Daniel Miller has been a figurehead of cutting edge music since he released his first single, "Warm Leatherette," as The Normal in 1978. The rise of his label, Mute Records, soon followed, with a roster including Depeche Mode, Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, Erasure, Moby, Zola Jesus, Goldfrapp, Arca, CAN, and many others. Daniel's Studio Mute opened this year at the Mute headquarters in Hammersmith, west London as a writing, recording, mixing and mastering space, featuring an SSL Matrix console and (of course) a selection of vintage analogue synths and drum machines.
If you were to start Mute today, would you approach things differently than you did in the '70s?
The way it started, probably not. Back then, in my bedroom, I had a 4-track tape recorder, a cheap synth, and I made the record. Now I'd probably have a laptop. I got it [my record] pressed and I went to a few stores to see if they were interested in it. Rough Trade said they'd like to distribute it, and so I got a distribution deal. Of course, now it would be a bit different. I'd still probably want to do a physical 7-inch, but then I would still have all of the digital opportunities as well. But that's just a distribution thing... there's nothing fundamentally different. In those days, you used to do five promo copies for the UK. One each for Melody Maker, Sound, NME [New Musical Express], Record Mirror, and John Peel. They were the only people in the world who had any impact, in my opinion. You could pretty much cover the country with those.
You later spent a lot of time recording in Berlin. What drew you there?
First of all, it was more fun. If you compare Berlin to London back in the early '80s, it was very strict. [In London] everything closes at 11 o'clock. If you're in the studio at a quarter to 11 and you'd like to get a drink, you basically have 15 minutes to get out to a pub and have a pint. Working in a studio isn't a normal life, but it's nice to have some element of normality. Berlin was, and is, a 24-hour city, so you could always go out somewhere and have a relaxed drink. Plus there was an amazing scene going on there. There were a couple of studios, but the one we used 90 percent of the time was Hansa Studios, which was right next to the Berlin Wall. We were working on an album called Construction Time Again with Depeche Mode. The engineer we were working with, Gareth Jones, was in the process of moving to Berlin and he started using Hansa's mix room. It was probably the most high tech studio I'd ever seen, up to that point. It had a huge SSL [console], and incredible outboard; [both] traditional and (what was then) modern digital technology. It was cutting edge. We liked really big control rooms in those days, because we wanted to set up all the synthesizers in the control room. We did three Depeche Mode albums there. Studio Two was a big dancehall; like a little ballroom. There were lots of ways of using that room. It became very famous for a certain kind of epic sound. The first band I worked with who used that studio was Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds.
Did you bring synthesizers with you or did they have them there?
We brought everything with us. There were a couple of guys who worked for Mute, Paul Kendall — who ran our studio and was a producer in his own right — and David Simmonds — who used to be the keyboard player with Fad Gadget. They used to bring it over [in a van] and set it all up. We had a Synclavier, an ARP 2600, a [Roland] System 100M, and Emulators. In those days West Berlin was in the middle of East Germany, so you had to go through East Germany to get there. There was a road called The Corridor, and it was a couple of hours drive from West Germany. At one point they were in very bad weather, took a wrong turn somehow, and ended up in East Germany with all of these guards trying to figure out what this electronic music equipment was! [laughs]
What is your approach to giving artists the resources to make the best record possible?
It's very artist dependent. The recording process has changed so much in the last ten years, beyond recognition with the cost structure and so forth. We're a small label, so we want to make sure the artist has the right tools to do the job, whatever those tools happen to be. If it happens to be that they need to be in a studio with a great live room, because they're a live band and it's important, then so be it. If it's one guy on his own with a laptop, then I make sure he's got a room that's soundproof. Record sales and recording budgets are down, so we have to cut our cloth. But we have our own studio [Studio Mute], which is very helpful. We look at what they need, and then we ask how we can best allocate the budget we have for this artist.
How does Studio Mute get used?
The first six months of its existence were pretty much taken up by people doing film scores and contemporary classical music, which was not what we expected. Sometimes it's [used for] a whole project, or sometimes only mixing a project. We just finished an album by Beth Jeans Houghton, and a lot of it was done there. The main recording was done in another studio, but all the overdubs and a lot of the mixing were done [at Studio Mute]. I quite often go down and do single edits and tweaks, plus a lot of stem tweaks. Some of the guys come in and spend a few days sampling the analog synths. It's a whole mixture of things. We're in the process of physically moving the studio. It was located across the road from where the office is. It's very important for me that we've always had a studio that's either in the office, or within a [short] walk. Unfortunately our lease ran out, and we were priced out. As we speak, it's being rebuilt downstairs in our office. It's going to be very functional; we just won't have quite as much of a live room. I'm excited about the fact that it's actually going to be in the building now. One of the things I like when it is in the building is that it brings the artist and the label closer together, which is important. Everybody feels like part of the group.
Do you see any advantage to using presets or sound libraries when creating electronic music?
Presets have a role if you're making certain types of commercial things that are very time sensitive. I can see why presets are useful for that. But for recording artists making records, it's a different thing. One of the important things about electronic music is creating your own sounds from scratch. In theory, I think people should build their own synthesizers. It's very easy, especially now with endless sample libraries and presets. You can cobble something together really quickly and easily. It'll sound good on a certain level, but it may not be very individualistic. With analog synths, the most important thing is that it's your sound; even if the sound isn't technically as good as something you get from a preset or library. Bob Dylan isn't the greatest guitarist, but he has a sound. Jimi Hendrix was one of the greatest guitarists, and he had his own sound! [laughs]
It's another level of identity.
That's right. It doesn't have to be technically good all the time. It just has to be an expression of your personality. If people learn how to make their own sounds using electronic instruments, they're much more likely to achieve their aims than by going through endless sounds. There's nothing more soul destroying than going through endless bass sounds, or kick drums, or whatever. It's so boring, unproductive, and uncreative. It's like you start to glaze over and you can't hear. You've lost all sense of what sounds good and what doesn't sound good.
Did the concept of things not being technically perfect come from your appreciation of punk?
It's partly that. Just before punk started, everything had become technically amazingly good. Polished, from a sonic point of view, or virtuosic, from a performance point of view; but actually very boring to me — and to a whole generation of kids who were influenced by punk. I don't think about it specifically, but it's not about being technically perfect. It's about expressing yourself in a way that's interesting. Of course you'd like to get a nice sound, but not at the cost of losing the personality. Just do what you do; don't worry if it's not the most incredible sounding kick you've ever heard, as long as it fits into what you want it to be. Make it your own. The other thing I think is very important, especially with digital technology for recording, is to set yourself [up with] some kind of guidelines about what you're going to do. People end up with these ridiculous sessions, which become unmanageable. One can get lost. I have zero nostalgia for using tape in the studio. I thought it was a complete pain in the ass, and I thought it stopped the flow of the creative process. The one thing that was good was the workflow of tape, where you really have to make decisions. I'm one of the people who are really bad at making decisions in the studio, so I like the discipline of tape because it forced me into making decisions. To impose a bit of that in the digital recording process is a good idea.
Do you see any correlation between DJing and your approach to running a label?
I suppose there's a curatorial aspect to both of them. They're very different functions, but there's a curatorial process. You have to make choices. There are four million tracks on [the online music store] Beatport, and you have to choose 40 for a set. I DJ music I like to DJ, but I think Mute, in a genre sense, is quite diverse, and the DJ set I do is not diverse at all. I've set myself very strict parameters. It's techno; partly because I love the genre [and because] I think there are some really great artists out there. I also think it's good to have some guidelines with all that choice, so I've made them as strict as possible. I try to work within those and still be creative. I enjoy that kind of discipline.
Did that come about after DJing for a while, or was it something you knew from the start?
I knew I wanted to do techno, basically. I had a radio show for quite a long time, before I started DJing live, and it was an electronic music show. I'd say that 75 percent of what I played was techno. That was the genre that I started naturally playing, and I narrowed it from there. One of the things I enjoy about DJing is that you put a set together and you [immediately] get a reaction, good or bad. You can see it in front of you as it's happening, and I enjoy that sort of experience. Within the parameters I've set for myself, I try and adapt to the needs of the crowd.
Vince Clarke
Projects such as Erasure, Depeche Mode, Yaz, The Assembly, and VCMG have kept Vince Clarke firmly planted as an electronic music heavyweight since 1981. I asked for his thoughts on what’s made his relationship with Daniel and Mute so successful. “Mute’s a cool label. Daniel is a genuine music fan, and I feel fortunate to be on a label that is more interested in making music rather than money. There aren’t many labels left that work like that. Daniel is always open to experimentation and likes to push the boundaries of electronic sound sculpture. I’ve never known him to try and 'reproduce.' He'll always come up with something new."
Does the idea of selling records or pleasing the label's audience exist, or is there an intention to stay away from that?
Followers of the label like the diversity of it. I would never think, "This Mute fan's going to like this." Fundamentally, we have to think it's good on our terms. Then it's down to us to make sure that we're right, and that (with the artist) we've made the best possible record and hopefully convince other people that it's great. We're not market led. We're artist led. We don't go around saying, "Well, so and so is number one, so we should sign an artist like that." That's not how we operate. We just say, "We like the music," and then we figure out how we'll sell it afterward.
I know you're fond of the ARP Sequencer. When did you start using it?
The first time I saw an Arp Sequencer in action was when I went to see [the German group] Ash Ra Tempel play. What they were doing was amazing. I got a battered old ARP 2600 as soon as I could afford to, and I really wanted to get a sequencer to go with it. Those were the days when you could pick stuff up relatively cheap. They weren't collector's items yet. I ended up using it so much for percussion and bass lines. On the early Depeche Mode projects, we used it almost exclusively for all the sequencing. There are a few things I like about it that make it different from other analog sequencers. It's got a built-in quantizer, which if you're doing tonal things makes improvising very easy, so you can jam along with it. You can turn things on and off very quickly to change the rhythms and to reassign the triggers to different instruments. There are a lot of sequencers around, and none of them are as hands on. That's the only one I'd think of as a really great instrument. You can play it. You can come up with stuff that you'd never thought of yourself. Move the sliders, and see what happens.
There's more analog synth gear available now than ever before.
There's definitely more. You've got all the different versions of the Moog, and all of the modular synth equipment. Modular has gone completely crazy in the last five years.
It's great!
It's great, but it's also very dangerous. [laughs] It's all- consuming — an addiction, basically. I think the more software synths there are, the more people get into synthesis, and the more they want to play with analog synths as well.
In your mind, is there anything that the computer will never replace?
The hands-on experience. I'm very happy to work with a DAW, but...
You use Ableton Live, right?
Yes. I'm happy to do that, and I think it's incredible what people can do with it; but I enjoy physical synthesizers much more. It's not a sound thing. These days, you can do A/B tests between a real Moog and a digital Moog. Whatever. That doesn't interest me much. It's much more about the programmer than the actual synthesizer anyway, in my opinion. I'm very happy to use software synths, definitely. What those designers have made is incredible, but it's still more fun to use an analog synth. Not because of the circuitry, but because of the physicality of it.
Control surfaces are getting better. Do you ever see them getting to a point where it's just as satisfying?
You get pretty close, but you're always limiting yourself. Whatever kind of control surface you're using, there's no way you can cover everything with it. There are always buttons to press; or you're always reassigning, or you're using macros — know what I mean? It compromises [you]. I think there are some interesting software synths on the horizon, but there's nothing like being in front of a bunch of modules, plugging them up, seeing what happens, re-plugging them, and messing around.
There's spontaneity to working with those instruments. You can't recall a giant modular synth patch.
That's what I like. It's the opposite of working with a software synth; it's completely in the moment. I'm very into stuff that exists in the moment, whether it's music, photography, or whatever, so that's really appealing [to me] that you can't recall it. You either have to say, "I'm going to record it," or, "I'm just going to move on, and I'm going to have a happy memory of that sound."
mute.com
studiomute.co.uk
Evan Sutton is a producer and engineer based out of Brooklyn, NY.
