The C.A.R. studio up close
Chloé has access to a wide range of hardware, some of it shared with her flatmate, but all of it as esoteric and bespoke as you might imagine. Here’s a quick tour…
also not afraid to ask for help. There’s only so much you can do as an individual and even when you’re producing on your own, getting a fresh set of ears involved can be a good thing. For me, this happens at the mix.
“I also know what interests me (the writing/ production side of things) and I know my limitations. If I wanted to hone the studio skills, I would’ve educated myself years ago. In fact the opposite is true. You could almost say I’m scared to lose the naivety of being DIY. If I know too much, maybe those happy accidents won’t happen. The same goes for singing. I’ve lost count of the amount of people who’ve suggested I take lessons over the years. It used to knock my confidence, but now I think of my voice as an instrument in itself, one I’m happy to employ. It’s unique and it sounds like me. Sure it’s not for everyone, but I’m cool with that. I’d rather appeal to fewer people than sound run of the mill.”
Here in my C.A.R.
By now we’re getting the sense that Raunet is a fan of more left-field thinking, so you won’t be surprised to learn that her introduction into the world of computer music production was anything but conventional.
“Back before Mole and I recorded our first demo,” she recalls, “I’d been in Detroit filming a documentary on techno music. My then boyfriend and I had spent a few weeks interviewing all these legends – like Mad Mike, Octave One, Juan Atkins, Robert Hood and Ron Murphy – when we met [DJ and producer] Magda playing at a Minus party in the basement of our hotel. We wanted to interview her too, and ended up going out to Windsor [just over from Detroit, in Canada] where she was living with [Canadian DJ] Marc Houle. When he heard we were staying at the hotel, he insisted we pack our things and head out to his for the rest of our trip. Back then, he was still working as a graphic designer, but had this incredible studio with all these vintage synths. Despite my love of dance music, I didn’t know much about them. He gave me a crash course and sent me back to the UK with a copy of Reason, and that’s how I got started.”
That’s probably the coolest introduction to computer music production that we’ve heard, and since that Reason debut, Chloé has remained in the hi-tech studio world… with occasional dalliances into the very low-tech.
“For years I relied heavily on softsynths, caning the Arturia and Native Instrument packs,” she says. “I also owned a Korg Poly 800 and a MicroKorg, an electric guitar and this wonderful, red, homemade bass with a distinct non-bassy sound (super prominent in the second Battant album and the first C.A.R. LP). I also had an electric piano and a load of cheap percussive bits, including a jar of rice and a squeaky chair, both of which made it into a lot
of my tracks, heavily drenched in FX.”
“Recently my flatmate’s moved his studio into the house so there’s a lot more to play with. His Korg Polysix and Yamaha CS01 are featured on my new album, as well as the Teenage Engineering OP-1 and my Korg Minilogue, which I also use live.
“Since setting up the studio properly, I’ve been getting a lot of use out of a Moog Minitaur, Arturia MicroFreak, Roland Boutique JU-06A and Analogue Solutions’ Impulse Command, although I’m still trying to get my head around the latter. There’s a Prophet-5 – it needs a clean but that hasn’t stopped me from trying to get some strange sounds out of it. I also have an Eventide H9 pedal which I go through phases of using loads, before packing it back into the bag. It hasn’t featured as much recently, but I know it’s one of those super handy bits of kit I’ll come back to soon enough. And of course there’s my Beta 58 mic! I’ve been recording with it almost exclusively since Battant.”
Anything on her studio wish list?
“Yikes, there’s a lot of things I’d love to have, including a Roland CR-78 [vintage drum machine], EMS VCS3 [vintage synth], and Eventide H3000 [legendary effects box]. I think I need to win the lottery for most of that though, so for now I’m pretty happy with what I’ve got. I would really want that EMS VCS3 though; it’s unattainable, but it would be great if someone could make an affordable clone (there are some out there but they’re still in the thousands). From what I understand, getting the price down is easier said than done. There’s also the fact a lot of replicants start sounding like softsynths. I don’t really see the point in that.”
The C.A.R. production philosophy
“I don’t think I stick to a typical structure,” Raunet perhaps unsurprisingly tells us when asked about her song-making ethos. “Sometimes I start with the drums, sometimes I’ll get a little bassline in my head, sometimes I’ll just open up a plugin synth and start messing about with sounds or melodies, and sometimes I’ll start with the lyrics. I think this goes with my intuitive ethos. It also helps keep things fresh. When I’m struggling to find inspiration, that flexibility really comes in handy. I also have loads of starts to tracks I can delve into – little loops or sketches I mighta shelved ages ago which can trigger an idea.”
“You should never throw anything away,” she continues. “You might hate something at the time, but that doesn’t mean it won’t come in handy in the future. I can’t count the number of times I’ve been stuck and opened up some random session I’d completely forgotten about.
“I had a load of cheap percussive bits including both a jar of rice and a squeaky chair”
“Never throw anything away. You might hate it but it might come in handy one day”
90% of it might be rubbish, but with fresh ears, a single part might be all you need to set you down a new, exciting path. Don’t be scared to experiment and don’t be frightened of failure.
It’s a cliché, but you learn a lot from messing up.”
One standard that Raunet does employ more often than not is, well, not that standard: “I use my voice as an instrument as much as I do for lead vocals. It can be chopped up or looped into sequences, repitched or treated with harmonics. Also, anything can be percussion. I mentioned before that I had a squeaky studio chair which made it into a lot of my tracks. I’ve even used my cat’s meow!”
With her booming career as a remixer and third solo album Crossing Prior Street just released, Raunet is clearly as busy as ever, and if you add the DJ-ing and band experience into the mix, she’s in a great position to dish out some bits of advice…
“Just do your thing and try not get to caught up in the whole game,” she states. “The music industry is one of the toughest and if I’ve learned one lesson, it’s that it’s easier to bob along in the under-current than ride the waves. I’m not a household name, but I’ve managed to carve out a little niche for myself and survive in one of the most expensive cities in the world, doing what I love. I try to work on good things with good people, regardless of money and I get by through keeping my fingers in many pies - producing, songwriting, radio, DJing…”
“Crossing Prior Street is a really personal one and probably the body of work I’m most proud of,” Raunet says of her latest release. “Normally on an album release, I’m plagued with anxiety and sick of the songs, but this time round I’m still genuinely into it. I’ll hopefully be doing a fair bit of touring and I also have quite a few collaborations in the pipelines. I’m currently working on an EP with the French artists Get A Room, and I’m doing vocals for a whole slew of others including Patrice Baumel, Roe Deers and Il Est Vilaine. Anna Lann and I have an ongoing project too. We’ve done enough tracks for an EP. Hopefully we’ll get it together, now we’re finally living in the same city.”
Check out the accompanying video (at
284 at filesilo.co.uk or on YouTube), where Raunet reveals some of her remixing skills, working on two very different tracks. First up she takes on the more melodic and slow-paced track Weaver by Ride guitarist Andy Bell (as Glok), and then the more in-your-face track
Medicine, by US punks The Imbeciles. Two very different tracks but both get a unique C.A.R. remix treatment.