Article Preview - Recording XFM Radio Sessions

Working straight to DAT, with a minimum of equipment, Chris Denman records more bands in a year than most engineers manage in a lifetime.

Sam Inglis

One day, the world may hear a lot more of a four-piece indie band from West London called Dega Breaks. However, it's safe to say that on their first visit to the XFM studios they're a pretty well-kept secret. I've never heard of them, and more to the point, neither has XFM's resident session producer, Chris Denman. Yet it's up to him to listen to their debut single, figure out the production tricks that make up their sound, load in their gear, mic them up and record four of their songs — all in the space of three hours. And after lunch he'll be doing it all over again, perhaps for another bunch of newly signed hopefuls, or perhaps this time for rock royalty like the Cure or Queens of the Stone Age.

XFM is London's alternative music radio station, and as part of its licence remit is committed to playing a lot of live music. Denman is the man whose job it is to put that commitment into action, and in 2007 alone he recorded 341 different bands.

Everyone who finds themselves lugging their equipment to the fourth floor gets the same treatment. There's simply no time to do things any other way. "We do one pre-recorded session at 12, then an hour lunch, then our next band comes in at four. Each session's an hour setup, so we're done and dusted by half-two, loaded out by three, I have my lunch, four — next band in. That's how tight it is, so you have to get it bang on, there and then."

Two-track Mind

The combination of time and budget constraints means that all these sessions are done using the barest minimum of equipment. "It is, basically, me, on a set of headphones out of the desk, mixing straight to a DAT tape. No multitracking involved. It comes down to the age-old art of two-tracking, which is a skill in itself. I don't have any outboard, so it's just the desk. Originally we had a Yamaha O2R, and we upgraded to the DM2000 in 2002. Nothing has actually been changed on it. I've still got version 1, still got the old internal effects."

All of which makes Denman's ability to replicate a band's sound on the basis of a 10-second flick through their recorded output even more impressive. In Dega Breaks' case, that sound is an edgy indie-rock production that owes much to the Killers, but previous sessions have covered every conceivable style, from dusty blues to cutting-edge electro, from balls-to-the-wall metal to delicate folk.

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