Ladytron | Layer Cake
Jun 1, 2008 12:00 PM, By David Weiss
USING GOOD STUDIO JUDGMENT ALONG WITH DELAYS, EBOWS AND SYNTHS, LADYTRON THICKENS UP THE SOUND WITHOUT SPOILING THE RECIPE
A SPACIOUS GARAGE
In Paris, a little studio called The Garage served as the headquarters for tracking a large proportion of the vocals, as well as the creation of additional demo tracks. What followed from there would be a near nonstop amalgam of writing, recording and mixing, with the band continuing to generate new songs in bursts even as final mixes were being put to bed late in the game. The next stop for this amorphous process was the Parisian Studio de la Grande Armée.
“This place is very old-school,” Hunt says. “It was built in 1978. It's modern now with a big SSL room, but the stuff that had been recorded there is pretty funny: Jagger's solo stuff from the '80s, Tina Turner, Murray Head, Duran Duran's Rio, Bryan Adams' Waking up the Neighbors, OMD — loads of stuff. It was nice and expensive, spacious and comfortable with free Internet — it made us feel important!”
But seriously. “It was vibe-y,” Hunt concedes. “This place has got a pedigree, and the plan was to mix there. But when we got there we realized we had loads more to do, and it became a tracking place as well as a mixing place. We planned just to mix what we had, but when we arrived, Helen had gone to Australia and had an operation [on her throat], so we said, ‘Let's keep layering.’”
Velocifero's opener, “Black Cat,” is just one example of the multilayered approach that makes the album stand up to repeated listenings. Extra-crispy bass, perky-dark electric piano pop hooks and Aroyo singing quite seriously in her native Bulgarian set the tone for much of what follows on the disc. “‘Black Cat’ is a mixture of analog synths, soft synths, a real Korg MS-10 doubled up quite a few times and filtered through some of the custom modules that [mixer] Michael Patterson had,” Wu explains. “It also has some xylophone, and the incessant thing is Rhodes.”
The in-your-face beat, programmed in the Native Instruments Battery software drum sampler, propels the track relentlessly forward. Lightly infused with a nasty dose of distortion, a close listen to the Ladytron programmers' work reveals subtly effective tricks such as slightly truncated snare samples on the fills — a touch that adds to the rush without technically affecting the tempo.
“Battery is so tweakable,” Wu notes. “You can load your own samples. But the main thing is that it's easy to use.”
“But it feels like a drum machine as well,” Hunt adds. “It's not literally represented like a drum machine, but in terms of what is represented onscreen, it's very logical. I like that you have easy access to the bit depth to nasty things up. The control over the samples is so clear.”
VOICES CARRY
Of course, not every sound that shows up on a Ladytron album requires electrical juice to run, like those hauntingly unforgettable vocals by Aroyo and Marnie, for instance. On “I'm Not Scared” there are ooos and ahs that flit to the left and the right around Marnie's arrow-sharp lead; on “Runaway,” she pierces through a heavy landscape of growling synth stabs, echoes of her voice peeling away like feathers floating rhythmically out into the air; “Ghosts” confounds as she intones throughout the chorus, “There's a ghost in me who wants to say I'm sorry/Doesn't mean I'm sorry.”
Despite their reputation for studio wizardry, the members of Ladytron go blank when asked about the science of capturing vocals — no dissertations on microphones, mic preamps or the proper compressor ratio settings here. Instead, they're content to let the engineer set things up for the art to follow. “We've got two vocalists in Mira and me, and we play off the differences between us,” Marnie says. “That way we have another level — my vocal doesn't need to be on the track. When I'm recording at home, I'll use a Shure mic, but when we go out to the studio, it's a variety of microphones.
“Champagne helps for recording a good vocal track,” she says, “but you can have a glass too much, and it does go over the edge! [Laughs.] It's important that we're in the right place: The Garage was a good place to record because I felt quite relaxed. It's got the right atmosphere.”
“The vocals are what make it sound like Ladytron, honestly,” Hunt observes. “Just listen to the difference between ‘Versus’ [the album closer which sees Hunt joining Aroyo and Marnie on vocals] and ‘I'm Not Scared,’ musically. The thing that makes it Ladytron is the voice.”
Ladytron also has been known to interact with a real live drum set. The Witching Hour tour saw them traveling with drummer Keith York (as well as bassist Andrew Goldsworthy), and the Velocifero sessions were supplemented by Seba, skinsman for the band Panico. “He came in and laid down a load of tracks,” Hunt says. “We sat him there for three hours and said, ‘Go for it.’ He's a fan of the band, and we got him to do stuff like Stewart Copeland; that was the catch phrase. He improvised at the end of ‘They Gave You a Heart, They Gave You a Name,’ and the hats on ‘Tomorrow,’ which is very subtle.”
NO SHIRT, NO SHOES, NO PRODUCER
Although their friends Vicarious Bliss (Ed Banger Records) and Alessandro Cortini (Nine Inch Nails) are credited with assisting in the production of the album, the members of Ladytron themselves are the official producers on Velocifero.
“We might have needed a producer on the last album, but we don't need one anymore,” Wu says. “Jim Abbiss taught us a hell of a lot on the last album, but the important thing is to work with a really good engineer and mixer. The kind of band we are is we're producers. We're producers from the beginning, although we collaborated a lot with Alessandro Cortini and Vicarious Bliss, and they got production credits.
“This is obvious these days, but everyone produces themselves anyway,” Wu continues. “That's what we've done all along, but we've hit a level where you think, ‘We'll have to bring a producer in.’ But unless they really understand the band, what are they going to bring to it? They're not going to understand it better than you do.”
Ladytron acknowledges that they learned at least two important things from Abbiss' efforts on Witching Hour. 1) How to drink vodka gimlets, and 2) the fine art of layering. “Whenever you think you've got enough, you need more!” Hunt says. “You have a lot of frequencies, but make sure they're not doing the same thing. An experienced producer told us that he really liked our first album because it sounded minimalist to them; it's only got four sounds on it, but that's because we didn't have any other sounds.”
“I think it's a perception of putting on more layers and giving the impression that there aren't any more layers,” Wu explains. “It's a thick sound and a lot of space. The way that ‘Runaway’ was built up was the product of experience: There's layers of EBow and drones using delays, building vocal textures with delays, recording synth sounds twice and panning them left and right, generally fattening things up like that. Even though we're putting on a lot more layers now, we don't want it to be too much.”
“It depends what the layers are; it has to be good stuff,” Hunt reasons. “With drones, for example, you play a flat line with a mono synth and a lot of modulation on it, then double it with an EBow, then double it with another keyboard, it's going to sound better if those are the ingredients. It's when people apply it without any taste that you have a problem. So it's really not about how many layers; it's about the right layers.”
IN PAIRS
Seven years into a career that hasn't gone the way anybody could have predicted — least of all Ladytron — the band has reached a happy stage where they find they're not just layering tracks, they're layering albums.
“I felt Witching Hour was like a coming-of-age album,” Wu muses. “At that point it was the best album that we'd done so far, and basically lots of different factors came together, and we've now created this work that we're really happy with. I see that as a foundation, a whole new set of opportunities to broaden our range again.”
“I think it might be that this record was easier to make,” Hunt concludes. “It felt like we knew what we were doing a lot. It gets easier each time, but Velocifero also feels like our second album, in a way. The first two albums make a pair, and these two do.”
VELOCIFERO: Built for Speed
Computer, DAW, recording hardware
Apple MacBook Pro 2.16 GHz running Logic Pro 8 (in Alessandro Cortini's studio)
Digidesign Control|24 console (courtesy of Vicarious Bliss)
Digidesign Pro Tools software
Steinberg Cubase SX software
Synths, soft synths, instruments
Analogue Systems French Connection synth
ARP 2600 modular synth, Solina String Synthesizer
Buchla 200e synth
EBow electronic guitar bow
Farfisa organ
Fender Rhodes
JoMoX SunSyn synth
Korg MS-10, MS-20, Delta synths
Moog Minimoog, Voyager synths
Native Instruments Battery software drum sampler, Guitar Rig software, Komplete software bundle
Ovation Breadwinner guitar (with EBow)
Roland MKS-80, SH-09, SH-2 and Juno-6 synths
Phantom 6-string guitar, bass guitar
Sequential Circuits Pro-One synth
Sequential Circuits Prophet VS (courtesy of Daft Punk)
Live drum kit
Mics, mic preamps, EQs, compressors, effects/plug-ins
API 2500 stereo compressor
Crane Song HEDD signal processor (for synth parts)
Electro-Harmonix Bass Micro Synthesizer effects unit
Neumann TLM 103 mic
Roland RE-201 Space Echo tape echo
Shadow Hills GAMA preamp, The Equinox preamp/summing mixer
Shure SM7 mic (for background vocals)
SoundToys EchoBoy plug-in
Tonelux MP1a preamp, EQ4P EQ and TXC compressor
URS Classic Console Strip Pro plug-in
Various effects pedal combinations
Monitors
Genelec 1031s (courtesy of Vicarious Bliss)
Genelec 8030s
Acceptable Use Policy blog comments powered by Disqus
| Want to use this article? Click here for options! |  |
