These Hidden Hands

Welcome to my studio. It serves both as the creative workshop for all the music I write but also as my company One Million Mangos, a recording and mastering studio in Berlin.

This is the view from the front. From this angle it’s a classic mastering setup – apart from the modular on the left, of course. I feel most comfortable working in this configuration, whether that’s writing music or working recording, mixing or mastering. I’ve been using flat mid-fields with a sub for so long, I just can’t work with anything else.

I do everything with the sub on. There’s always been this mysterious controversy surrounding mixing with a sub, but I don’t get it. I need to hear everything all the time. I don’t use alt monitors, just one solid system that I know inside out.

In terms of DAW, for the last four years or so I’ve been using Reaper exclusively for pretty much everything.

Taking up most of the rack is an Analogue Systems modular synth. This thing is pretty standard in terms of the module selection but in comparison to many other brands, everything just seems to have more vibe. The comb filter, for example, is horrendously lo-fi and noisy but in a great way. The modular features (exclusively) on ‘Isopod’ and ‘Untitled’.

The main thing to talk about in the right hand side rack would be the EQ. I built it myself so there are no labels for the controls. This is definitely the best sounding EQ I’ve ever owned as it’s totally over-built. I mean, all the components are way more expensive than necessary and it could have easily fit into a 2U rack, but I wanted this particular layout with oversized knobs.

Quite a few of the songs were either run through the tape machine or mixed off tape to some degree. I guess you can hear it in the overall sound of the album. We weren’t afraid of hiss or saturation for this project!

The acoustic drum kit was used to varying extents on all tracks which have drums. It’s one of the most important elements to the sound of the album. The tracks ‘Severed’, ‘When Told’, ‘Diesel’ and ‘Laika’ in particular all started life from sounds recorded from the drum kit.

In every track which had drums, we concocted some sort of weird and wonderful kick out of either the acoustic drum kit in the live room, or some random source. In the case of the track ‘Ivy’, the kick drum was made out of a plastic toolbox. Although these kicks gave each track a unique character, a lot of the time, no matter how much you cranked the lows, there wasn’t enough weight to the bottom end.

Despite having Alain’s Analogue Systems modular we actually used a MicroKorg for the vast majority of melody on the album. We used it as a kind of toy instrument because it’s easy to pick up and play, but always ran it through a bunch of pedals so the actual sound coming out of the thing was nearly irrelevant by the time the signal path had run its course.

A good few of the songs had an ambient noise recording real low down in the mix to add a character in the same way room tones are used in film. We chose a location to capture based on the mood of the track. I guess the most noticeable use of this would be on ‘Ivy’ where we layered a field recording of us walking outside the studio on snow and the nearest station underpass which had some great ambience.

The Sherman rack was used occasionally for mangling more percussive sounds, like the drums on ‘Trelesire’. Although it’s a visual centrepiece of my studio, it didn’t get used half as much as it should have!

Both being vegan, fruit is an essential studio snack and the ultimate lazy fast food! No dirty dishes, no washing up required. We’ll typically get through a box like this in a week.