Other artists 1997-xx-xx Flood Warning

[demoderus]

1997-xx-xx Flood Warning​

Interview with Flood

 

[demoderus]

FLOOD WARNING​

when it comes to producing and remixing, there's no-one 'arder than Flood. Flood's career spans a variety of musical styles, from the grandeur of U2's 'Joshua Tree' via the sombre electronics of Depeche Mode's 'Songs of Faith and Devotion' to the experimental electro-funk of Cabaret Voltaire's 'Microphonies'.

Flood has just remixed a track by Tom Jones. "I was given a choice from 20 songs, and I picked the one that stuck out by a mile, the only one worthy of doing anything with. It was a bottom-up production: re-recording it."
Such is the clout of this inconspicuous, anonymous and yet strangely ubiquitous workaholic. In the last year he's remixed for Patti Smith, Massive Attack, the Boo Radleys and the Cranes. He produces for Erasure, Nine Inch Nails and Depeche Mode; he worked alongside Brian Eno on U2's Zooropa, and he's just about to disappear into studioland until Christmas to work on the new PJ Harvey album. So what does he do on his day off?

FLOOD AND HIS THING​

It's the opening of the Museum of Synthesizer Technology and Flood is a modular-system fiddler of honour. On this particullary day off - undoubtly one of the few - he's talking production tips in the museum grounds, and we're trying to discover what he defines 'his thing'... "The more interviews I do," he says, "the less I want to quantify it, because I think really your thing - and that's not specific to me - is just instinctual. You refine it only by experience."

But what is it that you're aiming for when you think something is not quite right?
"Quite often you're relying on your own personal judgement, your own likes and dislikes. You hear something and go, 'Okay, that spurs me on to think, well, I'll try this.' Quite often you go in and it doesn't work out, so you have to try plan B. But you have to go on instinct. Though it does help," he adds, "if there are people around going, 'Yeah, that sounds good.' It's so difficult when you try to quantify 'my thing' because there's no reason why I should like a Patti Smith song, a Tom Jones song, a Massive Attack song. I just know I like them, and they spur me on to be creative."

Flood's instinct has been fashioned by at least 16 years in the business, starting off as an engineer. According to muso legend it was his tea-spilling that earned him his nickname. On the 80s he worked with Soft Cell, Cabaret Voltaire and The Associates, building up a reputation for a hard-edged approach. "In all forms of music I get pissed off, for want of a better word, with people following fashion," he says, "If you get caught up with always looking behind, then you end up with what 90% of music is today - retro. Very, very few people are leading at all. I don't think they're challenging themselves."

So who were the production visionaries? "I tend to reflect on older people, like the Visconti stuff with Bowie and Bolan; I like Kraftwerk, but then I love Iggy Pop. I'm a poor mixed-up kid. But then," he continues, "I try not to spend a lot of time listening to everybody around because there's so much mediocrity. I've spent a year on working with Nitzer Ebb and NIN, plus those eclectic remixes, and now it's PJ Harvey, so that's how I keep my excitement up. What's to stop PJ Harvey sticking a guitar through a VCS3? Nothing. What's to stop Nitzer Ebb going for total rock-out guitars against a full-on analogue sequencer? Nothing. So cross-fertilisation and trying different things is important. Yes, I know I'm known for harder-edged kinds of things, but it's not always the case. I think Zooropa is a good example of the mix."

FLOOD GATES OPEN​

When it comes to inspiration, Flood has enormous respect for Eno who co-produced Zooropa.
"I've had the chance to see how he works. When I was an engineer, I was asked to work on the Joshua Tree, and I did that working with Eno and Lanois, and it was just, like, 'here's the rule book - throw it away'. Everything you thought before was wrong."
"I like Trevor Horn, if only for his specific ideas. I dislike the fact that people know what I do, in the same way you hear a Trevor Horn production and you know it. That's what I've become. That's why I say you could put the remixes Iv' done over the past year back to back and then see if people can say it about me. The role of the producer is to carry the band, not to overtake it."

Flood illustrates another important point as he recalls how he felt after working on the Joshua Tree. "I went to do the second Erasure album, and that was coming from premier rock to premier pop and realising the cross-furtilisation that can be accomplished between the two. It doesn't mean that you have to play the second verse riff sound on a synth: why can't you have that concept in a rock song, and vice cersa? So that opened my eyes."

Half an hour before the start of this interview, Flood, Suede-producer Ed Bueller and a couple of mates played a storming set on the museum's temporary NME (No Microchip Electronics) stage. Flood has a modular set-up of his onw, which goes into the studio if the client is inclined to cross-pollinate. "If you do a remix, what's to stop you shoving a guitar through a ring-modulator?" Flood asks rhetorically.
Is that a favourite sound then? "Not particulary. To be honest, I started off as a guitarist, and I'm quite as happy to play guitar as use synths. The most important thing about today was that it was totally live. We only played together for the first time 12 hours ago. We were able to prove that synths aren't just cold, anonymous, have to sound like the same thing: within the right framework, they can deliver much more."

 

[demoderus]

FLOOD KEEPS THE FAITH​

One of Flood's most radical projects of late was Depeche Mode's Songs of Faith and Devotion. the shift in direction was by mutual consent. "On Violator they wanted to push into new territory; so I think that b me being new to the fold, some of the distance was made. With SoFaD they were in a much stronger position to change, so bring in the drum kit, and change the recording method."
How exactly?
"Inception of the songs than pre-producing them; trying them out live in the studio; demos being far more stripped back so there's more room for experimentation. Things like cutting down the amount of time spent on the computer - in the end, I don't think we achieved as much of that as we could have done. Also, using organic instruments - God, I hate that term - like guitar and drums incorporated with synths, but not making it sound like a forced dovetail. The synth sounds are all theirs, but it's the way they react to different people. They get used to their own sounds, then they sit next to someone new, and they say, 'Ooh, that's a good sound, but what if you do this? Or this?' It's that interaction that's important."

Cross-fertilise, interact, experiment: expect a Tom Jones-PJ Harvey duet at Christmas.

FLOOD ON THE TRENT​

Flood produced Trent Reznor's Downward Spiral, as well as earlier NIN tracks 'Head like a hole' and 'Terrible Lie' from 'Pretty Hate Machine', and most of the 'Broken' EP.
"I firts heard a set of demos for 'Pretty Hate Machine' before he was even signed, and they just blew me away - by far the best set of demos I've ever heard. They were good strong songs, not pop songs; then, on top of that, someone had spent a lot of care and attention on how the songs were represented musically. To me, that was the best of both worlds. So I played the demos for the first album and thought, 'Well, what do I have to do?' I was asked if I wanted to work on it, and I said 'Totally!'. Sometimes you hear something and you say, 'Sorry, I've just got to do that - I don't even care if it's just one song."
Soem guidance was required, though. "There was a problem in the middle, the way it (head like a hole) dropped down," he explains, "I think we changed the drum sounds, changed the feel, re-introduced backing vocals at the end. Encouragement was important: can we get anymore out of the vocal? Bring it in a little bit earlier? It was a mutual respect thing, rather than storming in there and saying, 'Well, we need to change that and that.' But really, 60-70% was there before we got into the studio."

PROTECTION RACKET​

Flood recently remixed the forthcoming Massive Attack track 'Protection'.
"I thought that the basic arrangement was so strong that I kept to that, and fiddled around with the bottom end of things. I had quite a bizarre bass sequence which I thought would pretty much plough through everything. Then I tried to just get a hint of their chords, because they are quite important to the melody - giving things a bit more of an edge without giving the full game away for what is effectively a seven-inch single. I suppose you could call the result a cross between a club record and something you'd listen to at home." Not even Flood dared to tamper with the flawless vocal of Everything But The Girl's Tracey Horn.
"It would be criminal to fiddle with it. It's so rare these days you hear something were the voice and song just sit together perfectly. It's weird because as you listen to it you don't realise you're hearing verse-chorus-verse, there's just an immediate mood to it."