Zero 7

An interview with Zero 7, clustered around a piano in The Engine Room in November 2005…

I understand you guys first met while working at a recording studio as assistants? 

SAM: Yeah we got started as assistants at the same studio and supported each other through the various trials.

And was it a natural transition from that to making your own music? Was it all part of a long-standing cunning master plan? 

SAM: I don’t think either of us was thinking that way. We did want to get into production, to get a more creative role, start shaping the music we were involved with. But, no, I don’t think either of us foresaw being the actual artists.

HENRY: No, although we did always want to make tunes, neither of us liked the idea of working in studios doing 12/13 hours forever.

SAM: …But it’s different doing it for yourself, on your own terms.

So do you feel comfortable having made the change from being behind the scenes to in the spotlight? 

HENRY: No.

SAM: No. But, well, this is obviously what we wanted to do…though we didn’t have a masterplan. I think that’s why we use guest singers. You know, people who are much more used to the limelight.

Now I looked at your website… 

HENRY: Don’t do that!

SAM: It’s a very neglected thing…

Ah…well it mentioned a top ten (albeit an out of date one) and I just wondered whether that kind of thing was easy to put together i.e. do you tend to agree with each on most things? 

SAM: No… It varies a lot.

HENRY: Sam listens to a lot more music than I do, I’m deeply boring with what I listen to, which I suppose gives us a different edge. What was on there?

Well you’ve got Roots and The Bees and Hot Chip, and then there’s Sly and the Family Stone, David Crosby, Steeley Dan… 

SAM: I don’t find that there’s that much current stuff that I really love – there’s stuff I like obviously, but not that much that would force itself into your All Time List – so, I tend to revisit some old favourites, hear them again.

Another thing on your website was the Warm Sound Remix competition [an invitation to fans to submit remixes of Zero 7 tunes]… 

HENRY: Yeah, that’s old too…

SAM: We got a really good response, a good variety. There was some really crude funky stuff that was just done, I suppose, in someone’s bedroom, and then other stuff that was a lot more advanced – in terms of the technology used.

HENRY: But all of it, I thought, was unbelievably proficient. I was astounded to think that all of our fans or people into our music were that good at these kind of things…

SAM: But it was a good idea. And when you listen to a lot of that stuff you really start to pick up on who – you know, despite levels of professionalism – is really good at what they do. The range of raw ideas coming through.

And so how is it working with the legend that is Phill Brown? 

HENRY: Brilliant.

SAM: Actually it’s been a bit of a nightmare, don’t tell him but…No, it’s been a luxury. We’ve always done all of it ourselves, so to be able to sit back and snooze on the sofa and for it to sound better than anything we’ve ever done is very cool. This is the first time we’ve been able to hand it over…

HENRY: …and if I remember rightly from the other two albums this is always the worst bit, the most stressful. But with Phill, he does what you do – but really well! He doesn’t need time to get his head round it – he’s got a really good feel for it straight away.

SAM: And, you know, when you’ve been immersed in it for 6 months – and you’ve got all the shit in your head as to how successfully you think each bit went and whether or not you captured this or that – trying to get it all together at the last stage can be difficult.

So having someone else tweak the knobs a little while you doze merrily on the sofa means you can wake up and maybe get a feel for how it would sound to someone hearing it for the first time? 

SAM: Yeah, exactly. We felt it would be good to have someone come in with their objectivity and their take on it; a different pair of ears. At some point I came to the conclusion that we were shit engineers and we needed someone to help us. And it just happened that over a period of time a number of records came up and they all had Phill’s name on. He’s done so much stuff, but it was the Talk Talk records that I was most familiar with. I was always taken with the sound of those records. So I turned Henry on to that and from there we got into that Beth Gibbons record ‘Out Of Season’ he did a few years ago. And then Henry was listening to a John Martyn record and was like: ‘Look, Phill did this too.’

There’s just so much of it: Rolling Stones, Brian Eno, Bob Marley, Jimi Hendrix… 

HENRY: I know. He brings us in little presents like ‘Joni Mitchell Live at the Old Vic 1974’. I mean no one’s ever heard that before. And he was there with his quarter inch, recording it all… The thing is both of us respect him so much so decisions get made easily…

SAM: …when he suggests something you know he’s considered it. It always resonates. It always makes sense.

So how did you get to this stage of the project – how did it all come together? 

HENRY: Well I live in Somerset now and we’ve got a little studio in the back room. So we’ve recorded a lot of it there. Or else a little studio we’ve got in North West London. But it’s always been small and funky, it’s nothing special, not a brilliant studio by any means. It always astonishes me that we get put down for producing so-called “clinical” sounding records, when it’s really very raw.

SAM: Yeah, very little care is actually taken in the recording process…as Phill will testify! There’s lots of sloppiness and laziness, neither of us have the capacity or the desire to get that stuck into that side of it… And the studio that Henry’s talking about – that he set up in his house – I always thought we’d just go there and mess about and put ideas together, and then bring it somewhere else. But it was really cool. We just got into and did it all there, got a few friends down – drums in the living room, the bass player in the bedroom, you know – and that was it. It was much more productive.

It must be very relaxing on your own terms and in your own space… 

HENRY: Yeah, it was.

SAM: It was cool actually. I wasn’t expecting it to run like that, but it was much more enjoyable.

And what was it recorded on? 

SAM: Just 16 tracks of Protools because, well, that’s what we’ve got.

HENRY: I wanted to get a 2″ hooked up, but it’s so heavy and just not really practical if you’re doing stuff all over the house.

SAM: We did do some brass in London, and a couple of drums tracks. And we recorded that onto 2″ – at the studio we used to work at – and then we just bounced it over and took it home.

So how do you write your tunes, what’s the process? Is it all pre-written, for example do you know early on that luscious string sections are going to come in at a certain point? 

SAM: Well there’s not a single string section on this one…

Ah… 

HENRY: And anyway they’re just devices, you know, to try and make your record sound big in some way…Really it starts off very raw: a few chords, a bit of a melody and a bit of something else. Then it’s just: does it need a this, does it need a that? Should it be an instrumental? It’s very organic.

And how does it work with guest vocalists? How does that develop? 

HENRY: Well we’re getting better at that I think. We’ve got a great relationship with Sia They [the vocalists] are a crucial part of the process and write a lot of it with us.

Apparently you’re after a more “warm, analogue” sound this time round… 

SAM: Well all those kind of words, you know…I just want it to sound good, man. I’m not after a brittle digital sound, but I’m not fanatical about whether it’s recorded on this or that…

HENRY: …though I have noticed that a lot of Protools stuff does sound the same…

SAM: We’re certainly after something with a bit more character. But it’s not really a pop record so it’s not recorded in the same way. I think it’s more about the idea and how it’s put down [than the technology used]. And, you know, we’ve got Phill and he’s giving us everything we need…

When Phill did the Talk Talk stuff, they employed lots of weird and wonderful techniques – pitch black recording sessions, un-briefed session musicians just asked to jam away at random, that kind of thing. Do you guys have any unusual recording set-ups or unique ways of working? 

HENRY: No it’s all very, very normal. We should do more though, I think…

SAM: But it works though. I mean 90% of it is just me and him sitting there working it out, chatting about it. Then we’ll go off and find a drummer for this bit, or somebody else for something else. [Recording and working in this way] really was an idyllic way to spend a summer. I felt quite guilty about it… I had to keep on coming back to London to get miserable again.

Do you have a title for the album yet? 

SAM: No. We’ve been discussing it, but nothing yet. You get a sense of the overall feeling of the record and then you just want to find something that does it for you. It’s usually when you’re getting on a bus… I’m looking forward to something popping out of the ether sometime soon.

And a release date? 

HENRY: Sometime in the spring, March I think.

SAM: But then we haven’t sent them the album yet…

And is there a particular band/DJ/producer, etc, that’s particularly influenced you over the last 12 months? 

HENRY: I’ve been listening to quite a bit of Steely Dan. And my son’s started listening to a lot of Bowie – Live at the BBC and stuff. Wicked songs. I really like that unproduced stuff.

So you don’t like the heavily produced things, like Low and Heroes – him and Brian Eno in huge studios in Berlin with a room full of gated microphones…

HENRY: Well no, I don’t really know that stuff.

SAM: There is a Danish guy called Trentmoller whose stuff I was buying a lot of without realising it. It was only later that I realised it was all by the same guy. And there’s an American singer called Sufian Stevens who’s been making a lot of good albums over the last few years.

If you could choose, is there an album – any album – that you would have liked to have worked on? 

HENRY: Well it’s the recording that’s always the fun bit. I wouldn’t have minded being Phill’s assistant on something like… Bob Marley: Live at the Lyceum. Seeing that gig from the truck…

SAM: Yeah, and he did some sessions for Sly Stone: There’s A Riot Going On. It sounded absolutely insane…

HENRY: …mountain of coke, drum machine, can’t really talk properly…

What’s the worst behaviour you’ve ever experienced at a gig or in the studio? 

HENRY: Actually we were just reading about a Simply Red gig in Cuba. He kicked a guy, an adoring fan, off the stage…

SAM: …and they arrested him. So the biggest Cuban Simply Red fan is now locked up for trying to hug him!

But you’ve never laid into your own fans… 

SAM: Well when people come up to me after gigs and start asking about computer programs and stuff…I’ve often been close to violence…when they start talking about synth sounds…

HENRY: We attract a lot of geeks. I remember someone on a website complaining that the piano was out of tune on one of our records…. That’s what I like about Sufian Stevens – that there seems to be a culture of making records that aren’t all perfect. It freaks me out that with Protools everything is endlessly polished and in tune and in time.

SAM: But talking about bad behaviour at gigs, I remember a friend of ours saying that she got in a fight and I was really disappointed that our own fans were kicking off at one of our own gigs. Especially when we were playing…

You’ll have to play mellower tunes… 

SAM. You can’t! There is no more mellow.

And what’s the best gig you’ve ever been to? 

SAM: One of them was a Radiohead gig at Shepherd’s Bush.

HENRY: Common at the Jazz Cafe – that was astonishing

SAM: I saw Run DMC at the Electric Ballroom and that was exciting. And I vaguely remember a Madness gig when I was about 8.

HENRY: That Radiohead gig was amazing – the first time I’ve seen people being carried out due to hysteria.

So are there any collaborations you’d like to do? 

SAM: We just never get it together and I don’t think we think anyone would be up for it. We have started doing something with this guy Jose Gonzalez, but I think he was the first person we’d thought might be receptive to the idea.

HENRY But I just don’t think our egos extend to that…that just because we like someone a lot they should consider working with us. I think Thom Yorke would probably feel a bit nauseous at the thought of working with us. You know, just because you admire someone’s work I don’t think that means you should necessarily try and work with them.

Zero 7 were talking to Miloco at Miloco recording studios, November 2005.