FYI.

This story is over 5 years old.

You Need to Hear This

Studio Masters: New Build

Electronic pioneers New Build let us come and poke around their studio. They even let us have a go.

Halve Hot Chip and add an incredibly clued-up studio technician and you’ve got New Build. Made up of Felix Martin and Al Doyle from Hot Chip and electronic composer Tom Hopkins, they’ve already released their analogue electronica debut, Yesterday was Loved and Lost, and are in the midst of writing a follow-up.

Recorded in their very own Lanark Studios, New Build’s debut is a multi instrumental record with a heavy reliance on unusual studio techniques and experimentation. So they’re pretty relaxed when I start pushing buttons and pulling levers.

Annons

Located just off Brick Lane, the studio is hidden at the back of a fairly unassuming warehouse. It’s hardly Abbey Road - the first thing they do when I arrive is start emptying a bucket of water that catches the overspill from a hole in the ceiling – but they’ve learnt to love its run down ways.

“When we came into this room it was in such bad disrepair that we were just like fuck it,” says Felix? “We blocked off the room that leaks and forgot about it”.

Impressively, these shabby surroundings have seen musical BNOCs like James Murphy and Caribou take up residence. The set up here is bespoke and inimitable, and I feel like a total n00b when they show me round it.

Keyboards

“Our two keyboards are both polyphonic keyboards. One is like a newer version of the other, and are both made by a guy called Dave Smith from San Francisco, who I (Felix) really like. This older one, called a Prophet 5, was on a lot of old 80s records and I actually bought it from someone from the BBC. It was in the BBC symphony orchestra in the 80s. I was kind of obsessed with it, so I went and bought another that’s exactly the same, which was used in Cats the musical for ages. There’s something a bit wrong with both of them, because they’re about 30 years old. They’re basically the same age as us. It was one of the first keyboards that you could save sounds on which meant you had access to about 10 at a time and could switch between them. That was quite a mind blowing thing for a musician.”

Annons

Moogs

Their synths are plonked on top of each other. The one on the bottom looks like something you might hang towels on. “These are both modern keyboards. The bottom one is called a Taurus, it’s meant to be a bass instrument. It’s like an organ, like playing the bass with your feet. We’ve put it on a stand, just to be different. The top one is called a Voyager, and it’s really cool, we use it when we play live. It’s good for bass, and we use them in Hot Chip. They’re very heavy- one of those inside a case weighs about 30kg. About 80% of rock n roll is moving stuff about, and trying not to break your toes.”

Joe Goddard’s Cwejman

This synthesiser (lovingly nicknamed the cwej) has been on long loan from Joe Goddard. Tom and Felix spend a bit of time trying to turn it on, which I forget they’re doing until it screams into life 5 minutes later. It’s pretty fucking loud and a tad screechy, but when used correctly it sounds a bit like this (yeah a recording would be good)

Car Park Simulator

“That thing is called a reverb unit and it's made by a company called Bricasti. We use it to create artificial reverb, which you can treat sounds with to make them appear to be in different spaces - for example, an underground car park, a small room, a forest or a concert hall. It adds a lot of atmosphere to recordings and this particular unit has a very beautiful sound”. They let me play with this myself for a bit, which was pretty cool.

Thanks New Build!

Follow Tamara on Twitter @tamararoper