![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.polymathperspective.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/08\/MG_7215-1024x683.jpg\")
Brian at work in the studio<\/p><\/div>\n
Starting To Record<\/strong> The door to the small room in which most of Someday World was recorded can be seen in this photograph. Karl\u2019s amp was eventually moved out into the main room seen here.<\/p><\/div>\n Constant Mixing<\/strong> Brian playing slide guitar and processing it through his chain of effects.<\/p><\/div>\n Live In The Studio<\/strong> Part 3 of Brian Eno and Karl Hyde: Recording Someday World, can be found here: Part 3<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n
\nAlmost all of the recording of Someday World<\/em> was done in a small room in Brian\u2019s Notting Hill studio, although when Karl\u2019s guitar proved to be a little loud, his amp was moved out into the large room next door.
\nCo-producing the album was 20 year-old Fred Gibson, who was virtually unknown in the world of music production. It was during a chance meeting that Fred managed to impress Brian with his advanced knowledge of computer audio software.
\n\u201cOne of Fred\u2019s best friends, Ed, is the son of a friend of mine who belongs to the A capella singing group that I have here,\u201d explains Brian. \u201cOne day she asked me if Ed, could come over to look at my music stuff, because Ed is a scientist. He was about 16 at the time. He came round and brought Fred with him. I was showing them how you can do this and that with Logic, assuming they knew nothing about it at all, and I said, \u2018Actually you can really probably do anything,\u2019 and then I named something and said, \u2018you can probably do that too but I wouldn\u2019t know how to do it,\u2019 and Fred very politely leaned over and said, \u2018Well, actually it is quite easy, if you take a Sys Ex message\u2026\u2019, and I realized that he knew that program with a depth that I had never even dreamed of! But he is a very good musician and writer as well and he\u2019ll be a big name. He joined the A capella group and I let him use the studio a few times to work on his own music with friends when I wasn\u2019t using it. And then I asked him to help us out and he proved to be very important to the whole thing.\u201d
\nOne thing Brian was particularly keen to do was work fast. He did not want the production to become too methodical and laboured, as that would cancel out the excitement he and Karl were trying to create by using improvisation and spontaneity. In all, the project took just five-and-a-half weeks, thereby overrunning the initial four-week plan a little (although relative to many projects it was still very quick!).
\n\u201cI am sick of albums that take two years,\u201d insists Brian, \u201cso we just decided on a deadline. I have a theory that deadlines are responsible for most good art. Deadlines are good because they stop you overcooking something. Albums that take years to make are like bad French food, where it has been so long in the preparation that everything is dead by the time it reaches you, whereas my dream of how to make music is like they make food in a busy Italian restaurant. They have fantastic ingredients and they do as little to them as possible. They just get them hot, put them together and give it to you.
\n\u201cI once took a band that I was about to produce, after they had made a laboured and complicated album, for dinner in a very good Italian restaurant, and I arranged with the restaurant manager to take them into the kitchen. So I sat them down to dinner and said \u2018Now I want to show you how we are going to make your next record\u2019, and I took them all into the kitchen and it was just chaos with flames, and cooks and waiters doing things really quickly. It was exciting.\u201d<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.polymathperspective.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/08\/MG_7242-1024x683.jpg\")
\nAnother important choice the pair made was to record and mix simultaneously, rather than having a period of recording followed by a block of mixing. Once again, the idea was to maintain the vibe of the music and not let the material become overworked.
\n\u201cThere were no mixing days,\u201d reveals Karl, \u201cthe mixing was going on all the time so there was no separation between recording and mixing and we recorded up to the day that it was handed in.
\n\u201cWe have both experienced one of the negative sides of making records where you spend all that time recording and getting everything balanced and sounding exciting and you are really thrilled by it, then the place gets tidied up, everyone changes their shirt and you go into mixing mode. All the faders get pulled down and you are completely disconnected from the vibe of the music. The first record I ever made was like that. After a few days in a little studio in London it was sounding fantastic, and the engineer did that and we never got it back. But the great thin about working in-the-box with a computer, is the mix is there so you don\u2019t need a great SSL with total recall to bring back the mix.
\nSo there wasn\u2019t a mixing day, there was just a delivery day, which was a few hours after we finished recording.\u201d
\nIn their five-and-half weeks together, Brian and Karl also recorded material which wasn\u2019t included on the final album. Brian explains what has become of the rest of it. \u201cThere\u2019s quite a lot of it, but not much that we actually finished! The album takes its title from a song that we finished but didn\u2019t put on the album, which is actually a very nice song, and there was another one that had Benjamin Zephaniah on which was pretty well finished.
\n\u201cThen there were several others that we abandoned along the way. They got to a point where we though they were probably not going to make it so we stopped working on them.\u201d
\n\u201cSome sounded great and you think they are fantastic but they don\u2019t seem to fit the sonic picture,\u201d adds Karl, \u201cso we\u2019ve put those to one side and we\u2019ll revisit them.\u201d<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.polymathperspective.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/08\/MG_7221-1024x683.jpg\")
\nBrian is not a fan of press interviews, so instead of sitting down with a continuous stream of journalists and describing the recording process in great detail over and over, he and Karl decided to have a series of open house sessions where members of the press could visit during set times and witness first-hand the creative process used to make Someday World.
\nThe sessions also gave Brian and Karl the chance to revisit their Reickuti concept, develop new material for a possible follow up album, and prepare for any live appearances they eventually decide to do.
\n\u201cWe were just following a journey, so although we started off with an idea we didn\u2019t end up at the place we originally intended to end up, which is why we are doing this,\u201d says Karl. \u201cWe remained open and followed the route of the things that were happening, it just took it off in another direction. We\u2019ve now gone back up the other road that we first intended to go up!
\n\u201cWe\u2019ve assembled a nine-piece band and played some of the music and we may do some small appearances, but we want to develop the sound of a band further than the album. You either take a band on tour to find your voice or signature sound, or you spend more time developing that sound so that you can pass it on to the people you work with, so we decided to do the latter.
\n\u201cIn a lot of live shows audiences get played the album. I remember as a kid hearing on radio someone saying that it is fantastic that you can go and see the band 10CC and the show sounds just like the record, but why would you want to go and see somebody when it\u2019s just like the record? I want to see something else.
\n\u201cWe both felt that there wasn\u2019t enough material to justify live performances,\u201d adds Brian. \u201cAnyway, we didn\u2019t want to go out and play the songs just as they are on the record. Festivals are so successful now because there is the possibility of something unscripted happening. It often doesn\u2019t, but there is the possibility that the band is going to go slightly off-piste and do something surprising, even to themselves.\u201d<\/p>\n