Martin Hannett the Factory Sound
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CINEMA Martin Hannett The Factory Sound. Manchester. The Invisible Girls. Joy Division. Martin Zero Words Andy Thomas Photographs courtesy of John Cooper Clarke and Chris Hewitt alongside Joe Meek, Phil Spector and instrument. He played with a few groups a roster and then booking them out,” the other producer geniuses of the 20th in the late 1960s and early 1970s, the says Mitchell. “It was set up with a century sits the lesser-venerated Martin fi rst to make a name being Spider Mike proper constitution but it was all quite Hannett. He passed away in 1991 aged King. “I lived above a record shop in alternative then. I was a hippy; Martin 42, having created a sonic signature Rusholme and Martin lived around the was more obscure than a hippy.” With through studio innovations and original back,” says drummer Bruce Mitchell. Music Force co-conspirators Tosh Ryan use of electronics, leaving behind a set “Martin and Mike used to play together. and Lawrence Beadle, Hannett launched of recordings that proved enormously I had a basement and we put egg boxes Rabid Records from a room in Cotton infl uential. Although best-known for his around, and [they’d] bang away down Lane. Both entities were vital building echo-laden Factory Records productions, there forever.” Mitchell, as an offshoot blocks in the musical future of the city, his contribution to Manchester’s music of his band Greasy Bear, also dealt as critic Jon Savage explains: “Punk scene goes back to the 1960s. A new high-end equipment out of GB Audio. didn’t spring out of nowhere. There was documentary – He Wasn’t Just the Fifth “Sound was more important than an alternative scene and structures before Member of Joy Division – by old friend anything to Martin,” says Mitchell. “He then. And Martin was a big part of that Chris Hewitt, seeks to tell his real story. would go without food and save up to in Manchester.” Hannett became an in- “I wanted to get past the stereotype that buy a piece of equipment. He’d be able house producer for Rabid working on Martin was invented at the same time as get fi rst shout on the latest gear, like the the fi rst releases by Slaughter & the Factory,” says Hewitt. “He wasn’t just a Quad 405 current-dumping amplifi er – Dogs and Jilted John, an early Graham product of punk – he had a wider scope.” that was very exotic then, very hi-spec Fellows incarnation. He also honed his Born James Martin Hannett in Miles and Martin had to have it. He wanted production skills for theatre group Belt Platting, north Manchester in 1948, his to try every new thing and analyse it.” and Braces Roadshow Band, as well as obsession with sound began as a teen. Hannett met another important on an avant-garde electronic soundtrack “There were small electronic shops at collaborator at a Soft Machine gig he to science-fi ction cartoonAll Sorts of the bottom of Oldham Road and was promoting in 1971. “Martin had Heroes, co-written with Steve Hopkins. Rochdale Road in Manchester and I’d graduated but was still working with His fi rst production of note – under be dispatched with incomprehensible the student social secretaries at UMIST the moniker Martin Zero – was the notes to hand over in their murky depths putting on various gigs,” recalls Steve Buzzcocks Spiral Scratch EP in January and come back with some crucial bit of Hopkins. “He wanted cannabis for the 1977. “Martin was the only person we equipment,” his sister Julie told Hewitt. band and a mutual friend called me in knew in Manchester that was known as, He had a huge record collection and as ‘someone who might know someone or called themselves, a producer,” singer listened intensely to their production on who could oblige’ – which was indeed Howard Devoto says. But Hannett felt his high-end equipment. While his peers true. We got on instantly.” Through the restricted by the sessions. “I was trying enjoyed Simon & Garfunkel’s melodic pair’s shared love of music and sonic to do things and the engineer was pop on Sounds of Silence, young Martin’s experimentation, a musical partnership turning them off when I looked round: ears were tuned to the echo chamber began. “Our friend fl agged the fact I ‘You don’t put that kind of echo on a used at the CBS studios where it was was a keyboardist, which got him snare drum!’” he told Savage. “It was recorded. While studying chemistry at excited and we set up a date to visit his never fi nished. I’d have whipped it away the University of Manchester Institute pad and have a jam,” says Hopkins. and remixed it but he erased the master and Technology (UMIST) and inspired Hannett joined promotion collective because he thought it such rubbish.” by the Grateful Dead’s Phil Lesh, Music Force soon after. “It was like an The Hannett-Hopkins partnership Hannett picked up the bass, his fi rst agency putting together all the bands on was cemented when their collective the > 59 CINEMA | Martin Hannett Invisible Girls provided the music for yearned for experimental outlets for the source,” he says, “and our eternal search John Cooper Clarke’s Disguise in Love. sounds in his head. “They were different for the compressor to make the bass “One of Martin’s big ambitions was to from punk,” he told Jon Savage on first sound like it was knocking on wood.” form a collective of talented musicians hearing Joy Division. “There was lots of Fixated on finding the sounds in his who would work together on diverse space in their sound.” His first work for head, Hannett’s studio eccentricity is the projects with different front men and the band was two tracks from A Factory stuff of legend. “Play faster, but slower,” women,” says Hopkins. “He called us Sample, alongside Cabaret Voltaire and he told A Certain Ratio, in the studio the Invisible Girls, and occasionally the the Durutti Column. Recorded at to record ‘All Night Party’. “Martin was Cheese Nightmares, which didn’t catch Cargo Studios in October 1978, ‘Digital’ a comical guy and frequently obscure,” on so well.” The group would variously and ‘Glass’ were, in the words of Factory says Mitchell. “His sense of humour was include Pete Shelley of Buzzcocks, Vini biographer James Nice, “a huge leap sometimes incomprehensible.” In the Reilly of the Durutti Column and 10cc forward for both band and producer… new documentary, late Factory Records drummer Paul Burgess. “Martin always elevating the raw post-punk power they boss Tony Wilson provides an insight recognised that different musicians produced onstage towards pure sonic into Hannett’s techniques: “As well as brought different vibes and he was a architecture.” The sound owed a lot to the great soundscapes and his incredible keen talent-spotter. He gave musicians a new piece of Hannett equipment: the work on that, he had this sociological space to try out ideas and tended to AMS Digital Delay. It would be just one work in the studio whereby he would record everything. If he was getting of the tools used to create his production put groups under incredible pressure, something that he felt was too ordinary ‘thumbprint’ and what became known as and would actually pull their brains or dull, he devised methods for getting the Manchester Sound. He told Savage: around, sort of surrealistically, and get musicians out of their comfort zone. things out of them.” Steve Hopkins But there was no formula; everything recalls his partner’s infamous studio was very spontaneous,” says Hopkins. riddles: “I understood his off-beam, Disguise in Love was the first of three ‘HANNETT surreal descriptions of musical styles; Clarke LPs the Invisible Girls played on, not every musician could tolerate that... including 1980’s definitiveSnap Crackle WAS WEIRD [but] his penchant for producing chord & Bop. Behind the Salford punk poet’s sequences or melodies by a random street musings (that reached their zenith AND SCARED number generator could be frustrating.” on ‘Beasley Street’), they created an While Hopkins may’ve understood innovative tapestry of sound and texture THE HELL Hannett, others found him baffling at that Hopkins says was influenced by OUT OF US’ best. “Hannett was weird and scared the everything from the Radio 4 shipping hell out of us. At one point he just forecast to Pierre Henry. “It was highly climbed under the desk and went to experimental,” he says. “The sounds “When digital effects came in at the end sleep,” OMD’s Andy McCluskey says. themselves were becoming as important, of the 1970s, there was a quantum leap His production of ‘Electricity’/’Almost’ if not more, than the harmonies and in ambience control. You had as many in 1979 riled the singer: “Our version of melodies of before. So, goodbye organ flavours as you could invent. You could ‘Almost’ was really tight and poppy, but solo and hello distorted, mangled piano. whack it into little attention-grabbing he’d laid it back and covered it in echo. Bernard Sumner of Joy Division and Martin Hannett at Cargo Studios, 1979 “On ‘I Don’t Wanna be Nice’, for things, into the ambient environment.” It was a pop song and he turned it into instance, the effect that sounds like a The synthesisers that became studio this totally lethargic ballad.” during this time, music founded on his claustrophobic”. The band he had first Martin’s doing.” The album’s ambience crazy steel band is just a delay echo on staples included the Transcendent 2000, In his quest for his own sound, he own compulsive and boundary-pushing seen live “were very, very loud, and hard also had other sources, as Savage says.