Youth = Martin Glover: Happy to be Challenged

For many years, an interview with Martin Glover, commonly known as "Youth," has been on my "must do" list for Tape Op. With the release of Gina Birch's debut LP, I Play My Bass Loud, which he produced for this former member of The Raincoats, I got a chance to pick Youth's brain about life in the studio, playing bass in Killing Joke, remixing, collaborating with Paul McCartney (The Fireman), and even co-producing Pink Floyd.

How did the album with Gina Birch get going? I assume you knew each other from a number of years back.

Oh, yeah; on and off. I saw her do a show at the Idler Festival in 2018. She was going on; she did a double header with Vivian Goldman. I'd already started working with Viv on her album [Next is Now]. I saw Gina do her show and was totally knocked away. That's still one of my top ten gigs I've ever seen. It was so visceral and disarmingly honest. Right in your face, no filter. Pure expression and dealing with difficult subject matter. Immediately after that show I said, "I'd love to work with you." She took me up on it and started sending me some demos a couple of years later.

We did one in lockdown, "Feminist [Song]," which I did remotely. She sent me the stems and I and added bits to it while I was in Spain. I mixed it and sent it back. It was good fun. After lockdown we got together in London, and I started going through all of her home recordings and demos. We based most of the album on those, and we did a few new ones at the same time. It all was very much a home recording situation. I've got a nice home studio here. I've got my 22-year-old son, Jake [Glover], living with me who assists. He's a music maker. It was still a bit of lockdown, but I didn't have an engineer. So, I had my son assisting, and then I did the rest of the engineering and recording. At the end of that, I got Michael Rendall, my main go-to engineer and mixer in, and we added a few other little bits. Then I mixed it. It was really straightforward. I enjoyed it, because it took me back to the '80s. I'm 62, so born in 1960. In the mid-'80s, I was just the right age. I'd gone through punk as a teenager. I'd gone through Killing Joke. I'd had a fair amount of recording experience and production, and I'd been programming Fairlights [CMI (Computer Musical Instrument)] for another producer. I'd just set up my first home studio around '84 or '85 in my spare bedroom with a Greengate [DS-3] sampler and Iconix software on an Atari [computer], a couple of keyboards, a couple of basses, and a little 4-track. I started writing songs there. The serial number on my Iconix software was 0015. I was only the 15th person who bought it. I was quick off the blocks with that technology.

Was that early MIDI?

MIDI was a bit earlier. I remember recording Killing Joke's first couple of singles, and it was pre-MIDI. We had to do the sequences with a slap delay. But then there was MIDI, so I could start using MIDI and I got an [Akai] S900 sampler a few years later. With that, I was writing so much and making beats. And I immediately started a record label, WAU [What About Us]! Mr. Modo Recordings, and producing projects in my bedroom. That was the beginning of The Orb [with Alex Patterson]. Some of that equipment I shared with Jimmy Cauty from The KLF. We'd been working together in my previous band, Brilliant. We quickly started having hit records with those home recordings. I found a great management company, Big Life, and they immediately started getting me to work with Coldcut, Yazz's first album [Wanted]. The first single we did with her, "The Only Way Is Up," was number one for 13 weeks. The phone didn't stop ringing. The remixes...