Heron Gets the Jasper Stone Treatment
J: Can you tell us a little about the recording process? Because I understand it was a ‘bedroom job’
H: Yeah, I used a lot of old keyboards that I picked up from car boot sales and I’ve got an eight track as well that I put everything on to basically; and drum machines as well and guitar, just a mixture really, just using anything that’s lying around and at my disposal. There’s not really any formula behind it, and that’s probably why some of it sounds a little bit raw and unpolished…But I quite like that about records. That’s how I got into Beck, listening to the early lo-fi stuff, which kind of had a real intimacy that a lot of other records didn’t have. I haven’t really tried to complete a polished record or compete with anyone else on any terms other than my own.
J: Has it been mastered though? Because I must admit that to me, and I’ve heard it loads, I never thought and it never occurred to me that it had been done on a lo-fi tip.
H: That’s a real compliment, cheers. A lot of people tagged it as lo fi, a lot of people tagged it as this or that, but it’s just music to me. Do you know what I mean? They’re just songs, people look into all sorts of things and worry about how much of it is contrived or intentional and whether I’m deliberately hiding my vocals, that’s just the way it is. That’s just how it sounded and the next record will sound different and the one after that will hopefully sound different again.
J: So how would you approach it if you were given an unlimited budget and told to go and spend as much as you possibly can. Would you approach it in the same way?
H: I’d approach the music in the same way, definitely. I’d use things, I mean music technology as a tool can help you execute things that you already want to do. But I don’t want to rely on technology to do things, I think there’s a temptation to not even play any music or musical instruments because you don’t have to these days. I’ve done a lot of stuff by multi-tracking it, so I’m playing stuff down, you’re still playing all the stuff in but your just using them as the tool’s to record the music rather than manipulate it in any way. If I had a 24 track or a 48 track mixing desk in a huge big studio, I don’t think I’d put 20 part harmonies on there. I’d have a lot of blank tracks, or I might just end up putting little things on certain tracks, maybe just use them to get a panoramic sound. Just use things that were there that maybe I’d never used before. But I think you can get lost in the process of doing things. 8 tracks are so simple, I mean to me they are just the best invention ever.
8 tracks, 4 tracks, anything like that, working with them you commit and they help you make decisions before you even do them.
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