02 - The Britpop YEars - HD 1080p-Session Recall Podcast Mp3
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[00:00:00] Brino: The main time our paths crossed was at Air Studios when they came in to listen to the playback of be here now and we're pinned to the back war by the deafening pa and Liam singing the entire album.
[00:00:30] Jon Con: Welcome back to episode two of the Session Record podcast. In episode one, I think we finished off with Nick meeting up with, oh, not meeting up with, but starting to work with Omars and Ash was the first session which obviously leads on to you working with obviously like Oasis Morning Glory be here now.
[00:00:48] Jon Con: Am I writing thinking that you did two albums of Ashton as one in between, so you did 1977 for your
[00:00:55] Brino: angel. I did three, three albums with Ash. So I also worked on on the second album nuclear Sounds, which wasn't recorded with Owen, but cuz they went to Rockfield. They loved the Coach House so much, they decided they'd go back to do nuclear sounds there.
[00:01:14] Brino: Which is another great album. So they came back and obviously I was the studio engineer brought in, and that was with Chris Kimsey. So legendary producer, lovely, lovely man, Chris Kimsey. I, I think there's some great tracks on that album. Obviously a completely different process to working with someone.
[00:01:32] Brino: I go in. and it wasn't the kind of mental, and the, the boys still had a good time. We all still had a good time. But yeah, the process wasn't quite as mental as that 1977 session, which was, as I said before, absolutely crazy doing the sick party and everything that was involved in that. The mushrooms, the acid, the mushroom teas, you know, the kind of Yeah.
[00:01:52] Brino: Oh God all went on. A lot more civilized, but still good fun cuz Chris loved you man. Yeah, and it was a great. . And then bits when they went back with though in and working with other producers as well. Little bits on third album, but I'd also go off and with Ian Lawton, who was their front house guy and tour manager.
[00:02:12] Brino: We like produced some BSides. We went to a few different studios. So we went to one in Totten Court Road. We went to Westex Studios, which is great to work in Westex, which is a fantastic studio. And we did a lot of BSides there. And that was just me and Ian producing with the band there. So yes, so lots of bits for them boys.
[00:02:30] Brino: I'm sure
[00:02:30] Jon Con: other people are gonna ask, but what was the sick
[00:02:32] Brino: party? The Sick party's a secret track on the end of the album, which involves Mark from Ash. Being sick and then setting off a chain of events, chain of events of other people being sick. Owen's out there, everyone's off, you know, off their edge, drunk as it can be, and I'm recording it.
[00:02:51] Brino: But Owen had left the speakers up full in the control room, and I walk in just as Marks launching a pile of sick. Right in front of a U 87 and it came out the speaker so loud, I just immediately retched and was like, it was just terrific. Yeah. But that was one of the secret tracks. We had another secret track on that album, it, which didn't make it cuz it, but it was a contender, which was called The Scream.
[00:03:13] Brino: which is where we got, whenever we felt like it or someone was in the other studio, or sometimes just a man walking his dog past the studio. We got them to come in and do a scream. You had to kind of start off with a kind of emotion but in silence and then eventually build up to a little hum. And then eventually that would be a scream at the top of your voice.
[00:03:32] Brino: And we'd fill all the tracks with these people. Saw these other band, all these other bands that were really at the studio coming in. And we'd fill all the tracks that we'd back, sit down to a stereo and have 22 again. And then we'd keep, keep going, keep going. Hundreds and hundreds of tracks of different people screaming.
[00:03:47] Brino: And obviously every time we'd all had a drink or felt, felt like it, we'd go in and do a, an emotion and a scream. And that was, that was a contender for the secret track at one point. Maybe not as commercial. That's the sick party. Well, no. And am I right in thinking we're, were Ash the reason why Kings you, because Rockfield used to have U 40 sevens, didn't he?
[00:04:08] Jon Con: Like the valve ones? Yeah. Ash, one of the reasons why Kings, you decided to stop looking after or decided to sell the U 40 sevens off.
[00:04:18] Brino: That was, they were one of the reasons, well, yeah, I suppose Owen stroke, stroke ash, but it wasn't the 40 sevens. It wasn't the 40 sevens we had What. What was you get?
[00:04:29] Brino: It was the 60 sevens. Right. Okay. They, they ended up going from, from the studio into his front room. Yeah. So he had to go into you and, and the SM two s, cuz the SM two s were really rare. Those were 12 marks. The Noman SM two s, he had some TAL ones as well. And of a sudden they disappeared after those sessions cuz they'd be outside recording sick in the rain.
[00:04:49] Brino: You know, it's 12 grand microphones. Yes. They, they were no longer available.
[00:04:55] Jon Con: Yeah. Cause I've definitely done that a couple times. I've had to walk in and go into like the, go through Kingsley's kitchen and pick up either the U 67 or the SM two to use on the session. And that's Kingsy and you go into King's like they used Yeah, he is like what?
[00:05:08] Jon Con: You need them for ? It's like recording Kings.
[00:05:11] Brino: Yeah. They're not used to your front room. Yeah. There's some, there's some right treasures in his front room there. Yeah, there used to be loads of those SM two s. They're great mics. Yeah. You don't see 'em stereo mics, so you can change the top capsule and stereo image on it.
[00:05:24] Brino: It's great. Mm. we're
[00:05:26] Jon Con: in the nineties. I'm probably gonna avoid talking a little bit about like Oasis morning Glory, Brit Pop stuff, because I think that's been covered quite a bit recently. Were there any sessions that you were involved with that? Cause I've been involved in a few sessions where they haven't seen the light of day.
[00:05:40] Jon Con: Are there any sessions you've been involved with in that era that might not have been, might not have been documented or seen the light of day or released commercially?
[00:05:48] Brino: Yeah. I mean, lots of kind of smaller sessions where bands I, I remember. You know, where bands would kind of come down and the record company were kind of developing or they weren't sure whether they were gonna sign, they would put them in and then we'd do an album or whatever.
[00:06:01] Brino: And sometimes I'd do it, sometimes other producers, and they would never see the light of day. They were kind of like development stroke trials. And then the band wouldn't get a deal. I remember when Colplay was signed and then became big, like they sent the label, sent down a stream of Coldplay esque.
[00:06:18] Brino: Some really great bands and just to, you know, get an album out of m and then see which one they wanted to sign, which was, which was kind of the most Coldplay or that would have the most success. So there was a stream of those bands and loads of those albums. Never saw the light of day. Couple of those bands might, we crossed paths again, one over in Norfolk, a great band there.
[00:06:37] Brino: But yeah, in that period, 90. Kind of, yeah, lots of, lots of smaller bands like big sessions. Yeah. There was things like the Robbie Williams session. , which was a mental session. Never saw the light of light of day. So where was, where was the Pretty most of, most of it. Pretty unusable . But some good, good fun had by all who, it was his who was doing the experimental period.
[00:07:04] Brino: Who
[00:07:05] Jon Con: was doing Robbie Williams session. Was that in
[00:07:07] Brino: Rockfield? Well actually another studio that that Kingsley owned just down the road. It's kind of like a rehearsal demo studio. So, yeah, that was, . Yeah. Fun time. So it was that kind of whole Glad I went to Glastonbury with him and Liam where Robbie had his dye blonde hair.
[00:07:27] Brino: Yeah. And we worked on, Rob Owen was mainly writing, worked on quite a lot of songs and then recording them, demoing them a lot of time in the pub, a lot of time spent lying under the desk in a com off on a completely different planet. But yeah, he was good fun actually. That was, but he was pretty full on at that.
[00:07:45] Brino: Just, and then teaming up with someone like Owen , it just took, all got taken a little bit too far into another level. Oh yeah. Another, another one with Owen, we did a version of urban hymns the Verve album, which was without Nick Mc McCabe. So we did a full version, actually the album, I think what, it wasn't the final batch of songs that ended up on the album.
[00:08:05] Brino: I think some of the songs that we did for that album ended up on Richard's first solo. . And, and some songs that didn't end up on either album, but yeah, an amazing version cuz Owen kind of would get them playing live. And the songs, the arrangement song were a bit more kind of jammy and had more extended kind of outros and kind of lots of layers.
[00:08:26] Brino: And obviously the album they ended up making was a lot more commercial, fantastic songs and, you know, did so well when of the best selling albums of all time in the uk mm-hmm. . But yeah, we did that version of, it was just a bit more kind of, , earthy, bit more druggie, bit more kind of floaty. And I, like Owen had done on the previous stuff with him, I thought it was great, but there was no Nick McCabe at that point.
[00:08:48] Brino: And then when Nick rejoined he decided to rerecord the album, so, which became the version that got released. So yeah, that was another one. This I think, I think the odd track from that has come out maybe on some compilations or limited edition stuff, but there's a whole album. that was done with Owen in the coach house again.
[00:09:06] Jon Con: Yeah, we knew Kings. He obviously like Rock. He had Rockfield. There was Mono Valley. For a while it was owned by Rockfield and then Kings and Charles kind of broke up the studios. And the other place was that Woodlawn and that was
[00:09:18] Brino: Demo Studio Woodside, Woodside, Woodside. Yeah, they had a studio, so Rockford had a label as well at that point.
[00:09:25] Brino: And a few of the bands, like I always remember going down a Novocain band from Newport, great band. We were, we were always down there and I'd record a couple of their demos and they were always down there rehearsing and demoing with one of the Rockford engineers. And my band would go down there and do demos.
[00:09:39] Brino: Kings, his mates would rehearse down there. Yeah. So there was Mono Valley kind of Charles's place then, which was originally the rehearsal place of rock. Two studios at Rockfield and Woodside
[00:09:50] Jon Con: in this era then, were there any re like what would you say the most interesting bands that you worked with?
[00:09:55] Jon Con: Who was the most interesting band to work with?
[00:09:59] Brino: I mean, God, the most, the most interesting to record creatively. and, well, the most interesting really was, was the beater band. That was an another I've mentioned in before in Lawton, who worked, worked with me on the Ash stuff. He'd introduced me to that band and I, I loved that band.
[00:10:22] Brino: I listened to the three eps and then I got to work with them on a few albums after that, once they came to Rockfield with another producer doing the kind of first album proper. I got to do hi heroes to Zeros, the third album, I think it was and talkative albums that never saw the light of day.
[00:10:43] Brino: I actually did an album with them up in the Highlands of Scotland, which never saw the light of day. One of the most bizarre records I've ever been involved in, but one of the most amazing times. It wasn't, it was trying to grasp what the record was supposed to be. And I think the label thought we were going up into a mountain to record this masterpiece that was gonna become of commercial success for the band.
[00:11:05] Brino: And it soon became clear. We were definitely not there to record a commercial success. Yeah, so we had FX rentals or a Dream High might have been back then. We had them drive to Northern Scotland play s to. Which is about 26 miles north of Osa right up there. We had them bring a studio, and the studio was on the side of a mountain so you couldn't get the van.
[00:11:28] Brino: So they then the equip equipment had to all be carried down this mountain to this cabin of a sh of a boat. That belonged to John from the band. It was his uncles, I think, right? So there was a cabin of a boat. His favorite boat had been transported to the side of a mountain that had no road and direct access.
[00:11:45] Brino: So it was like, I think an 18 hour drive for this van to come up from London. And then the guy had to all of us, and it was like minus, there was like six foot of snow as well. It was like minus seven. And the studio had to be built in this. Right. And we spent a couple of weeks up there just traveling around with portable dat players and recording everything we could find, whether it be barrels on a beach or stones or monuments of just creating all these samples and noises and silence.
[00:12:12] Brino: and then we'd take them back to this cabin on the side of a mountain and I'd play all the tapes, sometimes the same time, sometimes one after another. And they'd all have headphones on getting a feed of that. And they'd play along, right. And they'd be thinking, right, this is the bit where we start doing that rhythm on a beach, and this is where we'll add a baseline or, or with their headphones on.
[00:12:32] Brino: So nobody knew what the other person was gonna. . Sometimes we just read books and we recorded that. You know, sometimes everyone would just get really stoned and just kind of tell stupid stories. Other times we would just try and talk in Japanese and that was, that was a song and we'd have to put atmospherics crazy, crazy.
[00:12:50] Brino: There was no. There was no, I have, dunno what it was. And then I remember the label booked us a big mix room in London and said, really excited to hear the mix and we booked you in the mix room, come down, mix the record and I'm thinking, what, what am I gonna mix? You know, , I got, got 72 hours of waves, wave sounds we got.
[00:13:08] Brino: And it was just, yeah, to never saw the light of day. But they were the most interesting, just their outlook. I mean that one album I did with them. their third album in the Quadrangle. We did that. I just loved that approach of we'd, we'd have a blank canvas in the studio and we'd set up. We'd have a production meeting about how we wanted the drums to sound, whether there was gonna be two drum kits.
[00:13:31] Brino: Cause they often did two drummers. Yeah. What kind of guitar sounds, what kind of fear are we wanting for the song? And then we would set up around that and they would come out with crazy ideas like in each sound, like a thousand slaves dragging a statue across a, you know, gravel or whatever. And we'd actually go and find an old plow and we'd drag it across the stones in Rockford's courtyard.
[00:13:52] Brino: Or I remember once it was like, we need a really. Weird chewy echoy drum sound on this. It's gotta sound really kind of weird and a bit muffled. So I didn't mic up the drums. I micd up the drum cases, which was all kind of sat around the drums. Yeah. So I put them near kind of one near the bass drum, one near the snare One one in kind of stereo position, either side of the kit and the, yeah.
[00:14:15] Brino: So how we worked on well, album three, which is the second album proper, if you count the first Three Peas is the first album then It was album three. Yeah, so we'd have a reason. Well, the reason they were kind of so creative and kind of, it was a bit different and exciting. They just worked differently really.
[00:14:34] Brino: So what we would do is we'd have a production meeting on how we wanted the track to go. So the studio's a blank canvas at this point. Whether we do the drums outside, whether we do them in a cupboard, whether we do 'em in the drum room, in the dead room whether there'd be two drummers, three drummers, you know, what, what was gonna be on there, what kind of samples, what kind of feel it would have.
[00:14:53] Brino: And that would be the production meeting, basically building a picture up of how the track was gonna be. And then once that was decided, we'd go about setting up. . And we might have decided that, you know, the drum should be outside and we'd set up outside, blah, blah, blah. Or they might say the drums need to sound really hollow and like they're kind of muffled.
[00:15:12] Brino: So what, what I did once, rather than just putting the OT towels on and putting 'em in a dead room, I put 'em in the big drum room. And then instead of micing up with the drums, I put the drum cases, which were kind of all scattered around the the drum kit. I kind of put one in front of the bass drum, one underneath the snare, two, either side in lack of stereo, and I put the mics inside the drum kit.
[00:15:34] Brino: so that they were kind of in front of the instruments roughly, but they was in inside drum kits to try and get that really kind of muffled muffled sound. It was just, just something unique really. Cuz they were all about creating their own unique sounds and their own unique samples rather than just using samples, just create them.
[00:15:51] Brino: And then I had this idea that I, I could push the pool table that was in the big drum room there at Rockfield, in the quadrangle in front of the drum kit. So literally pushed it right in front of the bass drum. And my idea was that the, especially the bass drum would shoot up the, the hole where the, you know, the whiteboard would come out.
[00:16:11] Brino: and I micd up all the pockets with 50 sevens. So I guess six 50 sevens on the pockets. And my idea was that you'd get some kind of flutter echoes and some kind of weird kind of hollow kind of ambient kind of reflections in there. And it worked amazing so that with mixed with the, the drum mics, inside drum cases And the pool table micd up, pushed in front of the kit these six 50 sevens.
[00:16:37] Brino: And then I had a stereo ambience in the room as well, 80 sevens just to capture that room of, of his actual kit. Yeah. And that was, that was the, I can't remember which song it was on The Heroes, the series, but that was the drum sound for that song. So we, you know, it was about creating these unique sounds.
[00:16:52] Brino: So it was like real, really taxing cuz it was like, We couldn't just pull sounds off the internet or from sound libraries or anything. It was how can we create this, you know, the sound of dragging something a, a big rock across the stones, you know, getting a plow and recording that and recording it like 80 times or whatever so we could really build it up.
[00:17:11] Brino: So it sounded like a thousand slaves, you know, is so yeah, really interesting and, and as an engineer, like demanding, but. really interesting to do and so we would do now get, get the backing track done then, and all the guitars and the bass and the kind of guy vocal and everything. The backing track would be done.
[00:17:28] Brino: That would be day one. And then we'd go into day two, which would be overdubs. And they had this way of working where they would go off to their own little stations. So I guess it's like working. Nowadays we work remotely, so someone's in America working on guitars. Someone's in Jo Island, say, doing the bass.
[00:17:44] Brino: I'm doing the mixing everything production in Spain or wherever in or in Wales. So it's kinda like that they'd be off in their own little part of the studio and they'd have their own workstation, which involved I think maybe a little inbox or something back in them days. If it was even that then, and they'd have their own, their aai samplers.
[00:18:00] Brino: They'd have record decks, they'd have cassette decks. They'd have their instruments. So. I like Robin would've like his trumpets around and they all played a lot of instruments so that they would've all these instruments around and percussion and they'd sit and work on the track individually, not really knowing what the other person was doing apart from stuff that we discussed in the production meeting, which I found amazing that they put in parts down not knowing what the other guys putting on it, and they'd be samples from old films that they were famous for and their kind of beats and stuff would come.
[00:18:29] Brino: So they'd all have the track that we recorded the day before on their Yeah. On their computers. And then they'd just be over dubb into it and layer it in. And then what they would do is bring it into me, which became known as the hub. So I was the central hub in the studio. They'd bring all their parts in and I'd have to kind of make 'em work together.
[00:18:45] Brino: And it would kind of be like the first time they were each hearing what they'd done on top of this track. So the buzz was like, what has he done? What's he, you know, what's John put on this? What are we gonna get here? Distorted bass coming in and then extra drum things coming in and Sam f all records. And it is amazing just making it work really creative.
[00:19:02] Brino: So guests kind of like working remotely now, although people tend to know a bit more about what each other's doing. And they'd bring it in and I'd kind of make it all work and we'd kind of slot it all in, figure out together what worked and what didn't. Maybe redo some bits and then we'd get the vocals down.
[00:19:19] Brino: Steve would lay loads of harmonies and we'd work on effects and. , and then that would be the song recorded after the end of day two. All high five, all have pints, go around the pub, whatever we did. And then drive across golf courses And then, and then and then day three would, we'd mix it. So we'd spend the day mix and they'd sit with me for a while, then I'd, they'd go off maybe to the pub or whatever and sit in the other room and then I'd carry on and they'd come back in the evening.
[00:19:46] Brino: We'd kind of finish the mix off together. Really holding on it. And that was. Finished. Yeah. Day three. So you, you just created this piece of art from start to finish. The pre-production, the backing track, the overdubs, the mix, and that was it. That song then is then put out of your mind. It's gone. and we break the studio down.
[00:20:07] Brino: It's not like we leave everything set up to so we can, everything had to be different. So the studio would get packed down. It's a blank canvas again. We'd start again, production meeting, and exactly the same method for the next song and build that track. And you're only ever thinking about one song at a time, which is really nice as a producer and engineer.
[00:20:23] Brino: Yeah. and you really get any unique kind of sound. Some people say, ah, but it's nice to have a thread on the album where it's the same drum sound or it's the same guitar sound. But that wasn't, that wasn't them. They were all about each treating each song individually as a separate piece of art. But because they had such a unique way of doing things and individually their personalities always came across on records, I still think that their albums have a thread and like a common theme and.
[00:20:49] Brino: they don't sound disjointed. They sound like a body of work because they're so in, they have these strong personalities and that sound and the way they do things and the grooves that they use, like using the MPC 66% swing, which is a kind of a classic beat band thing, which is still used today actually.
[00:21:06] Brino: Yeah. Is that where it came from? Shows you that? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, so they had that and then they had that strong identity anyway, so then we do two songs of three days. The first song, three days, the second. Saturday night, everyone out the pub levered Sunday hangover chill out, day off Monday morning, start again, until we did the album in three days of track loop doing like that.
[00:21:27] Brino: And I loved doing like that.
[00:21:28] Jon Con: So how long, so was that, would that sticking to kind of like the four to six
[00:21:31] Brino: week rule? Yeah. Too far. Yeah. Yeah. So we are weak for, to do two songs. . So, you know, we'd do like, you know, 12, 14 songs or whatever on the album. So yeah, six, seven weeks. Okay. And then obviously it would there might be a couple of days booked then to just do mix changes.
[00:21:47] Brino: Cause obviously you didn't, you didn't have studios at home and then, so you'd have to go into a studio and just do a couple days of mix changes and that was it. Really creative. Yeah. Really, really interesting band to work with. And was that
[00:21:58] Jon Con: all like laid down to tape or was that like, was this
[00:22:00] Brino: kind of at the start of that pro process?
[00:22:02] Brino: That was the kind, that was the start of it. Yeah. That was the start of it. It was I remember that with that one. It was back in the day where protos wasn't really integrated into the studio yet. I still think they might have been hiring machines in at that point. Cause I remember I was sat on a tall stool with the keyboard and the screen on top of the tall flight case.
[00:22:21] Brino: It wasn't even on a desk. Yeah. There was nowhere to put it anywhere else. So I'm sat up high working on this on this. I think it was pretty a rental rig actually. Right. So yeah. Very early days of pro tours at Rock. . Yeah.
[00:22:33] Jon Con: And were you doing anything to tape at that point or was
[00:22:35] it
[00:22:35] Brino: just literally, yeah, we would do stuff to tape and we'd do some backwards stuff to tape and we'd do tape phase.
[00:22:40] Brino: So I'd line up the two machines and they wanted to symbols to phase again with them, rather than putting the AMS over it or something like that. We would actually create the tape phase. So I'd get the two machines go in and I'd literally slow 'em down my hands and get the tape of the symbol phase going on the drums or on the vocals, whatever we were.
[00:22:56] Jon Con: And I suppose like what worked for that album then was like the structure instead of saying, right, we're gonna do a production meeting, we're gonna do the body of the track, do the overdubs in like, you know, two songs a week. Yeah. So what if we just went back to the next album? Where in Scotland was that structure there?
[00:23:10] Jon Con: Or was it, let's just record sounds and
[00:23:13] Brino: there was no structure whatsoever. , no structure whatsoever to, to that, that was just record sounds and atmospheric album. I think maybe the label had been forcing them. into trying to make a guitar records on their, on their second album and stuff and be more commercial.
[00:23:29] Brino: That wasn't what they were about. So maybe there was a slight protest in that. I don't know. Or whether they wanted to make something completely anti that. . Mm. It really didn't go down well with the label whatsoever. There's kind of artist power, and I don't think at the time they thought they had power and could do what the hell they wanted to.
[00:23:48] Brino: I don't think that was it. I think it was just, let's, let's, we've got this budget to make this album. Let's go and see what happens. Let's do something completely out there in typical beat band fashion. Let's do something mind blowing. And also a, a, a, you know, it's bonding thing. We're up in these mountains, staying in these cabins overlooking the summer aisles.
[00:24:06] Brino: Amazing. On a beach. and like drinking in the local pubs and it's right in the middle of nowhere. And it was, yeah, loads of, loads of shit went on. Loads of crazy, crazy, crazy antics went on. So we had a great time. So the camaraderie and the kind of bonding thing was good. I dunno. Yeah. Trying, we had so many hours and hours and hours of footage and and atmosphere and music and, you know, pushing cars off cliffs and recording that and just craziness to try and, I mean, would've taken weeks and weeks and weeks and we would've lost our minds if we tried to put it into an album.
[00:24:44] Brino: Yeah.
[00:24:44] Jon Con: How do you mic up a car
[00:24:45] Brino: being pushed off a cliff? Right. So what happens here is the, the so the, the technical method of this is find, find a young Welsh person called Bri. Get him to have two portable dat players with belt clips either side on his belt and two Sony stereo microphones. Into said that players send.
[00:25:10] Brino: So drive along the Scottish countryside in the middle of nowhere until you find an old car on top of a cliff. Then make, make brio, climb down the cliff into the sea and stand on rocks. the bottom of the cliff. , no help for safety here. We weren't working for the bbc, so , so we, we kind of got this track right and we'd been.
[00:25:36] Brino: Working on it. And it was where we were doing like pebbles and barrels on a beach and it kind of builds up and there was car door, car windows going up and down for the rhythm. We'd recorded that going along and stuff like this. And this, this track had a big crescendo. and we were kind of like, ah, you know, in, like in Day of Life when the it builds and builds and then 5 million pianos do a note at the end.
[00:25:57] Brino: Well, what happens if ours weren't five pianos? What happens if our crescendo finished with the crash of a car being pushed off a cliff and hitting rocks in the sea? Everyone was like, brilliant. And I was like, brilliant. Until I realized, yeah, I'd have to record it. See, I, I find a way down. I'm literal. I mean, it's a wild, wild, wild ocean.
[00:26:17] Brino: There's like 30 foot waves crashing these rocks on this cliff face, and I found these, like walked out a bit into these, into the middle of the sea. I'm standing on these rocks and I'm looking up and they're all up there, thumbs up, like laughing, laughing their heads off cuz they're like, He's actually down there doing this and I'm thinking one big wave and I'm gone.
[00:26:38] Brino: I'm swept off, you know? Yeah. And they're just shouting. Don't go in, don't go in. You'll lose all the great stuff we've recorded today. Don't go in cuz adapts will be ruined. So yeah. Tell me about your life. Yeah. The adapts will be swept away. They'll end up in you know, in America at some point. But yeah, so I'm there and they're pushing off and I'm standing there just holding these two mics in the air like this and thinking this is the worst idea we've ever.
[00:27:03] Brino: And they're pushing it. At first it just wouldn't, bud. It'd obviously been there while it was all rested. This car first it didn't budge and then all of a sudden it got a bit of gi give a bit of momentum and they're kind of like going with it. And at first I thought they were gonna go over the cliff with it cuz it just flew.
[00:27:19] Brino: And then there's that silence of when. The car's just in mid-air. That's so, and I'm thinking like, is this just gonna explode into a million pieces and hit me in the face, you know? Cause I'm not that far away from it. But didn't it just hit the rocks and just went into smoother rain and obviously met with loads of cheers and high fires from a, from the top of the cliff.
[00:27:41] Brino: And yeah, that was, that I had, I had to climb. Got it. Listened back to it. Check. We had it. We had it. It was amazing with the sounds of the waves and the rocks and everything in the background. And then the wass, it came off and then the big crash. So yeah, goodnight was had that night. I think we paid 50 quid each for a shot of whiskey in the local pub.
[00:27:59] Brino: Just to celebrate.
[00:28:00] Jon Con: I know that obviously that the album wasn't, you know, like when it comes to mixing it, you said that it wasn't well received by the label. Did that album ever come out? Did anything
[00:28:08] Brino: ever happen with those recordings? No. I imagine they've, they've got themselves a library of samples and sounds that they've probably integrated into their music since, you know.
[00:28:17] Brino: Yeah. But they weren't on the label after that. I didn't work with him again. , so. The label. The label or the band. But now we stayed friends and we had a great time. We had some great times. Yeah. This is amazing. Oh, January sounds like Yeah. Brilliant, amazing guys. Amazing band to work with. Happy memories.
[00:28:36] Brino: Great, great memories. Yeah. But yeah, so that kind of leads
[00:28:39] Jon Con: on a little bit then obviously to working with Teenage Band Club. My right in thinking you came in on howdy. Yeah. Two thousands. Yeah. So they then obviously like grand Prix songs from Northern Britain. Yeah. You love that band. Was it at that point?
[00:28:58] Jon Con: I think they'd been produced previously and they were, they were, I think they accredited as producers in your engineering.
[00:29:04] Brino: Yes. Yeah. So they brought me in as an engineer. I'd met them already. I, so I, I knew them. They were creation band. So yeah. Our path had crossed The meantime, our pass crossed was at Air Studios when they came in to listen to the playback of Be here now and we're pinned to the back war by the deafening PA and Liam singing the entire album this far away from their faces.
[00:29:27] Brino: absolutely Trolleyed. I can't remember who was there. I, me, Liam. For me, maybe Brian Cannon, I think, I'm not sure. And Teenage Fan Club just sat at the back of the room. Liam screaming at them, you know, you are the be, you are the second best band in the world, you guys and all. So yeah, I'd met them so I'd knew them and then they'd wanted to go to Rockfield and then they obviously knew about me working with Creation and met them up there and yeah, was brought in to do, to do the album and I love that band and start of a very, very long friendship and another amazing band to.
[00:29:57] Brino: Talented guys, lovely guys, great. Loved the way they work, their creativeness, their harmonies, the the sounds they get at. Raymond's, a fantastic producer, engineer as well. Yeah, we buzzed and we got to go to some amazing studios. Got to obviously used Rock Field for Steph. But we went around London, we went up to studios in Glasgow with them.
[00:30:19] Brino: We called it in Raymond's house. We went to Dave Gilmore's Bar. On the Thames did some stuff there. Yeah. And it was great. And obviously that was the last record on creation. They'd gone to Sony at that point, but Alan McGee used to come in so new, Alan and he'd come in and was like, he loves that band.
[00:30:39] Brino: Obviously cause he signed them, but yeah, one of his favorite bands. Brilliant times with em guys met loads of amazing people, made some great records, but How was the first one? Yeah, which was really well received as well.
[00:30:49] Jon Con: Yeah. So this is obviously like, I think it's about 2000. Yeah. At this point, I think Darkness Little bit way after then, like, you, you do the second album with the Darkness in Rockfield as well.
[00:31:05] Brino: Yeah, a few. That was a few years later, like a few years after that. So there's a couple more teenage fan cla fan club bits in there. But yeah, that was the kind of for music that period, that transition, that 2000 and. when the industry really, really changed cuz of the onset of digital and downloads and yeah, ster Pro tools coming into every studio, the industry changed.
[00:31:27] Brino: The studios like Rockford really suffered massive dip in in business. People looking to do other things, other forms of income, revenue streams obviously. I think we touched on it before, what we went from having a producer, an engineer programmer, and a assistant to one guy to do all those jobs, all of a sudden with an assistant, maybe if you were lucky on, on the same budget as you were getting before.
[00:31:52] Brino: So now you were doing four people's jobs for the same money as when you just doing one job. So the industry really changed around that. . Yeah. Lots of album. Those six week sessions just stopped. Bands would come in, they'd just maybe come and just do the drums or the backing tracks they'd be in just for a few days.
[00:32:09] Brino: Those six, all of a sudden, those long sessions where you could guarantee a nice long income, you knew you were working on this album for 6, 8, 10, 12 weeks. They were kind of not happening really. Yeah, that was for a period of like five years until I got the call from Roy Thomas. And Dan actually from the Darkness to would I like to be the engineer on their second album, obviously they'd gone massive and at the time, biggest Rock band in, in, in the World and massive singles.
[00:32:38] Brino: And yeah, it was time for album two, which they decided to use Roy and. Obviously they, it's well known. They love Queen and there's a big queen
[00:32:45] Jon Con: influencer. Okay, so cool. Thanks very much for watching episode two. Hope you really like this podcast. What we'd really appreciate is, is any feedback. If there's any comments or questions you have for us, you can drop us an [email protected] or leave us a comment on the YouTube channel.
[00:33:01] Jon Con: If you're watching this, then we do have a community that we're opening up shortly for a very, very small subs. Per month, which you can access just by heading over to session recall.com and there'll be some information on the website there for you. The next episode kind of carries on from where we are today and is covering more about like a next time in
[00:33:21] Brino: Norfolk.
[00:33:22] Brino: And obviously like Time at Leaders
[00:33:24] Jon Con: Farm, the, we've got a few episodes coming up now, but if you have any questions or suggestions for content, please just drop us an email, as I've already said. But thanks again for watching. Give us a like to subscribe and I'll see you all again.
