English producer and mix engineer Stephen Power has worked with artists ranging from Blur and Andrea Bocelli to Diana Ross and the Bangles. Power co‑produced some of Robbie Williams’ biggest‑selling albums and, asked to select a favourite sound, Power recalls how he got the layered drum sound on Williams’ 1998 single ‘No Regrets’.
Half Power
“The original demo of the song was in half time, but because we wanted to get it on the radio as a single, it meant we had to get some double‑time stuff on there. So, the intro and the end are both in half time, while the body of the song is in double time.
“This was in the days of tape, and was the last Robbie album that was recorded on tape. No Pro Tools rig in this session! I started programming with a load of loops and several of them in half time and several of them in double time and also some backwards loops. And then we also used the tape to play double time and then slowed the tape down to half time. Then recorded that into Logic and put that back onto the tape.
"What I ended up with were loads and loads of rhythm tracks, including three where Chris Sharrock played a rolling tom‑tom part with the rest of the kit during the double‑time body of the song. You can’t really pick that out, because the idea was to make it epic‑sounding — kind of like a Phil Spector thing. The idea was to get everything doubled and repeated and just try and make this collage of something that would sound epic out of lots of sounds.
Stephen Power: I didn’t want it to sound clear. I wanted it to sound like a magical blend of stuff that you couldn’t really figure out what the hell was making the rhythm track.
“At the beginning and during the track, you can hear the reverse hi‑hat going. And it was at a time when you couldn’t line everything up, because it was done on tape. So, it was more a case of filtering out the low end of the loops so that the real bass drum is the one that you hear. And basically, that was it. All these collages were made out of half‑time loops, reversed loops, half‑time playing full speed, and a tom‑tom part. And then when it came to mixing it, I didn’t want it to sound clear. I wanted it to sound like a magical blend of stuff that you couldn’t really figure out what the hell was making the rhythm track. It took us a whole day of picking the loops, a whole day of the drummer playing parts, and then a lot of messing around in the mix to get a blend together of everything working correctly to try and make a motoring sort of epic backing track.”
Going Epic
“The loops were all recorded through the SSL at Trident Studios. The live drums were recorded with a Neve console, and it was all mixed on an SSL. I used some compression on each loop as I recorded them, though I didn’t use any compression on the live drums. Everything then went through an SSL quad compressor to try and hold the whole track together. As I didn’t do any group compression of the loops, the only group compressor used was the quad SSL over the whole mix plus individual EQ’ing and compression again on all the loops. So that’s why it sounds kind of like a steamroller thing, where you can’t really figure out what’s playing what.”