These New Puritans’ reissue of 2010 album Hidden was one among our highlights of final 12 months, and since a groundbreaking, stunning album is for all times and never simply the Christmas lists, we have pulled collectively a information to the file for you.
We have enlisted Puritan Jack Barnett, producer Graham Sutton and blend engineer Dave Cooley to inform the story of the album, track-by-track, from Steve Reich and J Dilla influences to intense studio classes in Prague.
Learn on under to seek out out extra concerning the making of one among tQ’s favorite albums of the 2010s.
‘Time Xone’
Jack Barnett: This was at all times supposed as a prelude to ‘We Need Conflict’ – to lull you right into a false sense of safety; most distinction. It was necessary to us to keep away from the entice of bringing in classical instrumentation to make issues sound ‘orchestral’ or ‘genuine’. We had been going for the other – to make the music much more uneven and distressed. 2D and stark, like a charcoal drawing. I might taught myself music notation within the previous six months so this was a brand new world to me.
Graham Sutton: I’ve at all times thought the method devised and selected to make one thing has a extremely necessary impact on its consequence. For Hidden, I assumed it was necessary that the preparations should not be added (as they so typically are) as some type of ornamental impact after the actual fact. I felt fairly strongly that they need to as an alternative be unapologetically on the coronary heart of issues, and that the tracks ought to develop out of them, which meant that we commenced making Hidden by recording your complete album’s brass and woodwind elements in a single four-hour session at SONO in Prague. It was a fairly excessive stress state of affairs for all concerned however felt fittingly daring. By the top of that in the future we had a top level view/basis for a lot of the file.
‘We Need Conflict’
JB: The taiko drums had been essential to this. we employed three of them, delivered by heavy obligation vehicles. They had been half-alive, seven toes tall, with hair and unusual natural tissue rising out of them (like some street crew we have labored with). They resonate for about 5 minutes after they have been hit, like a gong. The eventual sound is all three layered up, I consider. One of many guiding intuitions of the music was that the sorts of rhythms in ‘Clapping Music’ by Steve Reich may mesh with one thing just like the Diwali Riddim (which I first grew to become conscious of via Wayne Surprise’s ‘No Letting Go’, which prompted me to purchase a Diwali Riddim compliation). You may hear the concrete and marsh on this.
GS: The place attainable, I at all times tried to file as items quite than solo devices, to get a really feel of ensemble enjoying. Living proof, ‘We Need Conflict’ has Jack, George and Tom all drumming collectively, clapping collectively and so forth, with them specified by the room how they emerge out of your audio system, no baffles or separation. Considerably limits your choices when it comes to modifying however extra enjoyable to only deal with getting it proper!
Dave Cooley: Jack needed a J Dilla-esque ‘aspect chain pump’ on a number of tunes on the file. That impact was initially impressed by early Daft Punk and Thomas Bangalter, after which afterward with Madlib and Dilla overloading their samplers with low finish. It seems which you can get an analogous pump in Professional Instruments. I’d run the kick drum into sidechain teams to get a lot of the different atmospheric parts to ‘blink’ in time with the music, tailoring the discharge to tempo. Up to now I used to be utilizing that approach on hip hop data however on this album it is a very unnatural sound on pure parts. The primary few moments of ‘We Need Conflict’ are instance of it when the acoustic drums get dunked down by the 808 bass.
’Three Thousand’
JB: This was the final music to be written for the album. This rhythm actually wound up the neighbours on the drum equipment at 3am. This can be a nice George [Barnett] drum music – brutal. The day I wrote it, I noticed a rat the scale of a horse in George and I’s kitchen. I used a way influenced by Alvin Lucier on the outro: I recorded the keyboard line, then transformed that sound to a shit high quality MP3, then reimported it and transformed
GS: This monitor at all times conjured up a picture of Ricardo Montalbán in Fantasy Island for me for some purpose.
‘Hologram’
JB: On the floor it evidently looks like a cheery pop music however it’s in all probability probably the most complicated (‘complicated’ is a shit phrase as complexity is overrated) music on the album. The instrumental line-up is: three pianos, bassoon, trombone, french horn, two snares, two vibraphones, and I just lately learn somebody describe it as ‘electropop’!
GS: I understood and completely received how Jack’s lexicon for the album needed to embody each the brutal and the radiant, shit and gold. Alongside sheer assault there was a necessity for smaller, extra fragile items, and that distinction was important to the album’s impact I believe. The intro of ‘Hologram’ popping out of the again of the earlier monitor is a particular second I like, the interaction of the snares and pianos. The monitor has hidden depths I believe.
JB: It was George’s thought to incorporate the children on this one, and that fully made the music. Plenty of Foley methods on it: damaged glass, knives and so forth. We needed depth however with out the formal clichés of depth – no distortion or lengthy repetitive jams, no blurry, tranquillised reverb; music with out the mollifying impact of fuzz and distortion, each line must be clear and straight and will sharpen your nervous system.
GS: There’s nice shitty guitar on this. I at all times appreciated Jack’s disrespect of the instrument – only a sound-making lump of wooden and metallic. He can get proper elegant on bass, thoughts. The taikos on the album had been so nice to seize, however completely ginormous and proved too massive to get into the studio, regardless of them gamely taking all of the doorways off their hinges. Fortunately it was constructed inside an enormous distribution warehouse, so we used that house as an alternative to file in as soon as all had gone house at evening, which then contributed its pure reverberance.
DC: I used to be guided by the band’s observe to worth readability over heat and richness. That hi-fi strategy juxtaposed with the aggressiveness of the drums is heard album broad.
‘Fireplace-Energy’
JB: I keep in mind this reside for Hidden Reside at The Barbican – the primary time the reside Foley technician hit the melon [to simulate brain destruction] it vaporised and rained down all around the youngsters’s choir.
GS: This one has in all probability my favorite drum fill. Trivia: Tom Hein’s rototoms had been recorded binaurally. God sure, the Barbican stage was a little bit of a multitude.
‘Orion’
JB: The chain sounds on this had been produced in two methods. Firstly, by George strolling them round a concrete flooring and secondly, by alternately pouring and slamming them right into a bucket, which acted as a type of soundboard or amp. We examined out tonnes of chains in {hardware} outlets and received some humorous seems to be. I believe it is at all times signal if you end up compelled into awkward conditions in what you do. A giant affect on the choruses was the children’ TV program Mysterious Cities Of Gold, a flying-over-unknown-continents type of feeling, “up into the celebrities.”
GS: This was an underrated monitor – a favorite to work on. Getting the ready piano down was a whole lot of enjoyable. The pianist, Religion Leadbetter, who’s a consummate professional, did not bat an eyelid on the mangled tuning and dissonances. The transition from verses to choruses and again on this, opening up and shifting temper, together with the children’ voices, encapsulates a whole lot of Hidden to me. Fast sonic chain tip for you after a lot analysis: go for those with smaller and lighter hyperlinks.
DC: Checking my notes, I am seeing that we had been having some trickiness getting the Juno synth bass elements to ‘separate out’ clearly from the principle bass traces since they shared some decrease frequencies. The band needed that melodic counterpoint between the synths and choir. I ended up subtly distorting the bass synth elements to get them to talk out extra within the midrange. Finally it jigsawed collectively properly.
‘Canticle’
JB: This was A type of moments the place, stripping issues away, you discover a music throughout the music. This was the woodwind session for ‘5’, with the brass and pitched percussion eliminated. Much less is extra and so forth.
‘Drum Courts’
JB: ‘Drum Courts’ was one of many album’s centre items and possibly my favorite. Some nice George Barnett and Tom Hein psychic drumming.
GS: Reside on the Barbican, this was a complete spotlight. We supplemented the PA there and actually pushed it. The workers turned white as mud got here down off the ceiling. Together with the strobes it was an attractive assault.
‘White Chords’
JB: AKA the guitar music, in any other case the guitar had turn into a vestigial limb. This was made with my first ever guitar, £70 from the Argos catalogue after I was seven – served me nicely.
GS: AKA ‘White Cords’ for the Essex minded. I like Jack’s vocals on this, and I am an enormous fan of his voice usually. My missus reckons he sounds “extra Southend than the Kursaal.”
’5′
JB: It was very shifting listening to these thick brass chords come to life throughout recording, from skinny air, when beforehand solely ever imagined. I wrote this on the school computer systems on Sibelius (thanks South East Essex Sixth Kind Faculty), simply messing round, listening to again what I might drawn in on shit MIDI sounds. On the final day of school I introduced in a floppy disc to get it off the antiquated PC, so it will reside on and be unhidden. Weirdly, we tried to file ‘5’ on Beat Pyramid. I keep in mind Gareth Jones [producer] saying, ‘I believe that is one for the following album’ – he was undoubtedly proper.
GS: Monitoring the children’ choir at a faculty corridor in North London was the final little bit of recording we did for Hidden. Revisiting their naivety at this time, combining with the interaction of the ensemble and vibraphones with all that is occurred this 12 months, fairly will get to me.
Bonus Tracks
’Hologram Pianos’
JB: While you strip issues away, you discover a new piece of music, with qualities you may’t admire when it is crowded out with the opposite parts. This excavates the unique three-piano-only composition.
‘We Need Conflict (Brass And Woodwind Model)’
JB: The legendary (horrible, overused phrase, however fully justified on this case!) Phill Brown engineered the woodwind and brass classes for the album. Ryan Lott, AKA Son Lux, flew over to assist coordinate with the conductor (we might labored collectively on the scores for ‘5’ and ‘We Need Conflict’).
‘5 Malletts’
JB: Extra excavation work, songs inside songs.
‘Hologram Chamber Combine’
JB: I like this mixture of ‘Hologram’. It opens up extra of the music, with the drums stripped away. It was at all times a contact and go determination, whether or not to incorporate drum equipment within the authentic.
‘Drum Course Paris’
JB: Hidden Reside was André de Ridder’s thought and he was central to its execution. This model of ‘Drum Courts’ is taken from the Pompidou Centre gig (the place a youngsters’s choir pulled out as a result of the gig was too late at evening for them). It is sooner and extra brutal than the studio model.
‘5–Irreversible Berlin’
JB: That is taken from HAU in Berlin (the place a youngsters’s choir pulled out as a result of the German dad and mom realised they’d be singing “we wish struggle”. Fortunately André scrambled collectively an emergency choir of his children and their buddies!). You might discover that ‘5-Irreversible Berlin’ crops up as a piece of ‘Spiral’ on Area Of Reeds. I at all times like that type of continuity and people relationships throughout albums – there are heaps extra scattered round.
