[Kevin Paul] Welcome to the Sound On Sound People & Music Industry Podcast channel with me, Kevin Paul. In this episode, I talk to producer Ben Hillier. He discusses with me his early beginnings, about how he got into the studio, working with Depeche Mode, working with Nadine Shah and how he gets drum machines to jam with each other. Ben, thanks very much for doing the interview. Loved your studio and I hope you enjoy the show. Tell me about the studio here, because it's a lovely, vibey little place in the middle of nowhere. I understand it's been built with hay. [Ben Hillier] Yes. Yeah. Straw, actually. [Kevin Paul] Straw. Okay. [Ben Hillier] Very important. [Kevin Paul] Is there a difference? [Ben Hillier] There is, yes. Straw is basically like wood, whereas hay is grass. [Kevin Paul] Okay [Ben Hillier] It's the bit that cows eat. Whereas straw is the stuff that has corn growing on the end of it. [Kevin Paul] Okay. [Ben Hillier] So it's inert. [Kevin Paul] I'm glad we've clarified that. [Ben Hillier] Yeah, there you go. Yeah. Very important difference. Yeah, so we've got a few units in a big barn in the middle of a field in the middle of nowhere and inside the units we built a couple of control rooms with straw bale walls, specifically for the acoustic and for the insulation. [Kevin Paul] Yeah. [Ben Hillier] So it's really nice and warm in here. [Kevin Paul] Yeah. [Ben Hillier] And it doesn't cost us anything to heat. We are in the middle of nowhere, so you do need that in the winter. [Kevin Paul] Yeah, sure. [Ben Hillier] And acoustically it's great because it sort of absorbs the high frequencies in a pleasant manner. And because the walls are not very stiff and hard, [Kevin Paul] Right [Ben Hillier] ... it doesn't tend to reflect low end either. The low end sort of goes straight through the walls, so you don't get a lot of standing waves, so it's... [Kevin Paul] Great, perfect for mixing. [Ben Hillier] Perfect for mixing, yeah. [Kevin Paul] Yeah. [Ben Hillier] And I quite like recording in here as well, actually. [Kevin Paul] Yeah? [Ben Hillier] It's pretty good. We did, I think most of the drums for Nadine's third album for "Holiday Destination" were done in my room. [Kevin Paul] Yeah. [Ben Hillier] In the control room. [Kevin Paul] In the actual control room? [Ben Hillier] Yeah, because I use a really big, resonant old drum kit from the big old Slingerland Radio King. [Kevin Paul] Yeah. [Ben Hillier] And if you put it in a big acoustic, it sounds enormous, a bit too rocky. But if you put it in a real dead acoustic, you get all the resonance of the drums. [Kevin Paul] Yeah [Ben Hillier] ... really clear. [Kevin Paul] Yeah. [Ben Hillier] And it's got enough going on in the sound to not need to have a lot of room on it or anything like that. So it actually sounds better really dry. [Kevin Paul] I wasn't sure what to expect actually when I came to the studio. But the feeling here, it's very rustic. It's almost homemade. really. [Ben Hillier] It is homemade. [Kevin Paul] Yeah, both in its appearance and the sort of the vibe here. [Ben Hillier] Yeah. [Kevin Paul] It's very conducive to just working, but in a way that maybe allows the artist to think about what they're doing a little bit differently. There's no carpets on the walls or stuff like that, which doesn't necessarily mean anything particularly. [Ben Hillier] Yeah. [Kevin Paul] Is that something you've deliberately done? [Ben Hillier] Yeah, I want it to be creative and [Kevin Paul] Yeah [Ben Hillier] ... want it to feel like something where you can build stuff and make stuff and sort of get your hands dirty and get in amongst it rather than it being too... it's not hugely comfortable, but you tend to get here and just work. [Kevin Paul] Yeah. [Ben Hillier] So we work short, fast days here. We don't tend to work really late. But we don't need to because there's no distractions. [Kevin Paul] Yeah. [Ben Hillier] We're sort of two miles away from the nearest cappuccino. There's not anything going on to distract you, apart from going for a nice walk in the countryside. [Kevin Paul] Yeah. [Ben Hillier] Which is quite nice sometimes. [Kevin Paul] Yeah, of course. Yeah. [Ben Hillier] A lot of artists like to do that, just disappear off and walk through the fields for a bit and clear their heads. Yeah, it means we can work in a very applied... [Kevin Paul] Time period, yeah [Ben Hillier] ... of way, yeah. So yeah, it's good. [Kevin Paul] So tell me about how did you get into engineering and the studio, because are you a musician? [Ben Hillier] I started off playing in orchestras, playing percussion in orchestras, and then I studied that. When I left school, I started studying music, all classical stuff, doing grades and reading and all that sort of thing. [Kevin Paul] Yeah. [Ben Hillier] And I played drums as well. [Kevin Paul] Okay. [Ben Hillier] But it was mainly classical percussion was what I was studying. I was recorded playing in an orchestra for a Benjamin Britten piece. It was written for amateur and professional musicians, a piece called "Noye's Fludde," which is an opera specifically written to mix professional and amateur players. [Kevin Paul] Okay. [Ben Hillier] And as one of the amateur players, I was 18 or something like that and that was recorded for Virgin Classics by a company called Floating Earth, who are one of, I think they're still going, They're one of the top sort of independent classical recording companies, because at that time... [Kevin Paul] Was it a mobile thing? [Ben Hillier] They've got a mobile studio, yeah. [Kevin Paul] Yeah. [Ben Hillier] And they would go around to orchestras wherever. This was Bournemouth, so Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra, and they would go to where the orchestras played. [Kevin Paul] Yeah. [Ben Hillier] And they would hire the hall where, the hall and record them in that over a couple of days and record CDs of symphonies and whatever. [Kevin Paul] And is, that was your first inkling of the studio? [Ben Hillier] So I just followed the cables around. I think we were having a break. I followed the cables around and ended up in this control room. I was like, "Wow, I like this, this is good". [Kevin Paul] Really, was it immediate? Was it like... [Ben Hillier] Yeah, it was, yeah. And they were really friendly. They were like, "Oh, yeah." So they sort of looked at me and thought "Oh, come in." "Come in and have a look" and I thought "This is great". [Kevin Paul] Wow. [Ben Hillier] And I was just chatting to them and the producer invited me to go and see the editing. So he was editing it together in this very early digital editing and he'd just gone to, so this was 1988 maybe. [Kevin Paul] What's that, maybe. What's that, Sony or... [Ben Hillier] Yeah, so yeah, Sony DAE-1000's. [Kevin Paul] DASH yeah, okay. [Ben Hillier] So yeah, with the U-Matic machines and all that stuff. And so I went to an edit suite in London and I just went out there for the day and had a nose around and looked at it. And I was at college in Devon at the time and luckily the engineer, a guy called Mike Hatch, who's a fantastic engineer, he had a very bad grasp of geography and he said, "Oh yeah, we're recording the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra quite a lot, so do you want to be our assistant down there?" "Yeah, all right. It's only a three-hour drive." And I jumped at the chance of doing that. [Kevin Paul] Yeah. [Ben Hillier] So I went and started doing classical assisting for him, which was really exciting. So you're running the, they recorded to two U-Matics and two DASH, two DAT tapes sorry, as backups and then as the assistant, you were basically helping rig the whole studio. So they'd turn up with a van and you'd be plugging all the cables in and running multi cores and stuff like that. [Kevin Paul] Yeah. [Ben Hillier] They'd record with about 20 mics, I think. [Kevin Paul] Okay [Ben Hillier] ... for a full symphony orchestra. [Kevin Paul] So it's pretty detailed, so it'd give you a... [Ben Hillier] Yeah [Kevin Paul] ... a good oversee of the process, as it were. [Ben Hillier] Absolutely yeah, and then he'd be balancing live to two track. [Kevin Paul] Yeah. [Ben Hillier] So once you'd had one session, that was pretty much his job done. He was just monitoring levels and watching out for any technical problems. [Kevin Paul] Yeah. [Ben Hillier] And then I was doing sort of running the tape machines and ID-ing things. [Kevin Paul] Overlapping them and stuff, yeah [Ben Hillier] ... scribbling down. [Kevin Paul] Yeah. [Ben Hillier] And making sure that everything was labelled, and so they could find all the takes in the right place. And just being part of it, and it's a really exciting process actually, recording classical stuff, especially the last half hour, because they have a whole list of takes that they've got to get through and you've got what, anything up to 100 musicians in the orchestra. [Kevin Paul] Yeah. [Ben Hillier] And if you go over time, it costs you an absolute fortune. [Kevin Paul] That's right, yeah. The Musicians Union rates are pretty spot on, the union rates. [Ben Hillier] Yeah, all of a sudden you're going way over budget. [Kevin Paul] Yeah. [Ben Hillier] And so the last sort of 10 or 15 minutes, you might be doing sort of 20 or 30 takes of tiny little sections. So it's like bosh, bosh, bosh and the level of constant, it's very exciting to be involved with that many people really focused and really concentrated. [Kevin Paul] For sure. [Ben Hillier] And you're banging in ID points on the DAP machines. [Kevin Paul] Yeah [Ben Hillier] ... and just like scribbling everything down. I was very lucky to be allowed to, at that age, to be allowed to be involved in something that sort of... Because if I'd screwed it up, there would've been... [Kevin Paul] That's it. [Ben Hillier] That's it. [Kevin Paul] You won't record anything. [Ben Hillier] They wouldn't have recorded anything. [Kevin Paul] Yeah. [Ben Hillier] It wasn't computer recording in those days. [Kevin Paul] That's right. [Ben Hillier] It was pre-DAEs. Those engineers had all been trained at a place called the Tonmeister course in Guildford, in Surrey University and they said, "You should go there because that's a really good..." I was wondering what to do next and they sort of recommended that. And because I'd worked with them, that gave me quite a good in to that course. And I went there and they had great equipment because it was originally set up by the BBC in the '60s, so they'd had these sort of Neve 1073s lying around and... [Kevin Paul] Oh my gosh. [Ben Hillier] I think they had something like four C12s and two C24s as... [Kevin Paul] Oh my God. [Ben Hillier] And like Val 47s just knocking about and those were just the normal mics you used. [Kevin Paul] Yeah. [Ben Hillier] And everyone was like, "Oh yeah, they're a bit noisy." But those were the days when it was sort of like they weren't the new thing. Everyone was saying, "Oh, you should use the 414 because it's nice and quiet." [Kevin Paul] Yeah. [Ben Hillier] And I was lucky. I was digging. And they had a VCS3 and stuff like that. [Kevin Paul] Oh, really? [Ben Hillier] All these things knocking about that just blew my mind. I was just getting them out, and these sound amazing, and this... [Kevin Paul] Yeah. [Ben Hillier] The VCS3, I think I was one of the few people that ever bothered even getting it out of the store, because you have to sign everything out to use it. [Kevin Paul] Yeah, of course. Yeah. [Ben Hillier] And yeah, I remember getting that thing out and just struggling to get it to make any noise at all, but just being really excited by it. And I was very lucky with the timing because at that point, DAWs were just becoming viable, so... [Kevin Paul] When would this have been? '90s? Early '90s? [Ben Hillier] Yeah, 1990. [Kevin Paul] 1990. [Ben Hillier] So you were just getting Sound Tools. [Kevin Paul] Yes. That would've been the first one, wasn't it? Sound Tools. [Ben Hillier] Yeah. So Pro Tools wasn't available then. It was Sound Tools, and they had an eight-track version, which didn't really work, but they had a two-track version and Sonic Solutions and stuff like that. [Kevin Paul] Yeah. [Ben Hillier] And Cubase Audio, sort of. [Kevin Paul] Was just starting, wasn't it? [Ben Hillier] Yeah. [Kevin Paul] Four track of Cubase Audio. [Ben Hillier] Yeah, and it was all... [Kevin Paul] It never worked [Ben Hillier] ... it was all very tentative. None of it really... [Kevin Paul] Yeah [Ben Hillier] ... worked properly, and it was sort of a... And I was doing a lot of classical editing but as part of the course as well, which was all DA1000s or dash tapes. And so just learning all of that was very prescient. It was the perfect time to do it, because it meant that... Then I did an industrial year in Eden Studios in London. [Kevin Paul] Oh yeah. Yeah, I remember. [Ben Hillier] And it meant that I could do all that stuff and everybody in the... I could do all the digital editing and knew how to get Sound Tools to work and Pro Tools was just turning up. [Kevin Paul] Yeah. [Ben Hillier] And it was exactly the same as Sound Tools, effectively. [Kevin Paul] But it was the four-channel one, wasn't it? [Ben Hillier] Yeah. [Kevin Paul] You had to link two units together. [Ben Hillier] That's right, yeah. And it was sort of like version... [Kevin Paul] Never worked [Ben Hillier] ... Pro Tools 2 or 4, wasn't it? [Kevin Paul] Yeah. It definitely wasn't Pro Tools 1. Nobody ever heard of it. [Ben Hillier] No. [Kevin Paul] It never made it out. [Ben Hillier] Yeah. And I started working with people like Steve Osborne-And Paul Oakenfold, they were in that studio all the time. And so I became their sort of main assistant while I was there. And we started using Pro Tools, because everything was still taped then, and we would do tape edits. [Kevin Paul] Yeah. [Ben Hillier] And I was quite surprised when I went to a professional pop studio, if you like, a multitrack studio- that they weren't using anything digital. It was like you'd master to DAP, but really you were mastering to half-inch. [Kevin Paul] Yes. [Ben Hillier] DAP was a backup. So that was sort of like, oh, I thought they would've gone on further than that, but the technology was only just available. [Kevin Paul] Just wasn't there. It wasn't reliable enough though, was it, really? [Ben Hillier] No. [Kevin Paul] It wasn't. [Ben Hillier] But it meant that when I first started assisting in engineering, I was sort of at the front of that... [Kevin Paul] Yeah [Ben Hillier] ... with the Pro Tools revolution. So I knew from my technical training at the college, I learned how to clock systems properly and lock two-inch to Pro Tools, which a lot of people really struggled with because it was tricky. [Kevin Paul] It was hard. I do remember. [Ben Hillier] You had to really know your stuff. Yeah. [Kevin Paul] I do. [Ben Hillier] You had to understand it. [Kevin Paul] You had to understand the concept, then you... [Ben Hillier] Yeah, so that you could lock the... [Kevin Paul] On time code and frame rates, and clocking. [Ben Hillier] And locking the capstone of the machine to an external Black Burst video clock and all that sort of stuff. [Kevin Paul] Yeah [Ben Hillier] So that the Pro Tools was locked to a solid frame rate, which meant that it sounded good. [Kevin Paul] Yeah. [Ben Hillier] Whereas if you didn't do that, it sounded awful because... [Kevin Paul] And it would drift, wouldn't it? [Ben Hillier] Yeah. [Kevin Paul] It would start... [Ben Hillier] Well, it would do if you didn't lock it all together [Kevin Paul] It would start drifting, wouldn't it? [Ben Hillier] Yeah. [Kevin Paul] Sort of just, you know. And every time you played it, it would play differently. [Ben Hillier] And I used to get loads of work from people, because word got out that I could actually lock tape machines to Pro Tools. And it was like this thing, it's like, "Wow, somebody can actually do it." And there was a chap at Dream Hire who went on to be a producer and I'm just trying to remember his name. He was a very nice chap. [Kevin Paul] I remember Dream Hire. [Ben Hillier] Me and them, we sort of had worked out how we could get this to work reliably. [Kevin Paul] Yeah. [Ben Hillier] And so I used to get loads of, I've got some gigs where it was just like "Can you come around and sync our tape machine up?" It literally was that. [Kevin Paul] I don't doubt that at all. [Ben Hillier] Yeah, because it was such a pain in the arse [Kevin Paul] Because it was a total nightmare. It was an absolute nightmare. [Ben Hillier] And so I did lots of engineering and programming. I was a programmer for a long time and I did a few gigs with people, because in those days as well, the studio personnel used to be slightly different. You used to have your producer who didn't always engineer and quite often didn't. [Kevin Paul] Well, he could be the DJ, couldn't he? [Ben Hillier] Yeah. He could be a DJ, he could be a band member. [Kevin Paul] Yeah. [Ben Hillier] He could be an engineer who'd gone up to producing or whatever. But then you'd always have an engineer, and you'd usually have a programmer as well. [Kevin Paul] Yes. [Ben Hillier] And so quite often you'd have an engineer who's running the tape machine, and a programmer who's running Logic or Pro Tools and sort of working together and everything would be compiled onto the master two-inch. [Kevin Paul] Yes. [Ben Hillier] And that's how you'd build the song up. And so I was doing one or both of those roles, as a programmer or engineer for different people. And I worked with a lot of different producers. So I worked a lot with Steve Osborne and I did some stuff with Nellee Hooper, stuff with Gil Norton. [Kevin Paul] Yeah. [Ben Hillier] Stuff with Stephen Street. So I was very lucky. I worked with a lot of big producers at the time and saw how they ran their sessions and learnt a lot from them, yeah. [Kevin Paul] Is that where you cut your teeth then? That's where you got your... [Ben Hillier] Yeah. That's where I learned how to make rock records, pop records, yeah. [Kevin Paul] Well... [Ben Hillier] That's where I learned how to produce. So it was from those people, really. [Kevin Paul] Well, you were doing all this engineering. What does it take to be a good engineer? What is a good engineer? [Ben Hillier] You've got to know your stuff technically. [Kevin Paul] Yeah. [Ben Hillier] That's really important. And you've got to know it to the point where it's not even an issue. You just are keeping an eye on levels and you're hearing things. You're hearing phase and you're hearing... [Kevin Paul] Pops and clicks. [Ben Hillier] Pops and crackles and noises that shouldn't be there and stuff like that. And then you can be creative within the sort of remit you're given by the producer. You have to remember that you're working for the producer. So if the producer says, "I want it to sound exactly like this," then you have to get it sounding exactly like that. And some of the producers I worked for were very prescriptive about what they wanted. They were like, "This isn't the sound that I want." [Kevin Paul] Okay. [Ben Hillier] Or you would be essentially plugging things in, routing sounds, getting everything ready and they would do the sound. [Kevin Paul] Yeah. [Ben Hillier] They would fine-tune the sound, because they'd know what they want and they had enough technical knowledge, or lots of technical knowledge to do that. [Kevin Paul] Yeah. [Ben Hillier] And you were enabling them to do that. Other producers would be like, "Yeah, get drum sound up." [Kevin Paul] Yeah. [Ben Hillier] And you would do whatever... [Kevin Paul] You wanted to do? [Ben Hillier] That would be fully your choice. And they would either like it or not. But I think the most important thing as an engineer is you're sort of technical support for the whole project. [Kevin Paul] Yeah. [Ben Hillier] So you're achieving the sounds and realising the sounds to the best quality and the best standard that you can. [Kevin Paul] Yeah [Ben Hillier] For the artist and the producer. It can be very creative. [Kevin Paul] Yeah [Ben Hillier] But that's not the reason you're there. It's great if you can be creative, and if you get that opportunity to do that and to inspire people with great sounds and to say, "Well, you could try running it through this synthesiser and it'll... You could try running that drum sound through this synthesiser and it'll sound wicked." And everyone will go, "Oh, great". But that is the... [Kevin Paul] That's not your primary function [Ben Hillier] It was great when that happened, but that's not your primary function. Your primary function is to record everything really well. [Kevin Paul] It's a fairly anonymous role, isn't it? [Ben Hillier] It can be. [Kevin Paul] Yeah [Ben Hillier] But the best engineers are always really calm, very able, and very easy to work with. [Kevin Paul] Yeah. [Ben Hillier] And they just sort of make everything all right and give you confidence in it. They're sort of driving, if you like and they're not scaring you. [Kevin Paul] Do you personally, even after all your years as a producer, do you still need that confidence sometimes? [Ben Hillier] Yeah. It's absolutely great to have a good engineer. [Kevin Paul] Yeah. [Ben Hillier] It really is. You want someone who's got their eye on everything. [Kevin Paul] Yeah. [Ben Hillier] And you don't want... It's always a bit... Yeah, because now I'm sort of experiencing it from the other side. It's always a bit of a worry if you're like, "I've noticed that crackle...". [Kevin Paul] Yeah [Ben Hillier] Or that's not working, or that's one-legged. [Kevin Paul] Yeah [Ben Hillier] And he hasn't noticed it." [Kevin Paul] Yeah. [Ben Hillier] So yeah. You can't expect the engineer to notice absolutely everything, but when they don't notice stuff, it's always a bit like, "Oh, really?" [Kevin Paul] Yeah. [Ben Hillier] "Do I have to think about that now rather than thinking about all the other things I should be thinking about? About the song and about the lyrics and about the chords and..." [Kevin Paul] Yeah, sure [Ben Hillier] And about the creative direction and sonic direction of things. So that's the real job of the engineer, is to free everybody else up to not have to think about the technical stuff. [Kevin Paul] Sure. You worked with Elbow on their first record. [Ben Hillier] Yes. [Kevin Paul] And their second record as well, right? The first two. Yeah that's right, yeah. Did you know that they were going to be great? [Ben Hillier] The first record was a strange situation because it was kind of the first thing I'd produced. [Kevin Paul] Yeah. [Ben Hillier] And they'd already done the whole record with Steve Osborne, who I'd worked with for years. I've been his engineer for years. And they'd recorded it for EMI I think, or Virgin and then been dropped before they'd released the record, which was quite a common thing back in those days. [Kevin Paul] Yes. [Ben Hillier] There was a period... [Kevin Paul] Well, yeah [Ben Hillier] ... when that went on a lot, wasn't it? [Kevin Paul] Well, the A&R man would change. [Ben Hillier] Yeah. They spent all the money on recording the record and then once the record had been delivered they had a sort of decision to make of, well, do they want to commit the same amount of money to promotion? And they couldn't be arsed. And they hadn't and the A&R guy had gone, so there was nobody fighting the band's corner. [Kevin Paul] Yeah. [Ben Hillier] So they signed again to... they went away after that and recorded a couple of tracks themselves, new tracks, which were really good and then got signed to V2. And then contractual obligations are that they're not allowed to re-record all those, they were in those days, I don't know if they're the same now, but they weren't allowed to re-record the record with the same producer, because obviously there was a whole load of stuff on the first album that they wanted to, on the first recording of the first album, that they wanted to redo, or they wanted to use. And they also, as a sort of peace offering to EMI, they had to give them a couple of tracks on the new album that were owned by EMI. It was real legal nightmare. Yeah, just real bullshit because it was sort of like you had to do that so that otherwise EMI could just release their version of the album the week before and just fuck you up. [Kevin Paul] Fuck everything up, yeah. [Ben Hillier] Not that there was any suggestion they were going to do that, but you have to... [Kevin Paul] No, but there's- [Ben Hillier] You have to kind of play the game. And so it was a really weird situation for me because Steve had produced the first album and he was a good friend of mine and I'd learnt a lot off him and they were asking me to produce what I thought at the time was going to be the same thing. So I was like, "I don't know if I want to do that." And they said, "No, no, we've learnt a lot from doing the record with Steve and actually, we feel like it's a second go at it and there's loads of things we want to change." So we ended up only using one track off Steve's version of the record. [Kevin Paul] Yeah. [Ben Hillier] So one of his recordings, which I've mixed again, and then there was another track, which I think was quite close to the EMI version of the album, which we re-recorded and gave the rights to EMI. And then the rest was generally new songs, actually. So it was sort of... [Kevin Paul] So it's almost like a second album. [Ben Hillier] Almost like that, yeah. [Kevin Paul] Yeah. [Ben Hillier] It was sort of like a reworking. [Kevin Paul] A second debut album. [Ben Hillier] Yeah, like a reworking of their debut album with like "Actually, we've had a... we've changed our mind. We want to do this, this, and this." [Kevin Paul] Cool guys. [Ben Hillier] Well in some ways it was really good. But they saw it as a sort of like... They were great about it. They saw it as an opportunity to be really creative with it... and go, "Right, okay, we're going to change this around." And they were really... It was a great band to do a first record with because A, they're lovely people and I've got on really well with them, and they're still really good mates now. So, it's really good whenever I see them. And we were just really... it was just a really creative sort of playtime of an album. So we disappeared up to Parr Street in Liverpool, which had a massive great big live space, and had stuff set up all over the place, and we're just trying stuff out and being... because they had a couple of tracks ready already that they'd recorded themselves, it was sort of like we just had to fill in the blanks. And so there was a lot, it was really good fun. Yeah. It was a very creative session. Yeah. And then the second one was an absolute nightmare. [Kevin Paul] In what way? [Ben Hillier] Just because it was classic second album syndrome. [Kevin Paul] Classic, yeah. [Ben Hillier] They'd been very busy touring and playing everywhere... [Kevin Paul] Yeah [Ben Hillier] And they'd got a lot of press and a lot of interest in the UK. And so you approach the second album and you haven't had time to write many songs, so they were short on songs when we went in the studio and they were also worried about, because they'd only done one record, well, albeit twice. [Kevin Paul] Yeah. [Ben Hillier] They couldn't quite decide what it was about that first record that they wanted to hold. It's very difficult, I think, for any band with their second record. The hardest thing is not necessarily writing new stuff. It's knowing which elements of that first record are things that you don't want to change and then having the confidence to change other stuff. Because it's having the confidence to push the boat out a bit without feeling that you're going to lose your identity. [Kevin Paul] Yeah. [Ben Hillier] And I think the tendency with bands is, and very understandably, is to sort of almost try and make another first album. [Kevin Paul] Yeah. [Ben Hillier] But they were sort of battling with that because they didn't want to do that. But at the same time, they wanted to maintain their identity and they were sort of like... So, the difficult decisions on that record were what makes their sound? [Kevin Paul] Yeah, sure. [Ben Hillier] What is the core parts of their sound? And I was sort of saying to them, "Well, look, Guy's voice and the parts you choose to play, you can play any song and it will sound like you." [Kevin Paul] Yeah. [Ben Hillier] "You have to remember that and so just do what you feel. Pursue the songs." [Kevin Paul] Yeah. [Ben Hillier] Don't feel... [Kevin Paul] Don't feel tied down to anything. [Ben Hillier] Yeah. Don't second-guess yourselves. [Kevin Paul] Yeah. [Ben Hillier] Pursue the songs to their logical conclusion and if they're too far away from where... if they sound contrived or they sound too far away from your band identity, then we'll deal with that later. But it was sort of getting them to the point where they would actually do that. [Kevin Paul] When you're working with a band in that situation, the producer really comes into his own then, or their own. [Ben Hillier] Yeah. [Kevin Paul] Because there's lots of agendas possibly as well, outside of the studio, pushing and pulling... [Ben Hillier] Absolutely. Yeah [Kevin Paul] ... the band. How do you manage to maintain that focus? There's obviously a lot of trust there for you with the band. How do you manage to keep all that together? What's your secret recipe? [Ben Hillier] I think- [Kevin Paul] Or is there one? [Ben Hillier] No, I don't think there is one really. It's really about honesty with everyone and dealing, listening to everybody's points of view and then not being too scared to say, "Actually, that's valid, but you need to let other people pursue this." It almost felt like that was the record where, I learnt a lot about producing on that record. And I... [Kevin Paul] Personally, you learnt a lot? [Ben Hillier] Yeah. I mean... [Kevin Paul] About yourself? [Ben Hillier] That whole period, it was a really full-on period, because I'd just finished Think Tank with Blur and I had a weekend off and started the Elbow record because we were a bit behind schedule. So, I spent like a year working with Blur, doing that and learnt absolutely loads, because obviously they were really experienced. [Kevin Paul] Yeah [Ben Hillier] And very... Damon, well, the whole band are very, very capable and they'd been through a difficult time on that record as well, with Graham leaving the band... [Kevin Paul] Yeah [Ben Hillier] or getting moved out at the beginning of the record. And so, I'd come off the back of finishing that record and all the pressure of that, and gone straight into this Elbow record, which I was expecting to be really quite chilled and back in with my mates sort of thing. But it was like fucking hell. Out of the frying pan into the fire. Yeah. So, it was an interesting time. [Kevin Paul] Let's have a little chat about your stuff with Blur. You've done a lot of them. You've done a lot of stuff with them and Graham as well in particular. [Ben Hillier] Yeah. [Kevin Paul] What did you sort of bring to the party with those guys? What did you sort of want to do with that? [Ben Hillier] It was a funny... it was a slightly odd record in that I sort of managed somehow to end up as producer. I was originally brought in, I'd done some work with Alex, probably even before I'd done the Elbow stuff. I can't quite remember the... No, it was around about the same time. And I'd done some writing with him and some remixing with him and gotten really well with him and he'd introduced me to Graham and I'd done a, I think I'd done one solo record with Graham at this point and really liked him. I'd been a big fan of theirs. [Kevin Paul] Yeah, sure. [Ben Hillier] And so, they were a very big band at the time and still are, I guess. And I went in with the... they were doing a greatest hits record and I went in with them, I think mainly as engineer to kind of... Because I hadn't done that much producing, but I'd done a lot of engineering, so I was still mainly booked as an engineer. [Kevin Paul] Yeah. [Ben Hillier] And we went in to record some, I'm basically to record the demos for this... [Kevin Paul] Yes [Ben Hillier] Let's write a new single for the greatest hits record. [Kevin Paul] Yeah. [Ben Hillier] So I went in to record the demo for that and we recorded this track called "Black Book", which was really cool and I'd got on well with Damon because that was my first time I'd worked with him and we'd fired off at each other a bit and we'd recorded this track and I'd sort of edited it into... Because what they liked to do is they liked to play live and jam quite a lot. [Kevin Paul] Yeah. [Ben Hillier] And Damon would have the core idea of a song and it was almost like he was teaching the band the song. [Kevin Paul] Yeah. [Ben Hillier] And I would record that, because there was loads of ideas coming out and then I could sort of say, "This idea that you played here is really good, and this bit you played here was really good." And so sort of focus them and push them towards different bits and they'd say, "I like that bit I did there," or whatever. So collectively, out of a jam session, we would edit together a thing... [Kevin Paul] Yeah [Ben Hillier] ... that became a song, or a few songs. Yeah. Or a production as it was. Then we'd finish this track and they'd go, "All right, brilliant. Cheers." And gone off and recorded it with a sort of named producer and I was like, "Oh, great." [Kevin Paul] Yeah. [Ben Hillier] And then I heard the version that they'd done with the named producer, and he'd quite rightly had gone, "Oh yeah, that's great." And recorded it exactly like that. And so like I'd put... [Kevin Paul] Applause, yeah. [Ben Hillier] Yeah. So I'd put all this work into this song and then they'd gone and recorded it with someone and they'd recorded a very good version of it. [Kevin Paul] Yeah. [Ben Hillier] And I just felt like, "Oh, right. Missed that, haven't I?" And then we went back in to do a B side and the B side was... and "Black Book" was quite a chill, quite a slow song. [Kevin Paul] Yeah. [Ben Hillier] A nice song and then... [Kevin Paul] Yeah, it's a good song [Ben Hillier] And then Damon had this... all he had was this little squeeze boxSome sort of little Chinese squeeze box thing that he'd got. It was like something you've got out of a cracker or something. [Kevin Paul] Mm. [Ben Hillier] Given it by someone. Just a tiny little thing. and he just had this little... and he was just playing and it was like, "All right, that's cool." and he was like, "Right, let's write a song about that." [Kevin Paul] Wispy. Interesting. [Ben Hillier] "Let's write a song around that." And so I sort of sampled that and looped it up and did this stuff and Damon was quite interested in doing looping based and samples, because he'd just done the first Gorillaz record, so he was quite into all of that sort of thing and I knew how to do all of that... [Kevin Paul] Yeah [Ben Hillier] ... coming from a sort of dance music background. [Kevin Paul] Were you bringing all of that stuff with you wherever you went? [Ben Hillier] Yeah. [Kevin Paul] That was informing your way of working? [Ben Hillier] Yeah, it was. Yeah. [Kevin Paul] Yeah. [Ben Hillier] Well, being fluent in the digital programming end of things was really useful. So if anyone wanted to go down that road... [Kevin Paul] Yeah [Ben Hillier] ... of programming or looping or sampling, it's like that was just my... [Kevin Paul] Yeah, because all of those records, the Elbow and the Blur records, they've all got elements of that. [Ben Hillier] Yeah. [Kevin Paul] And obviously, I'm assuming that that's through yourself, really. [Ben Hillier] Yeah. Well, it's stuff that I could do easily. [Kevin Paul] Yeah [Ben Hillier] And I could enable people to use that really easily and I could go with those. And I loved those sort of sounds. That's what excited me. So bringing those in would... and so with Blur, that was kind of a thing, that they'd worked with William Orbit before that, but they'd all felt, certainly, I don't know if Damon felt it, but certainly Alex and Dave had felt very much like that was a bit of an arm's length experience. They described it to me as like making a film. So they'd turn up, play some stuff, and then disappear again and then it would come back later and they wouldn't know which bits they played. [Kevin Paul] Yeah. [Ben Hillier] So it was all edited. There was a lot of editing and creating in the computer that they weren't party to. [Kevin Paul] And also a disassociation with the process. [Ben Hillier] Yeah. Well it's... [Kevin Paul] Whereas you- [Ben Hillier] Well, I tend to do things- [Kevin Paul] ... try to encompass... [Ben Hillier] I do things a little bit of a different way. I tend to like... so the thing I loved about doing the Blur track we were talking about, is that we had a little sample that we made and then I created that. [Kevin Paul] Yeah. [Ben Hillier] Damon played it. I created a loop for it, and that was a thing that we played with. And then we'd put the guitar through. So we'd put the bass through a synth and I think on that one, I can't quite remember. We certainly did with the guitar and it was like so they were playing that sound through... I wasn't recording a DI and then doing that later. [Kevin Paul] Yes. [Ben Hillier] That was a core part of the sound. [Kevin Paul] Yes. [Ben Hillier] And they would then perform through those sounds. And that was something that I'm still very into and it was something that where you create quite an extreme sound, and let the musician perform with it rather than saying, "Right, you just play through this normal..." [Kevin Paul] Play a clean DI. Yeah [Ben Hillier] "... in inverted commas, normal sound." [Kevin Paul] Yeah. [Ben Hillier] "And then I'll make it sound interesting later." So I wanted... [Kevin Paul] A lot of producers do that, though, don't they? A lot of people, that's how a lot of records are made now. [Ben Hillier] Yeah. [Kevin Paul] A lot of records are made with that kind of intent. People playing in bedrooms. [Ben Hillier] Yeah, and then fiddling with it through plug-ins later. [Kevin Paul] Yeah. [Ben Hillier] Yeah, exactly. And I would far rather do it at the core. If you're going to have a crazy sound like... Because one of the other things that I'd like to, I always remember and always try and hold onto, is that musicians are your biggest asset in a production. They are where all the good shit happens. [Kevin Paul] Yeah. [Ben Hillier] They play stuff, and the way they react to the sounds and the way the thing that they put in there is stuff that you cannot create digitally. [Kevin Paul] Yeah. With a plug-in, yeah. [Ben Hillier] So if you give them a crazy sound or a really interesting sound that responds in an odd way, then they'll play in a way which might be quite odd or might be quite interesting, but it forces them to be creative and forces them to react to it and respond to it. And we did a lot of that with Elbow on their first record. Like doing sounds where the guitar amp was so loud, that if you took your hands off the strings, it would... [Kevin Paul] Just feedback. Yeah [Ben Hillier] It would just feedback and then playing it really quietly. Just because it was like, to inspire someone to play something in a way which is special and different, rather than just playing a normal sound. Because there was a lot of records around at the time that were very sort of bands playing in rooms, sort of straight-ahead things and that wasn't what I wanted to do. And a lot of the artists I worked with didn't want to do that either. So it was sort of pushing the sonic boundaries of things as a way of inspiring the artist, if you like. [Kevin Paul] Where did you get that curiosity from? Where, because, where did you get that idea of I want to just try stuff? Because a lot of people always, it fascinates me as well, is how... [Ben Hillier] [cymbals clashing] Sorry. [Kevin Paul] Brilliant. There's a track right there. [Ben Hillier] Yeah. I'm always interviewed while sitting at a drum kit. [Kevin Paul] That desire to create and to try stuff. Is that just your imagination? It's like... [Ben Hillier] I think it was something that had always interested me in music. Maybe it's something from coming from being a percussionist. So in an orchestra as a percussionist, you're like the crazy gang. You're the ones who do all the funny noises and the.. [Kevin Paul] You're the outsider, aren't you? [Ben Hillier] Yeah. And you get to do the interesting stuff, whereas the violins might get the melody, but they've all got to play the same. They're all like drones. You've got to do what the person sitting next to them does and a little bit unfair. [Kevin Paul] No, but it's what you do. [Ben Hillier] Whereas, you are doing the really crazy stuff and also you're the... a lot of that really interested me and then when I started studying music I really liked the modern sort of 20th century modernism stuff and I was sort of, the stuff, the sort of Cage and Stockhausen, Ligeti and people like that. Stravinsky. That was just, I found far more interesting than the sort of Brahms and Wagner and the sort of mushy classicalism. I liked the sort of harder edge modern creative stuff just because it sounded really interesting and it excited me. [Kevin Paul] Yeah. [Ben Hillier] And I think it's also you'd see that on, that sort of music you'd see on films. So you'd get, it's like films of the 70s and the 80s. A lot of the really cool films would have some really cool Ligeti soundtrack or something like that. [Kevin Paul] Yeah, yeah, for sure. [Ben Hillier] And you'd be like, "Wow, what's that sound?" It's like and it'd be... [Kevin Paul] Yeah, because also it was the start of analogue synthesis and... [Ben Hillier] Totally. [Kevin Paul] ... the stuff like that would have been around since the 70s or something. [Ben Hillier] Yeah. And so synths were what I found super exciting because it was really, I don't know, I was growing up watching too much "Doctor Who" or something, but it was sort of, all those really cool sounds I found far more interesting than sort of an orchestra sound or a piano. [Kevin Paul] Yeah [Ben Hillier] Or a sound that I knew what it was and I'd sort of, I would go and try and search those out. And so I'd carried that on with musicians that I work with. And I think that was the... Then I went to, I think when I first studied music, before I'd worked with the classical people, I was in a music college down in Devon called Dartington, which was really, it was a very sort of 60s, it was established in the 60s, so it was very modernist, cutting edge. There's three faculties, music and art and drama and, or theatre. And it was sort of very modernist, creative, sort of try everything. and I really liked that. [Kevin Paul] Yeah. You were right up for that. [Ben Hillier] Yeah. That's what excited me, really. [Kevin Paul] And then came Depeche Mode after the Blur and... [Ben Hillier] After Blur, it was Depeche, yeah [Kevin Paul] What were they looking for from you? [Ben Hillier] I'd done some work for Daniel Miller, and I'd done some mixing for him and I'd done various bits and bobs and he knew that I was into synths. And he knew that I was using a lot of synths, making records. [Kevin Paul] Yeah [Ben Hillier] Which I think was probably, which for me, I thought that was just a cool way to make records, whereas actually for somebody else, they were like, "That's a bit weird" because when I was an engineer, I sort of had a, I used to, I still am a terrible, I've still got a terrible equipment habit, which has to be fed all the time, as you can see. [Kevin Paul] Yes, I have noticed. [Ben Hillier] Yes. Sitting in my third studio. And, I used to have a rule that sort of when I was an engineer, that I would only buy, I loved buying synths, but I had to limit myself buying synths. I would only buy synths that you could put sounds through, so they had an audio input. [Kevin Paul] Okay, great. Great rule. [Ben Hillier] And so hence ending up with things like MS-20s and VCS3s and ARPs and stuff like that, because I would use them to mould sound and to modify the sounds and to create sounds for artists to play, you know? [Kevin Paul] Yeah. [Ben Hillier] Because, and so Daniel knew that I was using all these synths, so he just presumed that I would know how to work with synth artists. And it kind of, I guess the combination was from, if you look at it from that point of view, the combination was a good one because they, or should've been, it was fairly obvious it was going to work because they, in many ways, are essentially a rock band. [Kevin Paul] Yeah. [Ben Hillier] A lot of their song, Dave is a rock singer and a lot of their songs from, not at the very beginning, but certainly in the sort of "Songs of Faith and Devotion" era, around there, they were writing big rock songs. [Kevin Paul] Yeah. [Ben Hillier] And blues songs and stuff that I liked. That sort of, that style of song is stuff that I love. But they were doing it with synths, which is what was so clever about their sound. So it made sense that it would work well us going together. I think that was the sort of thing that Daniel was after and then I met them and got on really well with them. [Kevin Paul] Yeah. [Ben Hillier] I wasn't going to turn up and say to them, "This is how I think you should make your record". I was far more interested in turning up and saying, "Well, how do you want to make your record and how can I facilitate that?" Yeah. That's my approach, really. When I'm working with an artist, especially an artist who knows exactly... [Kevin Paul] What they want, yeah [Ben Hillier] Who has so much experience, I'm there to sort of realise their ambition for it and if elements of my sonic approach are part of that, then that's great. [Kevin Paul] I spoke to Dave McCracken, which he worked on your... [Ben Hillier] Yeah, he worked on one of those records, [Kevin Paul] ... on that first record. And he mentioned something about you wanting to get machines jamming. [Ben Hillier] Yeah. [Kevin Paul] Because machines are obviously very straight. You press play on one and every machine kicks off. [Ben Hillier] Yeah. [Kevin Paul] What did you mean by that jamming thing? [Ben Hillier] I've always found that in modern computer-based music making, you have too much control. It's making things in time and in tune and doing all those things that Pro Tools does is just too easy and too boring. I think there's a subtlety to the feel of things, so of machines. [Kevin Paul] Yeah. [Ben Hillier] So, I think you can hear the sound of a quantised Pro Tools drum kit, for instance, because it has a feel. It has the feel of Pro Tools. It doesn't have the feel of the drummer. And in the same way that you can hear the sound of an 808, you can hear the feel of an 808. You can get 808 samples and program them in Logic, and they sound one way and you do it on an 808 drum machine and it sounds like an 808. [Kevin Paul] Yeah, sure. [Ben Hillier] It doesn't sound like a collection of 808 sounds. It sounds like an 808 drum machine. [Kevin Paul] Yeah. [Ben Hillier] So, one of the things that we were playing with on that record was different hardware sequences and drum machines and things like that, have their own feel to them. [Kevin Paul] Yeah, sure. [Ben Hillier] And I think that, [Ben Hillier] and we had the time and the sort of [Ben Hillier] patience to be able to mess around with [Ben Hillier] jam syncing things and stuff like that. So rather than clocking everything together, we would get a sequence running on an ARP sequencer, and then get a drum machine running in time with it, be it an MPC or be it an 808 or be it like 808, SP-12... [Kevin Paul] Yeah [Ben Hillier] ... whatever drum machine, MPC... [Kevin Paul] Yeah [Ben Hillier] ... whatever drum machine we wanted to use. You'd program it up and it would feel really cool, and then if you put MIDI clock on it, it wouldn't feel so cool. [Kevin Paul] Yeah. [Ben Hillier] So we'd spend more time getting it just jam syncing, so it's like three, two, one... [Kevin Paul] Jam sync, like literally just three, two, one, press? [Ben Hillier] Press the button [Kevin Paul] ... everyone's pressing play. [Ben Hillier] Off you go, yeah. And I'd done some stuff as an engineer working on some older remixes of older sort of 70s and 80s electronic music, where they were, before you had MIDI and clocking and stuff like that. Well I mean, it had clocking, but things wouldn't sync up and you'd get a multitrack for a song, and the feel on it would be very specific. [Kevin Paul] Yeah. [Ben Hillier] There was one song we worked on where it was all based around an analogue sequencer and the drums were sort of like they printed electronic drums down. It must be really early sort of LinnDrum style or analogue sequencer running like generating drums. They printed that down through the whole track with a click and then they'd got a sort of 16-type sequence apart. [Kevin Paul] Yeah. [Ben Hillier] The timing on it would keep moving around a bit. [Kevin Paul] Yeah. [Ben Hillier] Because what they'd do is they'd basically get it in time, record that section over the drums. [Kevin Paul] Yeah. [Ben Hillier] And then you get to the chorus and it would jump a little bit. [Kevin Paul] Yeah. [Ben Hillier] And it would come back in a bit more urgent... [Kevin Paul] So you'd stop the tape or whatever [Ben Hillier] ... and stuff like that because they'd have to jam. Yeah, because it would go... they wouldn't be exactly in time and they'd sort of move around a bit. [Kevin Paul] Yeah. [Ben Hillier] And that sort of thing, although it would seem like an error, it would give the song so much character and movement. [Kevin Paul] Yeah. [Ben Hillier] And it would mean that when you hit the chorus, everything would go bosh, straight back in time again because they'd got it back in time because they had a different sequence running for the chorus, and it'd go bang, drop it in time, and keep going till it felt good. [Kevin Paul] Yeah. [Ben Hillier] And it was all about feel and I'd done loads of that with Steve Osborne, when we were doing remixes for Open Four and Osborne, he'd program everything up on an old Atari ST running... [Kevin Paul] The old MIDI, yeah [Ben Hillier] ... through an S1000. And all the musical parts would be running off two-inch and it'd all be synced together. And when he'd decided that he'd written enough and that the backing track was all really good and the feel was great, we'd print it to tape, and we'd end up printing two tracks at a time. [Kevin Paul] Yeah. [Ben Hillier] So you'd print the kick and your snare. [Kevin Paul] Yeah [Ben Hillier] Because they sounded really cool and they were in time and then you'd print the hi-hat and stuff like that and you'd be adjusting it slightly each time and making sure that it felt good. [Kevin Paul] Yeah. [Ben Hillier] And it was all about feel because you couldn't see it. [Kevin Paul] That's right, because even the sequencer just would move around all the time, you know, over here and then... [Ben Hillier] But you had to do it by ear, because you couldn't see what was going on. Whereas in Pro Tools, you can now see if things are in time. And so that was really exciting for me because I'd spent a lot of my years as a Pro Tools engineer, putting drums in time for people, which I fucking hated. [Kevin Paul] Yeah. [Ben Hillier] It's the most boring thing in the world. [Kevin Paul] Okay. [Ben Hillier] You could get things sounding really impressive, but they'd have very little soul to them or character, or there's nothing there that would make you want to listen to them apart from the... yeah, the first time you heard it, it was like, "Brilliant. That's really super impressive." [Kevin Paul] Yeah. [Ben Hillier] And a lot of 90s music was like that, where it's like, that's a great-sounding drum kit. It's super loud. Everything's bang in time. There'd be digital silence in the gaps and all this sort of stuff but there was no humanity to it and no character. And so with Depeche, because I love the sort of awkward clunkiness of their first record, where it's sort of a sequence running, like a little drum machine running the groove. [Kevin Paul] Yeah. [Ben Hillier] And then some of the parts were played live and some of the parts were sequenced and nothing was really that tight. And it was all... [Kevin Paul] Yeah, but the songs were great. [Ben Hillier] The songs were great. [Kevin Paul] Yeah. [Ben Hillier] And the sound of the backing track. [Kevin Paul] Yeah [Ben Hillier] The character of the backing track was really specific. [Kevin Paul] Yeah. [Ben Hillier] It didn't sound like anything else because it was made specifically to sound like that and the way they'd made it had created this very specific sound. And so we did quite a lot of stuff like that where it's like, I don't want to just get a Logic session up and go, "Right. Great. Record that in, and then we'll mix it." [Kevin Paul] Well, too many people do that now, don't they? Too many people are screen-dependent. [Ben Hillier] It's very, very easy, isn't it? [Kevin Paul] Let's move on from that to Nadine Shah. [Ben Hillier] Yeah. [Kevin Paul] Because I was listening to a couple of her songs on the way down here, and there's loads of sonics going on in that, in her stuff. It's dirty, it's loud, and I'm not sure what I was expecting to hear when I put her records on because I hadn't heard anything and I was thinking Nadine Shah, okay, so it's going to be a woman singing with a band behind it and it wasn't that at all. [Ben Hillier] It's not that, yeah. [Kevin Paul] There isn't a band at all. How did you get involved with her? [Ben Hillier] When I was working with Depeche, actually. The Depeche project's very big and they take up a lot of time. [Kevin Paul] Yeah. [Ben Hillier] But you do have gaps in the project. [Kevin Paul] Yeah. [Ben Hillier] But there were never enough, or there was never big enough head space for me to take on another album. [Kevin Paul] Yeah. [Ben Hillier] And I didn't want to take on another album whilst I was doing that because I didn't want to be distracted from their stuff. So I would do smaller things like writing stuff with people, stuff like that, and just trying things out with people. And Nadine was one of the artists that I sort of met and tried doing some writing with in one of those periods. And we just hit it off straight away. We wrote her, I think it was probably her first single, the first time we met. I wouldn't call myself a guitarist or a bass player or anything like that. I can play a bit. But it was almost like with Nadine, it was just me and her in the room, so it's like, okay, well, I'll try a bit of guitar and play the guitar like a drummer would and things like that and sort of built these songs out of stuff that I could just sort of cobble together. [Kevin Paul] Yeah [Ben Hillier] And stuff that I found interesting. and that was quite exciting for me, having the opportunity to play, because I've never been allowed to play guitar on anybody else's songs, quite rightly, too. But it was sort of like, I would give myself the opportunity to play other instruments like piano and guitar and to play again, because I hadn't played for years. [Kevin Paul] Yeah. [Ben Hillier] And I found that quite exciting. And Nadine didn't go, "God, you're awful. What are you doing?" She was quite encouraging. And so it developed into this project where she's got an amazing voice and she's got a great way with words. [Kevin Paul] Yeah. [Kevin Paul] Very, very good. But most interestingly is her approach to melody, is that a lot of other musicians I've worked with are very experienced and sort of trained and chord-based and song-based and they know the sort of correct way to write a song and all that sort of thing. And Nadine wasn't any of that. She was extremely musical, but she wasn't from that sort of traditional one, four, five chord. [Kevin Paul] Yeah [Ben Hillier] Learn this, is the sort of cycle of fifths and all those sort of things. [Kevin Paul] Yeah. [Ben Hillier] She didn't know any of that. And I wasn't great at that sort of stuff either. So it was a question of working out, her background was much more sort of from Asian music and that's what her dad played a lot and rags, and so there'd be a lot of rags and drones and things like that. There'd be a lot of single chord stuff... [Kevin Paul] Yeah [Ben Hillier] ... with really, really clever melodies, really intricate and advanced melodies over one chord, which I found really interesting. So there's a lot of that on her first. So a lot on her first record, it was like one or two chords per song. [Kevin Paul] Yeah. [Ben Hillier] And I found that very interesting and it also meant that it's something that I could get my head around as a... [Kevin Paul] As a player. [Ben Hillier] As a player. [Kevin Paul] Yeah. [Ben Hillier] Because before that, playing guitar on, I can play guitar a bit, but I don't know all the chords. I'm not fast enough with my left hand to change the chords around and stay up with things like that. Whereas, with Nadine's stuff, I actually physically could play it. And it meant that I could learn to play those things well or how I wanted to play them. [Kevin Paul] Yeah. [Ben Hillier] I wouldn't say well. And with it being something that we were writing together and it developed to the point where, it's not entirely me, but where I was generally doing the music and she was generally writing the lyrics and the melody on the top. Or she would write a lyric and a melody and I would write the music to it. So we have sort of two main ways, two basic ways of writing songs. And I found it was just an exciting way to put together rock-Music in this thing that was a very different way of writing songs. You don't sit there and strum some chords and then sing over the top of it. It comes from a groove or a drum part or a little vocal part or something like that, so it comes from a very different place. [Kevin Paul] It sounds to me like the inner artist... [Ben Hillier] Yeah, maybe [Kevin Paul] ... has come out. [Ben Hillier] Yeah, maybe. Yeah. [Kevin Paul] Yeah. [Ben Hillier] Yeah. [Kevin Paul] You know? [Ben Hillier] Yeah. Whether that's a good thing or not, I don't know. [Kevin Paul] Well, I mean, the records sound great. And the songs, I had no idea of your involvement, in what capacity. [Ben Hillier] Yeah. Well, then I ended up playing live with her purely because somebody had to play drums, so I had to... [Kevin Paul] Is that what you're doing? [Ben Hillier] So yeah, live I've been drumming with her. I didn't do the second record because it was just after my daughter had been born. But I've toured the last, I did the first record and the third record and I'm probably going to do this fourth record as well, which we've just finished. And it's good. It was funny because it was like getting back into drumming. I did so much drumming when I was a kid. I drummed from the age of 10, really, and then by the time I was 20, I'd just done 10 years of solid drumming and learning and getting up and I used to do, when I was at school, I used to like to do. By the time I left school, I was doing two gigs a week pretty much and playing in everything. Playing in orchestras and bands, brass bands, wind bands, jazz bands, just like anything that would have me, I'd play- [Kevin Paul] Yeah [Ben Hillier] ... because I love playing. [Kevin Paul] Yeah. [Ben Hillier] And so it's been quite good getting back into playing again because it's sort of, with Nadine, it meant that, because I'd literally, seriously didn't play drums for 20 years at all and then I got back into playing with Nadine and it was like oh, actually, my technique's terrible, but all my muscles have... [Kevin Paul] Yeah [Ben Hillier] Because it's a physical activity, playing drums, because... [Kevin Paul] It's a great way to keep fit. [Ben Hillier] Yeah, you've got to have these funny little muscles from controlling the sticks and the jogging on the spot with the kick drums and stuff like that. So, but not being able to, by the time I finished playing as a teenager, I sort of wanted to be a really tricksy sort of player, like you do when you're a kid, you want to learn how to do all the flash stuff. I couldn't do any of that when I started playing with Nadine again and I was much better for it. [Kevin Paul] Less is more. [Ben Hillier] Well, yeah. I mean, it's not like I could try and do a drum fill, but I'd probably fuck it up, so it's probably best avoided. And it's still like that, and I've tried. We've done a lot more playing now, obviously, and I actually have to practice these days so I can actually keep up with the gigs, but it's sort of... [Kevin Paul] I'm going to come along to the show. [Ben Hillier] Yeah? [Kevin Paul] I'd love to see you play. I'm going to come along. [Ben Hillier] But it's, yeah, I have to have a word with myself if I find myself playing too many notes. [Kevin Paul] What does it take to be a good producer? Obviously, in your opinion. [Ben Hillier] Production is all about collaboration. My opinion of it is that your job is to realise the artist's ambition and to push them further than they might know, or to limit them where they're excessing. But it's all about getting them to perform something astonishing, that they love. So it's really, personality is the whole thing. It's being able to communicate. Because I've obviously worked with a lot of different people and sometimes it just doesn't work. Your personalities don't blend. [Kevin Paul] Yeah [Ben Hillier] And you work with people and you don't and it's sort of, it's not a great thing. Or sometimes you work with people and you really don't get on, but you create a really good record. You don't ever want to work together again afterwards, but you do actually, yeah, there's a sort of friction there. [Kevin Paul] Yeah. [Ben Hillier] But all the bands that I've worked with a lot and all the bands that I've been... I've been lucky because all the bands I've been most successful with are really very good friends. [Kevin Paul] Yeah. [Ben Hillier] Like sort of really proper, personal friends of mine now. [Kevin Paul] Yeah, sure. [Ben Hillier] And it's all about the creating the connection with people. [Kevin Paul] How do you create an environment in the studio for your artist to work in? Do you have an approach to that? Or do you have the same thing that you do every time? Is there a Ben's way, or? [Ben Hillier] No, I mean, there really isn't actually, which I think probably makes it much harder for me. But, I think it's all about... I think my aim is to get to the point where I feel like I'm communicating well with the artist. And some artists, that is very, very difficult and some artists, you do it the first time you meet them. [Kevin Paul] Yeah. [Ben Hillier] And so it's all... so things, I'm a little wary of doing things too by the book, by my own book, you know? I obviously have things that I always like to do, or I enjoy doing, or I did last time and worked well. But I try to avoid those because that's quite prescriptive and it's quite... [Kevin Paul] Yeah [Ben Hillier] ... and it gets you out of a hole sometimes. [Kevin Paul] Yeah. [Ben Hillier] But the majority of what I do, I like to be performance-based. I find if you're spending too long sitting looking at a computer or anything like that, or if it's getting a bit boring and a bit filey, then you're probably going wrong. [Kevin Paul] Right. [Ben Hillier] And I try and work with people who are good musicians or who have something about their playing which I love. [Kevin Paul] Yeah. [Ben Hillier] And try and nurture that as much as I can and motivate people and try and put people in a position where they're comfortable, but they're being challenged musically. [Kevin Paul] Yeah. [Ben Hillier] So, you want people... I don't like playing sort of... Some producers like to play sort of mind games with people and make people a bit uncomfortable and that sort of thing and I'm not really like that. [Kevin Paul] No. [Ben Hillier] I'm much more easygoing sort of chap, but I like to challenge people musically. [Kevin Paul] I guess with your success, you have an element of choice over who you work with. [Ben Hillier] Yeah. [Kevin Paul] But when you're up and coming and you're starting, most of us don't necessarily have that choice. You're normally working with the people that approach you or you find. How do you deal with that then? Because like you say, let's say for Elbow have existed, for instance they've never made a record, although as you've discussed, maybe slightly different, but maybe a first-time band. [Ben Hillier] Yeah. [Kevin Paul] There's no history there, and there's very little history maybe for the producer. There's nowhere to fall back on. There's nothing to fall back on. How do you then sort of approach a project like that? How would you approach, or how would you have approached that? [Ben Hillier] I was lucky in that I, and I still do actually, only work on projects that I want to work on. I think that's quite important, because you're making records. You're not sort of fixing boilers or... [Kevin Paul] Yeah [Ben Hillier] ... mending cars. You're doing things. You need to be creative. You need to be in an environment where it is creative. If you're not being creative, then you're probably on the wrong gig. [Kevin Paul] Yeah. [Ben Hillier] And you're not going to do yourself any favours doing that, because as an engineer, I took a few gigs purely for the money, and I was always so miserable and I always thought I did a really bad job on them. Whereas when I was working on things that I loved or things that excited me, it's a lot easier to do a good job on something that you give a shit about. I think it's important to remember when you take a project, it's important to remember what it was that excited you about it the first time you heard it and that works on every level. So the first time you hear a band, I always try to remember what it is that I think is really exciting about them. [Kevin Paul] Yeah. [Ben Hillier] That feeling about that band or that song that they played, why was that really cool? Why did you love that? And try and hold onto that and remember that that is the thing that's really good about the band. And it's the same with a song. So if you listen to a song and you're sort of like, "Oh, there's something great about this". I try very hard to cling onto the first impressions of things, because I think they're probably the purest. It works for me, that way of doing things. [Kevin Paul] Mm [Ben Hillier] ... is the first time I hear something and it excites me, I'm like, "That is great for this reason" and I log it... [Kevin Paul] You log it [Ben Hillier] ... and remember that. And then when you're six months down the line trying to get this bloody song to sound all right, you have to go back and go, "Well, what was really good about it? What did I love about it?" And then you have to go back and listen to the first version that you heard and go, "Oh, no, it's that. You see, that thing that we thought wasn't important is actually really important." [Kevin Paul] Yeah. [Ben Hillier] That little guitar part or that tiny little synth sequence there that we thought was just getting in the way actually is the thing that makes it really cool. [Kevin Paul] How much do you give of yourself when you're working with your bands? Do you give a lot of yourself emotionally, because you... [Ben Hillier] Yeah. When I'm in the studio, it's all, I'm not, you're all in, yeah. You've got to be, haven't you? [Kevin Paul] Maybe some people aren't. [Ben Hillier] Yeah, maybe. [Kevin Paul] For some people, it's a job. For me, I'm all in, but... [Ben Hillier] Yeah. I think you have to be a little bit careful sometimes that some artists are quite delicate flowers and they need nurturing and they need to feel... it's quite easy to steamroller people sometimes. [Kevin Paul] Right. [Ben Hillier] I try really hard to not do that. [Kevin Paul] And do you do that by... [Ben Hillier] And similarly, you do actually find that with artists the other way. Sometimes some artists come in, and it's usually a nerves thing, but they're so much bravado to get through the session. [Kevin Paul] Yeah [Ben Hillier] ... that they won't let anybody else do anything. And you're like, "Oh, chill out. Let's just do something completely different. Let everybody have an input, otherwise there's no point in anybody being here." [Kevin Paul] And do you do that just through time? [Ben Hillier] Yeah, and changing things around. I don't like things being really super precious in the studio at all. I think you have to remember that musicians can play the part again, and people can sing the song again and it will be different and it might not be exactly the same as the first version, but it might be better. So I'm not really precious about holding onto performances or holding onto certain things. That might be a thing from growing up with primarily digital, but I really don't mind trashing things and moving on, doing totally different versions and then going... [Kevin Paul] Great [Ben Hillier] Because I think that makes things a lot less precious, and I think preciousness is something that doesn't... In most music, something that's really sort of, you want to hear a bit of energy and a bit of excitement. And things being really precious and very particular in some environments sound great, but in general, they're a bit exclusive. They don't invite you in and I want to be invited into the music that I'm listening to. I want to be included in it. I don't want to sit back from it and it sort of project at me and go, "You're not part of this." I want to invite, I want to be in it. [Kevin Paul] I think you could probably say that about most art though, couldn't you? [Ben Hillier] Yeah. [Kevin Paul] Film, pictures... [Ben Hillier] Yeah, absolutely. Yeah [Kevin Paul] ... books. [Ben Hillier] I mean, it's a difficult thing. [Kevin Paul] Some of the best paintings in the world, they're totally flawed. [Ben Hillier] Absolutely, and it's a thing that I'm learning more and more, I'm getting more and more confident with, is things not being really not done, not finished. [Kevin Paul] Yeah. [Ben Hillier] Really messy and kind of... [Kevin Paul] Just letting it go. [Ben Hillier] Yeah, so I no longer quantise anything. Like drum live performances, they don't get quantised. If it doesn't feel right, you play it again. [Kevin Paul] Yeah. [Ben Hillier] And it's the same, so like all of Nadine's stuff, there's timing errors, in inverted commas. Things aren't on a grid. We quite often don't play to clicks and things like that. [Kevin Paul] Yeah [Ben Hillier] Because it's sort of like if you don't play to a click, then you can't put it in time, can you? And I love that. That's brilliant. [Kevin Paul] Yeah. [Ben Hillier] So if you don't tune the guitar, then you have to use your ears to get things in tune. [Kevin Paul] Yeah. [Ben Hillier] Yeah. [Kevin Paul] There's a couple of sections at the end. We've talked for a long time. I mean, I could probably sit here all day.. [Ben Hillier] Sorry [Kevin Paul] ... with you. No, no. Please don't apologise. It's fascinating. There's a couple of sections that I ask everybody. The first one is, is there a process or a piece of equipment or nowadays a plug-in that you've always tried to work into a session? [Ben Hillier] There's stuff that I wouldn't want to do sessions without. I don't... there's nothing... [Kevin Paul] Can you name something? [Ben Hillier] Probably the VCS3. [Kevin Paul] Really? [Ben Hillier] The VCS3 goes on everything, pretty much. I don't think I've made a record since I bought it years and years and years ago when they were really cheap. and I think I've used it on everything, like mixes, productions, recordings. [Kevin Paul] Yeah. [Ben Hillier] It ends up everywhere, just because I love it and it's so creative, and it sort of like, it does its own thing. You plug it in, quite often you plug it in, there's just a noise coming out and it's usually in tune or in time or something like that. It's... [Kevin Paul] Quick [Ben Hillier] ... possessed. [Kevin Paul] Press record. [Ben Hillier] Yeah. I love its untamable nature. [Kevin Paul] Fantastic. [Ben Hillier] You can try very hard to do what... I've spent hours with it and had it sort of maintained and reworked so that it's in really good condition and I've got a keyboard for it and if you spend about a day, you can get a normal synth sound and play it on the keyboard and it'll be in tune. And it sounds amazing. But actually, the thing I love most is usually when you plug it in, we have a rule in the studio, all my engineers, it's like whenever I plug a synth in, you record everything that comes out of it. Like the first sound that comes out the synth, it doesn't matter what it is because I will probably spend ages fiddling around, getting this sound exactly how I want it and then go back to the original noise that was something that it made without any input from me and I thought "Oh, that's much better". [Kevin Paul] What do you try to avoid doing in the studio? [Ben Hillier] So I try to avoid that thing that you can get sucked into doing in digital workstations, where you can put things in time and get rid of noise... [Kevin Paul] Absolutely [Ben Hillier] ... and put things in tune and all that sort of stuff. That to me is the sort of anti-music. That's the sort of total loss of vibe and creativity. [Kevin Paul] Yeah. [Ben Hillier] And I hear it on loads of bands where you sort of think, "I saw this band live and they were really good" and then the record is like, the overriding thing you can say about it is it's in time. And it's just not of any interest to me at all. [Kevin Paul] It's a bit like chicken and egg, isn't it? Which came first? [Ben Hillier] Yeah. [Kevin Paul] The live show or the recording? [Ben Hillier] Yeah. Well... [Kevin Paul] Hang on. [Ben Hillier] ... and often it is the recording and often people do loads of really cool stuff on their laptops in their bedrooms making records, which are really great. But they then struggle to get that through to a full band setup because there's an inevitable loss of control and... [Kevin Paul] Yeah [Ben Hillier] ... it's the control thing that I don't like. One of the best things that Steve Osborne ever said to me actually was that the key element of a producer's job is to finish the record and it doesn't matter how they do it. So if you're a producer who basically just gets the band pissed and knows really good places to party, but you get a really good finished record, you've done your job. [Kevin Paul] Yeah. [Ben Hillier] Or if you're a producer who has to play every single note on every record and record it all themselves and do all this, that and the other, but it's a great finished record, you've still done your job. [Kevin Paul] Yeah. [Ben Hillier] But they're totally... [Kevin Paul] Two jobs [Ben Hillier] ... diametrically opposed approaches and so for me, it's steering away from my engineering background and my programming background. [Kevin Paul] Yeah. [Ben Hillier] And it's very easy for me to fall into that sort of like, "Here we are. I know how to get this in time. Leave it with me for 10 minutes and I'll quantise it." And it's like, "What a boring thing to do." [Kevin Paul] Thank you so much for letting me come down here and hang out with you. It's been great to catch up with you. I'll speak to you soon. [Ben Hillier] Jolly good. Cheers, mate.