This originally appears in Interface Magazine 175
Not yet 30 years old and in his homeland Australia he’s already a lauded engineer and producer. Then he swapped Brisbane for Amsterdam and promptly landed with his nose in the butter. Interface talks to the man that gave Adje Vandenberg “a new coat” in de Wisseloord Studios [effectively, “talks to the man that gave A.V. a new lease on life - in a professional sense, sort of like a new coat of paint on an old house]. During the Pro Audio Summit he’ll also talk more about this in an interview and on a panel.
Ad Vandenberg is back, after a 13 year absence. The first album with his new Dutch band MoonKings is coming in February. Vandeberg’s MoonKingswas mixed by Ronald Prent and mastered by Darcy Proper, but the engineer that worked with Vandenberg is still an unknown in the Netherlands: Stephen Bartlett. Vandenberg explained during a recent conversation [with Interface] that aside from being an adventurous sound technician, Bartlett is also a phenomenal jazz guitarist.
Bartlett: “I was very young when I started making music; I was five [years old] or so when I started playing guitar. I had been at university for a month (university of Queensland, School of Music) when I entered a recording studio for the first time. What should have been a four hour session turned into a 28 hour session, and I managed to absorb a little of everything; from microphone placement to mixing. I walked out of the studio and thought, ‘Man, that felt awesome!’”
Bartlett switched from studying guitar to studying studio technology. The course led him to switch to composition after a year, where he again learnt everything he could. Bartlett then made a decision: “I left my education to go touring with my jazz band.” He looked for and found work as an engineer and producer in 2003. “Even for a kid of 19 it felt like a progressive and natural step in my career.”
Koningslied (“King’s Song”)
Ten years later and Stephen Bartlett is 29 years old with several Australian music-industry awards on his shelf and a variety of Top-10 albums and “tracks of the year”behind his name.
“In Brisbane I owned my own studio complex, The Docking Station. Five studio spaces, a few control rooms, and so on. I realised after a while that I wasn’t doing nearly enough recording. And I wasn’t improving [my skillset]. What I needed was somebody that could help me to get better at my craft. So I decided to challenge myself and to look beyond my immediate environment. My girlfriend and I wanted to move to Europe, so we went travelling and fell in love with Amsterdam. When we were in England, I thought that living in Amsterdam and working in London would be cool. And so that’s what I did.”
“During Queen’s Day 2013 I got into a conversation with a stranger while the “Koninglied” (“King’s Song”) was playing in the background. I told him what work I did and he told me about Wisseloord and the renovation of the studios, so I immediately sent Ronald Prent an email. He invited me over. I did two test days and a week later I was given the chance to record for Isla Delange. And from there: 3JS, Adrian Vandenberg, and it’s continuing. Oh, Pat Leonard too! These are artists that would never come to Australia. The world is smaller [more accessible] when you’re here.”
No, Bartlett doesn’t really miss Australia. “No time for that! It’s so nice to be working in a fresh, new, easy-going environment. Of course, creativity can also stem from restrictions [limitations]. If I wanted something special in Brisbane, I needed to move heaven and earth to find a few good instruments or amplifiers. And I did! No restrictions means that you’re inspired in different ways. Here I snap my fingers and there are twelve top guitars ready for me, of any brand and type you can think of. It’s the same with mics and outboard gear. It gives you space for creativity; I noticed that over the last week with Alain Clark.”
Kick (“Kick”)
Jazz musician at heart, but actually an all-round music connoisseur – that is Stephen Bartlett. He approaches each recording in the same way regardless of whether it’s a jazz trio or a new album from a Dutch hard-rock guitarist with an international reputation.
“It begins with a conversation. It’s important for me that there is a musical “click” with the person with whom I’ll be working. Adrian and I chatted, and discovered that we had almost identical thoughts around the big things in life. As a result, he let me listen to a couple of demo songs. It took a week or two before I realised what I had gotten myself involved with. We’d sit down to eat and play a game, “Guess who Ad hasn’t met,” because that was easier than the other way around…and the producers and engineers he’d recorded with were all heroes of mine. That’s when it began to become apparent what lay before me...Ad comes across as so relaxed and easy-going, you tend to forget who he is. And so, we began with the first song and with the search for the right feel. It had to sound honest, that was non-negotiable.”
“Ad and I were constantly sharing demos, and ideas about sounds, and discussing options, etc. That was during the time when the band was rehearsing together, so I also got to know them well, and after that was able to ensure that we got everything out of the rhythm parts that we could.” Sam Christoffel (bass) and Mart Nijen Es (drums) are early twenties and have been playing together for 10 years. Singer Jan Hoving is a thirty-something that got noticed when his band opened for Whitesnake. Ad Vandenberg asked his band members to join him because he got a kick out of the way they played and sang. With a general idea of the songs in hand, they were free to figure out the details for themselves. Bartlett: “What I’ve noticed is that they were used to working with young guys, used to digital techniques. ‘Give us the click, then we know we’ll be fine’, that was the vibe. But on day 2, I decided to get rid of the click. I felt it needed more emotion [feeling], and Ad thought the same. That caused a bit of tension with the guys, given how used to playing with a metronome they were. But after a day or so they were completely on board. They even criticised their own [unrelated] recordings for not having enough emotion [feeling]…”
Niet Re-Ampen (“Don’t Re-Amp”)
The singing of Jan Hoving was a surprise to Bartlett: “I remember clearly that Jan came in and I told him to go into the control room and sing for a first take. That was how I normally did it. So we started the backing track and after thirty seconds I threw him straight out [of the control room]. He sang so loudly, I was completely deafened! Never had that before. We stuck him one floor higher in the lounge, with the door closed, and we could still hear him singing. A giagantic voice, not what you’d expect from such a skinny guy. Superhuman lungs, or something like that. It was great coaching him during the recording. A big step [up] for anybody, and especially for somebody who is so fresh and open.”
“So we let the band play live, and after the initial recording week there was a month to work on the melodies, ideas for riffs, etc. Ad and I shut ourselves into the new vintage studio at Wisseloord for four weeks. We decided to scrap the original rhythm guitar section and record it again. We were looking for the right musical result, and that took a while. Not simply re-amping; we chose to rather use different guitars, different playing styles. A basic question: How hard was Ad going to hit the strings? That was all part of this [recording] phase.”
“We didn’t want to revert to the 80s. I’d say his solos have a modern slant to them and his rhythm parts are more classic rock. Minimal use of effects, no gimmicks. I saw Bruce Springsteen at the beginning of this year. He walks up, plugs his Telecaster directly into an amplifier, cranks it up and lets rip. So simple! So, minimal effects, open, simple. Guitar also has EQ, also has compression, also not in this mix. Those are more of a Ronald Prent-style mix.”
Natuurkunde (“Science”)
Wisseloord has a gigantic collection of amplifiers and guitars – well, actually, Wisseloord owner Henk Bout has a gigantic collection of amplifiers and guitars. Vandenberg made ample use of ancient Marshall and Vox amplifiers, along with a 1959 Fender Bassman and Bandmaster. Bartlett: “What was important was that we had each amplifier coming out of a separate speaker, with two different microphones in front of each speaker. And then we combined that sound with the consoles out of the EMI deck and the Neve. What also played a role was that I used a hard speaker sound with a soft microphone, and vice versa. That ensured a perfect middle ground, not overworked as you might expect. That allowed us to bring the guitars (vintage Les Paul and Stratocaster – ed.) nicely to the front.”
Bartlett had already extensively experimented in Australia with analog recordings. “I’d invested in a 1974 31-channel Neve 5316 for my own studio, as well as a Studer A80, after a long search. And I remember the first time that I recorded drums through the Neve and Studer, and that I – it sounds like a cliché – had tears in my eyes. That was what I was searching for. All the books about the science behind it, all the time invested in understanding the technology – it resulted in a whole series of records that I recorded without computers. You learn so much; like when you know what it means to mix drums through one track [line?], so you have more space to record guitars. With that knowledge you’re so much more creative in the digital domain. You circumvent [avoid] so much that isn’t actually necessary…moving a snare drum two milliseconds back and forth for an hour, but forgetting that the whole song is actually rubbish…or discover pre-set 7 of the plugin and yes, there’s the perfect sound – that everybody in the world has also programmed into their computers…”
“So I’ve worked a lot with tape in Australia. That’s led me to think a lot about how we currently record music. We look at a screen. There’s the recording, and on the grid we see the things that weren’t timed properly, that aren’t pitched right. In Tapeland that doesn’t happen. There you don’t trust your eyes, you trust your ears. Nothing else but the performance. John Lennon said, “Art is knowing what mistakes to keep.” That’s what I mean: Honesty. And [for the record], I can also complete a digital project honestly, trusting only my ears. It’s about the mindset for me: your ears come before your eyes.”
Bebop (“Bebop”)
After 6 months working together, the professional relationship between Ronald Prent and Stephen Bartlett began to crystallise. “When I first got here, I realised that I wanted to leave all the options on the table when I recorded, but I would also get too involved in the process to be able to work objectively. In Australia I had real issues with trusting somebody else to mix what I’d recorded. With Ronald it feels completely different. Ad and I were still busy with recording while he was busy mixing track 1. It was a big help to walk in and hear what he was busy with. I understand him completely, I heard what he did and there was nothing I could suggest to improve it. On the other hand, he’d occasionally walk in while I was recording, and ask what my reasoning was for this or that – that sort of thing was really valuable [helpful/useful]. Before Ad we did the album of 3JS, where Ronald mixed the first half and I mixed the second. Only because I’d seen how he mixed and what kind of decisions he’d make was it possible for me to do that. It’s so cool to sit with him and figure out which guitars to bring to the front, at which moment – for example. I’m always really interested in how he processes things [in his head]. But I lose him when he gets going with the surround mix…that’s another thing altogether.”
And the love for jazz? How does that find expression in the day-to-day of the recording business? “Honesty is an important aspect of my love for jazz. They’re [jazz musicians] busy with music instead of perfection. I’m crazy about bebop, which is a simple style to understand. Know where the boundaries lie while making mistakes and trying new things, and from there they’ll reach the next level. Jazz has really had an impact on my career, in the sense that I don’t want to be doing the same old thing for too long. I’ve done experimental things, with crazy types of media and without fixed pitch [tonality?]. I can also read music fluently enough to be able to know if there’s something I don’t like from a sound perspective. That’s also due to my education.”
“Jazz musicians and jazz connoisseurs [experts] often forget what the ordinary man hears. What patterns make him want to move. You can study a 13/8 rhythm and learn to appreciate it, but a 4/4 works everytime. And I don’t want my intellectual knowledge to get in the way. People want to move. And Adrian’s album, every song, makes you want to move. We’ve done that together.