Ian Catt | TapeOp

Ian Catt has developed a unique style that is behind some of the most interesting sounds coming out of the U.K. today. Having produced and engineered such bands as Saint Etienne, Trembling Blue Stars, The Field Mice, Fosca and many others, he has carved a niche in electronic-based pop music that is all his own, never looking back. There are many words that would be useful in describing Ian's recordings, texturally-rich, mood- evoking, expansive, purposeful, however, after speaking with Ian, I found myself thinking of his work quite simply as having integrity. I spoke with Ian (whose Cat Music is based in Couldson, England — 10 minutes south of London) about his humble beginnings, the building blocks of his craft, and the importance of achieving a fine arrangement prior to letting the tape roll.

What are you working on now, Ian?

Currently I'm working on a couple of new groups, one called Tenshi, which is Japanese for angel, apparently. It's a group of three girls. It's interesting in as much as they play strings as well. There's a vocalist, a violinist and a cellist.

Is that right? Do you have a lot of experience recording strings?

Not large strings, but I've done some small ensembles.

What type of environment are you recording them in? Could you describe what your studio is like?

If it's ones and twos, then I do it at my place. My space is pretty much a control room with a booth. That's the setup I've got myself, so if I need anything bigger than that, then there are other studios I use for different things. If it's a quartet or something, then I'd have to go to another good-sounding room.

Do you ever record in your control room? Or do you use a separate studio space?

Just a booth really, I mean it's about two meters square. It's a vocal booth. But obviously that is pretty much for computer based things or if we're just doing overdubs and mixing. If it's a band, then I need to be somewhere else.

The productions I've heard from you over the years have become increasingly complex, ever since those first singles you did for the Field Mice in 1988. Can you characterize how your production contributions have grown since then? To me your recordings sound wider or more spacious.

Yes, that's interesting, 'cause normally complex sounds smaller, I think... or you know, sounds denser. So it's interesting you hear more complexity and more space at the same time.

For example, compared to the first Field Mice recordings, which use what I think is a Boss DR 660 drum machine...

Yeah, the little box with the knob on it...

... the rhythm tracks you are working on now with the likes of Saint Etienne and Trembling Blue Stars sound infinitely more complex. I'm wondering how that evolved.

A lot of it is just practicalities, really. The first Field Mice records were really done on a shoestring. I think the first couple of singles came from a session I did with them which were demos. They found me from an ad in Melody Maker, and they came in for a day and I think we did six or seven songs in probably about seven hours, eight hours. So it really was, "Start the drum machine, record all the drums, get the bass out, do the bass", and you know I wouldn't have even commented on the drum patterns. It was the first time I met them, and they came in, recorded what they had to record, I mixed it, and there was no time to think about it, really. So, progressing on from that, after they got the deal [with Bristol's Sarah Records] and we got a little bit more time, then we had a bit more time to experiment. Certainly, I think all of the Field Mice recordings were done in a very tight budget situation. It wasn't until we got to the Northern Picture Library/Trembling Blue Stars phase that... basically it's always been tight, but I just invested a bit more of my time and I think that's really what happened.

Did you kind of grow with them?

Oh, yeah, completely! I mean they came to me the first year I'd actually been doing it for a living. I've been recording since the early eighties, really. The Teac 4- track PortaStudio, the very first one — the 144. Basically to buy that, I'd sold a lot of my live gear, because I played bass in bands before and suddenly got very fed up with it! [laughs] I think it's when I did the first demo with my first real band, I thought "Oh this is a lot more fun than touring around pubs and putting big cabinets in and out of vans, doing a half-hour sound-check at 4:00 p.m. for an 11:30 show and that kind of thing."

So you started out in humble beginnings...

For a long time the studio was actually a bedroom in my parents' house, 'till about five years ago, in fact. All the Field Mice things were done there. It was just a 4-track to start with, and I used to use the reverb from the Music Man guitar combo I had. That was the only reverb I had. We'd just run the cables inside the amp and use the spring unit and a digital delay line I built myself from a kit.

So you have quite a technical aptitude.

Yeah, pretty much so, from the ground up. It's funny, I was talking to someone the other day and I was reflecting really that a lot of the most inventive recording I did, not necessarily the Field Mice things, because that's when I started doing it for a living and it got a bit different, but the songs I recorded before that were probably the most inventive because I had so little to do them with.

Is any of this material released?

No. Lots of them were for demos for bands that I was in that didn't actually go anywhere.

So bass was your primary instrument — aren't you also a very capable keyboard player?

Well, learned piano when I was about 13 or 14 — a couple years of lessons, and then I taught myself guitar and then ended up playing bass in my first group 'cause no one else wanted to do it! And that's definitely my favorite instrument, really. It's being the link between the rhythm and the melody. I enjoy being quite melodic.

I know you've played bass on at least one of the Trembling Blue Stars albums, is that right?

Yeah, yeah. And on quite a few tracks on the last one as well, for various reasons. But yeah, the first Trembling Blue Stars one [Her Handwriting], that's me.

Uh huh. And, certainly on the Saint Etienne recordings, I hear a distinctive rhythms and drum programming. Is that coming from you, or is it something that the band brings in? Is it achieved through MIDI sequencing?

The early Saint Etienne records were really loops. Most of it is loops. I think what confuses the issue a bit is that lots of the loops were from early techno records, so a lot of it sounds programmed.

How about on some of the Trembling Blue Stars stuff, are they loops as well?

No, that's more programmed. I mean quite often we'll start with a loop and either replace it or, it will take a back seat by the time the rest of the programming is done.

So you are starting with samplers to get some of those sounds?

Yeah, yeah. A lot of it's sampled in one way or another, whether it's sampled hits or loops. Often a combination of the two, I mean I quite often get frustrated if I try and program a whole drum track. Especially if the idea is that it sounds like a drummer. I just find it really, really clumsy trying to do it with programming. Quite often, putting a loop in there will give you just a little bit of a randomness or a live feel to make the rest of the programming feel more convincing. I tend to be a bit more dogmatic about it now and say, "Well if you want it to sound like a drummer, let's get a drummer and go and record him!" [laughs]... 'cause I end up bashing my head on the wall.

So are you technically proficient with say, like the Cubase and Logic programs of the world?

Yeah, though interestingly, and much to the horror of lots of people who come into the studio, I still use Cubase on the Atari, which looks very limited now but it does the job and I don't have to think about it. I've used it so long now, that it's just like another instrument. It's like picking up a guitar for me. If something comes in on like, Cubase on a PC or Mac or whatever, I really have to think about it and I find it's quite distracting. All of the sudden I am a computer operator, not a musician or producer.

Is there any certain equipment that you have continually turned to over the years which you have kept around?

I've pretty well kept everything I've bought, I think. I try not to buy new gear. It's just getting so ridiculous now, the rate of obsolescence is so fast. I don't have the money to try to keep up. I think you can spend all your time learning new stuff, or software updates and all these kind of things, while not actually making any music. The hard disc recorder I use is Soundscape. Don't know if you know it, it's probably not that popular in the states. It's a British one.

So you choose to record on digital, then mix down to analog?

No, I mix down to digital now.

Oh, is that right? What are you mixing down to?

I mixdown onto my soundcard, a M-Audio Delta Dio 96. I use the A/D in the DAT, a Sony PCM 7040 into WaveLab, which works really well. If people want to use DAT, I've got DAT recorders, and I've still got a 1/4" analog machine if anyone really wants to do that, but digital is getting better now, and there is starting to be less of an issue between the two, I think. The stuff I've kept are things like a [Sequential Circuits] Pro One synth I bought brand- spanking new, 1982, when they first came out. That's still around and gets used pretty often — not every session, but lots of sessions. The Prophet Five I got a bit later, and it still gets used a lot.

Listening to "It's Easier To Smile", the third track on the Trembling Blue Stars most recent Slow Soft Sighs EP, I hear what I think is a Roland TR 808?

I believe it was a TR 808. Not a real one, though, it's samples. I think it's just 'cause the sound of those "classic" drum boxes is so familiar that you kind of almost accept it the way you've accepted the sound of an acoustic drum kit and just get on with the rest of the track, you know the interesting bits [laughs] like the vocals and the melodic parts.

What role does MIDI play in your studio? Do you use it very much?

Yes, quite a lot. Funny, the things I've been doing lately, not so much. I tend to put keyboards straight down to the recorder more whereas before I would have sequenced them, tidied them up, and probably left them running live into the mix. I tend to just record straight to tape now.

What is a typical signal chain for vocals. Do you like to run through compressors going in?

Okay, let's take vocals. Generally, as little compression as possible. I've got a Drawmer 1960 Valve Compressor, and that's got mic preamps on it which are very good and I tend to use those first and see what it sounds like. EQ? Probably not, not going in. I mean with analog I used to put a bit of top end on it 'cause you know you're going to have to eventually, but with digital, I tend not to unless something is really, obviously not right, in which case I obviously try and change mics first. Get it right at the source, really, that's always going to be true, I think.

What are some of you favorite microphones? What do you typically use for Bobby's voice, or Sarah's voice? [Saint Etienne lead singer]

One of my big favorites is a Beyer M740. It's really, really good. It's just very neutral, in fact. I tend to use valve outboard with it, valve preamps or whatever. It's quite a nice combination. But recently, I bought an AKG Solid Tube, and that's very nice.

Drums? What do you use for recording drums?

The AKG D112 on the bass drum, and probably an SM-57 top snare, and another one underneath. Depends on what's in the studio, really, and, of course, the drummer, the kit and the room. I don't reach for the same combination every time. If I have a rule at all it's, "Do I need this extra microphone?" I try to use as few as possible. Because I don't have a studio big enough to record drums, I don't own an awful lot of microphones. My philosophy has always been that all the gear is completely secondary, really. No one listening to the records is going to give a toss about what it was done on, or how it was done, I mean ninety-nine percent of the people won't. They'll just know they like the record, and if it moves them in some way, then you've done the job, really. That's all that counts. I mean the rest of it, you do it for yourself. It's fun playing with new bits of gear and experimenting to get new sounds and things but it's not really what it's all about.

If you get too hung up on it, you can miss the point, right?

Yeah, I mean I write as well and in some ways, that's the thing I enjoy the most, is songwriting. It always comes down to having something worth recording in the first place. You can mess about with bits of sounds and transform them and distort them, or whatever, but unless you've got either a good idea or a good song, then you're pushing water uphill, really. It's very difficult to make a good record out of an average song.

Where is your setup now?

It's actually attached to my home. It's a separate building, but it's actually attached to my house, which is very convenient. It's in a place called Couldsdon, which is just on the edge of the suburbs [of London].

What's next for you?

There's a new Saint Etienne album out — I actually did a fair amount on that one. I didn't have a lot to do with the last couple of albums, but there's more me on this one. So I'm quite pleased about that. It sounds really good actually. It's called Finisterre. Saint Etienne was signed to Warners in the early '90s, and I don't think Warners really knew what to do with them. They were just too English.

Are there favorite engineers and producers that you listen to?

Definitely. Trevor Horn. The first time I bought a record and thought, "Bloody hell, this sounds really different to everything else, it just sounds huge." He's the first person that made me look at the sleeve to see what was different about it. I said, "Ahh, producer, what does he do?

And what record was that, do you remember?

That was, I can remember what record that was, I'm sure you won't, it's a tune called "Handheld in Black and White" by a group called Dollar who were a lightweight pop duo. It's a blond girl, blond boy. Complete puppets, you know. It was a vehicle really for the production. And that was about nine months to a year before he produced Lexicon of Love by ABC. What I had heard on that Dollar record, like everything that was in there that made me go "whoa", was like ten times more so. He had obviously just been honing his sound. I mean the ABC record's just amazing. I played it the other day, actually, and it still sounds so much better than other stuff that's coming out now.

How involved are you during the mastering phase? What kinds of things are you listening for?

Just continuity, really. Punch. I think if you have to do too much in the mastering, then you've got something wrong in the recording. But obviously, especially people like Saint Etienne and Trembling Blue Stars, you can have a pop-reggae tune, followed by a dance track, or a house track or something so there's gonna be quite a sonic difference track to track sometimes. So it's really just a question of evening out the balance. Quite often just listening to the vocal element and trying to match the level of the vocal.

What types of projects at this point are most fulfilling and challenging to you? Like on the last Trembling Blue Stars album I heard a much more kind of live, organic if you will, type of feel versus building it from the ground up maybe. Did you record the basic tracks all at once?

That's the difference. Really, there was a band in place this time whereas beforehand there wasn't. We didn't actually do that much as a band, but certainly the rhythm tracks were recorded together.

Do you find that you like recording everything at once like that, or do you prefer kind of building something piece by piece?

I enjoy recording everything together because it's quick, and it gives you instant gratification. You hear something and it sounds like a song straight away. But it used to be a bit limiting. Now, because of hard disk, you can edit and move things around after the event. But before, when everything went to tape, you might come out of the studio thinking, "Well, I'm not sure if that really works", or "It would have been nice to have an extra bridge in there" or something. So, I'm less bothered by that now. But I think I probably prefer the things where I can kind of start from the ground up.

You've also been doing a lot more arrangements with the projects you've been working on... how has that kind of evolved?

It's something I've always enjoyed doing, and perhaps because I've had more success, people have been more ready to let me not just engineer the record, but arrange and produce it as well.

It also helps when you have more time, right?

And more time. But mainly just having people being prepared to let me have more input and suggest things like that. Certainly the Trembling Blue Stars stuff, Bobby [lead vocalist/writer in Trembling Blue Stars] usually comes in with a song, which is acoustic guitar and him singing and he'd have some ideas of sounds and things... he'll play me a few bits of records to give me the feel he wants, but in terms of actually putting the arrangement together, it's pretty well all me, really.

How specific an idea does he typically have for a sound or a feel? Do you kind of bat it back and forth?

Yes, that's the good thing about it, really, because he'll suggest something and I'll have a different background or whatever, and have a slightly different take on it. So I'll say, "Why don't we do it this way" and he'll say, "Yeah, that's good," so it goes like a game of tennis. I suppose the main thing is not to have any preconceptions about how it's going to turn out, and that's where Bobby's great to work with because if I say, "I've got this great idea, let me have a go."

He listens to you.

He'll sit there for an hour while I try it out. And lots of people won't have that kind of patience. That's partly because of the way we've structured the record in as much as the label provides a budget, and I always exceed it! [laughs]... by quite a large margin because it's never that much anyway. But it's just something I enjoy working on and I enjoy getting it right. If anything goes huge at any point, then I'll be rewarded for my extra time.