Recording Moloko's 'Sing It Back'

Mark Brydon & Roisin Murphey

Published in SOS October 1999
Printer-friendly version

People : Artists/Engineers/Producers/Programmers

It's been hard to turn on a radio or go to a club this summer without hearing Moloko's distinctive retro disco hit. Bill Bruce meets the Sheffield duo to find out how it was put together.

Although it has been almost six years since Moloko first grabbed the record-buying public's attention with their off-kilter art-pop, it has taken the re-release of a track from their second album, I Am Not A Doctor, to finally put them at the top of the charts. Even after their debut album, the quirkily titled Do You Like My Tight Sweater? went quietly silver, selling to date almost half a million copies, Moloko remained one of British pop's best-kept secrets. When their first single 'Fun For Me' recently cropped up in a car advert, few made the connection with Sheffield-based duo Mark Brydon and Roisin Murphy.

Now the success of 'Sing It Back' threatens to change all that for good. A crowd-pleaser on dance floors from Miami to Ibiza, and A-listed by daytime Radio One, in pre-sales alone 'Sing It Back' was guaranteed a Top Five place even before its release. The single was produced, engineered and mixed by Moloko, with additional production by remix legend Boris Dlugosch and Michael Lange in addition to mixes from Mousse T and Can 7. Moloko are currently finishing off their third album, due for release in early 2000.

Brydon and Murphy met at a party in Sheffield in 1993. Discovering a mutual love for funk, R & B and, more importantly, house music, they became firm friends and soon began writing and recording together. Brydon recalls: "I was involved in quite a well-known studio in Sheffield called FON Studios. It was one of the major studios in the North until it fell into bankruptcy. I was still a partner in the studio when I met Roisin, so I had access to studio dead-time and we'd go in and play around with these daft tunes. Things like Roisin going, 'Do you like my tight sweater?' and stuff like that; pure theatre, really. Now, we're on our t

"The real inspiration with 'Sing It Back' was a tom sound we found in a Clavia Nord Lead synth."

hird album and the whole thing has just mushroomed quite naturally over the years into full-blown pop songs. It's been quite a natural progression really."

Immediately prior to the recording of the I Am Not A Doctor album, Murphy took a brief sabbatical to New York, where she completely embraced the Big Apple's legendary club culture: "I stayed with a girl in the house music business," she recalls, "and she took me out to all these places like Body And Soul. I was totally blown away by the real deal. I started singing the lyric 'Sing It Back' to an instrumental track while I was dancing in a club, and it was still lodged in my head when I came back home."

Moloko's own recording studio, a humble but well-equipped single room in what is termed the Cultural Industries Quarter of Sheffield, takes its name 'BAM' from the band's surnames, Brydon And Murphy: "It's our little musical potting shed," grins Brydon wryly. "On one side is the Music Museum, and on the other a complex which houses the Human League's studios amongst others. It's quite handy if you want to borrow a DAT machine or something like that. The studio itself is basically a large open space. We've done no acoustic work to it at all.

"On 'Sing It Back' we didn't bring in any session players -- we did it all ourselves, including the engineering, although I have always found that a bit of a hat-changing business -- the producer's hat, or engineer's hat, or artist's hat. When there are two of you it doesn't matter so much, but in a band situation it doesn't work as well. 'Sing It Back', and indeed the whole I Am Not A Doctor album was done in BAM, and completely by Roisin and myself."

While 'Sing It Back' has only recently become a big hit, the track itself was written almost three years previously. Brydon explains how the track began to take shape when Murphy returned from New York: "When Roisin came back to Sheffield she was inspired to write a mutant New York disco tune. Now, normally we work in several different ways: sometimes we have a lyric, sometimes we have a groove, but in this case it was the lyric which started it. At the time we were kind of shy of going full four-on-the-floor, and we tried to make all the beats on the I Am Not A Doctor album obtuse. The Latino feel was definitely a result of the whole New York thing, but we had to pull back because we were afraid of making just another dance tune. This is why, on the album version of 'Sing It Back', the beats are a little jagged, because we were trying to find new and unusual drum patterns. On the album version we didn't allow ourselves to go all-the-way-out disco. It would have sounded disjointed from the other tracks on there. So instead it began with a very broken-up two-step kind of thing. Of course, if there was ever a song built for remixing it was that one.

"It took us two or three days to write and record the track -- any longer than that and we would have started to get sick of it. We went through the whole process from start to finish together. We never made demos; the recording process and the writing process -- and I'm sure this is true for a lot of bands these days -- is rolled into one. You find there are a lot of things from the initial writing sessions which make it to the final cut, because they retain a freshness you don't find when you've been working on something a lot. It's important to keep things exciting. A lot of people have commented on the vocals, but we didn't really spend a lot of time re-vocalising it or things like that."

Murphy adds: "We work as each other's producer, I think. We are very hands-off within our different roles, so I don't touch the equipment and he doesn't sing."

The song began to take shape through a process of trial and error, with each idea being refined or rejected. Brydon explains: "On 'Sing It Back' we didn't do a lot of acoustic work. We have a little vocal booth which is pretty dead, and we did all the vocals in there, and often the guitar parts are done in there as well. However, trying to do a drum kit is an absolute nightmare. You have to do it on headphones and you can only judge what you've got on playback. It's such a large room, though, that you don't have to worry too much about the acoustics because you're always in a 'sweet' sp

"The acquisition of a Macintosh G3 running Logic has led Brydon to neglect his samplers, which he admits were once the most important instruments in the studio."

ot. You're not really hearing the rest of the room. In fact, there are funny little bottom-end tests you can do to find where the bass lifts, so if you play something in the right part of the room you can get pretty much the sound you want.

"The real inspiration with 'Sing It Back' was a tom sound we found in a Clavia Nord Lead synth. It was a very specific sound. I had heard it on a track by a band called The Funky Green Dogs, who are an American house band, and it sounded amazing. So when I was skipping through the sounds on the Nord it jumped out at me and I recognised it right away. It became the focus of the track, with just guide hats and a guide kick. We began with the tom pattern, and fitted a vocal around that. Then the live bass part was played in through a Boss ME88 bass effects unit, which has a little synth section you can feed an audio signal through. Then it was laid down onto Logic Audio on an Apple Mac G3, with a core Pro Tools system for editing. We've got two ADATs, and so we began to put some rough ideas onto the ADAT, experimenting with different samples. When we were recording 'Sing It Back', it was the first time I had discovered the joys of audio sequencing. So we threw a lot of stuff into Logic Audio and looped it, or took it off the ADAT, a four bar section, or whatever, at a time.

"We've never really needed more than the two ADATs -- it's only recording real drums which tak

Remixes     With the final mix completed, it was time to hand 'Sing It Back' over to the remixers, whose work neatly complements the single itself. In fact, this current version of 'Sing It Back' isn't the first to have had the remix treatment, as Mark Brydon reflects: "With remixes you always want a remixer to come in and just make a banging club version. The first time the single came out, our American record company paid a fortune to have Todd Terry remix it. Except we weren't all that over the moon about it when we heard the final result. The Boris Dlugosch mix just came through the letterbox one day. He'd been pestering our German record company to let him remix it, and they sent him the parts to work on. It's going to be a nice exchange, actually, because he did the remix for us and Roisin is going to do a vocal on one of his tracks. The problem with the Todd Terry remix was that Todd Terry retained almost all the original parts, which we felt a little ripped off about to be honest. If he had put more of himself into it rather than just re-looping our keyboard parts, it might have turned out a lot better. Boris's remix uses long passages of looped guitar and bass, which have been added in live by his people." In another curious twist, Roisin adds: "The original track had a similar bass line to an old Boris Dlugosch track called 'Keep Pushing', so when I heard his remix I thought he'd done a remix keeping the same bass line. I was very happy with it though. I think all the remixes bring out the Latin, summery feel of the song."

es up lots of tracks. I've never had a problem linking Logic and ADAT. I'm not a big fan of ADATs, but at the same time I can live with them because they've proved themselves a great little tool."

So what of the sounds themselves? "I'm not a snob," insists Brydon. "I'm not of the school which says 'It's got to be old, it's got to be CV and analogue.' I really couldn't care less where the noises come from. A good selection of squiggly synth noises are the only real must-haves. I can't be bothered programming sounds at all. I usually take a sound, a preset or something, and just tailor that to suit. A little bit of processing helps.

"On 'Sing It Back' I was sticking sounds through guitar effects pedals. I'm a big fan of the Boss ME88, which I'm happy to use on guitars and basses. You can turn virtually anything into a synth sound with it. Among the synths I have, the Juno 106, an instrument I've been using since about 1985, is a favourite. I use the bass sound from it on almost all our records; you can work up a hundred variations from it. I also used a Nord Lead and Yamaha CS1x on 'Sing It Back', two machines which are great for the money, and an old Roland MKS70 Super Jupiter rack which I use on almost everything.

"The synth didgeridoo sound on 'Sing It Back', which is really prominent in the album version, is from the Korg Prophecy, and the rasping effect on it comes from the little ribbon controller. One unusual synth I used was an old Roland SH3. Although it's in a bit of a state, and it's only got one oscillator, you can get some great stuff out of it. Combining synths with modern hard disk editing gives you tremendous freedom. You can really play the machines, then sort it out later."

The acquisition of a Macintosh G3 running Logic has led Brydon to neglect his samplers, which he admits were once the most important instruments in the studio: "I think I've worked with every Akai sampler since they started producing them. Before the Akais, in the early days, all we had for sampling were two BEL delay units triggered from a Roland TR808. I still use an Akai S1000, and the Akai S3000XL was used a lot on 'Sing It Back'. I'd use it the same way I use Logic Audio now, using an eight- or 16-bar section in a loop. Recently the samplers have fallen into decline, though -- they only really get used for guide loops while I lay stuff into Logic Audio. That process began with 'Sing It Back'."

The lilting stacked harmony vocals on 'Sing It Back' are one of the features that make the song so memorable. Remarkably, the process of recording the vocals was a fairly painless and speedy affair, as Mark Brydon explains: "We used an old AKG C12 valve mic. It's so warm we had to actually remove some of the warmth from it. We had been using a budget Audio-Technica mic, which sounded OK, but once we had our hands on the C12 it improved everything dramatically. We had a nice mic coupled with a nice reverb setting, from a Lexicon MPX unit, and it was really hard to go wrong. We haven't ever had a lavish budget but I think we've spent what money we've had where it's warranted."

Murphy adds: "As a vocalist I've learned to be a singer through a background of enjoying dance music and technology. I didn't have a background as a folk singer or something beforehand. I find double-tracking a breeze -- I wanted to double-track everything, but of course Mark hates it because he thinks it flattens out the main vocal. Perhaps I was lucky I've hooked up with someone who isn't a total techno-boffin type, but who is a really brilliant producer, so he's helped my singing along. Actually, I don't look after my voice. Mark even thinks I should smoke more! The fact my voice is cracking up a little bit is something he likes. It makes it sound more mature."

Brydon: "The vocals are the only really acoustic parts of 'Sing It Back'. Other parts, like the bass, were just recorded straight in as a DI. When I'm recording I only use compression on the vocals and nothing else, and until recently I've always been a big believer in getting things down without too much added."

With so much sequencing and so few acoustic parts to be recorded, the whole process of recording 'Sing It Back' had allowed plenty of flexibility. Brydon acknowledges that a lot of this has to do with modern technology: "With computer recording you can do a lot of rearranging at every stage, so I don't do anything too dramatic at the mix. I do tend to use a lot of EQ, and I've got a TL Audio stereo valve compressor which I use to make the final 2-track punchier. We use a Mackie 24:8 mixing desk which has a fairly limited EQ, so it does make you work a lot more at getting the sound right at source.

"With Logic Audio the possibilities are getting better and better -- before you even go into the desk to mix, you can do a lot to refine the sound. I'm using more plug-ins now, but when we recorded 'Sing It Back' I didn't have any plug-ins, so it was all analogue effects. I have a little unit Roisin brought me back from America called a Seekwah, which is a pedal made by a company in California -- each one is hand-made. You can step through an eight-part sequence which has different filter settings on each step, and you can adjust the speed of it. It's like a triggered gate but with built-in filters, which is really unu

Introducing 'Maurice' On BVs     Mark Brydon doesn't sing on 'Sing It Back', but there is nonetheless a distinctly male vocal on the track. He explains: "We use a Digitech Vocalist quite a lot. The 'Back, back, sing it back' part is generated by the Baritone setting, which for some reason just sounds great on Roisin's voice. She says she likes sounding like this big, strange transvestite. The Vocalist has become an almost virtual member of the band. We've even christened it Maurice." Murphy laughs and agrees: "I like the Vocalist precisely because it makes me sound like a big, black gay man. It's like magic. People have actually called up trying to book him for sessions! Now, perhaps if you put Sharleen Spiteri through it, it wouldn't sound the same. It's just me, I turn out like a big, black gay man every time." Cross-gender manipulation aside, Brydon is keen to point out that there were more straightforward uses for the Vocalist: "The harmony parts essentially come from the Vocalist. We would write the parts in Vocoder mode and then re-sing them once we'd isolated the harmony part we wanted. We also used it like a slave at the end of the ADAT, when we tracked up backing vocals, because remember we only had eight tracks at a time to work with. Then we did a little submix of those and mixed them into the stereo inputs of the S3000XL, and re-triggered them as samples. We did a lot of double-tracking on the backing vocals, but I don't like double-tracked lead vocals. All the backing vocals are just tracked up, with Roisin doing them in different voices with a little bit of the Digitech's Baritone setting, so it sounds like a mixture of male and female vocals."

sual, so I use that a lot. You need to keep one hand free when you're using it so you can adjust the speed to the tempo of the music, but it's great fun.

"I'll use a Joemeek unit for compression on the vocals, and that's normally applied when I'm recording the vocal. We also have an EAR (Esoteric Audio Research) compressor, a big valve compressor which is really transparent -- you can hardly hear it working. Compression isn't really there to be heard: even on the final 2-track with the TL Audio compressor, I'll only use a touch.

"I hate mixing on headphones, I find them too claustrophobic. I use a large set of Genelec monitors, and I'm very assured about where everything is going to sit in the mix because the stereo imaging is so good. I also use a pair of Yamaha NS10s, more out of habit than anything else, although I have bought some Spirit Absolute 2s as nearfields and they're great. I also bought big subwoofers for the Genelecs, because with our music you really have to know what's going on in the bottom end. I mean, you can usually guess with the NS10s because of how they distort, but it's no substitute.

"We tried the final mix in as many different environments as possible. On crap speakers, in the car, on a portable machine. I find those little monitors on half-inch machines are good as well. Unfortunately we don't have one of those, but they can be great for giving you an idea of how things will sound on the radio."

A DAT mix of 'Sing It Back' was then passed over to The Exchange in London for a final sheen to be applied. "We wouldn't attempt to master it ourselves," admits Brydon. "The wiring in mastering suites is just so superior to what we have, there's no point. Good mastering is a mystical science which doesn't seem to have too dramatic an effect on a track -- if anything, 'Sing It Back' just came back a little louder. I feel that unless you have a really terrible mix, we're only talking a dB here or there being added or taken away at the mastering stage. It can just be good for making all the tracks on an album sound cohesive and together. We did tend to edit our final mixes for radio and so on, because some of our tracks do go on a bit, but beyond that there were no real changes made."

So with 'Sing It Back' already one of the songs of 1999, Moloko are understandably delighted and enthusiastic about the future: "I was a bit depressed it didn't take off the first time round," admits Roisin, "but it's just been bubbling away under the surface, and really made a breakthrough at the Miami Music Conference. I think this track really needed the sun, to be honest!"

"Oh yeah, it's great," smiles Brydon. "Our previous work was always a little bit more experimental, but I think we had to make those records to get a lot of things out of our system. Everything's turned out great. Anything's better than being obscurely obscure!"