage Audio DMA73 mic pre, a UAD-2 Live Rack, and an Antelope Audio Orion 32+ GEN3 converter. However, it seems that De Laet’s real attention goes to two main units of outboard on his left… 

“I love my Wes Audio Next Generation Bus Compressor, which adds really nice harmonic distortion. When I put a Moog One sound through it, it adds really nice, midrange body. But of course, if you later want to recreate that sound, it’s harder to do. I sometimes use the API 2500+ compressor on the stereo output for premastering for radio mixes, but when I do club mixes I’ll send them through the Wes Audio, which gives a more aggressive sound.”

TREEHOUSE: BRANCH OFFICE

Concluding his tour of Treehouse, De Laet explains, “I have the Yamaha HS7 monitors here, Kii Three, and Neumann KH310A monitors, with a sub. I use the Neumann’s almost constantly. I only skip to the other monitors when I’m not sure about how something translates. They’re really nice speakers, and with the sub they are great for just vibing. I use the Heritage Audio R.A.M. System 5000 as my monitor controller.

“Oh, and I also have a Neumann U67 mic, which I don’t use as much as I would like, because I now work mostly with famous singers, and they usually like to record in their own studios with their own engineer. By the way, I also still have a basic home studio at my apartment, because all the gear and all the options I have at Treehouse can make it more complicated to create. I can sometimes get overly focused on details — if I need to keep it simple, I go back home.

“At home I have just my first KRK speakers, my laptop, UA Apollo X4 soundcard, and a Roland JU-06A and TB-03. Having just this gear creates limitations and forces me to be creative with what I have. So when I’m stuck, I sometimes go there. I’ll try to get a first idea, and once I have that, I’ll go back to my main studio and go crazy with sound design and things like that. On all my computers I have all my favourite plugins, by FabFilter and SoundToys, Valhalla, and so on.”

MIXING FREQUENCIES

Once De Laet finishes a track, he sends it out to mixer Andres Algaba. “He has mixed all my tracks since ‘Reality’ in 2015. Sometimes he does not change a lot, and he’s more concerned with consistency between all the tracks on an album, so they are the same in terms of volume, dynamics, where the bass and the vocals sit, and so on. Also, when I do a DJ set, everything has to sound like a whole. You can’t have one track with super loud vocals and other with super loud bass He takes care of that, and also makes the stems, so I don’t have to do all that.” 

Early June, Lost Frequencies released another single, ‘Questions’ (with James Arthur), and De Laet reveals that he’s “working on an album at the moment. I’m also preparing for the live shows for the summer. I have a drummer, Thibault on guitar, there’s a singer, and I play keyboards. We use Ableton for the live shows. I really like the Ableton interface, but it’s easier for me to create in Logic, so we translate everything that I have in Logic to Ableton for the live shows.

“I’ll be using a Roland Ax Edge keytar, a DJ TechTools Midi Fighter, a Roland Pro 61-key MIDI controller, and also the Sub 37. On the last tour I had the Prophet, but it would detune if it got hot. The drummer has a completely digital kit, which looks analogue, but allows him to use all samples of my tracks. The guitarist also plays a MIDI keyboard. We resample everything so we can get things to sound as close as possible to the original versions.

“It’s a lot of work, but performing live as an electronic act gives me a lot of credibility, as opposed to just doing DJ sets. I also learn a lot in terms of interacting with the crowd. It’s going to be fun. In December we go to Asia, and in January I’m on holiday!”

Clearly, De Laet’s has returned to his pre-pandemic globetrotting days. But his Treehouse Studios is sure to lure him back to Brussels more often than before.

MONITORING IN MIXLAND

Ernster conducts all his mixes in his Mixland studio in LA. At this point one would expect a straightforward description of his studio, but for some reason his mix environment changes continuously. Early in the pandemic he could be found mixing in an Airbnb with sea view, using a laptop and a headset. He later on mixed ‘Woman’ in his bedroom. He has also moved house several times in recent years, which means that he has built several incarnations of Mixland.

In addition, the studio’s design itself is rather out of the ordinary, with Ernster preferring to mix with a keyboard and track pad in his lap, so he does not have to deal with the reflections that come from an office desk. He also has built tons of tube traps, to create close to dead acoustics around his monitors, while the rear of his current studio is treated with less absorption, resulting in a live-end-dead-end room.

“I built all of these big, 27 inch diameter absorption tubes,” explains Ernster. “They are copies of the Isothermal ASC Attack Wall tube traps, with a vented design where they take the sound in, and convert the energy into heat so it just dissipates. It leaves the room very accurate. I built them for my previous studio, and when we moved house I just brought all the tubes to this place. I want the area around the speakers to be completely anechoic, just loaded into the wall, with no resonance. It is like I am sitting in a hi-fi room, just me and the speakers and the power amps on the floor. It is incredible for translation. I hear exactly what clients send me.”

“I have a PDF guide for anybody who is interested in making these tube traps on my Mixland website, on which we also offer plugins, and other nerdy stuff. Right now we’re working on a DIY guide for Yamaha NS10 modification. The NS10 modification consists of updated crossovers, which cost about $70 per pair. The mod is a more thoughtful design with better components and a better placed crossover.”

“The cheap crossover they originally put in results in a horrendous overlap and a big bump around 1.6kHz. This mod alleviates that, but the speakers still sound like NS10s: fast with great micro-dynamics. They are just a little more useful without that snarly, harsh mid-range. The mod also extends the top and the low end. When I place the NS10s closer together, they go down to 40Hz, because the low end couples. These days, a lot of cats working with NS10s use them in a boombox configuration, i.e. very closely together.”

“I mixed ‘Woman,’ on un-modded NS10s in a temporary studio within a tiny bedroom, with some acoustic treatment. I currently still mix on NS10s, and also on my Strauss SE‑MF‑4 monitors. I now have 16 NS10s in my studio, because I am building an Atmos setup! I have an old Apogee Symphony as my I/O, and hope to upgrade to the Symphony Mk II soon. I also have the Grace M905 monitor controller and a whole bunch of other gear that I don’t use when I mix. When I did the ‘Woman’ mix in my bedroom I was using the Crane Song Solaris DAC.”

SESSION PREP

Ernster mixed ‘Woman’ in May 2021, and explains that his process involves one of his two assistants prepping the sessions. “I had an assistant, Noah ‘Mix Giant’ Glassman, who played a large role in helping to prep this song. He has experienced a lot of success from working on this. In general, the assistant will make a new session with my template, and then he imports all the session data from the session that is sent to us.”

“With ‘Woman,’ we retained their settings, master bus, and I/O, everything, and my template lives in there just in case I need it. I have a bunch of  auxiliaries that give me really quick options, like if I need a slapback on the vocal I can really quickly reach for it. So I used most of what they had, added my own treatments, and I built my own master bus.”

“My assistant’s job is to colour code and lay everything out in the session, and he also lines up the reference mix, using the ADPTR Metric AB plugin, and listens measure by measure, section by section, all the way through the song, to ensure that the song in the session is playing back exactly the same as the approved reference bounce. If anything sounds remotely different, we call the engineer or producer and we politely request correct files. But in this scenario everything sounded great and was perfect.”

NO SOLO

Unusually, Ernster mixed ‘Woman’ with his assistant virtually looking over his shoulder. “He was present via Zoom and AudioMovers, because pandemic numbers were high. Generally, I mix on my own, but in this scenario, because it was a big mix and a big opportunity, and he was trying to absorb as much information as possible, he watched me mix and of course commented sometimes. It was fun to have a co-pilot.”

“My mix process is primarily comprised of listening to everything at the same time. I will solo when I really need to focus on something, but in this day and age mixes are very loud and glued together at the mix bus, and when you are hearing the kick in the mix, you are not hearing the way it is EQ-ed, you hearing the kick rub against everything else, grinding into saturation plug-ins, with several decibels of gain reduction and clipping and limiting. There is a chemistry of distortion happening that is not represented when you are in solo, so for most of the time I work with everything in.”

“I will generally listen to the record twice, to get an idea of what is going on, and I’ll run around the session, also observing gain staging and the way things are behaving. When I get stems I might start with clip gaining every single track down in the session, but that was not the case with this session. In my head I make a priority list of what I think prevents the song from really working, and what needs doing to improve it.”

“Once I finish this process, I will gain stage the mix and set up my mix bus based on what the kick is doing. Generally, the kick peaks will be digging most in the mix bus, and I need my mix to be as loud as the reference. So I will get the mix bus going early. You could call that a top-down approach, but what I do on the mix bus is pretty minimal. Once I have added the mix bus I will jump into the session, and get down to the nitty-gritty.”

RISING FROM A SOLID BASS

Pigliapoco was born in Los Angeles in 1990 from Argentinian parents, and grew up playing bass. When he was around 16, he recognised that the future was going to be digital, and he ended up interning at a label and recording studio not far from his school. It inspired him to attend The Los Angeles Recording School, and he graduated there with honours. During his time at the school he got a job engineering for rapper Juicy J, at Wyman studios, where the owner, Tip Wyman, became a mentor.

At 21, Pigliapoco signed a publishing deal with BMG as an engineer and producer. He worked with Cheryl Cole on her album ‘A Million Lights’ (2012), and with Fergie on her album ‘Double Dutchess’ (2017). He also worked with Josh Gudwin (engineer and mixer for Justin Bieber), and in 2015 Pigliapoco became the regular engineer for Chris Brown. He eventually graduated to also finding the beatmakers and producers for Brown’s albums, doing production, and mixing the final tracks.

Pigliapoco still works with Brown, but has over the last two years spread his wings and has mixed tracks for an impressive number of artists, among them The Kid Laroi, Pop Smoke, Gunna, DJ Khaled, Polo G, G-Eazy, H.E.R., Mooski, Chris Brown, and, of course Little Nas X, which gave him his first Billboard No.1, and two Grammy nominations. Pigliapoco clearly is breaking into the elite group of star mixers.

HYBRID STUDIO LOW DOWN

One result of Pigliapoco’s success is that he’s been able to buy a new house in Los Angeles, where he has installed a state-of-the-art hybrid studio. “My monitors are the PMC 6-2,” he explains. “I used to have the PMC 226 monitors, and the 6-2’s are essentially double. They have incredible low end. I think they go down to 10Hz or something like that, so I don’t need a sub. These things are insane! My room is 10x15ft, and I have the low end down by 7dB to make it work in the room. I use the Grace m905 monitor controller.

“I have a Mac with Pro Tools and my interface is the Lynx Aurora 24 I/O. This allows me to use channels 1 and 2 for my stereo output, 3 and 4 for the rough mix, 5 and 6 go to my D.W Fearn VT5 EQ, 7 and 8 go to my Undertone Audio Unfairchild 670M II, and 9 to 24 go to my Neve 5057 Orbit 16-channel summing mixer. I send eight stereo pairs to the Neve, which are the group tracks near the top of my Pro Tools sessions: drum bus, music bus, effect bus, and vocal buses.

“I have the outboard because of the sonics. It gives me a sound that I cannot get any other way. For example, the VT5 is on the insert of my master bus, and it takes out any abrasiveness in the top end. It’s incredible. Often when you are mixing, you are struggling to tame things that are too bright. Particularly when you are dealing with vocals today — people often boost the top end too much. Just running the signal through the VT5 flat corrects that. Rather than fighting with EQs and multiband compressors in the box, it’s a lot easier just to run your entire mix through the VT5 and a lot of that work is done for you.

“I use the Unfairchild on the vocals, as my first vocal compressor, and then I commit that. Songs tend to have verse, pre-hook and hook sections, and usually a lead vocal is on two tracks, because sometimes things will overlap. So I’ll work one vocal track of the verse on Channel 7 and the other vocal track on Channel 8, and then I’ll commit that, which frees up these two channels to work on the pre- or the hook lead vocal.”

BABY STEPS: MIX WALK THROUGH

Pigliapoco illustrates his process with his mix of ‘Industry Baby’. He recalls, “The production session was done in Logic, and I was sent audio files that were all printed. So there were no plugins. I asked the producers, Take A Daytrip, to send me the lead vocals with only Antares AutoTune applied, and the effects printed separately. When people send you tracks with effects like reverb, when you start compressing and EQ-ing them, the reverb changes. Having the effects separate gives me more control. In general I did use many of the delays and reverbs that they sent, because they wanted specific delays in specific places.

“I loaded all their audio files into Pro Tools, which made it easier, because actually, receiving a session this big as a Pro Tools session would have been really difficult. It would have been a lot of work to make that fit my workflow. There would have been plugins everywhere, and AutoTune on every track, and it would have become an enormous session. Instead I could import the audio in a fresh Pro Tools session, in which I could work more cleanly.

“They also sent me a rough, which sounded pretty good, as is the case when you’re dealing with high calibre artists and producers. I normally follow the rough very closely. In fact, I reference the rough all the time. I will listen to the rough for 20 seconds, just to get an idea of how much low end there is, how much compression is happening overall, how bright the vocals are, and how loud the mix is. If the mix is printed at -5 LUFS, I am going to have a really tough time getting my mix to sound really good and dynamic and as loud.

“Once I get the idea of the rough, I pull in the drums and I start referencing back and forth between the rough and my mix, constantly, to make sure I get a similar blend. Are the kick and the snare in the same place? Of course, that does not mean that if something sounds too loud for me, that I won’t turn it down. After the drums I pull in the bass, and listen again to the rough. Where is the bass? How loud is it? Is my bass louder? How loud is the music?

“My version is going to sound way better, it is going to hit harder, it is going to be more dynamic, but as a general rule, the blend needs to match the rough. If your 808 or bass is not hitting as hard, your mix won’t feel as big and dynamic. So referencing is the most important thing. I don’t want to go in the wrong direction.

“If the strings are the main part in the song, and I have them too low, the energy will go down. I also need to control the vocals. Usually they are too bright in the rough, so I need to find that middle place where they are bright enough, but not abrasive. In other words: balance what they have, and make it sound better.

“Sometimes people tell me: ‘don’t listen to the rough. The engineer did not get it right, do your thing.’ Of course, I’m happy to do that, but what they don’t know is that I will still reference the rough, just to get an idea of where things are. Think about it: maybe the A&R tells me not to listen to the rough, but an artist who does not have as much knowledge of mixing may like the rough. If I’m lucky, I get to speak with the artist as well, and they can tell me what they think of the rough. I have to have all these things in my head when I’m mixing.” 

OBSESSIVE COMPULSIVE ORDER

Pigliapoco’s mix session of ‘Industry Baby’ is huge, about 200 tracks, and very well-organised. At the top are his master track, called Neve Return, Mix Buss, Mix prints, Rough Mix, the aforementioned eight groups that are sent to the Neve and his aux tracks. This entire section is part of his template. Below this are the audio tracks and some associated aux tracks: drums, bass, music, vocals, and a 90-track, four-bar horn outro in pink. 

“I am very OCD,” explains Pigliapoco. “Everything has to be very well organised. The master fader is at the top, because it is the master! Everything at the bottom feeds the tracks at the top. I don’t like having things like aux effects tracks at the bottom, as many people have. So the audio tracks feed the yellow bus tracks, which go to my Neve 5057, and then come back on my Neve Return, which is sent to my mix bus track.”

Before elaborating further on the top of his mix session, Pigliapoco follows the signal flow of his session, and his mix process, by first discussing his treatments on the audio tracks. “I put the tracks in the order in which I mix them, so I’m literally working my way down as I am mixing. So first there are my drums, in blue, because I start with them. They are the most important part of the session. And at the top of the drums is the kick.

“A lot of my work on the drums and other audio tracks is done with the Fabfilter Pro-Q3, which is my starting point for EQ, and I tend to notch out frequencies I don’t want. I always start with that, before I start boosting frequencies. First take out the bad stuff! I also use the iZotope Neutron 3 for this, which I adore. It is really easy to use,  and allows you to split the compression into bands. So if the transient part of the kick is too bright, I can split the compressor into two frequencies and affect the low end and the high end differently. 

“Those are my main two plugins on many audio tracks. There’s also a Waves Doubler on a reversed cymbal, because I wanted it wider. The Audio tracks usually feed the aux group tracks below them, and all drums go to the Drums bus track, on which I have the Acustica Audio Mike Dean Gainstation, doing 0.1 on the Clipper, which seems very minimal, but it makes a big difference, and adds drive. After that I have the Softube Weiss limiter, which I use to push the volume on the drums. I also have the iZotope Ozone, but I did not use it in this case. I love the iZotope stuff, because it’s really clean and transparent. I use many plugins, and don’t want too many that add colour, otherwise you end up with a mess.” 

BASS TRACK HACKS

Pigliapoco continues his exposé by tackling the six bass tracks, which are coloured brown. Three of which have 808s. “Usually there are only two bass tracks, but there are quite a few here! Most of these low-end tracks again have the Pro-Q3, and with the 808s I’m often notching around 200Hz and 400Hz, where they can sound boxy. In this case there’s a 1dB notch at 59Hz and at 104Hz. After that I’m using the Avid lo-fi plugin for some distortion and then I throw on the Waves MV2 Limiter, boosting both high level and low level. After that there’s a Neutron 3.”

The green music tracks consist of horns, which are in part played, despite many suspecting a looped sample. “Yeah, it’s a very extensive arrangement, with trombones, tubas, trumpets, saxophones and so on. I again use the Pro-Q3 extensively, with tons of notches to take away some abrasive frequencies. You can see this in the image of the Pro-Q3 on the main horn loop, which is the first green track below the bass tracks. That horn loop also has the Celestian Psychoacoustic Bus Processor, which is adding harmonics with the Teal Staging Harmonics knob, and widens the signal with the Yellow Stereo Elliptic knob. After that there’s some compression from the Waves CLA-3A.

“All horns go to a Horns Group aux, and then to the Music bus at the top. I don’t normally have plugins on the Music bus because there tend to be so many different elements in the music, and I prefer to treat each separately. Underneath the Horns Group aux is a track called Outro, in blue, which is the submix of the 60-track entire horn section at the bottom of the session in pink. I had to commit that down and then deactivate the original tracks, because the session would otherwise have been too big. Also, the blend was already there, so I did not want to disturb that.

“Below the Outro track are some tracks in brown, which are vocal effects, like ad libs, and they were more part of the music, which is why I placed them there. They go to the BGV group bus at the top. Below this are Nil Nas X’s main sung vocals in light blue, one hook track and three verse tracks, and two tracks down, in dark blue, his rap (verse2). They all they have largely the same signal chain, but settings change between the verse and the hook.”

“In the prehook (vpreld) I was cutting less low end. Because there are no drums at that point, I left more body in the vocals. Whenever an element drops out of the mix, other elements become heightened. So if the kick drops out, all of a sudden you are going to be more focused on the more high-end elements and there’s space for low end. You have to balance things, and to do this I used an extra plugin here, the FabFilter Pro-MB multiband compressor.

“For the rest, the UAD Pultec EQP -1A does a 10-12kHz boost, and I have the Waves CLA76, because I wanted a compressor that was really aggressive and dirty, and pumped. I don’t usually use the CLA76, but this song needed a compressor that was really aggressive and dirty. They wanted the vocal to sound like that. Today, I use the Unfairchild at the point where the CLA76 is in this session, but I did not have that unit at the time I mixed this.

“Another important plugin I used on the vocals was Overloud’s Gem Dopamine Audio Enhancer. It heightens and boosts the top end in a nice way. After that I put on the Oeksound Soothe 2, to tame all the top end I just boosted. There’s also a de-esser and the Neutron, which is out taking some bottom end.

“And finally there’s the Pro-C2 compressor, which is usually the last compressor I have in the chain. It’s another plugin that is intuitive and easy-to-use, which is very important to me. If it is a complicated plug-in I don’t really want to deal with it. There is a lot of stuff going on already as it is, and to have to learn something that is overly complicated is not worth the time.

“There are three sends on these lead vocals, one to my Seventh Heaven aux effects track, which has the LiquidSonics Seventh Heaven Convolution Reverb. It mimics the Bricasti. There’s also a send to my effects aux track with the Valhalla Vintage Verb, and another to an aux with the SoundToys Microshift. I blend my reverbs, instead of relying on one reverb to give me specific sound. I will often also EQ the reverb afterwards. On the Seventh Heaven I cut all the low end information, because it was clouding up the mix a little bit.”

VOCALS: STACKS ON

Below Lil Nas X’s lead vocals are stacks and stacks of background vocals, and below them, at the bottom of the session and just above the deactivated tracks, is Jack Harlow’s rap. “As I mentioned earlier, the audio tracks are sent to the aux track below them. There are tons and tons of vocal layers. The hook alone is reinforced with eight vocals. In this session, rather than work on individual tracks, I processed the aux group tracks, and tried to preserve the blends and vibe that was there. I am boosting less at 10kHz on the stacks, because I want the lead vocals to be prominent, and for the backgrounds to have a warmer sound. There’s also a Neutron 3 cutting around 2.5kHz, again to soften the stacks.”

Returning to the top of the session, Pigliapoco elaborates on the rough mix and mix bus tracks. “The red track with the pink clip called ‘Industry12324808’ is the rough mix, which came in at -9.6 LUFS, which is what I want. I always want my mix to be louder than the rough, and if the rough is extremely loud it leaves me no space to work with. When I put the vocals in, I’m already at -9 LUFS, and from there I only need another -2 dB. I can actually come in at -.5.5 LUFS before distortion, boosting everything little by little.

“On the mix bus I have the Acustica Audio Ruby, which is the  plugin version of my VT5. I loved the Ruby so much that I got the real deal after I mixed this song! After that I have a Pro-Q3, and then the Brainworx bx_digital V3 EQ, to notch out some weird frequencies. It is a great piece of gear. Finally there’s the Shadow Hills Mastering Compressor, and then the UAD Sonnox Oxford Limiter, for volume. I take that off when I send the mix for mastering.

“‘Industry Baby’ was mastered by Eric Lagg. When Pigliapoco sent it off, did he think the song would blow up like it did? “No. I know of course that every song Lil Nas releases does well, so I anticipated it being a hit, but not that it’d go to No.1 in the US. It’s been incredible, and I am blessed!”