Recording - April 2021 - 32

ELECTRONIC OBSERVATIONS
and SOLILOQUIES for
the modern world
Steven Wilson's THE FUTURE BITES
For the drums on the album, are these
loops you altered, or a drum machine?
It's mostly live drums.

Well, there goes one big internet myth. [laughs]
The only songs that have drum machines are MAN OF THE
PEOPLE, which has a very primitive drum machine sound, and
KING GHOST. The rest is live drums. I mean, they are obviously
heavily processed afterward, with added sounds being triggered.

How about the vocal treatments? Are
you singing and responding through
them, or are they added later?
It's a bit of both. The signature vocal sound on this album-
the kind of slap delay is David's Roland Space Echo, and he's
got one that's a bit fucked up, but in a good way.

I think they all are. [both laugh]
I think they've all got their own unique signature quirks, and
his is just fantastic. If you listen, all the vocals have got that kind
of halo of slap around them, which is the Space Echo.

Two questions that I love to ask
everybody: which song was the hardest to
record, and which song was the easiest?
The Hardest was SELF. There were so many things we tried
and thought we liked, and then a week later we decided we
didn't. It was definitely a question of adding stuff and then realizing that less is more. I kept thinking, " We need to add more
stuff to that. " And David kept saying, " No, we need to keep it
stripped down and sparse. " And he was absolutely right.
We probably spent more time on that 2:58 song than we did
on PERSONAL SHOPPER, which is nine minutes long. The easiest
song was KING GHOST, which is one of the most purely electronic pieces I've ever done. There's virtually nothing on that track
that isn't electronic; even the voice is massively processed. It came
together effortlessly. The demo wasn't a million miles away, and I
came into the studio one morning and David said, " I programmed
a drum part, " and I was like, " That's good. Let's add that. " And
then we never changed it. It just fell into place so beautifully. That
might be my favorite song on the record-that and MAN OF THE
PEOPLE, ironically the two with purely electronic drums.

How do you know when you're done, and how
do you know when you've done too much?
I wish I knew the answer to that. I think the simplest answer would
be, when I'm so sick of it, I can't listen to it anymore! [both laugh]

Thanks so much for doing this. I appreciate it.
Bye for now.
32 RECORDING April 2021

David Kosten
David Kosten is a British producer, engineer and musician
who has worked with artists including Bat for Lashes, Richard
Walters, Snow Patrol, Everything Everything, Brooke Fraser,
Keane, and No-Man. Under the alias Faultline, he creates
glitchy modern electronica laced with nostalgic cinematic beauty.
He is also the recordist, mixing engineer and co-producer of
THE FUTURE BITES. David generously let us peer behind the
curtain to find out how the album was made.

How did you get involved
with THE FUTURE BITES?
I've known Steven for I reckon 28 years-pretty much half
my life. Back then, I placed an ad in Melody Maker looking
for musicians, and a guy turned up who I didn't end up having
enough in common with as a musician, but he said, " Oh, I
know this group called No-Man. " It just so happened that I was
a massive No-Man fan. The band was a trio at that point; I was
a fan for about two or three years before I ended up meeting
Steven, and then our paths just crossed very occasionally for
25 years. We chatted every now and again, and then two and
a half years ago, Steven sent me a message and said, " I may
have finally made some music you won't hate. " [both laugh]
I guess Steven was aware of the music that I'd been working
on in the intervening quarter century, so that was his opening
gambit. He sent me a couple of things. He was right. I genuinely
didn't hate it. In fact, I liked it. He said, " Well, what do you think
about doing some music with me? " And the first track we did, as
a sort of experiment, was KING GHOST. We both loved how it
turned out, and off we went and made a whole record.

Steven sent me photos of your studio and all
those amazing analog keyboards. I assume
you're a keyboard player or a synthesist?
As musicians go, I'm not really a player of anything. I've
reached a point now where I work with really good musicians,
so whenever I try and demonstrate something, whether I'm
singing or playing, it's a bit embarrassing. I can get by using
MIDI and programming stuff.
I like playing with sounds and machines, treating real sounds
and making them a bit more unique. For me, it's always about
atmosphere and the way you treat sonics and manipulate performances to create an emotional response in a listener, and then
combining that with making the artist's vision come to fruition.
The other thing I always try and aim for is, when an artist walks
in here with an idea of what they think it might be that they want
to do, I hope they leave going, " Wow, that's even better than
I thought it was going to be. " While synths is what I do, I also
work with real audio-miked-up sources-as much as possible.

How do you go about capturing
your synths or outboard sources
and processing them?
There's no sort of standard way of doing it, but if you want to drill
into the actual nitty-gritty of it, I have a collection of keyboards and
machines that I've accumulated, and every last one of them goes
into a little Speck Electronics X.Sum line mixer. It's basically a very

Recording - April 2021

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