It's been a year of big choices for the Big Sound Authority — since they decided to accept a record deal they've been making decisions about producers, studios, instruments, sounds...

Yesterday's Popstars were unshaven, unkempt, consumed enormous quantities of narcotics and frittered away hours of studio time in unproductive ways, often turning up at midnight to begin a session that had been booked for noon. That was what it was all about then — excess. Of course some of them are still at it today, the wrinkly old buggers, but in today's slimmed down economy they find that the old ways don't rub. For today's Popstar is fit and young, with responsibilities and clear incentives, who plays table tennis whilst colleagues add overdubs. A good example of this are Big Sound Authority, I found the other day setting up the table in the recording room of Audio International studios, Baker Street, London.

Since the band's formation last year, Big Sound Authority have released two singles on MCA, both of which have met with chart success. Coming from West London, their sound has that recognizable Northern Soul influence that was once synonymous with a lot of the bands on Paul Weller's Respond label, but they are distinguished by a very strong and loudly proclaimed melodic element. In addition the vocal talents of singer Julie Hadwen have also played a part in the band's early success.

Any band who have got to the point of making a single on a major label without either capitalizing on trendy gimmicks, or dropping their own style in favour of a more commercial one are indeed lucky, and this often manifests itself in a naivety of attitude amongst the band members. This is the case with Tony Burke, Steve Martinez and Martin Wilson, respectively guitarist and singer, drummer, and bassist with BSA. Like their music, they are hardworking, no nonsense guys, and when I spoke to them they were happily absorbed in the precise business of making an album, their first. For any band this is a crucial stage — on eon which much of their future will depend — and they and their producer Greg Walsh took time to tell me how they were going about the task.

A newly signed band can never have the sort of recording freedom that a top selling established act has, and the music they intend to produce always has to be vetted by their A&R person. Normally then, a band demos all its material and brings it in to the record company for discussion. BSA, however, in addition to doing two major tours in this country, had also done a lot of live radio sessions and TV appearances and so they already had enough well recorded material to bypass the making of specific demos. That stage quickly completed the band then came to what is perhaps the most important decision in the whole process of making an album; choosing a producer.

Tony and the rest of the band freely admit to being novices in this game, and the job of choosing a producer was one for which no previous musical experience had prepared them.

Tony: "We had to vet producers which is always quite a lengthy process, because it's very difficult to judge someone on a meeting lasting an hour or so. So we did pre-routining, working with a couple of producers in the rehearsal studio to see how we got on before making the decision about who we would actually go with in the studio."

Obviously the track record of a producer is the first consideration, but other considerations may prove in the long run just as important. The band's first single, This House, was produced by Robin Millar whose notable acoustic style productions of Sade, Everything But The Girl and Working Week made him one of the most obvious choices. However it was the man's attitude which attracted the members of the band above everthing else.

Tony: "The reason we first went with Robin was because he was a very inspiring character. After meeting him in his office everyone was saying, Christ, I can't wait to get in the studio with him, he's brilliant. We wouldn't work with someone we didn't think was up to scratch technically, but once you've got that out the way it's just a matter of personality — whether you can work with him, and whether he can bring out the best in you as a performer."

Unable to carry on working with Millar owing to his commitments on Sade's second album, the band looked around for another producer, and made the rather eyebrow raising choice of Greg Walsh, a producer best known for his work with electronic based bands like Heaven 17. In actual fact though, Greg had begun his career at Audio International recording a lot of live bands and orchestras, and was interested in BSA on the basis that a change was as good as a rest.

Big Sound Authority are a performance based acoustic type act, and so for them the recording studio is not the ideal place to arrange or write. All the arrangement side of production takes place during what the band call routining, which though the name gives a somewhat regimental impression, is in effect a glorified series of rehearsals. Having lived with the demos and lyric sheets of all the material the band intended to record for a couple of weeks, Greg was there and it was his presence more than anything else which was crucial to the idea of routining.

Tony: "In routining we concentrate purely on arrangements: bass and drums first, because sometimes there's little discrepancies and sometimes the groove's not as good as it should be. We toss around lots of ideas and sometimes we use ideas that Greg's come up with, sometimes stuff that we've come up with. It's like a co-operative of ideas. We get all that done so that we don't have to do any arranging in the studio and it's just a matter of getting the sounds we want."

An important aspect of the band's sound, though not actually part of the band proper, is the brass section, comprising Kevin White on trumpet, Greg Brown on sax, and Frank Seago on trombone. What the brass players actually play is up to them in the first instance, however it is at the routining stage that the rest of the band get to hear the parts for the first time, and it is not until then that the exact nature of the parts is fixed.

Tony: "What happens is that we give them a backing track and they go away and write out an arrangement. They work it out as a trio, and they deliberately put too many ideas in so that we've got a lot to choose from. Then we'll prune it and modify it, or pickup an original idea and develop it to a point where we're happy with it."

Recording studios come in many forms, all with particular characteristics especially suited to a particular type of recording. Obviously the choice of studio rests primarily with the producer who has the experience to make the choice, and there are of course the inevitable budget restrictions to comply with. But the opinions of the band are important here as well, because not only do they have to give of their best in the studio but they also have to live with the results, and it was the choice of Jacobs Studios in Farnham, with its 32 track digital set up, that provided the first recording snags.

Tony: "I didn't like it, that's why we didn't do it all there. It was so clean, there was no tape noise or anything like that. It works well I should imagine if Greg's doing something like Heaven 17, but for a band of our own style it wasn't really suitable which is why we changed back to analogue."

One of the reasons why Greg chose Jacobs in the first place was because it had large ambient rooms which were most suited to getting the kind of lively drum sound he wanted. Greg also felt that whilst for electronic music a state of the art studio was a must, for a band like BSA the atmosphere of the place was an important consideration.

The rest of the LP was recorded at Ridge Farm in Dorking, with a few overdubs being added (even as we talked) at Audio International, whilst the band were intending to mix at Good Earth. Because the LP was being made in so many different studios it was important that they used studios which had SSL desks.

Tony: "Obviously there are budget restrictions but more often than not we want to go to an SSL desk, so that if we are moving about we can get the sounds out immediately. That's not always possible, as in the case of Audio International where we're just doing overdubs, basically because it's cheaper. But we always mix on computer desks. It's not so much that you can't mix in studios I ike this, it's just much cheaper to do it on an SSL desk; it's a safeguard for future events."

And so to the actual recording of the music. As mentioned before, BSA are a performance based outfit, and they like to carry this through in their records as well. Thus the brief in recording is to steer away from studio fandangelry.

Tony: "The criteria for us in the studios is to make it sound as live as possible, to keep studio effects to a minimum, and make it sound like some really well recorded gig. At the mixing stage we bring in echoes and reverbs, but still nothing too complex, just natural sounding effects to make it sound as live as possible."

In actual fact, the recording formats are a little more complex than one might expect, bearing in mind the simple approach of the band.

Tony: "We always use slave reels so it's at least 48 track, but at Jacobs we went up to 58. But we try to keep our records so we can recreate them live as near as possible, which means not getting too complicated with the overdubs. When we did 60 track it was for one of the twelve inch singles, so there were lots and lots of backing vocals, but because we had so many tracks we recorded them on separate tracks and didn't bother bouncing them."

The instrumental parts were all recorded fairly conventionally, starting with the bass and drums playing the rhythm track. The only bit of technology the band did get into was using a click track, to guide Martin and Steve whilst they were recording. Steve actually preferred to work this way since it gave an assurance of perfect timing, but the actual decision to use the click was Greg's.

Greg: "With present day formats where Frankie comes before you on the radio, and another electronic band comes after you, if you allow them too much freedom it sounds weak because it's slowing down or speeding up; it doesn't sound as strong as it should."

In the first instance the drum sound is crucial to the lively outcome of the recording, and here the effect is achieved by a combination of Steve's incredibly loud playing style (on Ludwig drums and Sabian cymbals) and Greg's choice of large rooms with wooden floors in which to record him.

Greg: "We're lucky with BSA because we've got a good drummer. Often when you're competing with records which have punchy drums on them, if you've got a drummer in the band who doesn't quite make it, it's better to use a Linn drum."

It's generally thought that a good live performance will generally increase in tempo very slightly and that this adds a little to the excitement. Greg and the band are aware of this, and so when tempo changes do occur which clash with the click, the problem is not so much down to accuracy as to keeping the feeling going without becoming too erratic.

BSA are quite lucky in that they have two distinctive singers among their number, Julie and Tony. To help subsequent overdubs, guide vocals are laid after the rhythm tracks are completed, however a great deal of care is taken to make sure that the final vocals really shine.

Tony: "We go for as much of a performance as possible, a sort of one take thing. But there's always going to be some notes that crack or go out of tune and we try to get a really good performance then patch up the parts that are really unusable. But if a voice cracks in a certain way and it sounds good we'll use it."

Again, when it comes to recording keyboards and guitars the emphasis is not on clarity but on relating the recording to the sound and feeling of a performance.

Tony: "We make sure that everyone's playing like they would play onstage. It's a matter of putting some soul into it as opposed to just syncing up with the click."

Martin, playing a Fender Precision with a plectrum, always records direct into the desk via a Boss chorus pedal. For the guitars however this isn't good enough.

Tony: "We've been using Gibson 335's, Telecasters and Ovations. To try and get a good natural sound we first try and get it out of the amp. On a couple of tracks we link up a Roland JC120 with a Rockman. We try to get 80 percent of the sound out of the amp and then just brighten it up on the desk. We always record it from the amp because DI-ing sounds too polite and pleasant."

It was the band's desire for a sound that had a good feel that put them off using Jacobs' digital set up. But it wasn't so much the actual outcome of the recording as much as the feeling it gave while the band were actually laying the tracks down that put them off.

Greg: "You've got to be very careful how you record on digital and make sure you get sound from other sources, because there is no situation in the world where everything is totally silent. I think the tracks we did on analogue feel better, though the difference is so indefinable, it's really just an atmosphere that the record gives you."

In the end the band found that it was low rather than high tech which solved the problem.

Greg: "We had to transfer back onto analogue when we decided to move out of Jacobs because there aren't that many 3M digital machines round the country, and surprisingly enough the tracks felt better once they'd gone back onto analogue."

Greg: "Using the AMSs and the Yamaha Rev 1 — that's my favourite toy at the moment — you can really get perspective into sounds, and with a big band it's nice to be able to layer your sounds; have a first dimension, and a second row and a third row. You've got pan pots on the desk for your left and right imaging but sheer volume doesn't give you that front and back dimension. You need echoes to put things into the back of the mix. You've got to be careful with it, but if you give yourself the facility to use six or seven different sorts of reverb, a fifth of a second plate, a half second plate, a one second plate etc, then you don't have to put the same kind of reverb on every instrument and it won't go washy and lose clarity."

By now, of course, the results of all this toil will be available in the shops, and the band will have thought of a name for it. It's always good to see a band who are young enough and fresh enough to have ideals, putting them into action. All the way along the line BSA try to involve themselves in their audiences, even to the point of employing their own fans in various aspects of the group's administration. It is because of this commitment that the band aren't going the way of all flash when it comes to studio production, and are instead trying to make a record that doesn't sound like it was put together inside an ivory tower. I suppose it's just one of those ironies of life that it takes as much effort to make a record that sounds natural as it does to produce the most unnatural artifices of sound. It reminds me of Dolly Parton's famous remark, "It costs me a fortune to look this cheap!"