will always try other people’s ideas, because I’ve learned through bitter experience not to shoot the baby before it’s born. You can learn from anyone. Sometimes someone with no musical idea will come up with something from a com- pletely different angle which is sheer genius, and “I havIe found that you can learn a lot from the most sur- prising sources.” That’s one of Alan Moulder’s takes on his art and given that some of these ‘surprising’ sources have included seminal acts such as Nine Inch Nails, The Smashing Pumpkins, The Jesus & Mary Chain, My Bloody Valentine, Moby, U2, Swervedriver and Curve, you can tell that Moulder has enjoyed an enlightening and varied musical education. At the same time, for a large slice of the past two decades this versatile and highly accomplished producer, recording engineer and mixer has lent his own considerable skills to the work of an eclectic cache of artists, and the results have ranged from the sublime to flat-out nail-your-ears-to-the-wall ball-busting asperity. Hailing from the small English town of Boston in Lin- colnshire, Moulder was influenced by the sounds of bands like The Beatles, T-Rex, Slade, Black Sabbath, Led Zeppelin and Echo and the Bunnymen during his formative years. He played guitar in local bands, and first saw the inside of a studio when recording some demos. After giving himself a good crack at being a rock star, at the age of 24 he started his studio career in earnest at Trident Studios in London. Alan Moulder: “When I was there I was very lucky, because that was a fantastic time at that studio, I worked a lot with Flood, who was then the house engineer, as well as Clive Martin, while Steven Stuart Short – who owned the place – was very inspirational to watch. I’d be put on his production sessions, and he really taught me the ropes with regard to professionalism, a lack of tolerance for sloppiness, and generally getting my act together and being on the case.” Indeed, having set out to become a first-rate engineer, Moulder had always harboured the desire to also work as a producer. As things turned out, this wasn’t too hard to achieve. Many of the bands that he engineered didn’t really have a producer; they just produced themselves, and so Moulder’s progression into that role evolved fairly smoothly. Producer Alan Moulder spent the best It was on the back of his work with Ride and My Bloody Valentine that Moulder was asked to mix The part of two years holed up in Trent Smashing Pumpkins’ Siamese Dreams album. This led to Reznor’s New Orleans studio recording a similar assignment on the Downward Spiral album by Nine Inch Nails, prior to him co-producing the Chicago The Fragile. Richard Buskin finds out outfit’s Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness project with Flood and Billy Corgan, and then NIN’s more recent how time flies when you’re haunted by double album The Fragile. Moulder was holed up in Trent Reznor’s personal studio for two years finishing the NIN artistic paranoia. magnum opus. Reznor’s New Orleans studio may be personal but hardly falls into the ‘home’ category. It features a 72-input SSL G-Plus console with Ultimation, two Studer A800 multitrack machines, a wealth of 26 ProTools gear and “every synthesiser and guitar imagin- and that all eyes were therefore now upon him in terms of able”. Wrapped around the large control room are three how the new record was going to sound. This was espe- different live areas, each visible via closed-circuit cially true in America, so the pressure was on us to monitors rather than windows; one with a PA setup for deliver something. Consequently, we couldn’t go into this either rehearsals or live drums, another similar but project with a fixed idea as to what it would be like, espe- deader-sounding room without a PA, and then the third cially as, during the few years between The Downward which is basically a garage area. Spiral and The Fragile, there had been such a massive AM: “In the beginning Trent had a template of ideas evolution of equipment. Suddenly, all of the sounds that that he wanted to cover, so I went into the studio with him Trent had cleverly manufactured on Downward Spiral – and we just started going through what he had and what sampling, re-sampling, changing sampling rates – were he wanted to do. Initially we recorded and remixed a available on a plug-in and could be achieved really song called Somewhat Damaged, which ended up being quickly. So, we had to have a bit of a re-think and try to the first track on the album – although we redid it a year be a bit canny. later – and then we started taking some of Trent’s other “The instrumental tracks were all recorded in one go ideas to another stage. We never worked on anything to during the early stages of the project. We’d get to the completion but just kept evolving things; constantly point where we’d built up the atmosphere and there was a updating and moving on. We’d work for like two or three general arrangement that we’d come up with by way of days on one piece – 14 or 15-hour days – and it would be overdubbing, cutting and pasting. Then we’d start mixing, a case of anything goes. Trent would hear it shaping up, it would become apparent “We’d often start with guitar, just plugging a guitar into that certain things needed redoing or supplementing, and anything that took our fancy, be it an amp, DI, or amp and he’d generally become inspired to add another section. DI. Then we might think, ‘Oh, let’s do some drums,’ so This would all be running on ProTools – we couldn’t put it we’d set up a drum kit, record the drums, then do a bit of to tape if something wasn’t finished – and he’d either bass, some keyboards... Whatever Trent was inspired by, want to add a section or extend one. For instance, we we’d do it. It was never a case of us saying, ‘Okay, now might both think, ‘That sounds great now, but we could we’re going to do drums on the album,’ and that was fun extend it with another four bars in there and hold off on because it meant we’d always get a different drum sound. this sequence until it comes in four bars later,’ and so the At the same time, given that no drum sound was intended whole arrangement and length of the song would be for the whole album, we wouldn’t spend a day trying to completely changing all the time we were mixing. I mean, get it. I probably would only spend 20 or 25 minutes getting the sound, and then after we’d recorded it we would move on, so sonically nothing was that precious. It was more a case of being inspired and keeping the momentum going.” Overdub Club With overdubs as the modus operandi, no more than two musicians ever recorded together at the same time. For the most part Trent Reznor played everything, while a guest musician would occasionally drop by for a day or two in order to make some contribution or other. AM: “Everything went straight onto ProTools, and then, because it could be anywhere between a month to three months before we’d listen back to one of the tracks that we’d worked on, we would have mammoth cutting days to sort through the material. You know, after working on things and evolving them for so long, we would get to the point where we would forget what we’d done. Then we’d come back to it and it would be fantastic. We’d say, ‘Whoa! I don’t remember it sounding like that! I forgot about putting that bit down!’ It would always sound better than we thought, and that was great. Just at the point when we’d be at a low ebb and thinking, ‘Is this ever going to finish? Have we actually done anything?’ we’d then go back and listen to something and think, ‘Yeah actually we’ve been quite busy!’ It was quite inspiring. “Trent didn’t really know what he wanted the record to sound like. He knew that the previous album, The Downward Spiral, had been lauded for its sonic approach 27 ambient mics drum trigger synth PA rig preamp Fragile signal chain: The miked drums triggered a synth patch, the drums and synth were played through the PA in the DI rehearsal room, which vibrated a specially tuned guitar. The results were used on a number of tracks on The Fragile. compressor pedal at the end Pilgrimage had three more sections than when Happy Accidents we started mixing it – three completely different sections On the other hand, so-called ‘happy accidents’ – those evolved, each clearly delineated with starts and stops; moments of musical magic that come about by chance, guitar and synth sections, and the marching band at the mistake or a quirk of fate, and which are consequently end which Trent and I created by foleying, making often impossible to reproduce – are reason enough for samples, playing drums and adding brass. the producer to keep an open mind and the engineer to “As a producer I don’t have any hard and fast rules, so keep the tape rolling.