Doves: Producing Kingdom Of Rust : July 2009
In this article:
Ben Allen  Mixing R&B  Babydaddy • Dan Grech-Marguerat The Scissor Sisters' first album, recorded in a Manhattan apartment, sold 3.5 million copies worldwide. The follow-up sees them expanding their horizons, while keeping their DIY ethos very much intact. Artist/Producer  Writing & Producing With Robbie Williams Despite his best efforts, Stephen Duffy's solo work never quite made him a superstar — but it did get him one of the best co-writing gigs around. Producing Kasabian & Arctic Monkeys  Yellow Magic Orchestra goes Latino Yellow Magic Orchestra helped pioneer the use of electronic instruments and sampling. Now Uwe Schmidt, aka Señor Coconut, has used the same techniques to render their greatest hits as Latin dances, with contributions from all three original YMO members. Recording Morph The Cat  Folk Music For The 21st Century The idea of bringing folk music up to date is not a new one, but few people have taken it quite as far as Jim Moray. His material may be traditional, but his approach to music technology is as modern as it gets. Andy Jackson David Gilmour's chart-topping solo album was recorded on his own Astoria houseboat, a floating slice of studio heaven. Engineer Andy Jackson describes the making of the album. Mike Elizondo  The Current State Of Affairs What can we, as engineers or musicians, do to prevent our recorded legacy being lost? Record Producer  Richard Aitken of Nimrod Productions  Writing & Producing in LA The success of Avril Lavigne's debut album Let Go catapulted The Matrix to the front rank of songwriters and producers. Since then, they've moved in ever wider musical circles, culminating in their work with nu-metal pioneers Korn. Producing Hip-Hop Miami is now a hip-hop centre to rival New York and LA, and Cool & Dre are two of its most active beatmakers, songwriters and producers. Craig Bauer Craig Bauer has been part of Kanye West's career from the beginning, and as a mix engineer on the smash hit Late Registration album, he had to marry West's artistic perfectionism with his own technical standards. Roy Thomas Baker  John Fryer  Harry Gregson-Williams  November 2009
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| Doves: Producing Kingdom Of RustArticle Preview :: Dan Austin & Jez WilliamsPublished in SOS July 2009 People + Opinion : Artists/Engineers/Producers/Programmers Doves have overcome writer’s block, the perils of democracy and a silly studio name to produce an early contender for album of the year.
Missing in action since 2005’s Some Cities, it might have been reasonable to assume that we’d heard the last of Doves. Instead, it turns out that the band have been painstakingly crafting the follow-up, Kingdom Of Rust, already rightfully hailed as their best record to date. That’s not to say that the Wilmslow trio — twins Jez (guitar) and Andy (drums) Williams, plus singer/bassist Jimi Goodwin — are particularly happy about their apparently tortoise-like work rate. They would dearly love, Jez insists, to make their records faster. “Oh yeah,” he laughs. “But, y’know, because Doves is a democracy, everyone has an equal opinion, therefore the old wheel of democracy turns at a slower pace than it would under a dictator.” Out Of The Blocks Williams admits that it wasn’t just this democratic approach, along with an obsessive attention to detail, that created such a long gap between Doves albums. There was a bit of writer’s block involved too, which the guitarist tackled by employing the radical Immersion Music Method, invented in 2001 by a pair of songwriters from Oakland, California. “I was finding myself getting into bad habits,” he says. “Like music avoidance — instead of knuckling down and getting on with songwriting, you might find an excuse to get your emails or pop out and see your mates. So I read this amazing book [The Frustrated Songwriter’s Handbook, by Karl Coryat and Nicholas Dobson]. I’m simplifying it here, but basically what it boils down to is you have to write a song every half an hour for 12 hours. It’s incredible. I had my Logic all set up as a template, everything plugged in ready to go. Then quite a few songs started to come out of these sessions.” In Control
Kingdom Of Rust co-producer Dan Austin (Massive Attack, Cherry Ghost) first engineered for Doves in 2004 during the recording of Some Cities. “I recorded three tracks on that at 2kHz in London,” he recalls. “It was just the tracking I was involved with, but it went fantastically well. The songs were ready to record, so there wasn’t a lot of messing around, it was just all about getting a sound. They wanted to do something very vintage-sounding. They had the EMI TG board in there and we went to 16-track, 2-inch at 15ips, so it was a proper old sound.” “We were impressed by Dan and it felt right to work together again,” Jez remembers. “He’s an excellent set of ears and a great producer. We wanted to take control again this time and not have maybe this kind of mystical producer come in. I think, if I’m honest, we’re more comfortable when we’re in control ourselves really. Dan was coming in from the level that we were all working on it together.” Keen not to enter a commercial facility — perhaps unsurprisingly, considering the costs that would have been involved — the band opted instead to rent a Cheshire farmhouse and build their own makeshift residential studio. Austin says that only the barest amount of acoustic treatment was done to the improvised control room. “There’s a bedroom at one end with three racks of gear in and the Pro Tools and a load of mattresses to try and stop the sound flying around,” he explains. “Very, very basic setup, but throughout the course of the 18 months that we worked here, we managed to get it to a point where you could take a monitor mix away and it sounded all right. It’s still pretty inaccurate but it was never designed to mix in.” When it came to the recording environment of the living-cum-live room, Jez Williams says it was a matter of trial and error. “But it was one of those lucky ones,” he points out. “You move all the gear in and you put up the mics and then start moving the drum kit all around the room. Dan found this optimum place near the fireplace that sounded great. Half is carpet, half of it’s timber and there’s this brick fireplace that obviously reflects the sound, so it’s got a bit of everything.” ...
Published in SOS July 2009 
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