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"There's one track where I played the whole drum kit just with my hands, playing a soft ballroom rumba"
"We’ve got a little studio in Leicester and that’s where 90 percent of this album was recorded, particularly the drumming. I used a combination of my DW drums, some key vintage kits, bass drums and snares and stuff to create the various patterns. Each track has got a different vibe. Some tracks needed a massive drum sound, some needed a little jazz kit.
"There is a lot of drum percussion; I’m almost recreating an orchestral percussion section with drums and shaky things. It’s not necessarily playing drum kits with two overheads and mics on the toms and the snare. I may be playing a bass drum with timpani sticks, or wrapping a bass drum pedal in loads of j-cloths and I’m hitting it like an orchestral bass drum.
"There’s one track where I played the whole drum kit just with my hands, playing a soft ballroom rumba. There’s a lot going on, it’s not just me playing a drum kit in a room for 12 tunes. We wanted to get away from that. That’s the recording side.
"Then we took the entire lot to Dan The Automator in San Francisco. This guy has a massive hip-hop heritage, he’s pedigree. This is where the real mapping started, combining my drumming with the samples underneath. It brings it in, it’s surprising how simple yet how effective it is just taking a normal rhythm and putting the machine underneath it.
"It closes the whole thing in and your ear winds up hearing it as being more automated than it is."
