INTERV IEW:

David Wrench The multitasking producer and performer returns with his new project, Audiobooks

David Wrench has a musical CV that reads like a veritable who’s who of essential contemporary music. The Welsh producer, mixer and musician has added his not inconsiderable mixing talents to an impressive and eclectic range of projects from Frank Ocean, FKA Twigs and the Manic Street Preachers through to electronic luminaries Hot Chip, Goldfrapp and Caribou. Wrench’s deft touch with a mix recently drew the attention of one-time Talking Head David Byrne who enlisted David to mix his brilliant new album, American Utopia.

As a musician, David Wrench has followed an equally circuitous and varied path with debut album 1997’s, Blow Winds Blow, 2005’s offering The

Atomic World of Tomorrow and 2004’s electropop stomper, Superhorny (and its equally majestic B-side Fuck You and Your War on Terror) showcasing Wrench’s ear for the dancefloor along with a keen sense of musical mischief.

Audiobooks sees Wrench enlist the voice and saxophone skills of fine art student Evangeline Ling. Their debut offering, the modular-laced Gothenburg EP, announces the fledgling partnership amidst a glorious, bristling electro swagger and esoteric blend of synths and snatched conversations. If

Gothenburg is anything to go by then we cannot wait to sample the delights on their soon-to-be released debut album. Charged up on the new EP,

FM sought out David Wrench at his studio in East London to find out more about Audiobooks, audiophilia and the mixing modus operandi that has made Wrench so in-demand.

Congratulations on your mixing work on David Byrne’s recent album, American Utopia. How did that come about?

“Thanks… it feels amazing and I’m very, very lucky. I got an email out of the blue. I was lying in bed ill at the time, and when I saw it was from David Byrne (laughs) I thought I must’ve subscribed to a mailing-list. So, I read the lines ‘Hi, I’m David. I’m making an album...’ I was like whoa! So, they sent a test mix and I did it and sent it back. I didn’t hear anything back for a couple of days and I thought they didn’t like it. Then it all went from there, really!”

You’ve got so many strings to your musical bow, as it were. Which role do you enjoy most?

“See, I get bored if I’m doing the same thing all the time, so I have to mix it all up all the time. I really enjoy the mixing work though. Even there, I don’t like to stick with just one type of music as I like to find different solutions all the time and different ways of mixing a record. I’ve also got a bit more into production over the last year. I just produced an album for the band Let’s Eat Grandma and I’ve loved doing that. I’ve also started doing my own music again as a duo with Audiobooks, which has been amazing… so much fun. They do all feed into each other so, what I learn mixing other people’s records comes into my own stuff and what I learn doing my own music then goes into production or goes into other people’s stuff. You can experiment on your own music in a way that you can’t on other people’s. Then, when you figure out what actually works you can bring it into other projects with more confidence.”

Is the art of proper sound engineering an endangered animal these days?

“Well, you see, I work in the box most of the time now. What I do come across, if I’m sent someone else’s sessions, is that people haven’t grown up around having to get their gain structure right and having to have stuff in order or it doesn’t work. In the old days it used to be that the sessions could be quite a mess so, if I’m presented with a Pro Tools session, one of the first things is to go through it and sort the gain structure out so that nothing’s clipping. It’s amazing how much more headroom that gives me in a mix. How much more space it gives in the mix and how much it just opens out and sounds better straightaway. Even if I’m then bringing it up to the same level at the end with some limiting it just opens the whole track out. With a lot of the younger engineers, I don’t think they’ve learned about gain structure. You still have to do all that within digital, if you want a track to really punch. Giving yourself that headroom is invaluable and does a lot of the work for you. There are brilliant young engineers out there who know their stuff though, and I really like the democracy of everyone being able to make a good sounding record at home. If you pay attention to what you’re doing, then you can make an amazing record with very little equipment. That’s brilliant.”

In the box has certainly become a new norm for making music, hasn’t it?

“Yeah. It’s meant that the mixer has become quite a valuable role and that’s certainly what I’ve ended up specialising in. With bands or artists that self-record there’s still the mixing bit at the end that you can’t really fake. You know what it sounds like and if you put it up against another record and it doesn’t sound as big or as good then you know you probably need to get some specialist help in. I really like working with people who self-produce and who’ve learned how to do it. The ideas are often amazing and there’s usually quite a bit of dialogue at that point and I’ll maybe get back to them and say ‘we need to look at the bassline’ or maybe get a better sound in there as there’s not enough bass, or it’s all sub-bass and it’s not coming out of the laptop speakers because we need some harmonics in there. I really like working with artists and collaborating with them on that bit.”

Presumably that’s one of the areas where being an artist yourself helps a lot?

“Absolutely. I just want to help an artist get their

vision through. It’s not about judging their engineering skills or anything, it’s about ‘This is what we’ve got. Let’s try and get this as good as we can’. Maybe we need to redo a few bits or add something new. I definitely see it as a collaborative thing and I work with all sorts of projects. If I’ve agreed to work on something it’s because the music’s good anyway. So we’re in it together.”

What’s your take on the new breed of intelligent mixing software such as iZotope Neutron et al?

“I haven’t tried it but maybe it’ll help some people. I see it as such an artistic process… I suppose you can mix in a purely technical way, but I feel I’m always making so many judgements that are based on taste and I don’t know how you would program that? Who knows… I wouldn’t dismiss it, as it’s amazing what can happen with technology, but my approach to mixing is that I always try and go on the emotion of the song. I did a masterclass in New Zealand recently where I mixed a track in front of some people, which was interesting because it made me realise what I was doing and what was odd about what I do. Everyone at the end was saying ‘You mixed the whole track without soloing anything’ but I always pull everything up and go as I’m listening to the whole. I will bring each track up individually at the beginning but, after that, no soloing at all because I’m just EQing it all in place. I hadn’t realised that was an odd thing to do, but you listen to the whole track, you don’t listen to stuff in solo. So I don’t really care what the guitar sounds like in solo, I want to know what it sounds like in the track. I’ll EQ it so it sounds right in the track… that might sound really weird if you solo’d it. I’d imagine that would be a weird thing for software to emulate.”

Do you still spread everything out over a desk for the mix?

“I don’t get the chance to do it that much anymore as it’s almost become impractical. I did a bit of that on The XX album. We used a desk for a couple of the tracks because we wanted a hands-on thing. It’s more for practical reasons that I don’t do it so often now, as everyone wants so many stems and so many recalls that I would have to have three mixing desks tied-up all the time! I’m happy working in the box. On a practical level, I really can’t see any other way for me. I do have some outboard gear that I still like to run things through sometimes.”

So, Pro Tools is your DAW of choice then?

“Yeah! (laughs) It’s the only one I know how to use! I do want to learn Ableton as it looks interesting and quite a creative tool. You generally get stems of a project and throw them into Pro Tools to work your magic on them in there. I have a spec of what I require that goes out, then I’ll get the stems sent to me and one of my assistants will check over the stems and the session to make sure everything aligns alright. I’ll often have wet/dry of

“I will bring each track up individually at the beginning, but, after that, no soloing at all”

certain things and I want the session to open with the rough mix in it, so I can then A/B it then go from there.”

How do you know when something’s finished?

“That’s just an instinct. Listening to something a few times until I feel happy with it. Often, I’ll leave it up overnight or I won’t send it off. I’ll come back to it in the morning and listen with fresh ears then either tweak things or send it off. That’s the beginning of the dialogue with the artist and we’ll go back and forth with it.”

Tell us a little about Audiobooks?

“I’m excited by it. We’ve only done a handful of shows… it’s just myself and Evangeline (Ling). We met about a year ago and started making music, almost by accident. It’s gone really well, and the album’s essentially done. We’re just tweaking the end of it and we’ve signed to Heavenly. When we made the record, we improvised a lot. When Evangeline first came to the studio I’d just set up my modular synth and she’d never used one before. So, she asked what all the different bits did, and I had some other stuff to do so I left her playing with it. I listened in at one point and what she was doing was really good and she seemed to have sussed it out quickly and was making some amazing beats on it. We started jamming on it and realised we’d done a track. She came around again and did another track, so we just kept on doing it until we had loads of stuff that all seemed to fit together. Before we knew it we had an album.”

You posted great photo of Audiobooks’ live setup on Twitter. Talk us through your live rig…

“When it came to live, I wasn’t sure how we were going to do it. The one rule I had was that I didn’t want any computers onstage… I stare at a computer screen all day and I don’t want to stare at one onstage. I’ve seen so many gigs going wrong with computers crashing; it breaks the magic of it. So, we were experimenting with different things and I quite liked the whole Pioneer CDJ thing to be quite free with loops. We wanted to do a seamless set without big gaps, so we started experimenting with loops and beats on the CDJs, but I wanted to trigger stuff too. I wanted a sampler, but I wanted to lock into the tempo coming from the CDJs or the other way around. Eventually I settled on the Pioneer Toraiz SP-16 sampler and I run a mini-network with the two CDJs and the Toraiz, which then locks them in sync for tempo. That then outputs a MIDI clock for a Roland TR-8 drum machine, if needed, too. I can then shift tempos around all from the CDJs.”

Anything else?

“For noises and weird random stuff, I’ve got a Soma Lyra-8, which is a brilliant synth as it’s like nothing else. It’s quite random and it feels alive to play, adding an element of chaos into it all. On the record, most of the sounds were done on my ARP 2600 and an Elka Synthex.”

The Elka Synthex is a brilliant synth although it doesn’t sound like you imagine it would!

“No, they don’t. They’re like beasts! I can’t really take either of them out live as they’re too precious, too old and fragile. I just got a Fender Rhodes into the studio and I started playing the Audiobooks stuff with it and it works. It’s totally different to the record but it really works and feels really alive. I put the Rhodes through a rotary effect pedal, a distortion, a delay and a reverb, which I kick in and out to get different textures out of it. Because it’s an electro-mechanical it feels like a real instrument… it is a real instrument! I split the signal from the Rhodes, so the affected signal is coming through a Fender Princeton amp and the unaffected signal comes out through a bass amp so there’s a super low end to it. I got a super-light Aguilar bass amp, so it wasn’t too heavy to carry around – it’s bad enough carting the Rhodes around!”

Are you enjoying experimenting with your music live?

“Loving it! It’s fun and Evangeline is an amazing person to work with… she’s got the ability to improvise brilliant lyrics, which makes it all quite exciting. The record was mad with so much improvisation, so we want to keep that element of risk for the live shows and have sections where neither of us really know what’s going to happen. We just wing it and, OK, sometimes it might not work but sometimes it’ll be great. The songs that I used the Synthex or the ARP2600 for in the studio, I’m just using the Rhodes for, which makes it a different sounding thing live, but it captures the spirit of it. I might add in an MS-20 to the live setup at some point so I can do some solos.”

Cutting back to your studio work, is there anything that you never mix without?

“I always have a sub. I get totally lost without a sub, especially doing electronic music. If you’re not hearing what’s happening down there, then you’re in big trouble. So, I have a pair of Neumann KH 310 A speakers that have a big Neumann sub that goes with them. I’m almost sitting on top of the sub, I always have it right next to me. I’ve also got a pair of Unity Audio The Rock speakers and a tiny Pure radio, so I can move between them all for comparisons. I do have some really nice Audeze headphones that are beautiful. That all means I can go off and work in a hotel room essentially… especially now that Pro Tools allows you to use smaller interfaces. That’s been a really good change and I’ve got a little Apogee interface and my UAD card that I take in a backpack and I’m good to go.”

Which of the UAD plugins do you use most?

“I love the UAD plugins, they’re just brilliant. I use the LA-2A emulation all the time. Their 1176 limiter is excellent too. I like the FabFilter plugins a lot too, especially the Pro-MB multiband compressor, which is such a great tool. There are a couple of Waves plugins I still use… I really like their SSL Compressor. I forgot the FabFilter Pro-Q too, the EQ is brilliant on that. My latest discovery with that is to make sure you set it to the linear phase mode. There are different phase modes on it and it defaults to low latency, but it’s the linear phase mode that sounds better; especially on drums as you suddenly get a much tighter beat.”

Anything on the gear wishlist?

“I’m always looking for things that are creatively different… I like things I can make new, interesting sounds out of, like the Lyra-8, as it’s different and makes me think differently when I use it. I want to explore more using DJ culture equipment within a creative space. I’d also like to find a synth that sounds even a bit like the ARP 2600 that was giggable! I don’t know what it is about that ARP… it’s just oscillators but they sound amazing! I’ve got an early one with the Moog filter on it and it just sounds incredible. The whole room quakes when you put it on and I haven’t found a modern synth that does that.”

want to know more?

“I always have a sub. I get totally lost without a sub, especially doing electronic music”

Gothenburg EP is out now on Heavenly Recordings – heavenlyrecordings.com/artist/ audiobooks/