State of Play are a group, as yet relatively unknown, who have just succeeded in getting a deal with Virgin. As their first album was recorded entirely at home, we were naturally interested.

If you've been reading our current series 'From Demo to Vinyl', you might be forgiven for thinking that all is lost. No demo tape is ever destined to reach the pressing stage. Well, State of Play are just one of the bands that will prove you wrong. Comprising of Toni Halliday on vocals, Julie Fletcher on percussion, Dean Garcia on bass and Olle Romo on keyboards. The band write, play and record all their own material, and though modern in terms of production and instrumentation, the music itself encapsulates influences from a wide variety of sources. Occasionally the most unlikely sounds are pressed into service to suit the needs of the music. Sampled teddy bear, hair dryer and dripping tap are typical of their less esoteric sound sources, but I defy anyone to recognise those same sounds, in their finished form.

Their first album, Balancing the Scales was released in June and there are plans for a follow-up album by March 87. If Virgin have got it right, you should be hearing both the name and the music by the time this gets into print. Their material is rhythmic and powerful, the vocals compulsive and the instrumentation rich. Influences surface here and there fora tantalisingly brief moment before giving way to a sound that is definitely 'State of Play', and all the way through you get the impression that the band are thoroughly enjoying themselves. The band started out as nothing more than an idea between Dean and the management team.

Olle and Julie were playing with us at the time and Toni came along about a year later. Because of the cost of studio time and the fact that we wanted to record as and when ideas came along, we decided to set up a recording facility at home. The original plan was to have four Sony F1 systems running in sync to give a digital 8-track system, but the technical problems involved in syncing this up made the idea impractical. After deliberating as to whether we should go 16 or 24-track, we decided on the 24, and bought a Soundcraft recorder from the Eurythmics' studio which is nearby. To complement this, we decided on a Soundcraft 1600 24:16:2 split console and had eight extra monitor controls fitted so that we could use it in a 24-track system. This particular model was partly chosen because of its price and partly because we were familiar with the desk.

We recorded the album here, and mixed it at Trident, but we aim to mix the next one here as well. In that case, we'll need more mixer channels to cater for effects returns and the outputs from whatever instruments are being MIDI sequenced. We're not sure yet whether to go for a new desk or add an expander onto the existing one. Having said that, the recorder and mixer were comparatively inexpensive; it's the external processors, sequencers and samplers that account for most of the cost.

When it came to reverbs, we thought we should go for the best so we opted for the Klark Teknik DN780. Compressors and gates are Drawmers and we have an old Urei valve compressor which we use on the vocals.

Sampling

The Emulator was the first piece of sampling gear we got hold of, and now it forms the nerve centre of the whole system. With nothing but an Emulator you could make a great record. We use it for absolutely everything. We've also just acquired the sound assignment program for the Apple Macintosh computer and it saves us a great deal of time. You can edit and loop the sounds on screen and apply digital EQ; it really does add up to a very advanced system. We've also got a couple of Prophet 2002 modules for live use and we can use the Apple Macintosh to manipulate sounds here too.

We first started working with sampling a couple of years ago at The Church (the Eurythmics' studio) and found it exciting in that it enabled us to use sounds from outside in a musical context.

Do you think that there's a danger that the very nature of sampling itself is rather a cliché?

Well, I have to admit that there are orchestral stabs on the album. However, by choosing your samples carefully, layering sounds and careful arrangement, it's still possible to come up with something fresh.

We did some strange voice samples with bottles mixed in with them which gave a less recognisable result and even the orchestral stabs were made more individual by layering in brass and lead guitar. Our drum sounds too tend to be composed of several samples mixed into one, some from real or electronic drums, some from sounds that we have collected on our F1. Once in the Emulator, the sounds are blended in much the same way as track bouncing on a recorder and you can get quite unusual results as the harmonics and the overtones within the different sounds combine to give you something unexpected.

We do like doing some odd things but the media have already picked up on the sampling of teddy bears and have started calling us hi-tech hippies, so now we tend not to talk about that too much! We got a brilliant hi-hat sound from a dripping tap treated with an envelope filter. If we come across a new sound, we just whack it into the Emulator to see how it works. A bread knife turned in the ice in the freezer gave a wicked sound: the sort of squeak that sets your teeth on edge. That was a bit too strong.

If you have an acoustic part that needs laying down, will you generally sample it, or play the instrument in real time?

We use samples for sounds such as strings and brass but we'd always use the real instrument if the part demanded it. I don't really see sampling as a way to replace or copy acoustic instruments; sampling is a thing in its own right. Having said that, we have laid down lead and bass parts by sampling each separate note in its correct register and then triggering them back using a drum machine to control the timing. That takes a very long time, but can be interesting as a special treatment.

Generally though if we want a trumpet, we get a trumpet player; we've also got a brilliant guitarist (Pete Glenister) who comes in and does parts for us. We generally record the guitar straight into the desk using a Rockman, though we occasionally use the Church studio if we want to do anything loud. Mind you, we did the trumpet parts at home at three in the morning!

One really good aspect about working here is that you can have an idea in the middle of the night, get up and play it. You might listen to it again in the morning and decide to scrap it, but you've got to be prepared to do that.

As for the recording of other instruments, we DI the bass. We've a Wal and a Music Man and there's no problem in getting a good sound. A bit of manic compression from the Drawmer, a new set of strings and it's great. Another trick is to actually mic up the strings and then add that to the DId sound to give a bit more zing.

In the microphone department we've got a 414, some Shures and a Beyer. We've a U87 for vocals but we'd really like to get hold of a U67; it's got a warm sound that suits Toni's voice.

The Human Factor

On the album you have made heavy use of sequencer-driven musical parts. How do you go about avoiding the de-humanising effect that this often entails?

We are very careful not to over use the quantising or autocorrect modes, particularly where the drum parts are concerned, and we actually played samples from the Emulator using pads to keep the 'human feel'. You can also add feel to mechanically-timed parts by re-programming slight changes in the timing; you might make the snare drum lag or lead slightly. We like to play the hi-hats and cymbals manually and add live percussion; drum machine hi-hats are too regular and too obviously mechanical. At the moment we're using a Yamaha QX1 but we also make use of SMPTE. On the album we recorded the code at too high a level and if you listen carefully in places, you can just hear it bleeding through. In fact if the truth be known, we probably did everything wrong but at least we'll know what to do next time.

I get the impression that you don't stick rigidly to your individual musical areas and that the same person might be involved in writing rhythms, composing melodies and creating samples, for instance.

That's true, and because of that we all have a Portastudio at home to work out our ideas to present to the others. Toni might sing a bass line or whatever, but everyone has an input at every stage. This album is quite elaborate; it's taken a year to finish, although half of that was spent getting to know the equipment.

On the next album we're going to go for a more sparse arrangement. On this one it's been difficult for Toni to find space for the vocals in places because the tracks are so busy. We'd also like to run more parts from time code. One advantage of working from a sequencer locked to a code on tape is that you don't have to resort to razor blades and splicing to change the arrangement; you can just alter the program. This also makes life easy if you're doing an extended remix. Of course the vocals and the acoustic instruments have to go onto tape but time code does tend to leave more options open.

How do you monitor here? As there's no acoustic treatment, it must be difficult to assess when you have an accurate sound.

Fortunately we've been recording here and mixing in a fully equipped studio. However, as we'd like to mix the next album here too, it will mean getting a set of full-range monitors, though we haven't decided on the model yet. Acoustic treatment is something else to think about.

We had a pair of Tannoy SRM12Xs but didn't like them at all, so now we use Yamaha NS10s, without the tissue paper. The positioning of the SRMs was probably completely wrong, as we were using the Tannoys up close on the ends of the desk. They would have sounded better higher up and further away but the room's geography didn't really allow for that. When we've just recorded something, we want to hear it come back clean and exciting so that we can respond to it, and the NS10s do that well. I suppose it's all linked with the spontaneous way we work. Requirements would be different if we were doing a finished mix.

The Rhythm

The album is very rhythmic. What do you use to create the rhythm track apart from the Emulator?

We recently bought a Simmons SDS9 for live work and it's fantastic. With its MIDI capability it's going to be a very flexible tool in the studio too. It sounds great and it's got a good feel. I use it live with two brains and I've blown a couple of our own sounds into EPROMs. When recording we play it straight into the Macintosh which may then be used as a sequencer. That information can then be used to trigger whatever sounds we want from the Simmons brain, the Emulator or whatever we choose.

Triggering a gate from a hi-hat pattern on a drum machine can be very interesting and can also lead to some spectacular results. A block chord of layered vocals for example can be chopped up to emphasise the rhythm, and you can use the controls on the gate to make it act as an envelope shaper; that's very effective. Often we feed in a random hi-hat pattern and the gate will only allow through the parts that are in time with the programmed beats, which gives a really tight sound.

We don't often use drum machines themselves on a finished track, though they're invaluable as an aid to writing, we also have a couple of RX11s but the sounds on them are too predictable to use extensively on a recording.

But a short ambient reverb treatment can alter a basic drum machine sound quite radically.

We don't put much reverb actually onto tape though we do like the small room settings on the new Klark Teknik software. They sound brilliant on the SDS9 (which sounds good anyway). It can give an interesting ambience without cluttering the sound with unwanted reverb. Recently we bought a Lexicon PCM70 and that too is a fabulous reverb. I wouldn't say that it was better or worse than the Klark Teknik, simply different. It's also got those weird resonant chord programs, but although they sound interesting, we've found few practical uses for that aspect of it yet. Once we used it to create a sort of electronic wind noise that became the backing to a track on the album, but that was an exception.

Final Analysis

We've spent a lot of time learning on this album, and I'm sure it will pay off in the long run. One of the important things to realise at the start of a venture such as this is that it's possible to spend weeks trying to hone everything down to perfection, but a lot of what you do will be wasted because most people are going to play it back on cheap systems. You've also got to accept that some people just won't like it, and not be disillusioned by that. The important thing is that you do your best with the songs, yourself. No amount of equipment will impress those who don't like the original songs. We always begin on the Portastudio because if the track doesn't stand up on its own when roughly recorded onto just four tracks, then there's not a lot of point in going any further with it.

And in fact that's exactly what we've just been doing; we've started the second album already.