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  #1  
Old 10-09-2014, 12:54 PM
BeautifulBurnout
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Nice Interview in today's Guardian...
...could do with a few more Dirts bigging it up though. There are some right numpties on there.

Pop Tarts, ffs?

http://www.theguardian.com/music/201...?commentpage=1
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  #2  
Old 10-09-2014, 02:18 PM
jetpig
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Re: Nice Interview in today's Guardian...
Random internet comment sections are so very often pissing matches and flame wars. Not worth the effort. The article is great through! Now I want some pop tarts...
  #3  
Old 10-09-2014, 04:04 PM
BeautifulBurnout
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Re: Nice Interview in today's Guardian...
Quote:
Originally Posted by jetpig View Post
Random internet comment sections are so very often pissing matches and flame wars. Not worth the effort. The article is great through! Now I want some pop tarts...
True.

On the other hand, there is serious comedy value at times too.

This, in riposte to the evil "Pop tarts" guy:

Quote:
You one of those English guys who spent 5k on studio equipment and Protools back in the day and your wife told you your record that went bleep, bloop, sqwark, blooperblip for 3 hours was giving her a headache so you sold all your gear in the pages of Loot and bought a flatscreen telly for 3k for your "home cinema" that is now of lower spec than the tellys you can pickup in Argos for 300 quid?
LMFAO!
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"If I can't dance, I don't want to be part of your revolution" - Emma Goldman
  #4  
Old 10-10-2014, 02:46 PM
TheBang
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Re: Nice Interview in today's Guardian...
Funktion One posted a nice interview with Karl on Facebook. Here it is:

Underworld play a special show at the Festival Hall in London toomorrow night to mark the 20th anniversary of the album Dubnobasswithmyheadman.

Karl Hyde is using a special monitor environment for the show, featuring two Funktion-One F1201s for stereo mix, a PSM12 for mono vocal, together with a MB212 minibass sub behind.

We spoke to Karl about re-visiting the album and about working with Funktion-One's John Newsham.

---

How are preparations going?
Preparations are going good. We’ve got just the right amount of mistakes happening, at just the right time, you know? You can’t get too complacent about it, got to stay on edge.

Are you looking forward to the Festival Hall Show?
Yeah, yeah I am. It’s taken a while – I can’t say I was to start off with – but I am now. I’m not one for re-living the past normally but it’s a really good album and I like performing with Rick [Smith], so that’s two good reasons why I should enjoy it.

Have you played there before?
No, I’ve never played there before. It’s a lovely space – I’ve been to concerts there before.

I’ve done some concert halls with Brian Eno – we played the Opera House in Sydney – and I’ve played with my own band at the Melbourne Recital Centre. I really like that environment for playing in – it’s clean. The house crew is always really, really good. Backstage is nice. And people go out their way to help you make a great night. It all focuses on you doing the best you can rather than having to fight the environment.

Has your idea of the ‘ideal venue’ changed?
When you’ve been spoiled and you can hear what your playing and you’re playing at a volume where it feels human, that’s really appealing, particularly with music like ours. It’s got so much detail. So often Rick has to strip out some of the detail in order to play some of the big festival stages and some of the bigger spaces that we play, and that’s cool because it’s doing its thing for the environment we’re in. It’s just nice to be able to play a really detailed record in the way that it should be played.

We’re fortunate because Underworld can be more than one group. A couple of weeks after we play the Festival Hall we head to Belgium to play ‘I Love Techno’ – a very different night. Very physical, very sweaty, turn it up, a quite visceral experience. That’s two bands out of the same band. That’s exciting for people who have been together for 34 years, to know they’re in more than one band and it’s the same band.

Perhaps because you’ve always been driven by being progressive…
I suppose, in some ways, yes but also our music, our records, are always very eclectic, with every album. Dubnobass is no exception, it kind of set the benchmark, really. Having tracks that could be played on a dancefloor, like Cowgirl, and other things like ‘River of Bass’, which could never be played on a dancefloor – when are you going to play tracks like that? We’re playing them for the first time ever, really.

Mother Earth – I think we might have played Mother Earth once, with John Newsham in 1991, from the front desk at Glastonbury, when he let us come up and play live. Rick and me with John and Tony - Turbosound they were then - in the afternoon, on the main stage system, but from the control desk. That was the year before we all became the Experimental Sound Field – Michael Eavis gave us our own field, which in many ways was the blueprint for Underworld as a live, improvised band.

You’ll be playing Dubnobasswithmyheadman in its entirety and in order…
Yeah, absolutely. Something we’ve never done, ever. We haven’t done anything like that. That was part of the appeal, really. We’ve never done anything like that before, so let’s see what it’s like. We’ve never been a band to say ‘never’. It’s an opportunity to do something we’ve never tried before.

Has the process sparked new inspiration?
Yeah, yeah, we both think it’s an album which is very contemporary in its sound. Revisiting it is quite timely because we’re back in the studio writing and there are a lot of things about that album, not only in its sound, but the approach, and the mindsets that were going on at the time – you know, the attitudes we had to the things going on around us, and to things we were bringing into the studio. It’s been valuable to re-visit those things again.

How has life changed?
My life is completely different to what it was like then. It was a very dark and precarious existence. The lyrics that were being delivered to the record… it’s interesting to re-visit those processes and you start to think, can you achieve that very focused state of mind without having to do such damaging things to your body? And the answer has to be ‘yes’. It’s been very inspiring to realise that it’s just a state of mind and you can find other ways to achieve that focus and sharpness of mind.

So you’ve known John and Funktion-One for a while?
Since 1983. In 1983, we were at Stanbridges – that was a rehearsal studio – and they had Turbos in there and, in fact, in 1983 we recorded at Ridge Farm. When we were Freur we recorded one track of that first album at Ridge Farm and met Tony and John then – went over to the workshops, said ‘hi’, then later that year we went to Stanbridges and rehearsed using Turbosound and we’ve been in love with that sound ever since.

Do you see Funktion-One as the natural progression for Turbosound?
Oh yeah! Absolutely. Absolutely. It sounds human. There’s just something about it. It comes on. Other systems have a colour to them, which feels more synthetic than Funktion-One’s. Turbo was the same. They sound human, they sound organic. They feel like they’re living, breathing things. They invite me in when I’m listening to them. We’ve got Funkion-Ones – quite a few subs, mids and highs – here at the studio and we have them on stage as our monitor system. They’re fabulous. We tried a couple of shows without them and it was awful. It was like our ears had been taken away from us – something was missing.

When I went out with my own band, we took them with us because I just felt like I couldn’t function without them. Rick and I have grown up with them, both as a PA and as a monitoring system - they’re a part of our sound. They’re a very important part of the sound of Underworld. When the two come together it’s very special.

Is the monitoring system for the Festival Hall show new?
Yeah, it’s very specific. It came out of my experiences with my own band. John did FOH when I took the Edgeland album on tour. We were using a kind of halfway towards the monitoring system that we’ve got now. We were using side-fills and a small Funktion-One wedge in front of me and one in-ear in, with a little bit of reverb. It was a whole new system and I was working on cables instead of radios. Radios bring you so much interference and they filter out so much of the quality of the voice.

For this, I needed something that was very specific in the area that it covered because I didn’t want it to spill out over Rick, so I couldn’t use side-fills across the stage. So we set up a horseshoe of speakers – small wedge in front and two speakers on the side, pointing up at me. So I stand in this horseshoe, where I’m getting a stereo image of the mix that Rick is sending out to John, plus my vocal effects are in the stereo pair, and then my straight vocal comes to my own monitor desk – I can send it to the monitor straight in front, take it up or down.

Then I’ve got another control which sends to my single in-ear, which I can bring up and down, and add some ambiance to that as well. So I can completely contour what I’m adding to Rick’s mix. I like to hear Rick’s mix, but in this instance I’ve taken out my own vocal and left the vocal effects in the sides.

It’s really fantastic. It’s phenomenal. When we ran it at the Festival Hall the other day, we did a sound check, and even with the system slapping back off an empty room, it was phenomenal. It just allows me to hear my voice - the tonality and the various frequencies. There’s a lot of air in my voice. It’s really important to be able to control the tail and front end. When I can’t hear that, when I’m just using in-ears, then basically you’re just a vocal note that’s on or off, loud or quiet. For something like this – this album, in this kind of environment – it’s imperative that I’m able to hear as much of the voice as is humanly possible, while at the same time hearing the space of the room. This new system that Funktion-One has created for me is fantastic. It’s the best I’ve heard my voice ever.

It’s curious, we’re doing some tracks that the band plays on main stages, things like Cowgirl, and it’s quite shocking. My voice is so clear, I’m having to turn it down. I’ve just never heard it like that before. I’ve never ever had such control of the image of my voice, it’s like I’ve been given a new lease of life.
  #5  
Old 10-10-2014, 02:47 PM
TheBang
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Re: Nice Interview in today's Guardian...
When you get the monitoring right, do you deliver a better performance?
Yeah, you do. When you get that sweet spot as well. That’s one of the things I like about having Funktion-One behind us - it just feels fantastic. There’s a bit that’s been completed on the inside of your head. You feel like you’ve got all your skills available and you can take them anywhere.

The brilliant thing about working with John… I spent years and years in the ‘80s, spending hours trying to explain to monitor engineers what I was hearing. It would just go on and on and on, and it’s so demoralising. John walks up, and tweaks, it takes him less than a minute and he gets it. He understands. He’s a master. He is a master, there’s no question. When I went out on tour with my own band last year, I refused to go unless John was available. There’s just no point because you end up getting into these conversations about sound, which are untranslatable. But because we’ve grown up with John and also because he is such a master – he’s an extraordinary sound engineer – you just say to him, ‘John, can you just do that thing that you do’ and it’s great.

In our early days, when we’d go and play some clubs in America and other countries, the sound system would almost literally be falling to pieces, I remember club owners would be coming up to John and shaking his hand, saying, ‘Oh my god, how did you get it to sound like that?’ He just understands.

Some people are really good with animals, John is fantastic with sound and speakers.
  #6  
Old 10-10-2014, 05:05 PM
jetpig
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Re: Nice Interview in today's Guardian...
hrmm. Curious what the I love Techno set is gonna be like then. Dark and long, rez/cowgirl, dirty epic, nuxx are givens. I suspect scribble, tmo, KoS, dark train also. Perhaps spoon man and surf boy bridges?
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