Voyage of Discovery
May 1, 2008 12:00 PM, By Ken Micallef
FOURTEEN YEARS AFTER PORTISHEAD'S GROUNDBREAKING DUMMY, THE BRISTOL TRIO RETURNS AND ITS WORLD HAS NEVER SOUNDED OR LOOKED STRANGER
OUTER-SPACE TAPE
Outboard effects became integral to Portishead's recording process. Two models of Roland Space Echo, SRE-555 and RE-501, were used on every track of every song, and Sound Performance Lab's Transient Designer was added as necessary.
“Tape is gone except that we stuck things back onto the Space Echo,” Utley explains. “We are still looking for some tape emulation that actually sounds like tape, but in a realistic way. We used the Space Echo, track by track. Each track, one by one, would be recorded in Radar, then go on to a Space Echo then back to Radar. So if we recorded snare, bass drum and hi-hat, each one of those mics would go to the Space Echo and be rerecorded back onto Radar and offset by the amount of 1 ms delay of the tape heads. Space Echos have an interesting fidelity; sometimes, there is a bit of wobble you want.”
“We send a lot of stuff to the Tascam cassette as well,” Barrow confirms. “We love what it does to the top end. ‘Magic Doors’ was mastered to the Tascam cassette deck. It sounds brilliant because of it. Tape saturation is a pure, organic thing.”
Meanwhile, Barrow can't explain how the Transient Designer works or even exactly what it does, but he's convinced of its worth. “If you record a drum kit in a live room and add the Transient Designer, it's like you're drumming in the deadest room in the world. It's ultimate compression,” he says. “It's evil. It's great for sampling very live breaks for hip-hop; you just turn a knob, and they're not live. It takes the ambience out of the break. If you want something to be punchy and heavy but at the same time completely live, it will do that. I used it on vocals, guitars, everything on all the tracks. And it's worth about $200.”
As they practically pursued old-school recording conditions, miking played an important role on Third. Utley used a classical miking technique called Blumlein Pair (two mics in figure-8 placed at 45-degree angles to re-create the original ambient characteristic of the signal) on Barrow's drums, using his Coles 4038 or RCA ribbon mics overhead with a U 47 on the bass drum. Utley says they always add a lot of top end to Gibbons' vocal, cut the bass and push the upper mids, often using a Røde NTK mic.
“The whole thing about the sonics of Portishead is that every sound is incredibly considered and has to sit in its world,” Utley says. “Beth's voice is very different from as you hear it. There is a lot of bass in her voice, which we have to cut. We use an old Great British Spring reverb, and we recorded a lot of vocals in her house at her studio. She would record in Logic and bring them in, but often the original vocals were best. We used the Thermionic Culture Earlybird on her voice, though it is quite sensitive and weird, and the Telefunken V76, which has bass cut and a separate volume.”
TRACK BY TRACK
The extremes of Third are many: the Black Sabbath guitar peals of “Hunter,” homey Mills Brothers-styled vocal harmonies in “Deep Water,” savage techno beats in “Machine Gun,” the swelling strings of “Silence.” Barrow and Utley break down their processes, in their own words:
“Plastic”
Utley: “That helicopter effect in the beginning is the ARP 2600; it's the Apocalypse Now helicopter. That went through so many transitions. The guitar began with Beth, and I played some guitar into Logic through a POD. I would usually DI the guitar through the Calrec. I am really anti that POD shit, but it really sounded all right, I must admit. The prog-rock synth riff at the end is my Juno-60, performed by Geoff. It's like John Carpenter.”
Barrow: “The distorted drum fills are me trying to be Madlib. Just pure bass editing. I played the drums so they stopped. I made a stereo sample of the track, then burned it to CD and then put it into my Technics CD deck and then just literally cut the track. I'm back-spinning the verses. I wanted it to sound like I had two tracks of vinyl and was just cutting in the verses. I had the idea of a massive drum roll that would be cut short, so I would spin the vinyl backward [makes backward-scratching sound] and find the start of the track, and when it came to the chorus the record would play. That is where it comes from, just an idea I had in the late '90s.”
“Machine Gun”
Barrow: “Adrian borrowed a weird 1970s organ. It had the most amazing evil drum machine. We recorded the patterns of the drum machine, then I took it home and put it in my Akai S1000, then programmed it on my Atari ST 1040 running Cubase. It's that pure sound put through a RAT distortion pedal, which made it even heavier. The bass and snare drum come from the organ through the RAT. Then I had a sample of a Welsh horn section that I chopped up really evilly. I put it through the Yamaha DMP7 mixing desk, which is also one of the secret weapons of this album.”
“Magic Doors”
Barrow: “That's a real hurdy gurdy [aka “wheel fiddle”] and live drums recorded to a Therograph, an old British ¼-inch tape machine. I stuck it into the Akai sampler and chopped it up. Then I played a bass line that was properly off; it's just random like the bass player is not listening to the drummer. I recorded a piano going backwards, but I got really depressed 'cause it sounded like The Beatles' ‘Tomorrow Never Knows.’ So then our keyboard player, John Baggot, wrote a chorus with chords, the idea being a drone in D with the chords against it. I wanted the chords to be heavy, almost like when you play a cassette and it gets so distorted the beat disappears. Then we got Will Gregory [of Goldfrapp] to play a pure free-jazz baritone sax solo through a slap delay on a Roland Space Echo.”
“Hunter”
Utley: “The big synth there is a Farfisa organ with a slapback echo on it. The guitar is like Black Sabbath's ‘Iron Man’ but also like Sunn O))). We are really into those doom-drone metal bands. The guitar effect is from a fuzz pedal made by a Bristol company that repairs my equipment. It's based on a vintage Vox Tone Bender. It's built on the Germanium transistor like a lot of those old things.”
“The Rip”
Utley: “There is an old Minimoog playing a theremin sound and drums, and this weird old no-name synth playing the rest. A Korg MS20, as well. There are a lot of guitars, including a really cheap kid's guitar from the '70s. Cost me four pounds in a junk shop, it sounded brilliant, though they can sound terrible. But it had a major vibe to it.”
AGONY AND ECSTASY
Beth Gibbons never grants interviews anymore, but speaking with Utley and Barrow, you get the impression that Portishead is essentially three oddballs who somehow found a connection through music. In doing so, they also found a way to be true to themselves against record companies, popular music trends and their own inner demons, which at times threaten to overwhelm the recording sessions of Third.
“Every single thing was absolutely agonized over,” Utley says. “For everything you hear, there were at least 10 things that we spent fucking hours making that we didn't use — a real voyage of discovery. Sometimes it was enjoyable, but mostly it's kind of frustrating and difficult. The process of creativity is not always what you think. You are surrounded by the most beautiful equipment, but it doesn't mean anything if you haven't got an idea that is worth recording. You could record through the worst preamp with the worst microphone in the world, but [whether you have] a good idea is the most important thing. If you don't have an idea, it's better to go to a house in the country with a porta-studio and any old guitar just to purify your mind. Having amazing equipment doesn't give you the solution to creativity; it's merely a tool for recording it.”
Barrow agrees, believing that prescribed limitations make for the best recordings. Typically brash to Utley's more sensitive views, Barrow is nothing if not demonstrative.
“Buy a cassette 4-track and make a record,” he suggests. “It will be 10 times more interesting than you could ever make in Pro Tools. Though I don't want to sound like some old fucker. Use Pro Tools but put it onto cassette, fuck around with it. You need to dogma yourself. Dogma Films give limitations to what you can do to make a film. It is the same thing with recording. Record an album with limitations.”
Fatigued at the end of a long day of doing interviews, Utley just wants to sit with his daughter and watch a movie. He takes one last moment to evaluate Portishead, the people.
“We've known each other for 15 years of music-making, and we have been friends through all of that,” he says. “We've had the falling out, the joy and the playing for 50,000 people together when we started out knowing nothing. It's been a crazy journey. We're friends; were enemies. And as much as we wouldn't own up to it, we are actually a family 'cause we help each other and we're annoyed by each other.”
Portishead is scheduled to perform at this year's Coachella Festival and then hopefully tour the U.S. in '09. Don't bother searching for tickets for their current European tour, however — it's already sold out.
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