PRODUCER INTERVIEW

Mike Spencer

Interview with Mike Spencer, producer 3rd March 2006

For this issue of MILC we sat down with Mike Spencer, producer/engineer for everything from Kylie to Badmarsh & Shri, Jamiroquai to the World Food Programme.

In short, Mike does not have a usual CV. His work merrily encompasses chart-friendly pop and four-corners-of-the-world obscure, along with all stations in between. To pick an example at random, he's recently returned from Israel with critically acclaimed Klesma/world beat/fusion outfit Oi Va Voi, before that he was working on tracks for Sophie Ellis Bexter and before that he spent 9 months secreted in a country house with none other than Mr J Kay of Jamiroquai, recording, engineering and mixing his latest mega-selling album, Dynamite.

Mike's been based in a programming room at Miloco since last summer and as I walk in the air is alive with exotic strings, churning rhythms and spangly guitars - the initial mixes of Oi Va Voi's second album:





MS: "This has been a great project. We went over to Israel to, basically, absorb the flavours of the place. We visited Jerusalem, Tel Aviv and the West Bank. It was a great experience. I wanted to gain a greater understanding of the region and working with musicians is a great way of doing just that. The studios we worked in were fully spec'd up with HD Protools, and the musicianship is out of this world. We went primarily to record Arabic strings and, for the money we were paying...well back here a budget string section comprises two random violin players and a geography teacher.

...Due to diary commitments we possibly went on the trip a little early in the process - it was right at the beginning and the songs weren't really arranged. However, I think it adds to the feel of the recordings. It's such lively, organic material and that really comes across. So while we were flying by the seat of our pants quite a lot we did end up with some wonderful performances."

MILC: So you've now got the job of pasting all these performances together?

MS: "Well, yes. The songs are certainly there, but because we recorded so much, so early everything is pulling in different directions. Which isn't to say they're not all great musicians - because they are - but it's such a complex and rich sound that getting it to come across on the recording is sometimes quite a challenge. There's just so much going on and you have to get the feel and dynamics of the piece right or it just doesn't hang together. And, for example, on the tune that's playing now, there are three different string sections coming and going - now that's either cool or chaos. If chaos is what we want, it's my job to make it sound intentional."

MILC: I couldn't help but notice our floor regularly reverberates to segments of music on seemingly endless loop [Mike's studio is directly below the office]. This must be a pretty intense way to work...

MS: "I will happily loop round one bar endlessly. It's all to do with the song narrative. Somewhere a tune falls down and you can diagnose all sorts of problems on a macro level by zoning in on this point. I used to work the other way round. The last four bars of the middle eight were fabulous but the whole song was crap. I enjoy the diagnostics - the forensic detail, the physics of it all."

MILC: And you find that you're able to concentrate on these endlessly rotating snippets without going, well, bonkers?

MS: "No... I generally feel fairly deranged at the end of most days"

"MILC: This process must be made immeasurably easier with the range of tools that are now available thanks to technological advances...

MS: "It's certainly a lot more convenient nowadays, yeah, it's opened up a lot of possibilities...but I listen to records now and sometimes wonder what the hell people out there are doing - songs on the radio that sound shocking. I do my best to avoid that stepped digitised sound that's ever present in contemporary production. Sometimes though, when I'm part way through a mix, I'll realise that all I can hear are the ones and zeros - that I'm suddenly acutely aware of all the processing involved with every sound, some terrible Matrix-like awareness. It just screams out from every sound I'm hearing. Which generally means it's time to go home.

MILC: Which of the projects you've been involved in are you most proud?

"I think possibly the Badmarsh and Shri album I did ['Signs', Outcaste label, 2001] - that was a wonderful project. I really felt that it captured a moment and was very much a record of and about its time - a record that needed to be made. The music, though not overtly political, was certainly politicised - it was made by people, some very religious, who are very actively interested in the world and its machinations. We recorded it in 2000/2001 and were re-mixing the second single on Sept 11th 2001. That was an important moment to be creating a record of that kind. I think it encapsulated the period perfectly, yet has some very reflective, gentle moments.

But I'm also very proud of the last project I did with Jamiroquai [Dynamite, Sony BMG, 2005]. It was great to have a genuinely proper budget, a full scale budget, and to be in a position to be able to record everything exactly how I believed, in an ideal world, it should be done. Jay is not driven by market forces. We turned off the radio and the T.V shut the door and went about making a record. That's a great opportunity for any producer, not to be saddled by what the new lick is and being forced by nervous A&R to chase the dragon."

MILC: And meanwhile - a world away from the luxuries of big-budgets and endless takes - I know you've also spent numerous months over recent years uncovering native music and musicians in Cambodia, Sudan and Mozambique on behalf of the World Food Programme...

MS: Yes, they wanted to make a series of 'infomercials' to highlight various worldwide pressure points that the UN were involved in - to raise awareness. The finished pieces then traveled the world playing to audiences of the great and the good and were run internationally as straight forward commercials

...I was brought on to do the sound-scapes for them, and initially they said that they'd go off and get the raw materials and send it all back to me to piece together, but I said ' I'm coming too!' So I went out as part of a small documentary team. When we were in the field I would just disappear and record what I wanted. It was such an education - a lesson in what music means in different cultures and to people living wholly different lives. And if you work for too long in a sales-based environment where music is a shopping habit, you forget that for some people music is the perpetuation of folklore and a means of communication - the original campfire - and, of course, it's free. I've recorded people still singing in the most horrendous conditions and I believe that social and spiritual engine is in us all.

It wasn't all higher learning though, I was held at gunpoint in The Sudan. If you're standing there with a load of gear and a fluffy mike on a boom you're gonna attract a certain amount of attention."

MILC: So how would you explain these apparently disparate interests - the full-blown pop vs. exotic places and less commercially-viable projects?

MS: "Well the thing is I enjoy both immensely. It's true that in some ways one allows me to explore the other - gives me the time and resources to be able to indulge myself as it were - but I don't think they're that different either. Music is music and each one informs the other; it all adds to the sum of your knowledge and can be brought to bear elsewhere at a later date. And fundamentally I think I need that variety. I can't imagine what it must be like to work on similar-sounding projects over and over again."

MILC: Yet you've been at the desk for some extraordinarily popular records...

"I enjoy the variety. It's good to have your records out there being played to wide audience; I like having successful records and hearing my stuff on the radio. So, while it's important to do things you believe in and that interest you and keep you inspired and learning, I think it's also vital to know that at some level (perhaps via the other things you do) that your work is popular and successful too."

...MILC: How are you enjoying being at Miloco?

"It's great being a part of things here at Miloco - I was at The Roundhouse before and after a while that changed...

(I used to be in Definition of Sound, and the Roundhouse was our studio. In fact that was how I got started in production, because when we were dropped the only asset I had was the studio and I knew that if it went then I'd be gone too.)

...But the thing with Roundhouse and was they ended up getting rid of the main studio space. They started letting the whole place out to long-term clients, and that kind of sucked the soul out of the place; everyone in their separate rooms, with their head down, getting on with their own projects. So it's good being here in amongst a working studio, with different people coming and going. There's a shared purpose and it gives so much more life to the place. I think that's very important and it's good for everyone connected with the place. That creativity and lifeblood is important and healthy for everyone involved."

MILC: So what's next?

MS: "Well I'm finished on this [Oi Va Voi] for the time being at the end of this week and then I'm on something entirely different for the ncxt two months - I can't say what as yet, cos it's yet to be finalised - and then I'll come back to this and we'll hopefully be ready to finish the whole thing off. And after that? Well, your guess is as good as mine..."



Mike Spencer was talking to MILC in March 2006 © MILC@Miloco 2006

For further information on Mike go to www.mikespencer.co.uk