Jon Byrne

I’m in Analogue Cat, my favourite studio, recording Jon Byrne, who, in my humble opinion is Britain’s most exciting young folk singer. I’m here co producing his debut EP with Rob Ferrier, we haven’t worked together for a couple of years but it doesn’t take us long to get in the swing boys…as Clinic once so aptly said. You may well already know that Rob produced the first Clinic album which set them on the dizzy road to an appearance on The Letterman Show and most recently supports with Radiohead and The Arcade Fire. I’m still miffed that I missed their recent show at the local Arena, and to think we could have blagged a guest list place if we’d been more organised. The studio is situated in Mossley, top Mossley to be precise and we have the luxury of overnight accommodation in this wonderful old Victorian manor house. It’s a traditional old school basement recording set up, two inch tape and there’s no computer. We chose it accordingly with Jon in mind. Mike [Joyce] plays drums on day one on a couple of the songs and we nail everything by early evening, still always a bit messy on the first day with Rob and Jools [studio owner and session engineer] spending forever sorting out the mics. I get into a conversation with Julie on the merits of the 414 but pretty soon I’m lost in my technical ignorance and leave the setting up bit to Rob who’s more microphone savvy than I’ll ever be. German mics, Australian mics, Russian mics, American mics…hmm, now where were we. Mike, John and I run through some beat options. The term Folk-Glam emerges which sort of sums up the mood we’re after, stomping floor toms and long cymbal splashes that sustain seemingly forever…it’s a great sounding live room. Jon and Mike play to click; later we record more guides for the other songs and Jon performs a truly haunting version of his song ‘Child Killer’ which leaves us all kind of breathless. It’s very powerful song, intended as a guide but Rob and I discuss it later and we’re both thinking it was so much more than that; listening back the next day and realise we have the take. Then we add bass, more acoustic guitars and get a few more vocals out of Jon which we comp later that night. In the morning we wonder into town and are delighted to discover the E-Mouse brik a brack emporium. Rob bought some tools for his Blacksmith forge, the one he’s recently built in his garage. I bought a little yellow ashtray with a sailor on it. Not sure quite what that says about our respective personas but should you feel the need you can draw your own conclusions. We leave the studio around midnight on day three having added some final guitars and organ. If the mixing runs as smoothly as the tracking we’ll be laughing. More on this to follow, VP x