RECORDING January 2023 - 33

My job was easy because all I had to do was set it up. Norman
and Damian Blunt, the guy who worked with him, who
cataloged it all, did the hard work with Norman playing like
150 different hits and variations on each drum.
And you recorded the whole thing to analog tape
through vintage consoles?
With drums especially, tape always dealt very nicely and
musically with the transients. The trick is that if you want a
snappy snare, for instance, don't overload the tape because
you'll round off the peak too much.
And since we did it at British Grove, they have an original
REDD valve desk from Abbey Road and the TG console with
the discreet transistors. We ran the room mics through both of
those. We wouldn't have been able to do that nearly as easily,
or as well, if we had done it anywhere else.
Whose idea was it to reamp the drum machines
into the room? Did you do that back in the day?
Invisible Touch is probably the most electronic drum album I ever
did. Genesis was obsessed with equipment. Anything that came out,
whether it was a new Prophet, a new Emulator or a new sequencer,
whatever it was, we had it. Phil was well into his Simmons drums
and drum machines, and we would join them together into one big
thing-some sounds from one and some sounds from another.
Did Phil do the drum programming, or were you
involved in it?
He did it all, and he was bloody good at it.
Going back to your first question, I think drum machines
can sound a bit flat when they're just recorded direct. Genesis
used to have all of their backline equipment at the studio, so it
was kind of my idea to get out some PA speakers and big-ass
Crown amps and send the drum machines at a horrendously
loud volume into the studio. Then I just put up some room mics
and recorded them. I probably did record them direct as well
and blend in the room, but not always.
There's one track on Invisible Touch where you can hear the
toms from a Roland TR-808 going into the drum room, and
they're setting off the wires from the snare drum. It was either
" Tonight, Tonight, Tonight " or " Domino. "
Do you still use a similar approach to drum miking
in your recent jazz work?
I'll use condenser mics alongside the dynamic mic on the
snare and such when it's jazz, or very light stuff with brushes or
something. Plus, you have extra channels to try other mics and
things, because you are not necessarily going to use millions
and millions of tracks like you might do on a rock record.
On Feeding The Machine by Binker and Moses, it was just
drums and saxophone. Plus we had this guy named Max Luthert
making loops and things organically off their instruments, which
was great. So I would feed him stuff bussed off of the console-
the entire mix, or just the bass drum, whatever he would ask for.
Then he would feed that into his loopers, oscillators and effects.
Then I would have the main sax mic, and I might have a room
mic in the space. My drum setup was my standard setup with
a condenser mic alongside the SM57 on the snare and Coles
4038 ribbon mics on the cymbals. Two channels for the loops.
What did you record to?
We recorded to 24 track analog, then into Pro Tools.
Actually, the final released mixes were my rough mixes.
I decided to do a quick reference when we got done recording,
because we might not be mixing the album for a
couple of months. Then Darrel Sheinman at Gearbox said,
" I've played these to the band, and nobody thinks there is
anything we need to do to make them better, so we're just
gonna use that. " So the whole record was made in three
days, from tracking to mixing.
One of the great things about jazz records is that you
can do them quickly. That's why you can afford to go to a
good studio.
Where did you record Feeding The Machine?
We recorded it at Peter Gabriel's Real World Studios.
That's a beautiful space
We recorded in a bunch of the different spaces there,
but mainly we set up in the smaller wood studio.
Hugh, thank you so much for the insights, and
thanks for helping with the Hitmaker SDX.
Thank you, Paul. Have a good rest of the day.
RECORDING January 2023 33
RECORDING January 2023

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