I had a chat with my good friend Josh Kime recently. He is the engineering brains behind the last three Alfie and the Avalon singles, and a powerhouse in music production and sound engineering.

Toby: Hello Josh Kime; producer, sound engineer extraordinaire. Thank you so much for coming to chat with me today. Firstly, let’s begin with how you got into music production.

Josh: Oh, that’s a long story. I’ve always done music technology, I’ve always enjoyed it and have been in bands throughout high school and college, but originally, I wanted to do musical theatre. I went all the way through high school and college thinking I would go to drama school, I got a recall for one of the main drama schools in London and I was at the audition and just thought, this is not for me. I had to then re-evaluate my life and see what direction I wanted to go in because I’d sort of been pushed into that direction [musical theatre] by everyone around me, and I’d always enjoyed music and music technology, so I fell back onto that as I was doing it in my spare time anyway. So yes, I essentially fell back into music production, went to Huddersfield University with yourself, and yes, life led me to this point.

Toby: I didn’t realise how far you got into musical theatre.

Josh: Oh yea, it was completely the road I wanted to go down, and then, as I said, I was down in London just chatting to the people there, the atmosphere, I was just not feeling it whatsoever.

Toby: Do you think that musical theatre influences your music production nowadays?

Josh: It does, because throughout education, all of my compositions were quite based in that area. I still did a lot of rock and metal, but musical theatre, when you’re listening to it and you’re in it and you’re surrounded by it, it really does add a lot of cheese to your productions, as much as you don’t want to say that, or some extra clichés, or other ideas that other people might not put in. It brings the idea of motifs in quite a lot and bringing them back, as well as character ideas, and you could say branding if you will.

Toby: Sometimes cheesy is there for a reason because it’s tried and tested and works well. Although I wouldn’t characterise your productions as cheesy of course. Let’s have a chat about some recording! What are the most important aspects of running a recording session?

Josh: Most important thing in a recording session is making sure the performer is comfortable. That’s literally your number one priority, because if your performer isn’t comfortable, if they’re feeling anxious or socially awkward, or they’re not prepared then the session isn’t going to go well. You should be able to tell straight away how it’s going to go. I actually read this in Mark Mynett’s book, which is a really good read called the Metal Music Manual. He says you’re a therapist, psychologist, a friend, an enemy, a motivator, a supporter, a teacher. All of these roles come into production and running a studio session because you need to make sure the person, especially vocalists, is in the correct headspace to give the best performance possible. If you shit on someone and make them feel awkward or anxious, they’re just not going to give their true performance. If the person feels comfortable and the preparation is there, there’s nothing really to go wrong.

Toby: When we did the Alfie and the Avalon sessions, which we’ll get on to in a little bit, all of us felt so comfortable in the studio with you and we had the best time. It’s probably one of those things where you’re working quite hard to create that atmosphere, but it feels effortless to us.

Josh: I don’t know if you’ll get on to this later, but the pre-production that we did, when we sat down, listened to the songs and threw out ideas saying “why don’t we try this” or “what about this idea”, we had all that preparation done before so we weren’t panicking and worrying about things in the studio. We knew what we were doing and got on with it.

Toby: Was the pre-production an important part of the process for you, what kind of importance does it hold compared to the studio day?

Josh: If you don’t have the pre-production and everyone’s not on the same page, it’s the old high school saying of fail to prepare, prepare to fail. If you’ve got the preparation done, it’s so much easier. You can do a spontaneous session, I’ve done that before with people like Alex Broadgate, we’d sit there and we’d try and come up with something, or he’d say “I want to try and create something like this, let’s see what happens”, and they are really cool and interesting sessions but we had a long time to work on it. With Alfie and the Avalon, we didn’t have that much time, we knew we had maybe two or three days in the studio and we had to do drums, bass, guitar, lead guitar, acoustic guitar and Ewan’s array of 5 billion different instruments. It was a lot to get done.

Toby: It was so much to get done; we got a huge amount done in such a short time. It’s really a testament to your preparation. It went so smoothly. In terms of Alfie and the Avalon sessions for I Can See It, Burnout and Not Where I Belong, could you tell us a bit about the actual recording session from your end? Any of the technical considerations, or some of your favourite moments?

Josh: That’s an interesting question to be honest. Is there any particular aspect you want me to focus on?

Toby: Let’s go with the recording and the sound engineering first.

Josh: Right well, the rhythm section is the basis of everything, so we get good drums and solid bass before we even think about recording anything else. I’m a real fan of a big drum sound, nice big snare sound, nice kick, really well-rounded toms and I don’t like the cymbals to be too harsh. Me and Zbos [drummer] actually took a preparation date to make a custom kit for that session.

Toby: It pays off so much for the drum sound in general. I do think myself that if you have a bad drum kit, you’re going to get a bad recording.

Josh: Well there is that, and also you can take a good drum kit, but if it’s got old heads on it, or it’s not tuned properly, if you have a bad player etc. You’re never going to get it to sound good.

Toby: How long did it take you to prepare the kit? Was it the day before?

Josh: I think me and Zbos spent about 5 hours the day before trying to make the custom kit. We talked to one of the lecturers at the University, Stewart Worthy, and he recommended different aspects of different kits for what we were going for. There was this, I think it was a Yamaha kick drum, but it was from an 80s jazz kit, and it had a particular sound that we really liked. We started with quite a high snare, which we ended up changing out for the live sound snare that they had at the University. I think you were playing around with it and it sounded mint and we went “yea let’s go for that, it sounds like a cavern”. I also don’t like using drum samples too much, I don’t have a problem with people using them, but I know Zbos doesn’t like using them either, so I’m glad that all of the songs are completely natural. It’s more credit to Zbos for his consistent playing really.

To bring it back round to recording, it’s all about sound at source, it’s about getting the good tones before you begin. You can’t polish a turd, so you need to make sure that everything is as good as possible at source. It doesn’t matter how bad the microphone is, if something sounds good and you stick a microphone on there, it’s probably going to sound good. If something sounds bad and you stick a microphone in front of it, you’re not going to make it sound good, no matter what you do to it. If you get your sound at source right, there’s not much to go wrong if you follow the core principles of sound production.

I was tempted to try and use outboard gear a lot more, but we didn’t really have the time to be experimenting too much because if we cocked something up or we clipped something, we’d have to re-record a take, and if you change the settings you can’t comp those takes together; so I decided on an in-the-box approach, but we did go through lots of different preamps. I think we used the API’s, I normally put shells through the API’s, so kick, snare, toms and then the overheads might have just gone through the desk as standard, which is one of the SSL AWS desks, and those preamps sound really good. Then you’ve got the DAB, which is a really clean preamp, it’s just quite crisp and surprisingly nice.

Toby: Did we end up using the Avalon pre for anything?

Josh: I mean, that would have been ironic, but unfortunately, I did not. It would have been quite amusing.

Toby: A bit of a follow-up about the studio process, and this might be a bit of a weird one considering I’m in the band. But is there anything you have to say about the psychology of the session?

Josh: It was well, really what I said before, it’s just making sure that every performer is comfortable and keeping on top of where we’re at. The good thing is, we knew each other beforehand and are well acquainted with each other. If someone wanted a break, we all just went on a break. You could also leave two people in the studio while everyone else went for a coffee and relaxed for a bit because everyone was punctual. The psychology was really making sure everyone had the same vision, or vision-ish, because you’re never going to get everyone to agree entirely, and push forward that way, rather than trying to change things up too much in the session.

This goes back to the pre-production. Make sure everyone is on the same page, everyone is comfortable, everyone is practised, and everyone knows when they’re recording their parts. For example, we didn’t turn around to yourself and say, “oh you’re recording this song now” when you weren’t expecting to record it until tomorrow. You’d be like “well I haven’t practised it” or “I’m sure not what I’m doing for this bit yet”. It’s just making sure everyone’s comfortable.

Toby: It’s interesting when you say people can leave, have a break, and come back with a cup of coffee because everyone did that apart from you, who sat there working hard for the whole day.

Josh: Yes, with my 14 cans of monster!

Toby: Well mate, I’ve really enjoyed chatting about the sessions, your musical upbringing, and tech in general. Thank you so much. Are there any socials you want to plug?

Josh: Well you can always plug my socials (@kimeproducer) or Bangers & Mash [the function band Josh and I are in] (@bangersandmash_band). So thank you, it’s been good!