Paul Savage | TapeOp

Glasgow was once home to a wonderful, but sadly now defunct, band known as The Delgados. They started up a record label, Chemikal Underground, to release their records and others, and also became owners of a studio, Chem19 Recording. Chem19 has become more the job of their drummer, Paul Savage, who became an engineer/producer along the way. Paul's wife, Emma Pollock, was also a Delgado (see her fine solo album, Watch the Fireworks), and all the band still works on their label despite an amicable breakup in 2005. Besides The Delgados, Paul's recording resume includes such acts as Mogwai, Teenage Fanclub, Arab Strap, The Pastels, Camera Obscura, King Creosote, Shirley Manson, Mike Heron, Trash Can Sinatras, Malcolm Middleton and Vashti Bunyan — plus he was one of the main engineers of the recent Franz Ferdinand album, Tonight: Franz Ferdinand. Chem19 Recording's "newer" location is located just outside of Glasgow, a quick ride through beautiful rolling green hills, and the two-room facility is an affordable asset to the wonderful Scottish music scene.

This is a rehearsal space that became your recording space?

Yeah, we have a rehearsal space about a mile down the road and we took it from there. After The Delgados split up I kind of decided this is what I was going to do — this is the only thing I could do apart from play drums! [laughter] We wanted to make more of the other place, but the landlord kept on trying to sell to developers and he wouldn't renew our lease. There was no point in spending the money and time soundproofing rooms. At least I know this landlord probably won't kick me out.

Since it's your dad! [laughter]

We have a long history. He knows what it's all worth because he's a partner in the business as well. He's not screwing us for money at all, but he's not cutting any deals. We get a bonus that we can build and do things to the property. A lot of people think we don't have to pay rent!

So, he was running his transistor business in here before?

He would get and sell machines to build semiconductor microchips. He'd export all over the world. This used to be an office — we got almost a blank canvas. The original building wasn't designed in any way to be a studio. The old place was dark and had loads of character — lots of weird things on the wall. Now I have to start again. Over the years, as we develop it will get messy and it will grow, hopefully. The rooms are getting in shape a bit more — I need some bass trapping.

So you were stuck with these because they're brick, permanent walls?

Yeah. These are all warehouse workshops. The offices used to be in the front and the workshops in the back. I think it was metal work of some sort. There's a weird, hollowed out room in the back where people threw junk. It actually may have been a car mechanic's at one point. I wanted windows and then had to deal with working out the soundproofing problems.

Where it goes to the outside, you've got two sets of double-paned windows?

Yep. I had the layout right, at least in my head. I wanted a big live room. I wanted a reasonable control room, but I really didn't know how to build it properly. I got Calum Maclean, who was already the main builder of the whole project. He used to be an engineer and was responsible for a lot of the dance-based music that came out of Glasgow in the last decade. He completely gave that up and started doing studio builds. I bought our desk [66-channel Amek Einstein] from him years ago. When I got the money he said, "The plans seem fine, but the specs are all wrong. This is how you actually build it." He told us what to change and it basically doubled the cost. He told us we needed two ceilings and all this stuff we had done wrong.

Is that to prevent sound leakage?

Yeah. And he brought on two other guys, Rat and Ted, who are musicians. So, everybody who worked on the project was either a musician or an engineer and it really made a difference. We had all worked in studios. It was a really good atmosphere — the building of it worked out really well. There were all these things I didn't know — none of the walls can touch each other and that sort of thing. We were lucky. It really was done on the cheap, but it doesn't really look like it's been done on the cheap. Calum really helped make it work.

When was your first session in here?

The first session was for Emma's album, Watch the Fireworks. That was kind of frightening because Victor Van Vugt was producing it, and with all the albums he's done and all the studios he's been in, I was just kind of stressed. He was really okay with everything and it was fine. [laughter] The place wasn't finished. It wasn't anything near what it is now.

That's the way things go.

The lines were in, the desk was working. The first week was a disaster. The [Macintosh] G5 completely fucked up — just another reason why I can't stand computers. I can't fix computers when they break.

The studio came about at the end of The Delgados, but there's still the band's label going [Chemikal Underground Records].

I've flitted in and out of being an engineer and being a label. We still all run the label...

Everyone who was in the band?

Yeah, the four of us. We started it in 1995. The rest of them are in the office a lot more than I am because I'm here most of the time.

How did you end up engineering?

I took a course in audio engineering in Glasgow in 1993. I went to a local studio, which is a mile down the road. I asked that guy for a job and he said, "No, we've got an engineer. But you can sit in on some sessions." I said, "That would be great, but if anything comes up, let me know." He called me the next week and said, "Actually, you've got the job because the guy who was the engineer has left." [laughter] So, that was my big break! It was a really, really small set up — a 16-track Fostex 1/2" machine, Allen & Heath 16-channel desk and no mics of any note.

You've got to work harder to make it good.

Yeah, I work on sessions now and I hear, "You've got to have this piece of gear" and I remember what it was like working on albums then. I really wouldn't have wanted to know that this gear was there. Now I can recognize if something's got a higher quality, but you know the end product really doesn't matter if you've done the right things.

How long did you work in that studio space?

I was the main engineer there from 1993 to when the band started touring and stuff. We started the label just after I was working there in 1994 or '95. '95 is when we released the first Delgados single. We thought we'd try it out on ourselves first and see how it goes. So, I was doing recordings for us. Then the label took off and we started working with other bands. I started being the main engineer for the Chemikal Underground stuff. I had to kind of give it up because the band was getting too busy — I would just do it when I was back home. The studio got some other engineers and I was sharing the work time with them when I was around. In 1997 my boss said, "I don't want to do this anymore." I spoke to the rest of the label and said, "Look, we use this studio to record. We use this studio to rehearse. The bands use the studio." We recorded Mogwai's first album, Arab Strap's first album and our first album there. We said, "Okay, let's buy it." We just took it over. It's now moved a couple of times and it's now here. It used to be called MCM. To be honest, the other studio was really dying. It was so fucked up. There were too many compromises. I was engineering my own band and it was really, really tough. We'd worked with Tony [Doogan] on a BBC session for John Peel. We'd got on with Tony, so we thought, "We'll give that guy a call." We went to Ca Va Sound for the next one.

. . . which sounds like a much fancier studio than where you were.

It was completely different. Chem19 was just taking tiny steps to get better and better. It got to 2000, when we'd done the last album — we said to Tony, "Look, we don't want to spend tens of thousands on a studio like we usually do. We just want to do it at our own place." By then we'd gotten some good stuff. We'd gotten the desk and we'd gotten some other bits and pieces that we felt were compatible. We said, "What do we need to do to make you come out here and record it here?" And he said, "Well, you need an HD system and you could use a good preamp and get your Neumann serviced." [laughter] It kind of came down to what he wanted. I like now to say that you don't have to go elsewhere. This place should be everything you need.

How many bands are on Chemikal Underground right now?

We're in the process of talking to a few, so I don't really know who's signed. We just put out the Radar Brothers. We're doing Aidan Moffat's next record, a new band called The Phantom Band and De Rosa are gonna do their second record.

If you're working on an album that's on the label, how do you work the economics of that?

Well, we just pay — because it's two separate businesses. We view it as the band takes what modest recording budget we would give them and we would use that to pay Chem19 for the studio time. Obviously we give them the best deal we can give them. [laughter] I think for the bands it's actually quite a good deal and for Chemikal Underground it's quite a good deal. For Chem19 most of the time it's a bloody good deal and its flexible, but it can be hard to juggle the fact that I'm kind of more involved with the studio side of things. When I'm talking to Stewart [Henderson], who's much more in control of the financial side of the label, we do have some sort of discussions about money that they can be, not at all heated, but difficult to make fair. Like, "The budget's only this much, but we need six weeks of studio time." Normally you would only get two or three weeks. [laughter] We can make a compromise and do stuff on down time. Everyone benefits. It's good for us as a label to give our studio what it needs. It's good for the studio to have albums that come out. We always want to keep on producing records. It's the calling card for the studio.

Sometimes you see someone pouring a bunch of money into a studio, but then they're waiting for the bands to come. But when you've got a symbiotic relationship...

It works really well. Certainly in the first couple years of this place, there were a couple of crucial albums that gave us kind of a set amount of work to do and we could say, "Well, at least we've got that." And then until it gets really busy, we can afford to take a lot of time on it and give a fantastic deal.

You didn't give Emma any deals on her solo record, did you? [laughter]

Oh, she got a good deal. She was on 4AD but they still got a deal. It's hard. I don't know if you find this as a studio owner, but no matter what way someone approaches you, there's always a justification for the deal. It could be a big record company saying, "If we give this record to you we'd really like a deal because you could get more." Or, "This album could do well and it could do well for your studio." Everyone wants a deal. And then there's the band that can only afford a couple of days. I really shouldn't be saying this — but it's very rare to not cut deals.

We say, "The more time you book, the cheaper the day rate." If they fill our calendar then my studio manager has less things she has to deal with.

Oh, totally! The longer bookings are a lot of security for me. When I look at that, I think, "Fuck, we'll make it for another three months." [laughter]

It's been almost 2 1/2 years in the new building. Have you had a good amount of business happening?

It's been pretty good. Word of mouth has gone around Glasgow. A couple of key bands have been in that have really helped. The Twilight Sad came in and did their first album. They seem to be doing really well — it's just a great record. It's one of those ones that we talked about where I was only involved in the recording. They went over to the U.S. and did some mixing with Peter Katis. I'm not sure if you've heard of King Creosote in the States, but their last album Bombshell, a lot of it was recorded here. It was a great project to get involved with. There are so many others — Malcolm Middleton's album, Camera Obscura — they did bits and pieces. Franz Ferdinand has done some b- sides, and that's how I ended up doing their album [Tonight: Franz Ferdinand] at their place. I've been engineering on that. I haven't been in here as much.

What kind of space do they have?

Well, they have a rehearsal space and a place in Govan [a district of Glasgow] in the old Govan Town Hall, which is a really incredible old building. They had it as a place to hang about and rehearse and it's since got a lot bigger. We started last year doing some demos. They came in here first, and I knew Alex from years ago, but I hadn't seen him since he was in Franz Ferdinand. Things went really well for them.

Yeah, that's what it seems like! [laughter]

Yeah, it's been great. So, I'd seen him again since he came back in and they asked me to go out and do some work on demos at their place. They had Pro Tools set up and a small TL Audio desk and a couple of outboard preamps. We used the room a lot — the sounds of the room — just experimented with a lot of mic positions. They were enthusiastic and into making things sound different, not typical. I think everyone was pleased with the results. They went away to try out some big studios in London for the album. I thought that was the last I was going to hear of the whole thing. [laughter] And then I got a call again at the end of last year saying, "We were down in London and it didn't really work out. We like the sound of what we did up in Govan. Would you like to be involved in the album? We're going to do it in Govan." They brought over a Flickinger desk. I don't know if you know Flickinger?

Oh, yes! Those are really different. [laughter]

It's brilliant, but it's weird. I was taking a long time to get my head around it, but I love it now. There were a lot of parts that I didn't understand.

There's not that many of them.

It's just incredible. We'd been having a lot of fun with that and just recording. We expanded the little setup that they had. The town hall has lots of different parts — they've got one big hall, which is like a venue. It's got balconies and a stage. We had initially been recording in the rehearsal space that they had, which is one of the old green rooms behind the stage. Then we started to think, "Could we possibly use that hall?" I spoke to the people who owned the building and they said, "It's okay if you make some noise out there." It was just incredible using that space for the first time — the best reverb chamber you could ever have. We've just experimented with different sounds. We've got this really dry room and we've got this expansive hall. You can do all sorts of things. It's taught me a lot about experimentation. They're really interested in the audio side of things anyways. They all buy preamps, bits of gear and mics. They've got an incredible collection of stuff.

When the music biz really goes south they'll have a studio! [laughter]

I've gotten gear envy watching this! The producer, Dan Carey, has been bringing up his racks of stuff. I've seen all these things advertised and I've never really gotten to play with them. I've got to take my time to learn what it does to the sound. I'm kind of a slow learner, but I did have one of those "wow" moments when I used the Manley Massive Passive EQ. I just sort of flicked it on and off and I was just really impressed.

Is that messing you up when you come back to Chem19?

I come back here, "You know when I said I just need this one piece of gear? Well, I lied!" [laughter] "I need another few bits and pieces."

That's a dangerous situation to be in! [laughter]

It's really bad. I was really happy with everything in here until I started this job. Now I've got gear envy. With Franz Ferdinand, we used a new technique I'd never done before. They started playing parts of the song with a click, just the whole band playing live. But they wouldn't just go one shot and do the whole song — they'd just play a verse and get into a good feel. They'd build up and play for six or seven minutes. Dan would go, "Alright, that's good. Let's move on to the chorus." You could see the chorus getting tighter and tighter. Then it was like, "Alright, second verse."

Was there a preconceived structure, initially?

Yeah. It wasn't played live, but it's all live performances taken from one part to another played live.

Did anything have to be done, like put in a crash or a roll sometimes to make parts work?

Sometimes the air gets sucked right out of a chorus and it goes back down to a really tight verse and it sounds amazing. It sounds, not like an obvious effect, but like a reversed cymbal — like something happened there and it went really dry. Then you realize it's just the ride cymbal stopping. This wouldn't have happened naturally.

You would have heard it carrying out.

Yeah, but it's not really obvious. There have been happy accidents. Every song is different and we've been trying different techniques for different songs. The basement space downstairs under the stage is this really dark, dingy space and we've been recording the whole band live, really tight, close together with very few mics. That sometimes is the thing. It's never been a typical recording session.

Who's the other engineer on this?

Alexis Smith. All of us feel that we're doing something quite new, for us. We've got three recording spaces for the band. One's a room that's a bit bigger than this, carpeted with wood paneling in the walls, which actually works quite well as a diffuser. It's a really dry sound. It's got a whole floor below, which we love for the kick drum because the whole room resonates. I think that's probably part of it — when they went to a proper studio they're not going to get that sound. The basement that I was just telling you about is just brick walls, concrete floor, lots of junk all over the place and lots of buzzing fluorescent lights that we have to switch off. We essentially have to record almost in the dark. And then there's the actual hall itself where we've done some recording with the whole band in the middle of the hall. For one in particular, we've taken the verse from the dry room, the chorus from the basement and then the middle just opens up in this huge hall. It just really sounds quite nice — a lot of fun to work on.

That sounds like a good experience.

Yeah, it's been fascinating for me because just working on an album of that size is an eye opener. I went into it thinking, "I've got to brush up on techniques. I've got to be more professional as an engineer." Actually, it has made me think outside the box and challenge me. A lot of things have been completely thrown out the window. If the band feels like it's working, the performances get better and better. I think the mix is going to be really interesting.

Have you been playing drums much on recordings? Did you play on Emma's record?

I played on Emma's record. I played on Malcolm Middleton's last record. Sometimes I've been in here and told the drummer I can help out. I played on a few tracks of King Creosote's Bombshell. I was kind of curious how it would work engineering and drumming at the same time.

Are your ears ringing from doing that? [laughter]

Yeah, that's the problem. Certainly when trying to mix. Nothing gets done for the rest of the day.

What projects have been going through here recently?

The last Mogwai album [The Hawk Is Howling] was done when I was doing the Franz Ferdinand record. Andy Miller did that — he's a great engineer and a good asset to the studio. He's been here for years. I've been working on another Chemikal Underground band called The Phantom Band. Coming up, we've got a lot of new Scottish bands that haven't had records out like Wake The President and Strike the Colours. I'm speaking to The Twilight Sad about their next record and we're scheduling that. They're a great band.

You were showing us the cabinets in the back. What's a typical live tracking setup? There's an iso booth off to the side of the control room.

Well, I sometimes use that for drums. It's not completely dead, but it's really good for getting that dry, '70s-type of sound. For Franz Ferdinand we did the drums in there.

Yeah, you don't want too much ambience around with them.

No. This is the one thing that's really weird — the old studio space was smaller and much tighter. This is really not as bright as the old one was because the brick walls are not as reflective. But there was something about the old studio that was really good and we got used to it. I think the sound treatment that we're putting up is helping. We usually have to build some kind of den around the drums to stop the ambience coming in too much. I think it needs a bit more work. It probably always will. [laughter]

Studios are ongoing projects.

Yeah, you don't finish. You don't think, "Yeah that's done." I still haven't finished screwing the desk together. It's been two-and-a-half years and that's a five-minute job. [laughter]

That can happen! I notice you only have one set of monitors. Are those Quested [VS2108s]?

Yeah. They are really easy to listen to — they're really good to work to for a long period of time. With stuff like daylight and good sounding speakers, it's all just to make the days not seem as long. And you get more work done because you're not feeling tired or taking as many breaks. It makes a big difference. I want people to feel relaxed in here. There were arguments with the [building's] budget because it actually costs quite a bit to put a simple window in.

Everything costs money when you're building a studio! Do you feel okay with it at this point? Do you feel like it's going to make its money back?

I don't know. I think it's doing well. I just look at it as "I'm busy" and I've got a lot of work going on. I try not to look at the books. I'm not a businessman and I'm not very good at looking at those types of things. If you're talking from a financial point of view — studio two wasn't that expensive to build. The thing I noticed with one studio, you might have six weeks of nothing happening and think you're going to go bust. And then you'll get an album [booked] and it will last for two months. Within that two months, the whole world will phone in and try to book time! [laughter] I noticed how much business we were losing by only having one studio and not being able to accommodate people. I think it's been crucial. We thought we'd use studio one for people who were going to spend a lot of money and use studio two for demo and upcoming bands. But you know, everyone wants studio one. It's one thing that really surprised me. But I don't have that problem now of feeling like I just turned away six weeks worth of work. Sometimes you can't reschedule — sometimes bands can't wait.

Seems like you feel like you keep learning along the way.

I think bands teach me more than anything else. I have my favorite things I like to do at the moment and then kind of apply that across the board. Then a band will come in and want something completely different. Working with Mogwai and Arab Strap in quick succession really taught me two different things — both extremes. Mogwai wanted extreme effects. They wanted me to keep pushing the reverb. It was constantly on overload. I finally got it and realized it had to be the most full-on thing. And then Arab Strap didn't want any compression or reverb. They didn't want any studio stuff — they didn't want anyone to know a studio had even been involved! [laughter] Their first record was initially going to be on 4-track [cassette]. It sounded great, as far as performance was concerned, but the recording was half tape hiss and half mumbling. [laughter] It had a lot of character. Those taught me two definite extremes.

I used to be like, "No! Just do it this way." Now I'm like, "Sure. Let's try it."

Yeah. I think I had one of those moments with The Twilight Sad. We started tracking and then they told me they wanted the sound of the album being played through a snare drum, rattling all the way through the record. I was like, "You're sure you want that?" I was kind of confused, but I know the way they are as a band and they really like noise. We played the album through an amp and mic'ed up the snare drum, rattling away. It's the last track — it's murky and it rattles the whole way through, but I thought, "Bloody hell, we used it!" [laughter] You've just got to do it. It makes that song and it works. You break more rules as you get older. You learn the rules, then you break them.

chem19. co. uk www. chemikal. co. uk