Paul Butler: The Bees, Devendra Banhart & the Isle of Wight

In the fall of 2008 I was hired to help build a temporary home studio in the California coastal town of Bolinas, where Devendra Banhart was planning to start tracking a new album. I was excited about the project, and when I started talking on the phone to producer Paul Butler I quickly got a great vibe from him. I knew the project was going to be fun and run smoothly with his presence. Paul is in a fantastic band from the Isle of Wight called The Bees (known as A Band Of Bees in the US due to a name conflict). On the second day of January 2009, I drove to Bolinas to catch some surf and talk to Paul about recording. He was about a month into the three-month sessions that yielded Devendra's recent album, What Will We Be.

Were the Bees your first recording project?

We had three or four projects before the Bees. My first bit of recording training was with a man called Max Brennan at my home on the Isle of Wight. He had a studio in his front room — that was my source of inspiration for getting a studio in my bedroom. Later the Bees started recording in a shed in a field on the Isle of Wight with minimal equipment. I think I had a Roland VS-880 [digital recorder] and then it progressed from there. I got a Soundcraft Ghost [console] and later an old '60s Swedish desk. Lots learned in the last few years.

What's the Swedish desk?

It's made by SBC, the Swedish Broadcast Company. There are Germanium [transistors] inside, 20 channels and it was built like a tank for Swedish radio — there's not a huge amount of them around. It's built very well, so it has lasted. I've got an RCA 77-DX from Capital Radio. We did a radio session and they ran out of mics, so the guy there got something from the basement and he thought it was rubbish. I took it off his hands for 100 quid. [$160 USD] Mint condition — a beautiful mic.

The first Bees record you recorded by yourself on the Roland. On the second album you ended up at Abbey Road. How did that happen?

The change from the shed to the greatest studio in the world? It was daunting on the way in, but the inspiration that you feel in that place is pretty instant. The engineer, Alex Scannell, was really sound and everyone felt at home straight away. We got cracking by getting the old sound with the old setup. We got the EMI TG console out and bypassed the newer Neve in there. Everything went from the incredible mics we were using (from the Abbey Road collection) straight into the TG console, either via the [Revolution] REDD preamp and a Fairchild compressor, or maybe a Pultec, straight into the Studer [tape deck]. It was incredible. Then back into the TG again [to mix]. We made the chain as simple as possible, but that got all of the old boys in Abbey Road quite excited. I had some good teachers while I was in there.

But how did you actually end up in Abbey Road? Was it thousands of pounds a day?

It is. I'd bought a pair of HHB Circle 5 speakers years ago with my advance from my first album. They served me quite well until one of the cones went. I sent it back, but when [the company] returned it, I had trouble with mixes after that point. It got to be so much trouble that I said to my manager, "I'm actually up for going to a studio." I really wasn't up for the big studios at that point because the shed worked. We had a Mercury Prize-nominated album via the shed and it was a beautiful place. I said, "I need some help." He said, "What studio do you want?" I said, "I'll have Studio Two in Abbey Road," joking to him. He said, "That's possible. We're on Virgin. It is the EMI group and they do own Abbey Road." He asked and they said, "That's not a problem." All of a sudden we had six weeks in Abbey Road — three weeks recording, three weeks mixing. After all that, I came back home and discovered that HHB had wired the "repaired" speaker out of phase. That's the main reason we went into Abbey Road!

Did you sell enough of the second record [Free the Bees] to pay EMI back for being in Abbey Road?

That will never, ever happen. We left it right there. I've been there once — that's enough.

What's the Isle of Wight like?

Quiet and pretty laid back. All the band and our crew are from the Isle of Wight. It's not too far away from the pace here in Bolinas. You make your own entertainment there. It's quite an inspirational place — plenty of time to do music.

How far are you from London?

After the ferry ride, an hour and a half or two hours. We're not far away — off the south coast [of England].

Listening to the Bees stuff, everything feels like it exists at a particular place within the stereo spectrum. Is it a lot of mono tracks?

It's a rarity to record in stereo. I think I'm about to experiment with things like stereo piano. There will be three or four mics on the kit — you can play with that with panning. The panning part of mixing is one of my favorites. Each channel on the desk has got a phase switch on it — not the preamp phase, but you can change the phase afterwards. I've been playing with phase and panning. That's the bit that I will probably spend the most time on during mixing.

When you track, do you usually track the reverb with an instrument?

No, rarely. I do with guitar. I've got some nice springs, plates and an EMT 251 at home. Everything's added afterwards, generally. The vocals might go through a [Roland] Space Echo.

What are you mixing down to?

A Studer B62 [tape deck]. It finishes off the sound nicely. I like the 1/4" [tape] thing, what it does. The last album [Octopus] was [tracked] on an Ampex MM1200 as well, so it was tape all the way through. But after recording this album I have changed my views on Pro Tools, so I might be having a little bit of digital in the future.

Going into this, you said, "No Pro Tools. Don't even bring it in." Now the tape machine is powered off.

My first experiences of Pro Tools was during radio sessions. A couple of times the rig went down and we lost the session — a complete scare of everything being lost in one second. But recording this record, the sound is perfect. I've got no problem with the sound. After all of my time and effort maintaining an early '80s Ampex, I can't handle it anymore — I need things to work. 

What about all of the editing? You're not simply using the Pro Tools as a tape machine replacement.

It's magic. We're putting so many playlists down, editing, picking and choosing. I'm going to have to learn that you can't do that too much — you start losing a bit of flow to the track. If a band is good enough and you can record them all at the same time without doing editing, then that's going to be the ultimate way of tracking. But it's been a joy to use. It's so quick and easy to use for editing. They've got me.

You said you even liked some of the plug-ins?

The spring reverb in TL Space is really nice — that's it so far. It's the early stages of finding out what Pro Tools can actually do, but I like it.

Obviously you're open to working in a more traditional studio environ- ment, but you also enjoy this crazy, haphazard house setup too.

The room sounds great. There is enough separation between everything. The RCA mixer sounds great and the mics we're using are excellent.

Let me see if we can get Devendra out here for a sec.

DB: Hey guys. I'm gonna straddle this wooden horse.

Why did you ask Paul to do this record and what do you like about working with him?

DB: Just look at him! How can you not love this guy's sparkling, celestial smile. I hope there's a picture of this. He's never had a sourpuss on that mug this whole time we've been tracking. I think he's easy to work with and hard to work with at the same time. We never pick out a studio. We always build it ourselves and use our friends who have incredible gear. That, combined with Paul's fucking unbelievable capturing of something that sounds old but is totally modern, is the dualistic tip of the pyramid. I heard Paul's music, and I had never heard anything that sounded so good that was new. I could not believe that it was new. It's really the essence of Tropicália — into all world cultures, but making it your own. That's why I chose him. I heard "Chicken Payback", "Listening Man" and "I Love You". I was totally hooked. Every other Bees song was exactly jiving in what I always wanted to do with full band stuff. He's the kid who doesn't even need his friend to get on his knees behind the bully and push him over. He just has to shine those pearly whites and it's over.

Now that you picked him and you have been working together, has it met your expectations?

DB: Yes. It's met them and made out with them. It's taken my expectations for a ride.

PB: The tracking has gone well and I can already hear that mixing is going to be so much easier. The bass tones, the drums and the guitars — everything is sounding so good and we haven't even started yet. The panning and phasing — that's the bit that really creates the sound and that hasn't even begun.

Are you going to do the mixing elsewhere?

DB: Yeah. I have to go to the Isle of Wight. It's a sign of how much I trust Paul that he's going to take it first and work with it. It's the first time I've ever done that, given the songs unmixed to someone to begin mixing without me being there. But I trust him and his aesthetic enough to give it a shot. It's totally exciting too — trusting someone, but not knowing what's going to happen. It's going to bring a different color to it. We're sketching, taking these black and white photographs and he's going to do the airbrushing on it.

A lot of these songs came in rough and you guys are working on them together. What is Paul bringing to that part of the process?

DB: It doesn't hurt that he's the best singer, piano player, guitar player and drummer that I've ever met. He's a real musical polymath. When we were back in L.A. I was still writing the songs, but it was a much earlier stage. It was really easy to have Paul there. While I play guitar and sing he can play the drums or throw in a harmony really quickly. He's got perfect pitch — very James Taylor/ Phil Collins of him. British people — they've got these great voices. He also gives me a lot of space. It's a co-produced thing.

Do you do all the vocals in the Bees?

PB: Mostly, yeah — but everyone sings. It's changing for the next record.

DB: The new record is unbelievable. You've got to hear the new record. It's like Pink Floyd, The Kinks, Fela Kuti and Motown...

Is it all mixed yet?

PB: No it's not mixed yet.

What don't you like about Paul? DB: Let's see. I dunno. You've got hobbit feet.

Fast forward to Easter Sunday 2009. I'm in Ventnor on the Isle of Wight having lunch 20 yards from the ocean. It's a beautiful day and the sun has come out after several days of rain. Besides Paul, Little Labs' Jonathan Little and Tape Op's UK-based publisher, Al Lawson, are along for the ride. After lunch we head back to Paul's studio and finish up the interview we had started four months earlier on a different continent.

This is where you track the Bees?

Yeah. Quite a few other bands come in.

What are some of the other projects you've done here?

There's a band called The Shutes, which I do believe are going to do very well one day. They are on an MGMT- level I would say. Real young, but they've got a lot of potential. Jack Clutterbuck lives up the road. The Jackson Analogue [ issue #73 ] boys have got their own setup. It's really only us and them that have complete studios [on Isle of Wight].

How many days a month do you end up working here recording bands besides the Bees?

In here we'll give a band (everyone's skint — there's no money) two or three days to work out as many tunes as they can. That happens once every three months and every other day we'll be doing Bees or something. We've got to properly dedicate it to the Bees and get this fourth album done, get our American deal and then start touring again.

Who are The Bees besides you?

We've got a different drummer at the moment and he's not really involved in the recording, so I'm playing most of the drums. On a couple of bits other people played, but mostly me.

You do most of the writing and singing too?

Really it's me, Aaron [Fletcher] and Tim [Parkin]. Aaron is definitely writing more lyrics and providing sparks for songs.

The Bees were tracked in this room?

All of Octopus [third album]. Free the Bees [second album] was at Abbey Road and Sunshine Hit Me [first album] was in the little shed in the field. We threw it together. It was pretty manky before. We stripped everything and built this extra room in the back and then we decided to make the drum booth. We didn't soundproof it well enough — all the complaints from the neighbors pushed the drums back into this main room.

The neighbors aren't really endeared to you.

The hairdressers hate us. We won't be getting our haircuts there. But it's good at the moment, sounding nice. The drums are super heavy and raw.

Do you have other guys that work here as engineers?

I've got a couple of engineering friends that I am probably going to get in when we really get going. It's usually me running between rooms and people playing with microphones. I've got a pretty good system now. It would be nice to have an engineer down here, especially for the tape machine, but it's alright with a computer.

Is the tape machine gone now?

It is gone, yeah. That's amazing.

You are completely Pro Tools now?

For recording, yeah. I like it. Half the day used to be spent fixing the stupid tape machine, which was ridiculous. The Ampex MM1200 sounded great, but it was such a battle to get it to work.

JL: At least you have the 2-track still.

Yeah, exactly.

You started mixing Devendra's record here?

It didn't work. You need Devendra in the room. He needs to be part of the mixing process. It's tricky and very frustrating, because you do a whole day's work and by the time they get up in the morning it's 8 pm over here and it's, "Mmmm, no." As you can see from the desk, it's quite raw so you can't just go back a few steps. "Ah, I'll start again." There is no reverb on the mix. I did miss my reverbs because I ended up using a lot of plug-ins for stuff, but they don't have the same kind of dirty sound. I have the nice, clean massive [EMT] 140 plate. The Space Echo is more about the reverb than it is about the echo. I've got the old '50s Fender tank — the piggy back ones that go on top of the amps — they are really nice.

AL: Have you heard the Orban spring reverbs?

The stereo ones — yeah they are really nice. I've got a Mix Master next door — that's nice. Even the [AKG] BX15 — right in between the 10 and the 20 — is still relatively clean. Sometimes I really want the dirty sound.

Did you print some reverbs from here before you went back to L. A. to mix?

I didn't think that far forward. I should have. [Paul plays us "Foolin'" from Devendra's What Will We Be album] I obviously just stupidly compressed the whole thing. That's all I've really understood of the best of Jamaican recording — compress everything as much as possible.

When you mix these last three songs here, are you going to bounce the mixes to tape and then send it back off to the States?

Yeah, which is very Bees as well. He obviously wants a bit of that in there.

JL: Yay! 1/4 inch!

Yeah. I used that for the first album. It's amazing how much it colors the sound. It sounds nothing like what went down in the first place.

That's the Akai 4000DB 1/4" reel-to-reel machine?

It sounds amazing. What I have been doing on that deck is tape bounces. We did struggle with guitar amps. Some of the guitar sounds were pretty sharp — I didn't really have big cone sounds to mellow it out. But going to the tape machine and then back [into Pro Tools]...

AL: Then do you chop it up in Pro Tools to get it back in time?

Just move the whole track back. It does something really rich to the midrange.

When you got the tracks home from Bolinas, did everything hold up pretty well or did you have to add more parts or redo instruments?

I did some tracking here: some double bass on "Maria Lionza", more vocals, quite a bit of percussion, plus saxophone and trumpet parts. Tim played a real Chet Baker-esque solo on "Chin Chin & Muck Muck" that sounds really nice. It's all held up. I think I respect and appreciate studios a bit more after that experience. It's going to make for an interesting album. It won't sound like a studio for sure. There's one part of a song that we tracked outside and it sounds really amazing. Because I don't have a soundproof booth, I've always had some sort of coloration from the room going on. But it's so much easier to mix when you haven't got some sort of room sound to contend with on every track. I am going to completely pad out my booth now so I can get an outside sound inside. 

Listen to The Bees on Spotify

The Bees Sunshine Hit Me, Free The Bees, Octopus I was lucky enough to tag along with John and Al for a daytrip recently. Seventy miles and a ferry ride from London, the Isle of Wight is a vortex of which I was lucky to have a one-day snapshot of. During the ferry ride, there were these strange little islands on the way that looked like bunkers. Nowhere could you see a dock or boats, but unless they were penguins, it looked like the islands were full of people... all of them partying. No shit, but we all saw it. Once on the Isle of Wight we whisked off far across the island to the town of Ventnor to meet Paul from the Bees (known as A Band of Bees in the US) — producer, artist, musician and truly an Isle of Wight, life-long native. We were welcomed into his home. A long wide photograph in his living room was a shot of the massive crowd from the Isle of Wight Festival that Dylan played in 1969 and where Paul's parents had met. As I said, he's truly a product of the Isle. The studio there where most of the Bees work has been done was full of tape loops and funk. I hadn't seen a Watkins Copicat delay before, and he had a nice Tim de Paravicini-designed EQ too. Cool place. I hadn't heard the Bees music and I was just going along for the ride, but being the vinyl junkie I am, my radar was turned on by Paul's signal path and the vibe. I had to throw down some hints. Paul's gracious demeanor caught my hints and he whipped out a copy of his latest LPs, Octopus and Free the Bees (on the nice fat black vinyl) for me to carry back to California. We all walked down the hill into the little town of Ventnor for a fantastic pub lunch and a few pints at The Crab and Lobster Tap right next to the water. It was a beautiful place and Paul is the 'Man' there; he's on first-name basis with the proprietors and people kept coming up to say hi to him every few minutes. I felt the Isle of Wight vibe, it had that vortex appeal, and it's no wonder so many of those hippies taking the ferry (way back when) for the big festivals, never left. Spirits abound and you could feel the ghosts floating around. This place is haunted as fuck, but in a good way of course. Later that day we hung out with the Jackson Analogue/Boe Weavers fellows [ issue #73 ] for more strange tales, but that's another story.

So let me get to what I'm supposed to be writing about: the records. I really got into Free the Bees first. "Wash in the Rain" and "The Russian" are kind of psychedelic songs with a little pop, but definitely not urban pop. The rhythm on all the songs were different and each track had something really unique. My friend, engineer David Boucher, said I had to get Sunshine Hit Me, when I mentioned the band to him — that record is the shit. So I went off and bought the CD as I couldn't find the vinyl. John B. said he loved Octopus. He had been playing it while we drove up the coast of Morocco weeks earlier, and I was in the back seat bouncing around grooving, but I forgot it was the Bees. I was hooked on Free the Bees and neglected the others, but as my needles wore that down, the other two grew on me until I liked them every bit as much. The rhythm of all the music, the way it hit me was the thing. It captured the ocean and the feel of the Isle, a remoteness but with a sense of community, far off and away but not isolated. I suppose it's obvious, like reggae captures the Jamaican ocean vibe, so would this capture a different type of island vibe, a dreamy hazy day with a cold ocean splashing psychedelic, with ghosts dancing on a mossy rock and a lighthouse off the point. Hell what do I know-I was a tourist there for a day but I felt it. I highly recommend all three of these records to spend a moment of time with the Bee's and the Isle of Wight sound. Also check out the Boe Weavers another Isle of Wight band we spent the late afternoon with. Months later, I picked up their latest record and although instrumental, I was thinking, how do I know this sound? Then I realized they also had that Isle of Wight sound. So what were those people really doing on those little island bunkers? I'll never know. -Jonathan Little < www. littlelabs. com >