ROCKTRONIC CROCK-POT
Aug 1, 2002 12:00 PM, By Lily Moayeri
The three members of Dirty Vegas — Steve Smith, Paul Harris and Ben Harris (no relation) — have become really good chefs. Recording their self-titled debut album in Ben's home studio, located in the corner of his kitchen in the Tower Bridge neighborhood of London, they took turns with the cooking duties. Aside from developing specialties such as pork chops with pears, green Thai curry and seared tuna, the trio discovered a mutual musical bent toward “taking traditional values and twisting them with technology,” says Ben.
With varied backgrounds — Paul as a club and fashion-show DJ; Steve as a songwriter and lead vocalist in a conventional group setup and as a club percussionist; Ben as, initially, a band member and later as a studio engineer — the three came together when their other ventures had lost their appeal. Their first collaboration was the now-ubiquitous “Days Gone By,” heard on Mitsubishi's campaign for the Eclipse.
That number was recorded with Steve sitting in the kitchen singing into a Shure SM58 microphone (his percussion mic). Since then, the working process hasn't changed much. Switching to a Neumann U 87 for the rest of Dirty Vegas (Capitol, 2002), the group had to time the vocal recording according to London's mass-transit schedule because the train runs right past the kitchen window. The trio originally thought that the raw vocals recorded in the kitchen would only be used as guides, but they kept them on the finished version of the album.
The group's motto for equipment is, “You don't need big studios to make a good sound,” says Paul. Using a Mac G4 running Emagic Logic Audio, a Hohner Clavinet, a Clavia Nord Lead, a Korg MS2000, a Waldorf Microwave XT, an Eventide Eclipse, UREI and SSL compressors and a 32-channel Soundtrack Solitaire mixing desk, Dirty Vegas combine technology with time-honored instruments: Taylor 12-string and six-string guitars; a Gibson Les Paul guitar with a twisted fretboard; a Music Man StingRay bass guitar; LP drums and Zildjian cymbals; a timbali, conga and shakers; and tambourines. Logic Audio's BitCrusher plug-in, a tool that at first sounds like a food processor, was used to emulate rudimentary 4- and 8-bit sounds. “We put loads of stuff down at the tempo of the respective tracks that we wanted to add the percussion to,” explains Steve. “Then we dirtied them up and put them through the BitCrusher.”
The group treats quite a few sounds like the food they throw into their Cuisinarts. “We'll play a guitar, but we won't make it sound like a guitar because we're using technology,” says Paul. “We put it through so many different effects, it may sound like a keyboard or a pad.”
Ben concurs: “It's processed sound. We play with it as much as we can. I mixed the live drums and the drum machine together. Once we put the treatment with the vocal, it had that half-human, half-mechanical quality. We're into so many different influences, from [Danny] Tenaglia to Beck and the Stones. Technology gives you the opportunity to put different elements into a melting pot and make a record. We can use a guitar, a synth, a drum machine and see what happens with all these influences coming together.”
Planning to take the whole operation on the road with as many live elements as they can manage, Dirty Vegas can keep it acoustic with just guitars and the Fender Rhodes or electronic with the new Akai MPC4000 sampler and the Macintosh Titanium G4.
“It's a bit of everything,” says Steve. “Dance can be a cool underground thing that serves its purpose in the way that we all love and are linked to. But there's also the post-club thing. It's still from dance, but you're listening to it in the car, or you get home from work and put that kind of track on.”
| Want to use this article? Click here for options! |  |
