Zach Nahome (centre) with Olivia Dean and bassist Finn Zeferino‑Birchall.
To perfect Olivia Dean’s intimate, personal sound world, the artist and producer/songwriter Zach Nahome decided to step outside the studio.
One of the UK’s leading producers and songwriters, Zach Nahome’s credit list contains prominent names like Bakar, Loyle Carner, PinkPantheress, Slowthai and Celeste. Recently, Nahome hit the big time with Olivia Dean, as co‑writer, co‑producer and executive producer on the British singer’s second album The Art Of Loving, and its lead single ‘Man I Need’, both of which went to number one. “My process tends to be to go into a room with the artist with nothing, and leave with a song written,” says Nahome. “I also tend to lay down the demos. I’m not the best guitarist or pianist or drummer, but I figure it out.
“When I started working with Olivia, she brought in a few songs that had already been written when I got involved, so my job was to help develop and finish them, as well as write new ideas together. Still, the overall process with her was the same. The record started from within and from an internal dialogue, rather than considering an audience too much. The Art Of Loving is an ambitious record, and if your ambition is to really make the best music, the byproduct is that it will appeal to many people.”
A Room Of One’s Own
“When we were talking about where to start work on the record, she was thinking studios, but nothing felt exciting. At that point, she found all recording studios quite uninspiring and impersonal. So the idea came about to convert a house into a studio.
“It’s quite difficult to find a place in London where you can make noise, but in the end we found a big house in East London that was perfect. We set up a studio in a big kitchen/living area with big massive glass windows looking onto a garden. It felt very open. The house was really cool, and we ended up working there for two and a half months. Olivia even stayed there part of the time. We’d often cook whilst making music, or I’d be in the kitchen making pasta whilst leaving something on loop to listen to. That studio became our biggest tool in creating these songs. Equipment is great and amazing, but honestly, the room is the most important. By miles.”
Much of The Art Of Loving was written and recorded in a London house rented especially for the purpose.
Nonetheless, equipment remains essential, and Nahome recalls, “We brought in loads. We obviously had an obstacle in that room. The acoustics weren’t going to be incredible because there’s glass everywhere, so we had some baffles put in and built a vocal booth. I used a pair of Barefoot MicroMain27s, which are really good. We linked two [Universal Audio] Apollo x8ps together in order to get 16 preamp channels. We wanted to be able to just plug in and go. Everything was done in Logic, the DAW I have used for my entire career.”
House Music
“We brought Olivia’s piano over from her home, and she also brought in her nylon‑string guitar, which she loves. Rebecca Ellis at Gibson gave us loads of guitars to play with, which was great, and I also brought some guitars from my studio. We had a vintage Prophet‑5 and a Wurlitzer, and two drum kits: a vintage Gretsch and a vintage Ludwig. We also had lots of microphones, and tried several on the drum kit, but I ended up removing half of them because I didn’t love the sound of over‑miking a drum kit in that environment. It sounded better using less, so I used just a Shure SM57 as overhead, another 57 on the snare, and I think the kick mic was a Sennheiser e902. Electric and bass guitars were recorded DI, which gives me more control over the sounds I want.
“I’m less bothered by what mics there are on the drums, but I care a lot about what mic I use on vocals, and in this case a friend of mine lent me an amazing microphone. All her vocals and all acoustic guitars recorded in the house went through this AKG C12. We also recorded all the backing vocals on the C12, set to omni. We wanted to feel the house. The house was quite noisy, and we wanted that to be audible. The sound of the house became part of the sound world for the album, one of the common threads that holds it together. That C12 also was a really big part of this record. I ended up buying it, because of how important it became to my process. That particular mic has a lot of history. It used to belong to Olympic Studios in London and then to Dusty Springfield, who recorded most of her songs with it. It’s incredible.
“We also often used the Teenage Engineering TP‑7. It’s almost like a tape recorder. There were a lot of noises around the house in East London. It was next to a school and the garden had amazing birds. I recorded a lot of the sounds of the environment that we were in with the TP‑7. I also use my iPhone all the time. Sometimes I record vocals or drums solely through Voice Notes. The amount of times I’ll use the iPhone for recording guitars and pianos is amazing. Also on this album. Many of the songs may sound lush and big, but there’s this weird intimacy that you get from how your iPhone makes things sound, that spoke to the personal element that we were after.”
Less Is More
Many other writers and producers are credited on The Art Of Loving, including Bastian Langebaek, Max Wolfgang, Matt Hales and Tommy Danvers, and American production and writing heavyweights like John Ryan, Julian Bunetta, Amy Allen, Tobias Jesso Jr and Nolan Lambroza. According to Nahome, most of their work on the songs took place before the East London sessions.
“As I mentioned, some of the songs pre‑dated her and I meeting. For example, the year before, Olivia had worked in America on a song with John Ryan and Amy Allen. Julian Bunetta and John later also offered some work on the production of songs like ‘Close Up’ and ‘Let Alone The One You Love’ on the drums and brass, in particular, which was great. Moreover, Olivia has worked with guys like Bastian, Max and Matt for a long time, and they are an integral part of her writing process. They make great songs together.
“Some of these songs, because of the idea of the record being super‑personal, had to be on the record. Tobias Jesso Jr, Max Wolfgang and Bastian also worked at the house in East London, and some of the additional production from John and Julien took place around that time remotely. All songs went through my computer at some point or other, and we tried to elevate them. For example, when I first heard ‘Let Alone The One You Love’, I said to her, ‘This feels like it wants to be in 6/8.’ That gave it the sentiment that I understood she wanted, so we changed the rhythm.
“In general, I often didn’t redo or replay or change things. I did add stuff, but also often took away stuff. For me, good production often is reduction. I’m constantly trying to remove and declutter stuff. On a record that’s so personal and where honesty and vulnerability are at the core of it all, removing stuff really allows that to shine through.”
Strong Feelings
A number of songs were also written from scratch in their makeshift studio. “’Man I Need’ is a great example of something that was written from scratch in that house, with Tobias Jesso Jr, who came over from the US for a week. We were having a conversation around relationships for half a day, and that turned into a song, effortlessly. It started with Olivia playing some chords on the piano, and I went to the drum kit set up in the middle of the lounge. We mapped out the entire song, and at a later date Olivia and I sat down and tried to find chords that felt better. The pre‑chorus chords on the original demo were the same, but the chords throughout the rest of the song changed.
“The demo sound is not that dissimilar to the final sound. Obviously, it got added to and built on, but it was broadly the same world, with the same feeling. I did the sonic palette and the choices of guitars and keyboards, and the way everything’s layered up. So there’s Olivia’s piano, and I played the Prophet‑5, and the Wurlitzer, as well as guitar and bass. The drums are a combination of live drums and machine drums. I would have used Alchemy or Ultrabeat, I can’t remember. I love the Logic stock plug‑ins and instruments. I use them all the time.
“About half of Olivia’s vocals were recorded at the house, with me doing vocal production. I’m massively obsessed with that. Olivia and I did a lot of takes. Generally, she likes to record her vocal parts from the beginning to the end of songs. She’ll do that as often as she feels she needs to, to get what she wants. And after that we’ll sit side by side in front of the computer, going through and comping.
“Olivia is incredibly hands‑on in the studio, which is one reason why I love working with her so much. There’s no more harsh critic of her vocal takes than Olivia. If she’s not happy, she’ll do it again. If we need 100 takes, we’ll do 100 takes. There’s no tuning. We tune through editing. That’s why we’re so serious about the vocal comp. In terms of the vocal chain, I try to keep it as neutral as I can. I’ll have a compressor, an EQ and a reverb, but I don’t have a set vocal chain. For every song I’ll build the chain from scratch because I don’t want to be complacent and think that a particular channel strip suits every vocal and every song.
“On some songs Olivia worked with Max Wolfgang, who vocal‑produced as well, because it was just more time efficient. Max has an incredible understanding of vocal harmonies, and helped a lot with that, also with the backing vocals. They were recorded by Olivia and her band. She’s known these guys for 10 years, and went to school with many of them. They’re really close, and there’s a big chemistry between them. It felt right to have the humanness of a band who are incredible players, but perhaps not the best singers, doing backing vocals with one mic in a room. They were all standing around with headphones on, and a lot of the time they were laughing and being playful.”
Plot Lines
Additional recording sessions took place at RAK Studios in North London, including all string and brass recordings and some band sessions. “I was hellbent on getting in a string arranger right from the beginning of starting work on the record. We asked Rosie Danvers to do them, who is incredible. Olivia and I knew what we wanted, so we hummed the parts we had in mind in front of Rosie, and also the horn players, and explained what we wanted. Rosie also interpreted and performed parts in her own way and brought her own ideas, which were great.
Zach Nahome: I think building an album is much like making a movie. There are all these threads and subplots, and even if they’re subtle, they’re important.
“For me these string and brass parts were another aspect of building a record that has subplots and threads that run throughout, like the sound of the house in East London. I think building an album is much like making a movie. There are all these threads and subplots, and even if they’re subtle, they’re important. It’s what creates cohesion. Another thing that unifies the album is that it’s a short record with short songs. Especially on an album like this, where the sentiments expressed meant that it needed to be as concise and uncompromised as possible, we didn’t have space for filler or fluff. My principles in making both songs and albums are the same. It’s always the question, what can we delete? In removing stuff, you’re left with what you need the most. And you can make that shine more.”
The Final Stretch
Nahome was rough‑mixing the material throughout, and towards the end of the process, he took the sessions back to his own, minimalist studio to create final rough mixes to send to mixer Charlie Holmes. “My studio has to be really well treated, because I love big low end. I have it in my DNA, because when I was a kid, my dad was obsessed with sound systems, and in his car he had the loudest available subwoofer. And true enough, my first car, a small Fiat, had the biggest subwoofer that I could fit! I’ve had subwoofers in my own studios from the beginning. My monitoring today is hilarious, because I have a set of Neumann KH 120s and a set of KRK V6s, but my main monitors are the ATC SCM20As, with the KRK 10S sub.
“The rest of my gear is simple. I use the Prism Atlas as an interface and for preamps. It’s the best. I have a few Neve preamps, and some great mics, but I don’t have or use a lot of outboard. I just want the best converters and preamps. The Prism gives me that. For the rest it’s about great mics and great recording technique. I do have many instruments in my studio, including loads of guitars. I have a piano. And still I have my first drum kit from when I was 11, which is a Pearl Export.
“Low end was also a huge conversation with Olivia’s album. We talked about this at the beginning of the record, and she said that she wanted this record to sound really fat and thick. The joke between Olivia and I throughout making this record was that everything sounded too fat. We’d always laugh at that. She’d look at me and be like, ‘Come on, surely not? This is ridiculous!’ Every time there was a mix, before Olivia would even listen to it, she’d know that the bass and the kick would need to come down a bit. But that’s a better place to be than the other way round.
“With the final rough mixes for Olivia’s album, she went to America for a week, which gave me time to really get into them, and also to add some additional production. I added a number of bells and whistles and got the mixes really nice. When she returned, we sat together and went through them all and did some more tweaks and anything else that needed to be done. Once we were both happy, we sent them to Charlie. I send him stems, because he doesn’t like Logic. He’s a Mr Pro Tools.
“Charlie also mixes with his ears and is also obsessed with low end. He doesn’t overcook things, and has good taste in not putting on too many effects. With this project I did not even send him notes. I just let Charlie figure it out for himself. He understood what the record needed and there were very few recalls because he got it right so quickly. We’ve done quite a few projects together, and I was adamant that he mix this record. Olivia trusted me on this and was as blown away and happy with the mixes as I was.”
Charlie Holmes: Mixing The Art Of Loving
Having been mentored by Mark ‘Spike’ Stent, mix engineer Charlie Holmes now works from his own room near Salisbury. “I have a very simple mix room, with Neumann KH 150 monitors and a sub, Pro Tools with tons of plug‑ins, Dangerous Music Monitor ST controller, and SSL UC1 DAW controller. My room is small and has loads of acoustic treatment and is pretty flat. For whatever reason, I find it easier to get the bottom end to sound tight and punchy in a small room.”
Charlie Holmes in his minimalist mixing space.
Holmes asserts that he’s “quite an untechnical mixer. A lot of what I do is about feel. When working on Olivia’s record, she said, ‘I want it to sound like a warm hug all the time.’ If you do tons of processing, you won’t get there. So I was very minimal in my use of plug‑ins, and just did small tweaks everywhere. And we did not get into crazy revision numbers. I tend to mix top‑down, so I start with everything in, get an overall balance, then focus on the groups, and then home in on individual tracks. If you start your mix by soloing stuff and getting into tiny EQ moves too early, you can get bogged down and lose the big picture.”
Holmes dives into ‘Man I Need’ as an example of his approach. “Because the production on ‘Man I Need’ was a little more minimal than the rest of the album, it needed less heavy lifting. It also was one of the last songs I mixed for this project. I remember being absolutely shattered, and coming into my mix room feeling dreadful. But when I pressed play and heard that song, it was unreal. I was jumping round the studio, which is not like me at all. It felt great straight away.
“In mixing ‘Man I Need’, my main challenge was, ‘How can I get as much of that energy across as possible?’ There was quite bit of the sound of the house on the live drum stem, and on the vocal stems. I could hear background noises, and on the drums I was trying to preserve them with compression — with vocals you don’t want to bring it up too much. Finding the right balance was a challenge in this mix.
Sampled and real drums were sent to a stereo bus to be processed by this signal chain.
“I heavily compressed the live drum stem to bring out as much energy as possible, using the UAD Chandler Zener Limiter. I find that you can really crush live drums with this plug‑in. It adds a lot of character. Similar with the UAD Neve 33609 on the drum parallel, that brings out more transients. The track had machine drums and live drums that both went to the drum bus, on which I did not do crazy amounts. There’s the Waves PIE compressor, which I tend to use on my drum bus as it brings a live kit together like it’s one instrument rather than loads of mics.
The UAD Neve 33609 compressor plug‑in was used in parallel on the drums to add some transient attack.
“On this track I wanted the sample drums to feel more natural and more together with the live drum room track, to tie them in a little more with the vibe of the album. The PIE also allows the percussion to pump subtly to enhance the groove. The Overstayer adds saturation and does something lovely to the bottom end, and to the snare. It also adds some nice weight. Hilariously, I’m then cutting some low sub with the Dangerous Bax EQ, probably as a result of feedback I got that the track was getting a bit too heavy. The song has to be all about Olivia’s vocals!
The main lead vocal track was compressed gently with the UA LA‑2A plug‑in, whilst parallel duplicates were treated more aggressively with the 1176 and Devil‑Loc compressors.free
“When working on lead vocals, I tend to work with the dry vocal and two parallel tracks. This is especially the case with an artist like Olivia, because she doesn’t like her vocals to sound too compressed. She wants her vocals to sound natural, but you still want to it to have loads of energy and cut through. It’s a radio record, right? So there’s the main vocal, with just 2‑3 dB compression from the UAD LA‑2A, but then there’s a parallel with 20dB gain reduction from a UAD 1176, with the fastest release and a pretty slow attack. If I want more urgency and for the vocal to be more up front, for example in the choruses, I bring up the parallel, and I pull it back again in the verses.
“There’s another lead vocal parallel, with the Soundtoys Devil‑Loc, applying some more compression, but the Darkness button is dialled down, so it’s not adding more ‘s’ and ‘t’ sounds. I mixed this in very low, volume‑wise, but again, I pushed it up in some sections, so I could adjust the character of the vocals for these sections. These three tracks feed the lead vocal bus, on which I had the SSL SL4000E, which I use for everything. I think it’s really good to have a plug‑in that you know inside out, so you know exactly what it’s going to do. I used to have the UAD version, but when SSL came out with their controller, I started using that.
The effects on Olivia Dean’s lead vocal were intended to evoke an ’80s feel.
“The other big thing on the vocals is the UAD Lexicon 224. There’s an ’80s vibe about this song, but it also had to sound modern. So I used a long gated vocal verb, and some Soundtoys MicroShift, and then a lot of tape slap from the EchoBoy. On the All Lead bus there’s some Oeksound Soothe and another SL4000, and some Slate VMR, adding air. I hate harsh 3‑4 kHz frequencies in vocals, so love Soothe. All plug‑ins are doing light touches. It may be difficult to hear what difference each makes, but if you turn them all off, it’s a big change. Some of the backing vocals have the Arturia Rev Plate‑140, doing very little, and a FabFilter Pro‑Q 4 before it for some subtractive EQ. I use the Q 4 only for surgical subtractive stuff, and the SL4000 for boosting, because of the character it adds. It’s punchy and adds some harmonics, which is really cool.
“I very rarely use much compression on the mix bus. In this song I had The Oven, the SSL Bus Compressor 2, and the Virtual Tape Machines from Slate. The Oven adds a tiny bit of saturation in the lower mids and a bit of air as well. I had a mix note at one point that the drums were too heavy, so I added the SSL Bus Compressor because it kept the energy of the drums, but stopped them being quite so aggressive. It’s doing 1.5‑2 dB, absolutely maximum. The Virtual Tape adds some of that midrange warmth that Olivia wanted for the record. That particular tape plug‑in does a thing where it pulls the lower mids forwards a little bit, which I quite like on the vocals and the snare. It just adds a bit of weight to things, in a nice way. It makes them punchy rather than muddy.
The mix bus processing on ‘Man I Need’.
“Finally, there’s the Schwabe Digital Gold Clip. I love that plug‑in. As I said, I don’t love heavy compression on the mix bus, and I don’t love heavy limiting. But Gold Clip is fantastic, especially with transient‑heavy stuff. You can get volume without having to smash transients. It’s clipping them, but you don’t get pumping. It keeps the feel the same, and at the same time gives a lot more volume. At the end of the day, that’s where we’re at today. Again, there’s nothing crazy going on. They’re not big moves. It’s the energy and feel of it.”