66 l June 2012
www.prosoundnewseurope.com industrytalk
“When you get a truly great vocal or instrumental performance, it comes from the heart... somewhere we haven’t got close to emulating in a box” Geoff Foster
Breathe in
AS WELLas providing a further addition to a mantelpiece already well stocked with accolades, the presentation of the Engineer of the Year trophy at February’s Music Producers Guild Awards doubled as a welcome marker in the 25-year-and-counting association between Geoff Foster and London’s Air Studios. Joni Mitchell, Daft Punk and film composer Clint Mansell have been among countless distinguished collaborators during a career that has seen the recording/mix engineer cultivate a particularly enviable reputation in orchestral recording for film. A freelancer since 2007, Foster nonetheless remains chief engineer at Air and is represented by the group’s management division. “Air is a fantastic place to be, and we still have the great working relationship that we have always had,” he says.
What are your defining memories of the early years at Air? Literally my very first session was with Sir George Martin, who was producing a version of [Dylan
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Thomas’s celebrated radio play] Under Milk Wood. I had done quite a bit of work in small studios before, but to suddenly be exposed to George’s genius – the way he handles artists and guides the music and structure of the recording – was a fantastic learning experience. People like George, Phil Ramone and Chris Thomas are brilliant at making everybody feel welcome, and that’s something I’ve tried to weave into my way of working, too.
After Under Milk Wood, your next major project – The The’s Mind Bomb – sounds like it was a rather less comfortable undertaking... It couldn’t have been further from working with George! Alongside [The The principal] Matt Johnson, there were two producers involved – Warne Livesey and Roli Mosimann – and while Warne was very methodical, Roli was quite fond of chaos and anything that threw an element of uncertainty into the mix. I still think that it’s a fantastic-sounding record, but by
the Air
From assisting George Martin in the ’80s to helming sessions for the latest Hollywood blockbuster in 2012, engineer Geoff Foster has experienced every permutation of the studio life, writes David Davies
translated to a real orchestra because they don’t understand the forces with which they are dealing. Due to samples, there is a significant percentage of music we hear in the common culture that is sort of purporting to be orchestral but isn’t. It’s part of the reason that kids now have a different artistic bar, although personally I’m more concerned about people listening to stuff for free.
Geoff Foster, right, as composer Atticus Ross looks on Photo: Benjamin Ealovega (© Eli Productions LLC 2009), taken during the Book of Eli scoring sessions
the end of the sessions I was so tired that my girlfriend at the time was convinced I was taking hallucinogenic drugs because I was talking such exhausted gibberish when I got home! Together, Under Milk Wood and Mind Bomb gave me a wide benchmark of what to expect in my career, and so everything that followed was not as daunting as it might otherwise have been.
At what point do you feel that your own sonic philosophy started to come together? Working alongside Bob Clearmountain when he mixed Paul McCartney’s Tripping the Live Fantastic (1990) was an important moment. Bob gave me the chance to mix some bits and pieces on the same desk with the same EQs and returns that he was using, and in so doing I learned something that is essentially obvious but needs to be experienced – that engineering is fundamentally about balance. Suddenly, I understood the element of interaction between
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every part of what goes to make up a mix. You take one thing out and it completely changes your perspective on everything else. There were also some orchestral sessions around this time – I won’t tell you which ones! – that made it clear that having an orchestra sound great is about getting the notes on a page massaged to the best of the players’ ability in the room before the music gets to me. Rather than moving the mics or the faders, sometimes you just need to have the courage to tell the conductor that they need to change the dynamics or orchestration in order to get the best from what has been written.
The impact of samplers and programming on orchestral recording – broadly positive or not? Difficult. On the one hand, technological developments have opened the door for people who might otherwise have been unable to write orchestral music. On the other, it often means that they create stuff which can be unplayable or ineffective when it’s
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How do you feel about the overall shift towards digital? The flexibility of digital is fantastic and makes many parts of my work considerably easier, but it has diminished the sense of creative direction. If musicians go into a session with the mindset that it can always be fixed later on, they’re not pushed to give you ‘the magic’, which is still unfakeable. When you get a truly great vocal or instrumental performance, it comes from the heart... somewhere we haven’t got close to emulating in a box. Technological developments might mean we’ll get close one day, but I don’t think we’ll ever quite manage it.
Which artists have you particularly enjoyed working with, and are there any musical heroes still left to tick off the list? The people I most enjoy working with now are those who know what they want but are prepared to give me a degree of freedom. Craig Armstrong and Clint Mansell are both terrific in that regards [on Love, Actually and Black Swan/ Moon soundtracks, respectively]. I’ve spent many hours going over tiny details with Clint, in particular, but it’s never felt like a chore. In terms of artists I’d still like
to work with, I’ve always admired Billy Joel’s ability to craft a very simple but memorable tune, although he doesn’t really record these days. Frank Sinatra would obviously have been fantastic... But the fact is, I’ve now been in the studio with more or less everybody that, as a child, I idolised and thought about working with. I’ve been incredibly fortunate.
www.airstudios.com
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