The Bevis Frond

The Bevis Frond's 1986 debut Miasma could have come from any time, or maybe no time. Nick Saloman's home-recorded, somewhat primitive recording techniques would have fallen under the "lo-fi" moniker had he started working six years later. His ornamental arrangements and stylized guitar playing had fallen from favor in underground rock circles many years before its release. While trends have come and gone, Saloman has employed his instantly recognizable sound on all of the Bevis Frond records.

Saloman began recording himself many years before creating Miasma, and has even released one of his earliest recordings. "That was on an old reel-to-reel tape recorder — I think it was a Grundy [Grundig? -LC]. It belonged to my mom's boyfriend. It had a microphone on a lead with a kind of coax plug, just one mic for the both my voice and the guitar. Put the microphone there, play. That's the first thing I've got that I did. I think I probably recorded songs before that, but the tapes have disappeared over the years. My mom actually kept that one."

"I had this little spool of 1/4" tape, 3" spool. Even then, I wanted to make an album, so I did 6 songs a side — I recorded 12 songs. Some time ago, my mom gave me the tape, still in the box with my writing with the titles and everything. 'Alastair Jones' was by far the best thing on it, so I thought that one could go on "Bevis Through the Looking Glass, his third album."

"The first time I went in the studio was about 1971. I was about 18. I booked up a studio in the outskirts of London, and I went in to do 2 songs. I was playing all the instruments. I figured that the song was about 3 minutes long. I was playing guitar, bass, keyboards, vocals. I thought, that's about 4 things, so that should take 20 minutes, plus a couple of minutes to rewind the tapes. I wanted to do 2 songs, so I booked the studio for an hour. I actually did 2 songs. As it was done, it was mixed. The studio had a vinyl pressing facility so I've actually got it on vinyl. That sounded okay. I wrote one song on one side called 'Far Better,' I did one called 'Steaming.' That's the first kind of recorded stuff I have that you could hold." He has no memory of the studio's equipment.

Saloman's early efforts at recording his songs failed to capture his ideas. "I was always too pushed for time. I could never really do the kind of stuff I wanted to — I never had enough money to do what I wanted with it. All my money was going to paying rent and living."

"While I was at college, I played bass on an album by a folk rock band called Odd Socks, an LP on a label called Sweet Folk. They were a guitar acoustic duo. They got a deal to do an album, so they asked a drummer, and they asked me to play bass. We went up to a studio in Wales to do that one, and that took two days. The studio, as far as I can remember, was pretty primitive. It was probably an 8-track, big old heavy-duty studio equipment with knobs and things. I couldn't tell you what they were. I got offered a share of the profits or 15 pounds, and I went for the 15 pounds."

"When I got back from college, I formed a band in London with a couple of mates, this would be about '76. We went in the studio [for a day] and did this tape. It was actually the best thing we had ever recorded. And then about 2 weeks later, the Sex Pistols happened, so suddenly I was old-fashioned overnight. I was 23 years old. I was a has-been without ever having been anything. And then we formed our own psychedelic punk band in about '78, called the Von Trapp Family. We recorded a lot of stuff in various studios, and went back to the one where I'd done my first single, and we did an EP there. That took us about 3 hours or something. We hawked it around and no labels wanted to know, and we put it out on our own label, which was Woronzow number 1. Just after that we changed the name of the band to Room 13, and we did another single, and then the band broke up."

"After Von Trapp Family and Room 13, I was really fed up with playing live, because I'd been doing it for years and just getting nowhere. I thought to myself, I'm not going to do this anymore. I got a 4-track, and started recording at home. That eventually changed my life — the Tascam Porta 1. I started being able to do the things I'd really wanted to do — had time to do it. I didn't have anyone else telling me what I should or shouldn't be doing. It suddenly was like a kind of door opening." These recordings marked the beginning of the Bevis Frond.

Recording and mixing all happen in "a bedroom upstairs, at the back of the house. I chose it because it doesn't touch any other buildings." In that room "I've got like all my amps, all my guitars, various keyboards, drum kit, my recording equipment. The rest of the house belongs to the family."

Saloman owns two condenser microphones. "I'm really a very bad person to interview for a technical magazine. I wanted to use one for the drum kit, and have it permanently on my drum kit. [It] is on a boom stand going right into the middle of the drum kit. I figured out that if I had a mic on the drums, whenever I wanted to do anything else, I'd have to move it all. It was just too cumbersome. I kept one mic permanently on the kit and used the other to move around. They're different ones. One's a mic with a battery in it, and the other one's a kind of phantom power source one."

"The first attempts were dire. The longer I did it, I didn't make so many mistakes, and I got more ease with what I was doing. It's just getting used to the sounds really, so that your ears become accustomed to whether the drums should be louder than the bass, which again is just a personal thing anyhow." He has learned "that you don't need to record at full volume all the time. I would record so that the needles were touching the red all the time. I realized you don't actually have to do that, and that gives you more scope."

"I've upgraded to a Fostex digital DMT8. All my home stuff was on the Porta 1. Since these 8-track digitals were around, I thought I'd go for that. At first I was bouncing everything on to rhythm tracks, so you would get muffled drum kits. I don't now. I do 8 maximum tracks."

"I got a DAT when I got the Fostex. When I was doing the 4-track I used to mix straight on to cassette, or on to the Revox [B-77]. I still use the Revox for some stuff. I think the DAT's kind of sharper, which doesn't necessarily mean better. It's crisper and cleaner. The Revox has got a really nice, full sound. They both sound good."

For monitoring, "I got a couple of little studio speakers and a couple of big ones. I was driving home and I saw these two really big speakers sitting in a dumpster, so I took 'em. They're great. I do all my mixing on the little ones, because I figure that if it sounds good on the little ones, it'll sound great on the big ones." Saloman chose the small monitors because "the bloke who I bought all my equipment off of said, 'These are good.' I'll [mix] on the small speakers first, then I'll have a listen to them on the big speakers. If it sounds alright on both of them, I take it downstairs and play it on my stereo. If it sounds okay on all 3, then it's okay. Mixing often takes me longer than recording, because you've just got to make it sound right."

"When I write a song, I can visualize what I want the sound to be like." Capturing a recording of the song is "a bit like painting a picture. You have to prepare the canvas or lay the foundations first. I usually start with either a click track and some guitar with a guide vocal, or I'll start with the drums. It tends to be a guide guitar, drums, and bass first. [Next,] if there's keyboards I'll put them and any rhythm guitars. And then all the fancy stuff I'll lay on top. I'll do the vocals last. I really don't like spending hours doing things. I just like to get in, do it, but I do like to make it sound right. I'm not one of these guys who just does one take and if it's all wrong, that doesn't matter. It does matter. If I get it wrong, I'll do it again." He records songs as he writes them, and "when it's time to do an album, I just go through all the tracks that I've got and choose what sounds best."

Any Gas Faster marked the Bevis Frond's first trip to a recording studio. "I got a deal from Reckless and they gave me money." He spent "about 4 days" on it. "I've always used Gold Dust Studios in South London. Not because they're so good, but the guy who runs them, Mark Dawson, is a really nice bloke and I get on really well with him. He's really adaptable. Whatever I want to do, he'll just go, 'Okay, we can do that,' which is great. I've been in studios and said, 'Can we do this?' and they go, 'Oh, it's very difficult.' But Mark's a really nice guy, great guitarist himself. Whatever I want to do, he says, 'Fine, let's do that.' So I keep going back there." Saloman does not know what equipment Gold Dust uses.

"Going in the studio, I often feel a bit uncomfortable with playing the drums, because I really don't think I'm a very good drummer. If I'm going in the studio and it all has to be arranged, then I'll arrange to have a drummer there. If I'm recording at home, I play the drums. I can do it over and over and over again 'til I've got it right."

While Saloman has recorded distinctive and creative sounding music for years, he concludes that "I always felt that I was a songwriter."