ELECTRIC INDEPENDENCE
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Above: The Off-Key Hat’s Leon Mayes with Champ. Photo by Zazie Psotta. Clockwise from centre top: a virgin lacquer, checking the levels on a spectrum analyser, Lawrie and Andy reminiscing about the good old days when people actually bought records, Lawrie cutting the track on the lathe. Photos by Theydon Bois
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Regular readers may have noticed the absence of this column in Vice for most of last year. For those who cared, I can only mumble a sheepish apology and promise to write it more regularly. What amazing new music have you missed out on? Quite a lot, I suspect, very little of which will have eluded the better blogs.
In order to get right back in the thick of it, this Electric Independence is literally a report from the cutting edge of contemporary electronic music. Sounds exciting, but the brutal truth is we’re in a studio in east London watching a record being mastered and then cut. This is something every lover of vinyl should witness, if only to dispel the illusion that it’s a fantastically mysterious process. It isn’t, much, but there is an element of magic involved in the transformation of a digital file into a piece of vinyl.
The studio is Curved Limited, situated just off the top end of Mare Street in Hackney. The record is by German newcomer spAceLex, two smodgy high-energy tracks called “Pretty Face” and “Happy Birthday”. The producer sent the tracks to Andy Blake of Dissident Distribution in the hope that Andy might release them, and he is. This afternoon, Andy is also overseeing the mastering of another new Dissident artist, Glasgow’s The Niallist, whose two synth-pop prowlers, “The Hots” and “Still Hots”, ooze sleaze.
In terms of releases, Dissident is enjoying a particularly fruity winter. Around Christmas, Andy put out Scottish disco thugs Den Haan’s irrepressible “Night Shift” and “Theme From Den Haan”, as well as the second single by the Off-Key Hat, a trio from Brighton and London who, in “Emergency Calling”, have made the first great record of 2009. Sung by a girl called Cassie O, it’s a surprisingly sophisticated funk jam that has a timeless, soulful quality. The other day I caught up with the Off-Key Hat’s Leon Mayes in the newly refurbished Britannia pub by Victoria Park in the plusher end of Hackney to discuss the record. Leon has two beautiful greyhounds, and we mainly talked about them instead.
Vice: Do ideas come to you when walking the dogs?
Leon Mayes: Yes, of course. Lyrics-wise, the way I do lyrics, I read piles and piles of books. All I do is read, I read everything. My girlfriend’s into bestsellers and I’ll finish them in four hours. I’m reading the Twilight series at the moment, the vampire series.
How do you read so fast?
Philosophy degree. You get trained to scan-read. Philosophy is a whole language you have to learn, and then can pick out pretty much what you need. I can scan-read pretty well.
Where do you walk the dogs?
I go from Victoria Park to Hackney Marshes then come along the canal up into Broadway Market. Two hours, every day I’m off work. You have to be calm around the dogs, so they’re relaxed, and then your mind starts playing. Once I’ve had my coffee at Climpsons on Broadway Market, my mind’s like that.
Back in the studio, the mastering engineer and owner of Curved, Lawrie Dunster, is explaining for the 6,789th time in his life the difference between analogue and digital, and why the former sounds better. “Analogue is a continuous waveform, digital is a series of steps,” he says. “It might be 44,100 steps per second, which is the standard for a CD, but there is a gap between each step. They’re so fast that you can’t hear the gaps but you can hear the difference. If you put a CD on and then play a vinyl version of the same thing, the record will sound smoother.”
Curved is one of only a handful of vinyl mastering studios remaining in the UK. The bulk of the work Lawrie takes on comes from underground dance labels like Dissident and distributors such as Glasgow’s Rubadub, and he’s constantly busy. Andy used to be one of Lawrie’s biggest customers, but his visits are less frequent, even though Dissident releases around three or four records a month.
“Dissidents are only runs of 200 one-sided 12-inches, they’re pissy little jobs,” says Andy, who would like Dissident to develop into a DJ subscription service similar to Disconet, a popular New York label in the 80s. “We do short runs, and unlike most labels we don’t have to worry about alienating our target audience. We’ll release whatever comes along: stoner rock, Italo, high-energy. It’s mainly my mates’ tracks, but this guy [spAceLex] got in touch out of the blue. Hopefully we’re tapping a rich dancey vein of weird pop music. Well, to me it’s all pop music.”
Lawrie and Andy recently teamed up to release one of Dissident’s earlier singles as Control Voltage. In the mid-90s, Lawrie produced a lot of funky and minimal techno and did pretty well out of it. He ran a label called Pounding Grooves. “Pounding Grooves sorted me right out,” he says. He and Andy worked out that, across the five labels he was involved in, Lawrie has sold a million records. He stopped producing when people stopped buying his music.
“When people are stealing your records and not buying them, it makes you not want to bother. When your sales have gone from 3,500 to 350 but everyone’s still got it, what’s the point in doing it any more? A, I’m not making any money and B, people are nicking it off me.”
By now, the spAceLex tracks have been converted from a digital file, via a cabinet of 1978 analogue compressors, into an analogue waveform. The tracks boom from the two £28,000 SCM 300 speakers. Lawrie then places a virgin lacquer—a 14-inch black aluminium disc coated in acetate—on the lathe (the machine that cuts the grooves) and, simply put, plays the track through a “cutting head” (like a needle) which cuts the grooves into the lacquer. For a much more detailed explanation, visit curvedltd.com where there’s a layman’s guide to mastering.
Done badly, mastering can flatten any record. These new records turned out well, though, and come highly recommended: Matzo & Pauli’s “We Are” EP on Cyber Dance, Mr Pauli’s “Le Crunch” on David Vunk’s Moustache label, and a wild number called “Walter Ness” by Matias Aguayo on Kompakt.
PIERS MARTIN
See all articles by this contributor Anonymous, on May 4, 2009 wrote:
To settle this argument, you’re both right. What makes analog preferable is both the continuous waveform, as well as quality analog gear and vinyl format. That said, few will be able to tell if somethings been recorded at 192 k (or even 96 k)and finished in the analog realm. You can definitely tell a difference with 44.1. When you bring in a stage of digital, you are compromising, but partially analog is better than fully digital (if its done right). | | Anonymous, on Apr 14, 2009 wrote:
i’m glad ELECTRIC INDEPENDENCE is back. | | Anonymous, on Mar 17, 2009 wrote:
none of you idiots can tell the difference between a record and an mp3. you just act like you can to justify your record collection that you spent thousands of dollars on and if you can actually find worthwhile music on limewire then you are a truly exceptional person. | | Anonymous, on Feb 26, 2009 wrote:
even if all the bands do ’suck donkey dick’ i imagine that must be eminently preferable to being friends with smokey rob there, lester bangs he most certainly ain’t. and matey with his comment about once its digital its not analogue is totally missing the point. it’s the putting the music through analogue compressors, eqs and limiters via an analogue cutting process into an analogue medium like vinyl that gives warmth and character when its done properly. it helps if the digital file is recorded from analogue synths and drum machines in the first place but even something knocked up on ableton or fruity loops will sound much better if cut to vinyl. mp3s, even the good ones are like looking at a 2d photo of a 3d landscape. and where exactly was the research done that determined that ’all djs use serato or traktor now’? thank fuck that’s entirely untrue otherwise clubland would be even more shit than it already is. | | Anonymous, on Feb 24, 2009 wrote:
yes it is all quite possible Indie snobs that are the only ones that can hear it, I have used Serrato and Final scratch and it changed the way i DJed for the worse. You certainly notice a difference when playing on a good sound system. But that is besides the point. I am a snob i don’t want people having the same records as me, MP3CD DJ’s stick to there records on the download and keep playing crap they nick off Limewire along with a 1000 others. It keeps vinyls prices up and don’t get me started on re-edits you can’t just take the bad bits out they actually make the track (gives it a reference point. | | Anonymous, on Feb 17, 2009 wrote:
YES! Good to have you back, Piers. | | Anonymous, on Feb 17, 2009 wrote:
vinyl will probably be the last format that is physical .( ie cd will finish before vinyl) must be a reason for that. it is quality. if some people are obseessed with listening to music of shit quality through shit sound systems , then they are missing out . in current times people have forgotten what quality is | |
| smokey robinson crusoe, on Feb 13, 2009 wrote:
i’m not familiar with any of these bands, but from their names and the song titles, i’m guessing they all suck donkey dick. | | Anonymous, on Feb 13, 2009 wrote:
in other words, you can download a record for free and if you listen really hard you might possibly notice a difference between in the the record you can pay $15 for | | Anonymous, on Feb 12, 2009 wrote:
"Hopefully we’re tapping a rich dancey vein."
That sounds gross in many, many ways. | | Anonymous, on Feb 12, 2009 wrote:
i just get a kick out of kids saying something sounds better on vinyl when much of it was recorded on dat or another digital format. once there’s a digital generation in there somewhere, it’s not analog, folks! | | Anonymous, on Feb 12, 2009 wrote:
you must be deaf, shelby. high-quality mp3s are fine, but the difference between a crappy one and a record on a good turntable and speakers is obvious. | |
| shelby, on Feb 11, 2009 wrote:
you people that bitch about 44.1 and 192bkps or whatever are the only ones that can tell the difference anyways. believe me, as long as it sounds better than a myspace rip you’re cool. | | Anonymous, on Feb 11, 2009 wrote:
It’s nice to see vinly keep on keepin’ on. I put all my eggs in the Betamaxx basket and look where that got me. MiniDisc, don’t even get me started. | | Anonymous, on Feb 11, 2009 wrote:
indie snobs are the only thing keeping vinyl alive. djs all use serato or traktor now. you’d better pray for belle and sebastian to keep making music, leon. | | Anonymous, on Feb 11, 2009 wrote:
wait, you read while you walk your dogs? | | Anonymous, on Feb 11, 2009 wrote:
it’s a damn shame but my turntable is sitting at my house collecting dust. it’s the only reason i need an amp since i’ve gone discless and i can’t justify buying one strictly for it. i need to put my records in storage so i don’t have to look at them everyday. | | Anonymous, on Feb 11, 2009 wrote:
"The record is by German newcomer spAceLex, two smodgy high-energy tracks called “Pretty Face” and “Happy Birthday”."
going for originality i guess? | |
| shep, on Feb 11, 2009 wrote:
poozer, more and more labels are doing this, and if they don’t, you can almost always find it on bit torrent. | | Anonymous, on Feb 11, 2009 wrote:
"You have to be calm around the dogs, so they’re relaxed"
somebody has been watching the "Dog Whisperer". Thank youcesare milan. | | Anonymous, on Feb 3, 2009 wrote:
I didn’t notice | | Anonymous, on Jan 30, 2009 wrote:
aww, champ | |
| poozer, on Jan 20, 2009 wrote:
i love vinyl, and i would buy much more of it if all the labels included rights to a digital download. | | Anonymous, on Jan 20, 2009 wrote:
can you really enjoy a book by scan-reading it? i used to do it some in school for assigned reading. i could take in more than enough to pass the reading quizzes, but i found that it’s pretty much impossible to enjoy the nuances of the prose when you scan-read. | | Anonymous, on Jan 20, 2009 wrote:
the off-key hat track is up on their myspace. listening now. | | Anonymous, on Jan 20, 2009 wrote:
Yep, vinyl has sold the most last year since 91. | | Anonymous, on Jan 19, 2009 wrote:
i wish I had time to read piles and piles of books! | | Anonymous, on Jan 19, 2009 wrote:
I wish I had two hours to walk my dogs. Maybe the experience would inspire me more if they didn’t yank my shoulder off, bark at other dogs and get their leashes tangled. | | Anonymous, on Jan 19, 2009 wrote:
i read an article somewhere recently that vinyl purchases were up over the last year? ?? | | |
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