TOMMY D: Recording Catatonia's 'Dead From The Waist Down'

Tommy D with his extensive record collection.

Catatonia's rise from indie obscurity to pop dominance seems unstoppable — and with the first single from their new album, they're even targetting Radio 2 listeners. Matt Bell talks to producer Tommy D about the track's transformation from Akai DPS12 demo to Top Ten hit.

It's scarcely an original observation that the world of pop music is constantly changing; indeed, you could argue that change and continual self‑reinvention are the artform's very raisons d'être. Even with this in mind, however, certain recent shifts in the world of the Top 40 can seem fairly disconcerting. When I was growing up, pop stars were a rum bunch — ashen‑faced David Bowie, droning terrifyingly about junkies called Major Tom; Johnny Rotten, gobbing and swearing as he preached Anarchy In The UK; and Kate Bush, yodelling like a harpy under attack from a swarm of hornets. It was safe to say that the chances of your parents liking any of this lot were not high. Their music existed on the other side of a truly chasm‑like generation gap, and seemed epitomised by Radio 2, with its cardy‑clad Jimmy Stewarts and Terry Wogans, and programmes like the easy‑listening staple Sing Something Simple; music, surely, that was not so much played as crocheted.

Strange to see, then, that these days the generation gap, and, consequently, the former gulf between Radios 1 and 2, is not what it was: top‑selling bands such as The Beautiful South and The Corrs bridge it every day, gaining saturation airplay on both channels. Perhaps it is a sign of the times that in 1999 a former DJ, dance and hip‑hop producer, and a band viewed initially as noisy indie guitar‑based hopefuls can make a record with the partial aim of making it playable on Radio 2 — and the result can still be considered hip enough to go Top 10 nationally. Sounding like the perfectly‑formed offspring of a French chanson and a classy English pop standard, but concealing a bevvy of cunning production tricks beneath its innocuous exterior, Catatonia's 'Dead From The Waist Down' has made number seven on the charts at the time of writing. The producer who nursed it from a rough‑sounding demo on a portable hard disk recorder to become the first single from the band's new album Equally Cursed And Blessed is Tommy D.

Right Said Tommy

A former DJ, hip‑hop producer, and underground dance label owner, Tommy took a step into the mainstream in the early '90s when he produced a backing track for three gym‑owning friends who were regulars at the London club where he DJed. The track was called 'I'm Too Sexy', and the three friends, as I'm sure you will recall, went by the name of Right Said Fred. Wisely declining the floods of offers to produce the unending stream of 'Sexy' sound‑alikes which followed, Tommy moved into remixing and serious production, getting a name for himself as a top reupholsterer of singles by artists as diverse as The Sugarcubes, The Shamen and Michael Jackson. Eventually he landed the job of producing an early single by Welsh indie band Catatonia, 'You've Got A Lot To Answer For', which became their first Top 30 hit. Tommy was then asked to produce the group's second album, 1998's International Velvet, the record which subsequently went double‑platinum and moved the band out of the indie ghetto and into the mainstream, courtesy of such high‑profile chart hits as 'Road Rage', 'Mulder And Scully', and 'Strange Glue'. Unsurprisingly, Tommy was asked back to produce the band's third album. Equally unsurprisingly, given his production successes, he has now given up DJing as well: "I've done my credible, underground thing, where you do records that sell to 500 people. That's great, but there's nothing quite like making a record that you know 20 million people will get into."

Out On The Road With A DPS12

Tommy (and friend) at his home studio.

Following the success of International Velvet, Catatonia (Cerys Matthews, vocals; Mark Roberts, guitar; Paul Jones, bass and programming; Owen Powell, guitar; and Aled Richards, drums) embarked in the middle of last year on their first tour of America. Keen to get some demos ready for their next album, the band reacted eagerly to Tommy's suggestion that they take a portable hard disk recorder on tour with them. "I suggested an Akai DPS12 because it's a great‑sounding little box, and it's very immediate. We even used some bits off it in finished tracks on the album, though not on 'Dead From The Waist Down'".

The idea was a success; using the 12‑track Akai hard disk recorder in conjunction with a Yamaha QY77 Walkstation on long tour bus journeys between American gigs, the band sketched out tracks for their next record and sent the results back to Tommy in England. The demos he received ranged from basic ideas featuring just guitar and vocals to more developed concepts which used the QY77 as backing. "They were using a lot of the preset patterns and styles on the QY to write to. That was quite good in some ways and a bit misleading in others." According to Tommy, one of the new album's tracks (and possible future single), 'Karaoke Queen', actually makes a virtue of this approach, containing as many different pop styles as the group could fit into the song, inspired by what they found on the QY77.

Other tracks evolved a long way from the group's initial demos — 'Bulimic Beats', which at one point looked likely to be a beats‑and‑programming‑heavy production extravaganza, finished up on the album as a showcase for Cerys's voice, backed by little more than some real strings and a Welsh harp.

Dream Dream Dream...

Catatonia (l‑r): Mark Roberts, Aled Richards, Cerys Matthews, Owen Powell, Paul Jones.

'Dead From The Waist Down', however, developed in a much less radical way. Guitarist Mark Roberts wrote the song and lyrics, and his DPS12 demo featured just guitar, a lead vocal plus some sketchy harmony backing vocal ideas for the chorus, and a very basic drum beat from the QY77. Despite these humble beginnings, neither band nor Tommy were short of ideas for the track when they reconvened for the album sessions at Monmouthshire's Monnow Valley Studios.

Strangely, some people have now asked whether the final strings were programmed, which I think is quite ironic really, because I don't think you could get that feel from synthetic strings.

Tommy refrains from giving a precise explanation of the song's meaning, claiming that "Mark can be pretty cryptic with his lyrics sometimes" but does reveal something of the song's inspiration, and how that helped to shape the direction the full production of the song would take. "It's about being on tour in LA, and reflecting on the people there and also certain members of the band's entourage, who weren't enjoying themselves. People moaning, when they should have been having a laugh. It's all about being in California, and in the sun — being slightly Catatonic, I suppose! I wanted to really pull that out, and emphasise the song's very dreamy feel."

As work on the track progressed, another idea, this one initially only half‑serious, emerged. "Both Cerys and her mum love Radio 2, and we were saying that we ought to make a record to be played on Radio 2..."

Getting Started

With these ideas in mind, the band began recording, but initial live run‑throughs failed to capture the required feel. Coming at the track from "a programmer's perspective", Tommy decided to try building the track from the rhythm upwards, and programmed a scratch rhythm loop for the group to work to, using nothing more complex than his sequencer of choice, Emagic's Logic Audio on a Macintosh, which he runs with Digidesign Pro Tools hardware, and which was to prove invaluable throughout the recording of 'Dead From The Waist Down'. "I think Logic Audio is brilliant... I can't speak highly enough of it. That and the Pro Tools hardware — I don't use the Pro Tools program, just the hardware — are the best combination. The only dodgy thing is the timing — I've found the MIDI Clock awful. But then, that's Macs for you; their timing just doesn't seem very hot. That's why I keep an Akai MPC3000 sampling workstation — which rules — and an Emu SP1200, the old classic hip‑hop drum machine, for accurate beats. Mind you, the beat for 'Dead From The Waist Down' was so simple that it wasn't a problem. I just knocked it up in Logic in a couple of minutes, so we had something to work with, but it seemed to fit, so that was the one we ended up using on the finished track!"

The basic rhythm sequence Tommy wrote was enhanced by the custom samples he chose to use on it; very trebly hi‑hats and a toppy, crunchy snare. "That comes from my hip‑hop days", he explains. "I do use a little bit of sample CD stuff, but I'm not mad on it. I prefer to use my own samples, and I like to make up my own — say, by combining two or three snares to make one new one, and tuning one up really high or low, maybe even putting hi‑hats in them. It's your own sound then, it's distinctive."

By this stage in the production of Equally Cursed And Blessed, the recording regime for the album was well established: instruments recorded with mics, such as guitars (both acoustic and electrics with miked‑up amps), Paul's bass (the amp for which was also miked up), and Cerys's vocals, were usually recorded on a Studer A80 analogue 16‑track, as Tommy is a fan of the warm quality imparted to acoustic instruments by tape saturation. If any processing or editing was required, Tommy spun the audio into Logic Audio via his Pro Tools interfaces, dealt with it there, and eventually laid it to an Otari RADAR, the final multitrack resting place of the album's audio. Some non‑miked audio, such as Tommy's rhythm loop, was recorded directly into Logic, and certain sources (of which more later) were laid straight to the RADAR.

The first instrument to go down to the rhythm loop was some guide Rhodes organ, which Tommy played so that Cerys could lay down a guide vocal (the Rhodes track was not used again after this). This she did, along with some backing vocal ideas, via a Neumann U47 going through an Avalon EQ and a CLM Dynamics preamp to tape. Paul Jones then laid down a bass line, using his Epiphone semi‑acoustic via his Ashdown Engineering ADM C115500 bass amp. According to Tommy, the track really started to take off when Paul added the bass. Owen Powell then finished off the first evening's work by playing some Martin acoustic guitar, which was captured in stereo by a pair of Sennheiser MKH40 mics. Owen laid three stereo tracks of acoustic guitar to the analogue 16‑track, playing slightly different rhythms each time, and these were then mixed down to one stereo pair.

A Logical Case

At the next few sessions, Tommy began to seriously experiment with Logic, doing what he could to emphasise the dreamlike feel of the song. First, more guitars were added, this time Heritage electrics played by both Mark and Owen. Tommy: "I got them to just jam over the track, then I bunged all the results from 16‑track into Logic Audio and cut it all up, throwing away some of the new guitar parts but keeping others, like the prominent arpeggios. I also doubled some of the arpeggios by pitch‑shifting them up an octave, but keeping the length the same with time‑stretching and running them alongside the original."

I prefer to use my own samples, and I like to make up my own — say, by combining two or three snares to make one new one, and tuning one up really high or low, maybe even putting hi‑hats in them. It's your own sound then, it's distinctive.

Experimentation with Logic was also the name of the game during the recording of the track's piano part — see the 'On The Piano' box below.

Strings & Things

The decision had been taken by Tommy and the rest of Catatonia quite early on that 'Dead From The Waist Down' would feature a string arrangement. Paul and Owen of the band have previously gone on record decrying the gratuitous use of strings to make a track sound 'posher' by simply plastering them over a perfectly good arrangement, and so the band were keen to find something which truly complemented what they had already recorded.

While recording was in progress, Tommy experimented with occasional ideas using Logic and his favourite synth string sounds — a blend of Roland JV1080 patches and programs from Peter Siedlaczek's renowned orchestral sample CD‑ROMs. During one of these brainstorming sessions, Cerys came up with an idea for a string line, and gave it to Paul, who promptly disappeared into Monnow Valley's programming room to experiment with it on the group's QY77 for the rest of the day.

Tommy: "Paul is quite into programming; he did some for International Velvet and the new album, and runs a PC‑based hard disk setup at home. He took the line that Cerys had come up with and created the flowing string line with the quarter‑note flourishes in it that is the song's main string hook — then he exported it out of the QY77 as a MIDI file and brought it back to me. From there it went back into Logic, and together the two of us bashed his idea around a bit more.

"Eventually, we managed to work out something that we were pretty happy with, with a real Glen Campbell feel! It couldn't sound scratchy — it would have wrecked the mood. And it had to be real strings, as well. Strangely, some people have now asked whether the final strings were programmed, which I think is quite ironic really, because I don't think you could get that feel from synthetic strings. I hate using them, unless it's just for basic pads. If you want all the swoops and slides, like we did, it's got to be the real thing! And it's not as expensive as people think, either."

Tommy therefore booked a 24‑piece string section and hired an arranger to flesh out the idea he, Cerys and Paul had contributed to. Matt Dunkley, an orchestral arranger and conductor who has worked with Craig Armstrong (see SOS July '98) and Steve Hackett, was picked for the job. "Matt added even more to what Paul and me had done," says Tommy, "with some lines of his own, and arranged it properly for a 24‑piece string section. He's got Logic Audio as well, so I just gave him the file and backing track I had, and then he just wrote his arrangement to that."

The strings, with Matt conducting, were the last instrumental component of 'Dead From The Waist Down' to be recorded, being laid direct to six tracks of RADAR at Olympic Studios in London, the day before mixing of the track was due to start.

Finishing Up

Mixing took place at Whitfield Street Studios, London, on a J‑Series SSL console. One unexpected development at the mixing sessions was that it was only now that most of Cerys's final vocals were recorded. Tommy explains: "There had been a couple of lines of recorded vocal that Cerys wasn't happy with, and so we did a couple more full takes at the mix to nail those. They turned out so well that we ended up comping a final vocal mainly out of those.

"Normally, with Cerys, we do about four or five takes per session, and then I put them into Logic and comp them into one lead there. It's not always multiple takes, though. Sometimes she'll do one and that'll be it. Her vocal on 'Strange Glue' from International Velvet was one complete run‑through take at a very early stage. You just couldn't better it."

The mix presented no major problems, despite the wide tonal palette used during the recording, from the crispy snare sample to Paul Jones's thunderous bass (which was so powerful via his Ashdown amp that it required some careful handling). It seems this sonic diversity is no accident. "I'm really into reggae — Paul is too — so I like records that sound very toppy and bottomy. Also, I used to DJ in clubs like the Ministry Of Sound and Cream, doing five‑hour sets on enormous sound systems, so I'm very aware of sub‑bass, and very high top, and how it affects people.

"Credit must be given to Roland Herrington, who mixed the track, and Joe Gibb, who engineered it. They are my stalwart team; I work with them on everything. Joe is a great tracking engineer, and Roland tends to mix the radio stuff; he mixed 'Mulder and Scully' and 'Road Rage', and now 'Dead From The Waist Down'. They've got golden ears, those boys."

Finally, the track was mastered, with the aid of Tony Cousins, "the best mastering engineer in the world", at Metropolis. "Tony is a law of his own — he doesn't just put a bit of compression on here and roll off a bit there for every track; he treats every one as a separate case. He compressed 'Dead From The Waist Down' a little bit, but he didn't EQ it. I find generally when I cut things, it's rare to need to EQ something. Maybe occasionally to get consistency across an album, but that's it."

Looking back, Tommy is proud of the record. "It's very different from anything Catatonia have done, but it's a classy, sweet record, and it's very dreamy and summery too, so it's coming at just the right time of year! And the chorus just takes you off somewhere — it still does that to me, even now. It's arresting."

Radio 1 certainly agreed — with several weeks to go before release, the track had already clocked up significant airplay. Now the chart position of the record proves that Tommy was right to champion it as the first single.

In fact, by a strange twist, the only place 'Dead From The Waist Down' has failed to take off is the radio station at which the group — and especially Cerys and her Mum — had hoped to find favour. "It's been A‑listed on every radio station apart from Radio 2!" laughs Tommy. Perhaps there is life in the generation gap yet...