Los Angeles‑based Aron Kobayashi Ritch first fell in love with production in a friend’s father’s garage studio, recording local bands while skipping school to assist at the legendary Sound City Studios with engineer David Boucher. It was in this period that he met Momma, the rock band he would come to join and whose records he would come to produce, not least latest LP Welcome To My Blue Sky.
At the moment I can’t stop listening to
I’ve been listening a lot to the first two Cranberries records. That was a band where I always knew the hits, but I never fully understood why they were important. They’re just so fucking good! The stuff that Steven Street was doing on them is pretty mind‑blowing. I’ve always been a fan of his, but yeah, those records are amazing. I also have a constant love affair with the band Frou Frou. They only have one album [Details], that’s it! But I think that is such a landmark for me, in terms of sound and songwriting and production. What Imogen Heap and Guy Sigsworth were doing on that record is so insane. I’ve always loved that record. And lastly, I’ve revisited the first Third Eye Blind record. Growing up in that era, the late ’90s and early 2000s, a lot of the music I make sort of dips into that. I like records that had radio pop appeal, but like, were still ‘indie records’, or at least had the stylings of alternative music. It’s such a feat to combine the two and not make it incredibly cringey. That’s a fine line to toe, and it’s something we think a lot about in my band, too.
The artist I’d most like to record
It’s hard for me to take artists who I love, whose records I think are amazing, and to think about how I would somehow alter their career. Like, yeah, I’d love to work with Radiohead, but would I really do a better job than Nigel Godrich? Probably not. But the reality is I enjoy the process of finding an artist’s sound, so the prospect of working with someone that I’ve looked up to is sort of like, “Well, what would I do with this?” I do think it would be really cool to work with Weezer. We toured with them a long time ago, and they’re one of my favourite bands, but mostly it’s because I have a specific idea of what they should sound like. They had an aesthetic in the ’90s that I think they kind of stumbled upon, which was this very dry, honest representation of their music that I think gets lost when you get popular. This is a debate that’s raged on for decades with Weezer fans.
The first thing I look for in a studio
I think a really sizeable live room is pretty important to me. I make a lot of records with bands, and with bands I prefer to start from a place of like, “How would you guys play this all together?” So, having a room where they can all be together and look at each other, with enough places for isolation, and to get a drum sound that has a lot of natural ambience, all those things are pretty important to me. And then: Neve! I’m pretty Neve‑focused. A Neve desk, Neve pres: those are pretty important to me too, to how I think about starting a record. I don’t do much to tape anymore, and Neve tends to get me closer there just because the transient response is a little softer than something like an API — which I do also love.
Aron Kobayashi Ritch: My dad always said, ‘Don’t let school get in the way of your education.’
The person I would consider my mentor
Probably David Boucher. While I can’t say I learned everything I know during the years I worked with him, I was really young and it was just about experiencing what an actual workflow is and what a professional scenario is, and also what the lifestyle is like. Like, “OK, this is how you make a living doing this.” That was pretty important for me coming up, and I got to do a lot of really cool projects, for instance the Andrew Bird record that I sat in on was just really amazing to watch. He does a lot of orchestral stuff for Disney, also. So, in my senior year of high school, I would skip school to go and assist and take notes and put up mics for, like, the Moana soundtrack! It was very strange to be there, and very cool of him to bring me along. That’s him putting his neck out in this very professional scenario. “Yeah, I’m going to bring along a kid to watch, and he’s going to skip school to do it! Is that cool?” And everyone’s like, “Yeah, sure!” My dad always said, “Don’t let school get in the way of your education,” so I think he really liked it when I told him I had done that. It was cool to start my career from more an engineering perspective. It’s not really what I get hired to do now, but having that basis was really helpful to me thinking about how I want a record to sound.
My go‑to reference track or album
There’s sort of two. One that I used for a long time was a song from that Andrew Bird record! Tchad Blake mixed it and I love his mixes. There’s a song called ‘Capsized’, and I would listen to that a lot as a low‑end reference for things, because it has a really nice presence to it. It wasn’t incredibly subby, but he incorporated a lot of low end into rock records, like he did with Arctic Monkeys, or the Black Keys. There’s like an extra octave that people weren’t even touching before. So that’s one. And then, honestly, that Third Eye Blind record! Eric Valentine is an incredible mixer. I think he is really good at compartmentalising things. That’s something I look for a lot. He’s really good at things being… not harsh. So, that one for the clarity of it, and then the Andrew Bird for the low end.
My secret weapon in the studio is
I use the [Soundtoys] Tremolator plug‑in a lot. I’ve never been a synth person; I don’t have anything against them, it’s just not the language I speak. But I do a lot of stuff where it’s about getting ambience out of other instruments, like guitars and stuff like that, and having a way to control them. Tremolator allows me to get a really cool combination: you get to have this unruly, atmospheric thing, and then to control it through the beat of the song, almost like side‑chaining it.
Cymbals are also really important to me. I’m not a drummer. No one should put me behind a kit. But I started collecting cymbals that I think sound good and that I know are good, and I bring them to almost every session that I do, no matter what. Nothing’s worse than bad cymbals. I have a 22‑inch [Zildjian K Constantinople] that I bought a few years ago, and that’s been on almost every record I’ve made for the last three years, because that’s what I hear from a ride cymbal.
The studio session I wish I’d witnessed
I think, probably Radiohead making Kid A. That record confounds me. I listen to it and I have no clue how they got to here, because it’s just so unworldly. And to go from OK Computer to Kid A is such an insane transition. What I imagine happened is a lot of deconstruction, like, recording the song and then taking bits away, redoing bits. You sort of start in one place, which feels like a band, and then it sort of just morphs into something else because you find sounds along the way that become the crux of it. That’s how my brain thinks about it. But to be there and witness how they did that, I think that would be really amazing. There’s no way they got to this without just being like, “Let’s f**k around for like, a week, and then we’ll cut away the fat.” It’s the brilliance of knowing what to cut away. I think that’s the hard part, which they have down. There’s not that much going on, but also there is. They have chosen the sounds so specifically, there might only be three things happening at once, but it’s somehow so dense.
The producer I’d most like to work with
Probably Guy Sigsworth. I just think he’s a genius — and is completely different to me. I don’t think he approaches records from a band perspective like I do. He seems very digital‑focused, like, the way he constructs his productions. He did a Madonna song that I’m obsessed with, too, called ‘What It Feels Like For A Girl’. He did it right before Frou Frou, I think. But it sounds like he just made a Frou Frou song and put Madonna on it — like, you can’t go wrong! He just does stuff where I’m like, “What are you doing?” These insane sounds and the way he transitions between sections... He’s a very interesting person to me, so it would be awesome just to meet him one day. I would love him to do a remix of a song for my band. I think that would be really cool.
The studio experience that taught me the most
I think, producing the Momma record Household Name. Making a record where there’s a label budget to be considered, and because there’s a lot riding on it, you have to plan how you are going to manage everyone’s time and get the most out of the money and the people. That taught me a lot, and a lot of that carried over into records I’ve made after. We made it in a studio I work out of a lot in Brooklyn called Studio G. It’s a great place. It’s just a huge live room, an amazing Neve console in the B room, and then the A room has an SSL. A lot of studios in New York have basically sold off all their outboard gear. But at Studio G, you can show up with nothing and just make a record.
The advice I’d give myself of 10 years ago
Enjoy the ride! There are a lot of stresses involved in this industry, particularly when you’re also in a band. I think that has its own difficulties; you’re basically managing two very different hectic schedules. It’s just very complicated. But I think that if you just learn to enjoy the moments that are fun, that’s really important. You have to find the joy, and you have to remember why you’re doing it, because that’s the joyful part. If you’re doing it for a living — and working more hours than people should — then you have to enjoy it.