Content: Runaway / Seventeen / White Elephant / Destroy Everything You Touch
13 November 2011
MTV Hive interview (2011)
Ladytron has been making their particular brand of icy, New Wave-influenced electro-pop for a long time now. Following their Best Of 00-10 album, released earlier this year, the band's fifth album Gravity the Seducer is out today. While we've come to expect a certain gloom from the four-piece collective — serenely stoic goth-like hooks sung over sleek ambience or sparse electro-rock, for example — Gravity isn't so heavy. Instead their newest creation tones down the dark disco aesthetic for a brief foray into the light.
The lead singles are the clear successes of this endeavor: intro track "White Elephant" is built on a foundation of grandly swooping strings and lightly floating synths, "Ace of Hz" carries the strongest hook of the set and hauntingly broods in a style that's distinct to the group, but with a little less melodrama. Gravity, however, does work best as a whole. Where once we found ourselves playing a never-ending loop of "Destroy Everything You Touch," the recurring shimmer of chimes and warmly laid synth-beds of the band's newest creations are best understood when played as a set. Gravity the Seducer is more of a cinematic experience than anything they've done before.
Hive caught up with Ladytron's Reuben Wu a few days ago to talk about the release, the band's recording process, and what makes this album different from the rest.
You recently toured in support of your Best Of career retrospective. What was it like to be sitting on a new album while playing mostly your back catalog?
We played "White Elephants" and "Ace of Hz," so we were able to have a bit of fun and play at least two new songs while playing our old stuff. I mean, obviously, playing new music to an unsuspecting audience, it's not really great for us. Because, you know, a lot of people who go to gigs just want to hear music they recognize and they can sing to. I mean, the first time we ever played "Destroy Everything You Touch" was in '05 in China and when we played it there was absolutely no response. It was quite funny. So you say, "This is a new song," and you get a half-hearted reaction from the audience. It's actually quite nice to play hits and music that people know and love. It's nice now that the album has come out that now we can start playing the new stuff because that means there will be more recognition and audience participation, which is really what it's all about.
When you started recording Gravity the Seducer did you already know how you wanted it to be different from Velocifero? Or anything else you had previously done for that matter?
Well, we had some themes. We knew that we wanted a more kind of mid-tempo, a down-tempo, album. We wanted more of an atmospheric, surreal soundtrack vibe to it. We also knew it was going to be an album that people wouldn't necessarily expect us to produce. I think this sounds [like] what we wanted it to be but it morphed into something else. It did eventually become another kind of pop record in a way. It stands alone from the other albums that we've done but it's very, very, very much us. You can still hear our sounds in the music.
I know you wrote "Ace of Hz" a few years ago, around the time you were touring around your last studio album. Considering Gravity is so fluid in the way you mentioned earlier, did you have to consider that track in particular when recording the rest of the album? Did you have to mold anything around it?
That track is a little bit different from the rest of the album just because, yeah, it is one of the oldest tracks on that album. I think it still fits in to the story of the whole collection of songs. With every song, every song has it's own identity as one, yet it sticks together as an album perfectly for me. It works as an album better than any album that we've produced, I think. It's a very cohesive sounding album yet every song sounds different from each other.
This album also has an ethereal quality that makes it kind of cinematic. Are you guys interested in doing soundtrack work in the future?
We have quite a lot of our work used in movies, but they're songs. We've never actually written our own soundtrack and that's actually something we'd really like to do in the future.
If you were given the opportunity to choose a director or writer to work with, who would you pick?
For fun, I don't know, David Lynch? No, I can't say David Lynch. Everyone says David Lynch. I'm a massive massive Twin Peaks fan and a fan of Angelo Badalamenti's music so that would be cool. Werner Herzog. Alejandro Jodorowsky if he were to make another film. Anything really. If we were given the opportunity we would just make it our own and make it cool.
In past interviews Dan [Hunt] has avoided listing any influences or anything that could be genre-binding to the group, but there's definitely an impulsive desire to define your sound as '80s New Wave, electro-pop, or synth-pop. How do you maintain that ethos without becoming a slave to it?
It just comes from having a broad interest in music. A broad taste in music. That's the thing that Dan is probably thinking of, because we like so much music. It would be wrong to say that we liked this or that because, you know, it doesn't really give a true picture. It also helps that we are four people. It keeps us from doing the same thing. We kind of keep each other on our toes. It's a really good thing. Instead of just working alone, you have to be incredibly aware of everything. It's very difficult to keep yourself aware and take a step back from your work, you know? It helps when you have three other people listening to your stuff and always thinking, "Is this new?" Are we writing the same song again? Does this sound like someone else?" At times you have to create something that is original to us but interesting as well. That's why every album sounds new.
Do you ever listen to music while you're recording? Do you ever feel like you need to be keeping "in the loop"?
No, not really. Especially now when it's very difficult to be in the loop and also maintain this calm enthusiasm for music. Mainly because there's so much stuff out there. There's so much crap stuff as well. You have to listen to so much crap to get to the good. Whereas in the past you'd have people who would tell you for this band to look out for or you'd go to a record shop and you'd hear something someone was playing and then you would buy analog recording. You really had to listen to the music. Nowadays you have everything, like iTunes, out there telling you, "If you like this, you'll like this." And you have to kind of try it to actually know. It's quite frustrating, you know, taking suggestion from a computer. I'd much rather have real people giving me tips about what they're listening to.
That said, you're also releasing a new album into that market and your following is somewhat cult-like. They've been following you forever. How do you expect new people to be tipped to you?
The internet. [Laughs.] Yeah, their computer. I think the problem is that we live in this twenty-second attention span, where if you don't like it in twenty-seconds you move off from it. It's important to us that people look at the whole rounded idea of who we are and what we produced. That was one of the reasons we made the Best Of compilation, because we wanted to give this idea of who we were, not just the popular singles we produced. Also, I like to think that people learn about us through reading reviews and word of mouth more than anything else. Parties too – people playing our songs. That kind of thing. I think that's one of the reasons we have such a great following, because people think the music scene belongs to them and not to everyone.
I know that you and Dan met in the '90s while DJing. Are you still doing that?
Yeah, for sure. Whenever we get a gig we go out and play. We generally play high-energy music. Not really music like Ladytron but a party vibe and an electronic vibe. But yeah, that's a fun side project.
Have you been paying attention to any newer dance-outfits lately? There's a few that are pulling inspiration from '90s-era house music.
It seems like there are a lot of bands right now that are using keyboards. These cycles go in ten years or something like that. There's been a resurgence since about ten or twelve years ago. That might explain why a lot of bands are using keyboards and those sounds now. When we started off playing keyboards people would come to us like, "So, uh, why are you playing keyboards instead of guitars?" Now everyone's doing it again.
Source
The lead singles are the clear successes of this endeavor: intro track "White Elephant" is built on a foundation of grandly swooping strings and lightly floating synths, "Ace of Hz" carries the strongest hook of the set and hauntingly broods in a style that's distinct to the group, but with a little less melodrama. Gravity, however, does work best as a whole. Where once we found ourselves playing a never-ending loop of "Destroy Everything You Touch," the recurring shimmer of chimes and warmly laid synth-beds of the band's newest creations are best understood when played as a set. Gravity the Seducer is more of a cinematic experience than anything they've done before.Hive caught up with Ladytron's Reuben Wu a few days ago to talk about the release, the band's recording process, and what makes this album different from the rest.
You recently toured in support of your Best Of career retrospective. What was it like to be sitting on a new album while playing mostly your back catalog?
We played "White Elephants" and "Ace of Hz," so we were able to have a bit of fun and play at least two new songs while playing our old stuff. I mean, obviously, playing new music to an unsuspecting audience, it's not really great for us. Because, you know, a lot of people who go to gigs just want to hear music they recognize and they can sing to. I mean, the first time we ever played "Destroy Everything You Touch" was in '05 in China and when we played it there was absolutely no response. It was quite funny. So you say, "This is a new song," and you get a half-hearted reaction from the audience. It's actually quite nice to play hits and music that people know and love. It's nice now that the album has come out that now we can start playing the new stuff because that means there will be more recognition and audience participation, which is really what it's all about.
When you started recording Gravity the Seducer did you already know how you wanted it to be different from Velocifero? Or anything else you had previously done for that matter?
Well, we had some themes. We knew that we wanted a more kind of mid-tempo, a down-tempo, album. We wanted more of an atmospheric, surreal soundtrack vibe to it. We also knew it was going to be an album that people wouldn't necessarily expect us to produce. I think this sounds [like] what we wanted it to be but it morphed into something else. It did eventually become another kind of pop record in a way. It stands alone from the other albums that we've done but it's very, very, very much us. You can still hear our sounds in the music.
I know you wrote "Ace of Hz" a few years ago, around the time you were touring around your last studio album. Considering Gravity is so fluid in the way you mentioned earlier, did you have to consider that track in particular when recording the rest of the album? Did you have to mold anything around it?
That track is a little bit different from the rest of the album just because, yeah, it is one of the oldest tracks on that album. I think it still fits in to the story of the whole collection of songs. With every song, every song has it's own identity as one, yet it sticks together as an album perfectly for me. It works as an album better than any album that we've produced, I think. It's a very cohesive sounding album yet every song sounds different from each other.
This album also has an ethereal quality that makes it kind of cinematic. Are you guys interested in doing soundtrack work in the future?
We have quite a lot of our work used in movies, but they're songs. We've never actually written our own soundtrack and that's actually something we'd really like to do in the future.If you were given the opportunity to choose a director or writer to work with, who would you pick?
For fun, I don't know, David Lynch? No, I can't say David Lynch. Everyone says David Lynch. I'm a massive massive Twin Peaks fan and a fan of Angelo Badalamenti's music so that would be cool. Werner Herzog. Alejandro Jodorowsky if he were to make another film. Anything really. If we were given the opportunity we would just make it our own and make it cool.
In past interviews Dan [Hunt] has avoided listing any influences or anything that could be genre-binding to the group, but there's definitely an impulsive desire to define your sound as '80s New Wave, electro-pop, or synth-pop. How do you maintain that ethos without becoming a slave to it?
It just comes from having a broad interest in music. A broad taste in music. That's the thing that Dan is probably thinking of, because we like so much music. It would be wrong to say that we liked this or that because, you know, it doesn't really give a true picture. It also helps that we are four people. It keeps us from doing the same thing. We kind of keep each other on our toes. It's a really good thing. Instead of just working alone, you have to be incredibly aware of everything. It's very difficult to keep yourself aware and take a step back from your work, you know? It helps when you have three other people listening to your stuff and always thinking, "Is this new?" Are we writing the same song again? Does this sound like someone else?" At times you have to create something that is original to us but interesting as well. That's why every album sounds new.
Do you ever listen to music while you're recording? Do you ever feel like you need to be keeping "in the loop"?
No, not really. Especially now when it's very difficult to be in the loop and also maintain this calm enthusiasm for music. Mainly because there's so much stuff out there. There's so much crap stuff as well. You have to listen to so much crap to get to the good. Whereas in the past you'd have people who would tell you for this band to look out for or you'd go to a record shop and you'd hear something someone was playing and then you would buy analog recording. You really had to listen to the music. Nowadays you have everything, like iTunes, out there telling you, "If you like this, you'll like this." And you have to kind of try it to actually know. It's quite frustrating, you know, taking suggestion from a computer. I'd much rather have real people giving me tips about what they're listening to.
That said, you're also releasing a new album into that market and your following is somewhat cult-like. They've been following you forever. How do you expect new people to be tipped to you?
The internet. [Laughs.] Yeah, their computer. I think the problem is that we live in this twenty-second attention span, where if you don't like it in twenty-seconds you move off from it. It's important to us that people look at the whole rounded idea of who we are and what we produced. That was one of the reasons we made the Best Of compilation, because we wanted to give this idea of who we were, not just the popular singles we produced. Also, I like to think that people learn about us through reading reviews and word of mouth more than anything else. Parties too – people playing our songs. That kind of thing. I think that's one of the reasons we have such a great following, because people think the music scene belongs to them and not to everyone.
I know that you and Dan met in the '90s while DJing. Are you still doing that?Yeah, for sure. Whenever we get a gig we go out and play. We generally play high-energy music. Not really music like Ladytron but a party vibe and an electronic vibe. But yeah, that's a fun side project.
Have you been paying attention to any newer dance-outfits lately? There's a few that are pulling inspiration from '90s-era house music.
It seems like there are a lot of bands right now that are using keyboards. These cycles go in ten years or something like that. There's been a resurgence since about ten or twelve years ago. That might explain why a lot of bands are using keyboards and those sounds now. When we started off playing keyboards people would come to us like, "So, uh, why are you playing keyboards instead of guitars?" Now everyone's doing it again.
Source
31 October 2011
Ladytron - Montreal, 2011
Content: Soft Power / International Dateline / Mirage / Ghosts / High Rise / True Mathematics / White Gold / Runaway / Ace of Hz / Little Black Angel / Discotraxx / Fighting in Built Up Areas / Seventeen / White Elephant / Destroy Everything You Touch
29 October 2011
Ladytron - KEXP, 2011
Format: MP3, 320 kbps CBR
Note: I converted to MP3 320kbps CBR from WMA 128 kbps CBR stream. I added tags with MP3Tag and I made the cover.
Track listing:
1. Intro
2. White Elephant
3. Mirage
4. Interview
5. White Gold
6. Ace of Hz
Download
Interview Magazine interview (2011)
Ladytron the Seducer
It's easy to slip into a trance while playing UK-based electro outfit Ladytron on full blast. Ethereal, ice-cold melodies float over a sleek, metallic bass line, with vocalist Mira Aroyo sprinkling in her native Bulgarian just to keep it interesting. Ladytron's fifth studio album, Gravity the Seducer [Nettwerk], which the band is currently on tour promoting in North America, shows the band at their most laid-back, while still adding new brushstrokes to the Ladytron sonic palette.
Over the past ten years, Ladytron (Helen Marnie, lead vocals and synthesizers; Mira Aroyo, vocals and synthesizers; Daniel Hunt, synthesizers, electric guitar, vocals; and Reuben Wu, synthesizers) has been busy: touring, writing songs for Christina Aguilera, DJing, remixing, and producing music for video game and film soundtracks. And it's no wonder these indie darlings are in such high demand: Ladytron pushes sonic boundaries and is known for a largely unclassifiable sound that has been called everything from New Wave to electro-dance-pop.
Already halfway through their North American tour, Ladytron plays Terminal 5 in New York this Saturday, October 8th, followed by an after-hours DJ set at YOTEL. We caught Ladytron synth czar Daniel Hunt while the band was in the middle of a two-day drive from Montana. We touched on roller coasters, whether being in a band for 10 years gets old, and why truck stops are so scary.
You recently played a concert at Six Flags in Mexico. How was that?
It was definitely not fun. There was a tropical rainstorm. It should have been fun. 6,000 people showed up to see us and they were all standing in the rain.
Do you even like roller coasters?
No, I don't really like roller coasters, either. [laughs] I mean, we liked the idea of playing at Six Flags, but nobody told us it was going to rain.
You're on tour promoting the new record, Gravity the Seducer. It sounds a lot different from the last album, Velocifero. Is the band moving in a new musical direction?
We've had people say it's completely different, and we've had people say, "Oh, you know, it's a twist on what they've done in the past or a refinement of that." I wouldn't say it's a new direction. I'd say it was an album that expands on a thread that's run through our records. We think there's enough dance music in the world and we don't really think we need to be making it. We can always get remixes done whenever we want. I just think in terms of what we've got up our sleeves, this kind of record is far more rough than anything else. There's definitely a bit of a jump between the last record and this, but if you look over all the albums and shuffle a little bit, you'll see there's a thread leading through.
Speaking of all the other albums, Ladytron recently released an album of greatest hits, Best of 00-10. What was the experience of summarizing 10 years of Ladytron into a couple discs?
It was a little bit eerie. I mean it was fun, but it was like, how long have we been going? We also had to compile a photo book, and when we started, we just looked like children. It was a good experience, and it was also interesting to put tracks together in a new way—especially considering a lot of our audience have only been aware of us for a few years. It gives us a chance to say, okay, this is what we've been doing for the last 10 years.
One interesting thing about Ladytron is the almost orchestral use of layering.
Yeah, that's important to us. One thing that we're conscious of is that a lot of music now is created and mixed for laptop speakers. And that's fine, but after a while your ears don't lie to you, and some records only have a shelf life of a few weeks. Sounding good on laptop speakers is fine, but we're very old-school in that regard, very traditional. We like albums, we like records that are mixed to last forever. Gravity the Seducer, more than any of the records we've done before, is one for headphones.
That old-school vibe really comes through, even with the analog instruments you use on stage.
Well, that's from when we started. That was the gear we had, and that's what we made the band out of. When we first came out, nobody was using instruments like that, so it gave us a little bit of an advantage by having a limited sonic palette. By having more limited tools, you often end up developing better ideas because when you're flooded with the tools, the ideas get swamped. It was a bit of a novelty, a gimmick-not an intentional gimmick, but it worked as one.
You guys have been together for a while. Does it ever get old?
[laughs] I don't know. We felt burned out after the last tour finished, because we were more or less on the road constantly for four years. We put an album out, toured for two years, put another album out, toured for two more years. We didn't have a lot of time off at all. We can't tour and we don't want to tour as much as people might want us to, for our own sanity, for our own happiness. So we're being more considered this time. Like for example, this U.S. tour we're only doing three and a half weeks. For the band to continue, it's better that you play less and don't burn yourselves out, because we've put a hell of a lot in this. From 2005 to 2009, it was incessant.
What were you doing before Ladytron?
We were all doing bits and pieces. The girls were still in school—Mira was doing a Ph.D. in genetics, Reuben was working in industrial design, Helen had just come out of university, I was organizing a lot of parties and stuff. I had my own studio before I came to the band, so I came to this as a producer and I've done bits and pieces with other bands before.
All right, tell us something about Montana. You're driving through there now, right? What are you seeing?
Well the drive here is amazing, especially driving through Washington state. The scenery is incredible. But we go from the sublime to this horrible cluster of hotels and gas stations.
Do you have any horror stories?
We've had horror stories before from truck stops and whatever.
Truck stops are hilarious.
Well, this is the second time we've stopped in Montana. We've only stopped here once before, and boy, did it scare us. We had a scary time in St. Regis, Montana once where I was more or less confident that we were going to be killed. It was a little bit like Race with the Devil [1975]. I expected to wake up in the morning and see a ring of fire around the bus. We haven't been back since.
Source
It's easy to slip into a trance while playing UK-based electro outfit Ladytron on full blast. Ethereal, ice-cold melodies float over a sleek, metallic bass line, with vocalist Mira Aroyo sprinkling in her native Bulgarian just to keep it interesting. Ladytron's fifth studio album, Gravity the Seducer [Nettwerk], which the band is currently on tour promoting in North America, shows the band at their most laid-back, while still adding new brushstrokes to the Ladytron sonic palette.
Over the past ten years, Ladytron (Helen Marnie, lead vocals and synthesizers; Mira Aroyo, vocals and synthesizers; Daniel Hunt, synthesizers, electric guitar, vocals; and Reuben Wu, synthesizers) has been busy: touring, writing songs for Christina Aguilera, DJing, remixing, and producing music for video game and film soundtracks. And it's no wonder these indie darlings are in such high demand: Ladytron pushes sonic boundaries and is known for a largely unclassifiable sound that has been called everything from New Wave to electro-dance-pop.Already halfway through their North American tour, Ladytron plays Terminal 5 in New York this Saturday, October 8th, followed by an after-hours DJ set at YOTEL. We caught Ladytron synth czar Daniel Hunt while the band was in the middle of a two-day drive from Montana. We touched on roller coasters, whether being in a band for 10 years gets old, and why truck stops are so scary.
You recently played a concert at Six Flags in Mexico. How was that?
It was definitely not fun. There was a tropical rainstorm. It should have been fun. 6,000 people showed up to see us and they were all standing in the rain.
Do you even like roller coasters?
No, I don't really like roller coasters, either. [laughs] I mean, we liked the idea of playing at Six Flags, but nobody told us it was going to rain.
You're on tour promoting the new record, Gravity the Seducer. It sounds a lot different from the last album, Velocifero. Is the band moving in a new musical direction?
We've had people say it's completely different, and we've had people say, "Oh, you know, it's a twist on what they've done in the past or a refinement of that." I wouldn't say it's a new direction. I'd say it was an album that expands on a thread that's run through our records. We think there's enough dance music in the world and we don't really think we need to be making it. We can always get remixes done whenever we want. I just think in terms of what we've got up our sleeves, this kind of record is far more rough than anything else. There's definitely a bit of a jump between the last record and this, but if you look over all the albums and shuffle a little bit, you'll see there's a thread leading through.
Speaking of all the other albums, Ladytron recently released an album of greatest hits, Best of 00-10. What was the experience of summarizing 10 years of Ladytron into a couple discs?
It was a little bit eerie. I mean it was fun, but it was like, how long have we been going? We also had to compile a photo book, and when we started, we just looked like children. It was a good experience, and it was also interesting to put tracks together in a new way—especially considering a lot of our audience have only been aware of us for a few years. It gives us a chance to say, okay, this is what we've been doing for the last 10 years.
One interesting thing about Ladytron is the almost orchestral use of layering.Yeah, that's important to us. One thing that we're conscious of is that a lot of music now is created and mixed for laptop speakers. And that's fine, but after a while your ears don't lie to you, and some records only have a shelf life of a few weeks. Sounding good on laptop speakers is fine, but we're very old-school in that regard, very traditional. We like albums, we like records that are mixed to last forever. Gravity the Seducer, more than any of the records we've done before, is one for headphones.
That old-school vibe really comes through, even with the analog instruments you use on stage.
Well, that's from when we started. That was the gear we had, and that's what we made the band out of. When we first came out, nobody was using instruments like that, so it gave us a little bit of an advantage by having a limited sonic palette. By having more limited tools, you often end up developing better ideas because when you're flooded with the tools, the ideas get swamped. It was a bit of a novelty, a gimmick-not an intentional gimmick, but it worked as one.
You guys have been together for a while. Does it ever get old?
[laughs] I don't know. We felt burned out after the last tour finished, because we were more or less on the road constantly for four years. We put an album out, toured for two years, put another album out, toured for two more years. We didn't have a lot of time off at all. We can't tour and we don't want to tour as much as people might want us to, for our own sanity, for our own happiness. So we're being more considered this time. Like for example, this U.S. tour we're only doing three and a half weeks. For the band to continue, it's better that you play less and don't burn yourselves out, because we've put a hell of a lot in this. From 2005 to 2009, it was incessant.
What were you doing before Ladytron?
We were all doing bits and pieces. The girls were still in school—Mira was doing a Ph.D. in genetics, Reuben was working in industrial design, Helen had just come out of university, I was organizing a lot of parties and stuff. I had my own studio before I came to the band, so I came to this as a producer and I've done bits and pieces with other bands before.
All right, tell us something about Montana. You're driving through there now, right? What are you seeing?Well the drive here is amazing, especially driving through Washington state. The scenery is incredible. But we go from the sublime to this horrible cluster of hotels and gas stations.
Do you have any horror stories?
We've had horror stories before from truck stops and whatever.
Truck stops are hilarious.
Well, this is the second time we've stopped in Montana. We've only stopped here once before, and boy, did it scare us. We had a scary time in St. Regis, Montana once where I was more or less confident that we were going to be killed. It was a little bit like Race with the Devil [1975]. I expected to wake up in the morning and see a ring of fire around the bus. We haven't been back since.
Source
Electronic Musician interview (2011)
Infusing Cold Synths With Guitar Fire
It makes absolute sense that Daniel Hunt's "favorite record ever" is My Bloody Valentine's 1991 album Loveless. Aside from the obvious fact that Hunt's band is also a quartet comprised of two men and two women, Ladytron is like MBV for the electronic set: dense layers of synths rather than a shoegaze-y wall of guitars.
"I grew up listening to music that I could not fully understand", Hunt says. "I like this kind of swell where you hear certain things and you're not sure what they are, and you're not sure what is connected to what".
That isn't to say that Ladytron is creating an amorphous sonic mess in the studio. Ten years after releasing their debut album, 604, Ladytron has learned a thing or two about maximizing space in the mix. With the band's fifth full-length record, Gravity the Seducer, Hunt says they're more cognizant of when to say when.
"I think we're instinctively preempting those problems in the mix by not throwing too many bass-y mono synths and layers down there", he says. "We're just a bit more aware of what's required than we used to be. With the first and second records, the mix engineer would be like, 'You know, you put seven basses on here.' And we'd go, 'Okay, well it's your job. You just make it work!' We're a bit more considerate now".
While Ladytron dove into recording their previous two albums immediately after months on the road—thus creating an album that would easily translate to the stage—the band took a different approach to Gravity the Seducer. "We probably had about a year off from the road in which to write and prepare and had a clearer idea of what we wanted", Hunt says. "It was refreshing to make a record without thinking about the accompanying tour. We didn't care about it, so I think the record sounds freer and more coherent as a result".
One of the group's sonic schemes was to create a cinematic feel by using signature sounds throughout the album, including Sequential Circuits Pro-One, Buchla, Mellotron/Chamberlin, Conn, and Crumar Stratus keyboards. "We consciously tried to restrict ourselves to a sonic palette for the record", Hunt says. "We got to a point with every track and then went, 'What's this missing? Okay, we haven't put the Conn organ on it yet.' That organ had this really beautiful harmonic setting on it. Once we started using that—I think we used it on 'White Elephant' initially—it ended up on almost every song, if not every song. But unfortunately, we couldn't take it away with us. It's still stuck there in the countryside".
Although Ladytron's synth palette was limited, there was still no shortage of layers. Fortunately, it wasn't too much for co-producer Barny Barnicott to handle. He carved out space and attended to detail without overdosing on EQ, all the while making the album sound great on hi-fi systems and crappy laptop speakers.
"I tend to balance very quietly on medium speakers and then switch to a small portable radio for finishing off [the mix]", Barnicott says. "If you get the balance right like that without reaching for your EQ too much, a mix tends to work well across all platforms".
While Barnicott's methods are sophisticated, Hunt suspects that other producers sometimes resort to gimmicks to get a mix to sound right through lo-fi sound systems. "I have a theory that the prevalence of square waves and Auto-Tune in pop music these days is because people are listening to their music through their laptop speakers", Hunt says. "I've got no scientific evidence to back this up, but that's my instinct".
Meanwhile, Ladytron avoids using über-artificial plug-in processing on vocals and synths. Hunt (like his favorite band, MBV) is a fan of using lots of guitar pedals. In fact, he used to play mostly guitar at gigs, but more recently has played and recorded synths—which range on the album from deep, round bass to high, plinking bells—through his guitar pedalboard. "On the records, it made sense for me to play guitar for a while, and where certain songs didn't have guitar before, I actually added it live, and it enhanced what we'd done on the record", he says.
"But this time, we actually went back and added this old Italian polysynth, a Crumar Stratus, which has quite a nice Farisa-y organ sound on it. So I was playing my guitar parts on the keyboard and putting it through my pedalboard, and it sounded surprisingly good. It's going through an overdrive, delay, tremolo, and also an Electro-Harmonix POG Polyphonic Octave Generator. We also used a lot of this Empress Superdelay, which is like an octave delay, and it has some really beautiful effects that I haven't been able to recreate with anything else. It's just instant magic".
One particularly catchy riff that begins midway through "White Gold" sounds like palm-muted guitar but was actually created with a set of chromatic plastic tubes called Boomwhackers. "I saw them being used at my daughter's nursery", Barnicott says. "I think Reuben [Wu] and I had a couple of them, each in the right key, and came up with a rhythm that worked with the tune. Then the engineer, Alex [Miller], processed it quite heavily through the desk".
"It kind of reminds me of Miami Vice or something", Hunt adds with a laugh. "We physically constructed a riff by arranging those tubes and hitting them with beaters. I don't even think we had a complete scale to work with. But we didn't have to do that much editing. We just had to make sure it was timed enough, and perhaps we might have had to pitch-shift one note in [Celemony] Melodyne to make it work properly".
For an album with no guitars, the members of Ladytron certainly have a lot of guitar-related tricks up their sleeves. To add depth to synths and vocals, the band also processed parts through a Holy Grail reverb pedal, into a guitar amp, and then miked up the room about 10 feet away from the amp. "We ended up taking existing parts, reprocessing them quite a few times, and then bringing them in and out of the mix, so the tunes have movement to them while still having a simple arrangement", Barnicott says. "So we put a lot of the synths and vocals through reverbs and amps and recorded the room to give everything more of a 3-D sound and some natural distortion and grit".
The Holy Grail/amp combo is one of Hunt's favorites. "It's a really kind of glacial reverb", Hunt says. "I'm a really big fan of [legendary British producer] Joe Meek, so often when I'm working on something, it's like, 'What would Joe Meek do?' I draw the line at shooting my landlady, though".
Source
It makes absolute sense that Daniel Hunt's "favorite record ever" is My Bloody Valentine's 1991 album Loveless. Aside from the obvious fact that Hunt's band is also a quartet comprised of two men and two women, Ladytron is like MBV for the electronic set: dense layers of synths rather than a shoegaze-y wall of guitars.
"I grew up listening to music that I could not fully understand", Hunt says. "I like this kind of swell where you hear certain things and you're not sure what they are, and you're not sure what is connected to what". That isn't to say that Ladytron is creating an amorphous sonic mess in the studio. Ten years after releasing their debut album, 604, Ladytron has learned a thing or two about maximizing space in the mix. With the band's fifth full-length record, Gravity the Seducer, Hunt says they're more cognizant of when to say when.
"I think we're instinctively preempting those problems in the mix by not throwing too many bass-y mono synths and layers down there", he says. "We're just a bit more aware of what's required than we used to be. With the first and second records, the mix engineer would be like, 'You know, you put seven basses on here.' And we'd go, 'Okay, well it's your job. You just make it work!' We're a bit more considerate now".
While Ladytron dove into recording their previous two albums immediately after months on the road—thus creating an album that would easily translate to the stage—the band took a different approach to Gravity the Seducer. "We probably had about a year off from the road in which to write and prepare and had a clearer idea of what we wanted", Hunt says. "It was refreshing to make a record without thinking about the accompanying tour. We didn't care about it, so I think the record sounds freer and more coherent as a result".
One of the group's sonic schemes was to create a cinematic feel by using signature sounds throughout the album, including Sequential Circuits Pro-One, Buchla, Mellotron/Chamberlin, Conn, and Crumar Stratus keyboards. "We consciously tried to restrict ourselves to a sonic palette for the record", Hunt says. "We got to a point with every track and then went, 'What's this missing? Okay, we haven't put the Conn organ on it yet.' That organ had this really beautiful harmonic setting on it. Once we started using that—I think we used it on 'White Elephant' initially—it ended up on almost every song, if not every song. But unfortunately, we couldn't take it away with us. It's still stuck there in the countryside".
Although Ladytron's synth palette was limited, there was still no shortage of layers. Fortunately, it wasn't too much for co-producer Barny Barnicott to handle. He carved out space and attended to detail without overdosing on EQ, all the while making the album sound great on hi-fi systems and crappy laptop speakers.
"I tend to balance very quietly on medium speakers and then switch to a small portable radio for finishing off [the mix]", Barnicott says. "If you get the balance right like that without reaching for your EQ too much, a mix tends to work well across all platforms".While Barnicott's methods are sophisticated, Hunt suspects that other producers sometimes resort to gimmicks to get a mix to sound right through lo-fi sound systems. "I have a theory that the prevalence of square waves and Auto-Tune in pop music these days is because people are listening to their music through their laptop speakers", Hunt says. "I've got no scientific evidence to back this up, but that's my instinct".
Meanwhile, Ladytron avoids using über-artificial plug-in processing on vocals and synths. Hunt (like his favorite band, MBV) is a fan of using lots of guitar pedals. In fact, he used to play mostly guitar at gigs, but more recently has played and recorded synths—which range on the album from deep, round bass to high, plinking bells—through his guitar pedalboard. "On the records, it made sense for me to play guitar for a while, and where certain songs didn't have guitar before, I actually added it live, and it enhanced what we'd done on the record", he says.
"But this time, we actually went back and added this old Italian polysynth, a Crumar Stratus, which has quite a nice Farisa-y organ sound on it. So I was playing my guitar parts on the keyboard and putting it through my pedalboard, and it sounded surprisingly good. It's going through an overdrive, delay, tremolo, and also an Electro-Harmonix POG Polyphonic Octave Generator. We also used a lot of this Empress Superdelay, which is like an octave delay, and it has some really beautiful effects that I haven't been able to recreate with anything else. It's just instant magic".
One particularly catchy riff that begins midway through "White Gold" sounds like palm-muted guitar but was actually created with a set of chromatic plastic tubes called Boomwhackers. "I saw them being used at my daughter's nursery", Barnicott says. "I think Reuben [Wu] and I had a couple of them, each in the right key, and came up with a rhythm that worked with the tune. Then the engineer, Alex [Miller], processed it quite heavily through the desk".
"It kind of reminds me of Miami Vice or something", Hunt adds with a laugh. "We physically constructed a riff by arranging those tubes and hitting them with beaters. I don't even think we had a complete scale to work with. But we didn't have to do that much editing. We just had to make sure it was timed enough, and perhaps we might have had to pitch-shift one note in [Celemony] Melodyne to make it work properly". For an album with no guitars, the members of Ladytron certainly have a lot of guitar-related tricks up their sleeves. To add depth to synths and vocals, the band also processed parts through a Holy Grail reverb pedal, into a guitar amp, and then miked up the room about 10 feet away from the amp. "We ended up taking existing parts, reprocessing them quite a few times, and then bringing them in and out of the mix, so the tunes have movement to them while still having a simple arrangement", Barnicott says. "So we put a lot of the synths and vocals through reverbs and amps and recorded the room to give everything more of a 3-D sound and some natural distortion and grit".
The Holy Grail/amp combo is one of Hunt's favorites. "It's a really kind of glacial reverb", Hunt says. "I'm a really big fan of [legendary British producer] Joe Meek, so often when I'm working on something, it's like, 'What would Joe Meek do?' I draw the line at shooting my landlady, though".
Source
10 October 2011
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