Simple Minds: Recording Graffiti Soul : 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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| Simple Minds: Recording Graffiti SoulArticle Preview :: Jez Coad & Simple MindsPublished in SOS July 2009 People + Opinion : Artists/Engineers/Producers/Programmers Thirty years after their debut, Simple Minds returned to their roots as a live band and relit the old fires to record their most impressive album in years.
Two thous “We definitely wanted a band focus, so you can close your eyes and see a band, so a high degree of honesty. Simple Minds are known as a fantastic live band, so why wouldn’t you go and be a fantastic live band in a recording studio?” explains Jez Coad. “Secondly, there was a real desire not to go over old ground, because you can write a whole album of songs that sound like their hits, but nobody’s really very interested in doing that. Also, we wanted something that would be as accessible as it would be challenging — something that was going to surprise you but not alienate you. All of us love a good tune and all of us love a good rhythm, and we wanted great memorable tunes but with an attitude, with elements in them that would take you to different places.”
“I think we definitely knew what we wanted before we went in, and that always helps,” says Jim Kerr, “Sometimes, you’re a lot less clear. Sometimes, there’s a lot of different options and you’re writing varied music in different styles and the album can be a hotch-potch. Sometimes [albums] are great for that, and sometimes they suffer because of that. When we started to write, I started putting things in sequence early on. I had this feeling that, being with a new record company, this was an album that needed to be totally focused and immediate, and that was combined with the fact that we’d just done this thing about being 30 years old: we couldn’t have an album that sounded like it was 30 years old! We wanted something energetic and really trying to prove itself, vibrant and imaginative: that was the list of demands. At least we knew what we wanted — but how we were gonna get it was another thing...” ...
Published in SOS July 2009 
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