FEATURE RECORDING
Blackwell at Island Records or Ahmet Ertegun at Atlantic. And Berry Gordy at Motown – he might have been a money man, but alongside his shrewd business sense he had soul and a passion for music.
LEVELLING OFF
“Te UK has a proud music tradition – and music has never been more popular than it is today – yet we don’t have enough proper outlets. On the main TV channels everyone is scrambling for the occasional spot on the Jools Holland show. Tere’s little else. Somehow we’ve got to make the playing field a little bit more level.” Aside from a period working out of California, Levine has spent the majority of his career living and working out of London. He has had a number of his own studios, which were noted for embracing new technologies, most notably the latest digital developments, equipment, and working methods. Now, he has upped sticks and moved lock stock and studio to Liverpool, where his new space is based in the Baltic Creative CIC, a rapidly expanding media and arts centre. So why did he make the move north? “I’ve been going to Liverpool
for well over 10 years, initially as part of the Yamaha Make It Break It competition which was hosted up there, then I was made a LIPA companion, essentially working with Jon Tornton. I found myself travelling up and down to Liverpool more and more frequently and eventually my wife and I thought there were so many things we loved up here, we should move. “Another factor was the BBC moving many of its operations to Salford; a lot of our BBC friends had moved up here, so all in all it was an easy decision. I got rid of the studio in west London, took the equipment up the motorway, and here we are. Now I have a lovely new studio, which I really think is the best studio I’ve had to date – a hybrid of all the studios I’ve ever owned. “My first studio in Farm Lane
[Fulham], if truth be told, was probably too far ahead of its time – it was so technically advanced. I loved it, and wouldn’t have got my Grammy if I hadn’t been there. But it didn’t have a proper recording room. Ten I moved to California and set the studio up there. It was only really a shared facility and for various reasons didn’t work out.
www.audiomedia.com
“It came to a head when working with Carl Wilson and Carl was outside tuning up one of my guitars and one day my then business partner had these advertising clients come in and asked ‘that guitarist’ to tune up elsewhere as his client wasn’t very happy. Tat was the final straw. How dare they. Tere were other factors involved which contributed to my returning to the UK and setting up the studio in Fulham which worked out really well. It represented – in terms of work – the best bang for buck I’ve had to date. Tough to the casual observer it was just a glorified garden shed, it had a brilliant vibe and worked well. We did many albums and radio shows there.” Once Levine had decided to
move north, he began the search for suitable studio premises. “We looked at various potential sites before we met the people at Baltic Creative. It’s an area similar to what Shoreditch was before it became trendy. Once an industrial wasteland, it’s now home to many new businesses, the majority of which are media based. I’m the only recording studio so far, but in our little area at the end of the road is Elevator Studios, which is like Nomis once was – full of creative spaces and rehearsal studios. Te vibe is wonderful on so many levels. It’s like Los Angeles once was – and Nashville probably still is. You have access to everything you need on your doorstep.”
COMMUNITY SPIRIT
Te studio is now up and running and Levine has already recorded a number of bands and conducted masterclasses in conjunction with LIPA. He’s currently working with around six acts including Te Lottery Winners for whom he has great expectations. He’s also working, in association with the Mayor of Liverpool, on projects with disadvantaged and underprivileged youngsters: “Tey’re all as keen as mustard,” he adds. “Tey’re dead keen to get a hands-on feel of a studio and learn. It’s the community spirit I love.” With regard to the studio itself, its shell is constructed largely of OSB board, which the Baltic Creative architects used for much of the centre’s inner construction. “It works surprisingly well,” says Levine. “It turns out to be one of the best materials I’ve experienced in terms of studio builds. All the musicians who have been here so far have commented on how live it
Culture Club
In the UK, Culture Club amassed 12 Top 40 hit singles between 1982 and 1999, including the number ones Do You Really Want To Hurt Me and Karma Chameleon, the latter being the biggest selling single of 1983, and topped the US Billboard Hot 100 in 1984. Ten of their singles reached the US Top 40, where they are associated with the Second British Invasion of British new wave groups that became popular in the United States due to the cable music channel MTV. How does Levine account for the
band’s success? “Great songs that still stand the test of time. I think because we pushed the technology at the time our records have a certain quality. I heard Do You Really Want To Hurt Me on the radio the other day and it stands alone in that it could have been recorded last week. It does sound timeless. Te production and quality of that song is quite unusual. “As it does with Duran Duran,
and Spandau Ballet. With any of those bands of the 80s you know exactly what it is and where you were when you first heard it. Of all those groups George was by head and shoulders the star of the day,
loved by all ages and demographics. Although he had a terrible fall from grace everybody still loved him. He’s in a really good place at the moment, healthy and happy in his work and his personal life.” As to recording the band in the
1980s, Levine recalls: “We had a great work method. Te Linn [drum machine] formed the backbone of a lot of the tracks. Today, a lot of bands now record a take then spend ages overdubbing, trying to sort the arrangements out, whereas one of the good things about the older way of working with the Linn was that it forced you to really concentrate on the arrangement, not like working with a computer where you cut and paste.”
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