Richard James Burgess, once a musician with Landscape and co-designer of the Simmons SDS5 electronic drum kit, is now a sought after producer.

Burgess's biggest commercial success as a producer is with Spandau Ballet. He produced the Spandau albums, Journeys To Glory and Diamond and a number of singles collections and 12" mixes.

More recently, Burgess's chart achievements have come from King — he has worked with the band since its formation. His productions of Chakk in Sheffield and Five Star in New York should see him back in the charts in 1986.

Spandau Ballet met Burgess early in its career. Under his guidance the band made some of the funkiest British sounds of the early 1980s, a style which many bands are still emulating.

The bass sound on Paint Me Down was a landmark, as was the guitar sound on Glow and the brass and general ambience of Chant Number One.

Burgess explained how these sounds developed. 'When I'm trying to get a bass sound, I always start off with both a DI and an amp. The biggest problem with doing that is getting the phase right between the two. That's usually a bitch. Whenever you stick a mic on an amp and take a DI it's always out of phase but never 180 degrees out. I wouldn't like to do it without an amp, though, because the amp gives you all the middle and guts.'

'The bass sound on Paint Me Down was Martin (Kemp) using a Fender Precision through a Trace Elliot. I seem to wind up using Trace Elliots a lot purely because many bass players seem to be very keen on them. I like the 10 inch speakers for their punch. I use the 15 inch speakers on some tracks because they retain the punch but also give the sound a vast bottom end.

'The brass on Chant Number One was done in the live room at Utopia. We used just three instruments — trumpet, tenor and trombone — then we doubled and trebled them up. With brass, parts are very important. They can make or break a brass riff.

'The room at Utopia was very good. The glass walls and marble floor gave it a very live sound and really enhanced the atmosphere of the track.

'When I record a track I always have an image or atmosphere in mind that I want the listener to experience. On Chant Number One, I wanted to create the feel of a club with a band up on stage, really sweating. So we continued that theme right through to the video.'

The track's percussion contributed to this live feel and made it a successful dance record.

'I normally send all my gear down to the studio for a session — all my percussion and bits of drum kit and cymbals and so forth. It scares the hell out of drummers because they think I'm going to muscle in on the drum tracks.

'The moment I sent all my gear down for the Chant session, Steve Norman started playing around with my bongos. He picked it up really quickly so we decided to have him play some stuff on the track. By the time I'd finished working with the band, Steve had become a very good percussionist.'

Burgess had to work hard to convince Spandau guitarist, Gary Kemp, that he should use a different guitar in order to get a thin, funky sound.

'For some reason Gary was very reluctant to use a Fender guitar of any sort,' Burgess remembered. 'It had too many rock connotations for him, I think. Eventually, I brought a Telecaster into the studio and he fell in love with it immediately. This was lucky because, up until then, he had been using a Gretsch Country Gentleman which is a beautiful guitar but too thick for the sound we wanted. After that, Gary started trying to convince me that we should use Stratocasters and Telecasters.

As Burgess knows too well, getting the right sound on the instrument is pointless unless the miking is correct.

'Miking can be a very weird area. Every technique I use (and I'm sure a lot of other producers are the same) has a very flexible starting point.

'I often start with a lot of microphones up and then I'll eliminate or move them. I very rarely stick a microphone up and just leave it there. When I'm miking I usually try very hard not to choke acoustic instruments. I try not to get right on top of them. I do close mic them but I always have an ambience mic up to let it breathe. For a sax, say, I'd use something like a 414 or a 47 or even an 87. I like to use a valve mic now and again because they have a very characteristic warm sound.

'When I was working with Chakk recently we used a 67 and a 414 for the sax and that worked out to sound very bright without being too thin.

'I always take out a DI for bass because DI is like insurance. If all else fails, you have your DI to fall back on.

'I use a variety of mics on the amps. I'll use a D12 or a 47. I've also found that a 57 works really well. I normally put a mic really tight on the speaker and then have one just off to give the sound a bit of room and allow it, I hope, to balance.'

There has been brass in Burgess's bands throughout his career. His first group in New Zealand had a three piece brass section and Landscape's trombone was a trade mark.

'I've always said that there is no real trick to recording brass. It's always very dependant on the room and on the players. Brass sections sound fantastic acoustically so all you want to do is to get the sound onto tape as naturalistically as possible. I never record brass in a dead room because it sucks all the life out of the instruments. I never record any acoustic instrument in a dead room for that reason. It's just counterproductive. Even if I want to record very dead drums by close miking them, I still won't use a dead room.

'An acoustic instrument demands space to breathe. It shifts a lot of air and that air has to have somewhere to go and if it doesn't you get that dreadful acoustic compression which stifles the whole track. Space is essential. If you want a bathroom sound you don't cram everyone into a bathroom because there's a million and one ways you can do that in the mix afterwards.'

Burgess's experiences in 1975 with Landscape combined with this interest in acoustic characteristics led, ironically, to Dave Simmons.

'I used to do the sound out front for Landscape and it frustrated me immensely. I'd set up my drums and get someone else to play them while I got the kit sounding really good. Then I'd try to bring in the other sounds. (Landscape were still instrumental at this point.) As soon as I'd set up the other instruments, all their sounds would go down the drum mics and screw up the drum sound. I always thought it would be great to DI the drums.

'We DI'd virtually all the instruments. We had a pitch to voltage converter even on the trombone and this was 1975! But live, the drum would always sound bad.

'Around that period, the Syndrum and the SDS3 came out. I used to gang up four SDS3s from the MC8 via the trigger inputs in the back because the MC8 had eight multiplex channels. I ended up with millions of SDS3s — four for each drum — trying to get an electronic kit. Then I went up to see Dave Simmons and we spent about six months trying out ideas for what eventually would become the SDS5.

'Einstein A Go-Go was the first record to be a hit using the SDS5. But both of those were played by computer because the pads weren't really developed properly.'

The pad clicks that were the bane of many producers' lives at the birth of the SDS5, appealed to Burgess. He used ambience mics above John Keeble's kit in order to pick up the clicks and feed them back into the track, when he was recording Chant Number One. He enjoyed the sound when it was compressed and claimed it made a big contribution to the track's very sharp snare sound.

The next revolution was the introduction of the Fairlight CMI.

'Peter Gabriel got the first one, but that was because it was his company. I got the second one. I did all the programming for Kate Bush's album Never Forever on it.

'For Babooshka we smashed a wine glass and then played it back about an octave and a half lower to give it some bottom and get that real crunching sound it has. We processed it by splitting the sound and putting it on two cue boards and shifting the tuning slightly so they sort of chorus. Then we gave it some vibrato which also added a chorusing effect.

'John Walters and I rescaled the keyboard so that we only got a quarter tone between the notes — a very dense cluster of notes. Then we played it on the track.

'It sounds a bit stupid, but the Fairlight really changed my life. Sampling transformed the way I looked at things. Sampling may be passe now, but I still use it from time to time. I was using a Mirage very recently. It's not a Fairlight but it's a good little machine.

'You should hear the new Fairlight. Stereo sampling. Real full bandwidth. You can record a compact disc on it and it comes back sounding like a compact disc. It's more like a Synclavier, I guess. I think the Emu-II is probably the best buy in sampling, it's incredibly clean, good sampling — 17 seconds — and it's relatively cheap. The Fairlight definitely has a distinctive sound to it. I think it's a classic instrument like the Mini Moog, the Prophet 5, the Jupiter 8 and the PPG Wave 2.2.'

Although production takes up the majority of Burgess's time, he still keeps his drumming hand in, a practise that often proves useful to the artists he works with.

'When King were doing their first album, they didn't have a drummer so I played all the drums and percussion on that album. I also played all the percussion when I worked with Colonel Abrams. I'm never insistent. If they already have a drummer, I wouldn't dream of suggesting that I should play on the tracks.'

Fortunately, King are very competent in all other departments and this, cemented by Burgess's production, has turned out to be a complementary and fruitful relationship. It has not been trouble free though.

'Jimmy Jackall is very fussy about his guitar sound. The player and the producer often hear two completely different sounds. He wanted to recreate a live sound, but what he was hearing on stage and what I was hearing were very different. It took a little while to work out exactly the sound that Jimmy was hearing and wanted to get in the studio.

'It's very much a case of shifting mics around and re-EQing and compressing to reach the sound the guitarist is hearing in his head.

'On the last LP, Jimmy used a Strat and a Tele, and a Les Paul whenever we needed a warmer sound. It gave the sounds some variation. With Jimmy I always use close mics with a variety of ambient mics too. Some of the time I was using mics positioned 30 or 40 feet away. Even in another room. That gives an extremely ambient effect. By the time the sound has bounced around the walls of one room, made its way through a door and bounced around the walls of another room it sounds pretty wild.

'We were very lucky with keyboards because Micky Roberts is a phenomenal keyboard player. He's classically trained, has a very good technique and is very knowledgeable about synthesisers.

'We had a lot of fun with MIDI. At Unique in New York, they've got a MIDI grand piano so we MIDI'd that up to a Wave 2.3, the TX816 which is 8 DX7s, the Juno 106 and the Super Jupiter. It sounded stupendous. Then we swung straight down to a single keyboard. What a difference. You can MIDI up the whole world, but sometimes it doesn't sound as good as a single keyboard.

'I know it's a cliché, but I'm also an SSL lover. There's nothing to touch it. A lot of the time I'll record on anything. If I can, I'll avoid the desk altogether and go through the minimum amount of electronics to get to tape and keep it clean. SSL undoubtedly changes the sound. An A/B test will show the difference between a bass drum put to tape without going through anything and one put through an SSL.

'But what you lose you can make up in other areas, so I'll still record on SSL. It would be great if you didn't lose anything by going through the desk, but obviously we're not at that stage of technology yet. I think in ten years time, when we have digital desks they will be totally transparent. Right now the digital tape machines aren't. They're better, but they're not perfect. I just try to avoid screwing up sounds as much as possible before getting it onto tape.'

Where monitoring is concerned Burgess claimed that he liked 'anything that sounds good,' but if pushed he'll own up to specific preferences.

I like Eastlakes or Westlakes if the room is lined up properly. They tend to be a little harsh but I'm used to that. I really like the little Ureis, the Acorn 3Bs. When they're lined up properly, they sound fantastic, as they are very phase coherent. That's a problem I have with a lot of monitors. JBLs always sound weird to me, especially those 4350s, they're too honky. Quested are pretty interesting but a lot depends on their installation. I like near-field monitoring — AR18s, NS10s or Century 100As, and I'll often use all of them for a spread.'

As a technician, Richard James Burgess can produce monumental sounds from instruments, but how does he handle a more variable instrument such as the human voice?

'Paul King has an exceptionally loud voice. So has Tony Hadley. On the first King album we used to have to stand Paul six or seven feet from the microphone. It doesn't sound like it, but on Love And Pride he was standing at least seven feet away from the mic. We tended to use a lot of tube mics — 48s, 67s or 529 47s. Later I used dynamics for Paul because it seemed to deal with the level much better.

On the second album we wanted to bring his voice closer into the picture. It didn't make a hell of a lot of difference because Paul always sounds as though he's only a foot off the mic anyway.

'I never use pop shields. I sometimes make my own. I love sending the tape ops out in the West End to buy a pair of pink lacy stockings and a coat hanger.'