Creating The River’s ambient textures

Field recordings, tape machines and delays all go into the track’s atmospheric backdrop

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The starting point of the track comes from a collection of looped and layered field recordings. “Our keys player took a trip to India,” Pete explains. “He spent an afternoon on the Ganges in Varanasi with his Zoom recorder, and came back with these amazing field recordings. You can hear boat oars, and this procession boat with these amazing bits of percussion. We basically chopped that up and tried to make it vaguely in time without losing the human element.”

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Once the melody is down, Pete builds a melodic backdrop using the Yamaha Reface CP. Its onboard delay can act like a looper. This turns a simple two-note riff into a swirling backdrop that sits behind the track’s intro and middle section. The Reface’s delay is synced to the project by hand, so that the timing slips a little, making it feel slightly more human.

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To take the Reface loop further, Pete feeds it through his WEM Copicat tape echo. “I run this as a send/return on the desk before it goes into the computer. It’s nice to have more variety of timing that isn’t locked to the computer.” Pete manipulates the tape by hand to warp the pitch. “People probably won’t approve of using it like that, but you get those great wobbling delays.”

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To manipulate instrument textures further, Pete bounces sounds to his Yamaha four-track cassette recorder. “It’s basic but has some nice old preamps and you get a unique sound from it.” On The River, a recording of a simple guitar riff is played back at half speed for a drawn-out texture. “Just another toy to make beds of sound out of, really. It sits subtly under the mix.”