Level 42 have been spinning lots of tape — for a live album and a new studio LP. Paul COlbert listens to Mark King, and makes a cassette of his own.

"Look, you really should go down to the studio and talk to them. They're using computers and Fairlights, and synclavy-something, just loads of equipment. That's funny for level 42, isn't?"

As the Press Officer's husky imploring drove the telephone diaphragm through to the toilet next door, I half agreed. Wrong, of course.

"The new technology we're encompassing now is the keyboard revolution, I suppose," reflected the mega-gentlemanly Mark King, "but we've always been a keyboard oriented band. We haven't had a lot of brass sections, or guest musicians. Myself and Phil (Gould) the drummer are the rhythm section, then there's Boon (Gould) on guitar, but we fit around Mike (Lindup's) keyboards."

Words to note here are 'fit around'; as self-deprecating a summation of musicianship as you could wish to find. The strength of Level 42 on stage and on record has always been their ability to perform, interlock, and communicate as a foursome. None of this 'whack the sampled cello's on later to fill a gap' philosophy.

At last, the opportunity to examine how a polished band of players gets on with digi-tech in the studio during the making of their next LP. So without further ado, lets talk about...

LIVE ALBUMS...

Yes, live albums, which is the bit we do before getting to the bit above that which you were all hooked by. It's a mean world.

"We'd been thinking of a live album for a while, but didn't just want it to be a 'best of...' — that's not what the band's about. So we twisted Polydor's arm into doing a double — kept it cheap, no gatefold — and that's enough to fit a whole show on."

The 24-track Rolling Stone mobile recorded three British gigs (after a week long warm-up in France), eventually using material mostly from the Chippenham Goldiggers and Woolwich Coronet sets. (Reading was voted out only because it was plagued by buzzes and hums; "nothing to do with the fans... don't want them to think they let the side down".)

The reels were mixed at The Workhouse by Greg Chapman, and should have been released at the end of March. They got shuffled back by Polydor to June/July and will appear under the title (Phil's) of 'A Physical Presence'.

"You'd be surprised at the number of mikes you need," says Mr King, who, like most of us, probably once had the fanciful idea that you could hang two Shures from the balcony and go, go, go. "It's much like recording in the studio — separate mikes for each tom, snare, etc. had my bass amp mike-ed and DI-ed — bear in mind that we use a 40-channel desk out front. Add a couple of ambience mikes, and you end up with a multi-track."

They 'assisted' at a later date on backing vocals, and deleted thumps where keyboards went down, "but the saving grace is that with the ambience mikes ON you can't re-do anything you didn't do before because it's still there grumbling in the back ground — dead give away.

"Separation is the worst thing, invariably with the main vocals. What I like to hear in my monitors are drums, bass and vocals, all loud, but bass primarily because being centre/front, I'm a long way from my own gear at the back of the stage. But every time I move off mike, the bass and drums are still steaming into it."

I'd always thought that live albums must be a... er... nuisance to make. On a studio session you can perfect each note, wary that it will be on vinyl for ever. At a gig you can power through each note, knowing it will have gone for good in the next second. On a live album, which end of the sharp stick do you sit on?

"You have to treat it like a gig," is the assured response. "I'm really pleased with it as a whole, but for me personally, for example, I always seem to be harking back on the same lines. That day I felt like playing a lot of heavy, fast triplet fills — I wouldn't do it now, but I felt like it at the time so it happened, and it's there on record. Actually, we've done a lot of teles, and other live things, and I'm usually quite impressed listening back later to what we've done.

"A funny thing happens to you physically and psychologically playing live. Your whole psyche speeds up. Everything is lucid but working at a much faster speed; you go into another gear. We always try to keep cues, crossfades and segues pretty tight, but when you're performing they seem to go on for ever... just three bars. I can see myself struggling to the microphone in slow motion. (Mark now mimes, convincingly, a cheek-flapping, Chariots of Fire stagger across the room.) My heart's going 'BOOmmmp... BOOmmmp... BOOmmmp', and I'm thinking, 'this is taking too fucking long. The audience will be going home in a minute.'

"It's the strangest thing. I can see the same thoughts in Mike's and Phil's eyes; 'we're all going down together, boys'."

The mind plays peculiar tri-tri-tr-tr-trickssss. Yet, safely magnetaphoned at 33 1/3 are: 'Almost There', 'Turn It On', 'Mr Pink', 'Eyes', 'Water Falling', 'Kansas City Milkman', 'Follow Me' ("a new track we'd never done before, a frightening way to launch anything because you suddenly realise, 'God, this is an awful song', and it's already recorded"), 'Chant', '88' and 'Lots of Jam'... oh, sorry, lots of jamming in between.

So that's the live business. Now back to the civil savage of hi-tech. This is Level 42's fifth album and at the time of the interview, untitled. It's the first to be produced by themselves (with assistance from fifth man keyboard player/programmer Wally Badarou), and proffers one unique feature. "It's on time and under budget.

"That's gratifying, considering it's the first we've done without someone like Ken Scott or the Earth, Wind and Fire guys. And so far, touch wood, it's going to be the best, but then that's from experience learnt. And bringing this one in a good £40,000 under the others — that's not to be sniffed at. You think, Christ, that was a good day's work."

No scrimping, just practiced professionalism, even allowing room to re-do some tracks which had originally been recorded with Emulator II, PPG Wave and DX7 MIDI-ed and sequenced. They were ousted by Synclavier.

"Wally is a genius on the Synclavier. Although it seems a frightening instrument, in fact it's incredibly user friendly, providing you have someone who knows its language." He mean computer language like basic? No, he mean English language as performed in America and Australia. "No one seems to use the same words... on a Synclavier, Fairlight and Emulator, 'click', 'clock' and 'trigger' can all mean the same thing.

"We didn't want to bog ourselves down with pre-set sounds. The biggest defaulter of this must be the DX7 where, out of America, you've been hearing the same sounds for a year. Fine synth, a great step forward, but it's so difficult to get to know how to use it, unless you're someone like Wally who never goes out on the road, but just develops sounds in his studio."

Listening to some of the rough mixes of the forthcoming LP, proves they have genuinely managed to shape the digitality of the Synclavier to the identity of Level 42. Some of the most stunning sounds are almost sub-sonic, whomphing bass lines, topped by bell-like whistles, leaving oceans of space for Mark King's JayDee bass to slap along. Tracks are still based on performances by all four members of the band, together, "and if you've got a beautiful sound from the Synclavier you want to be able to react to it, while you're playing, not just overdub it later."

Very true, so for a band that relies so much on feel, how do you succeed in dog fighting with the sequencers? "It's not a difficult thing. If it's in time, we can play with it. We used sequencers on stage last year, and they were a joy to play with because you could sit back on them, they gave you a sense of freedom."

However, when a little extra 42-esq persuasion was needed, they called for Dr Click. This semi-sentient device is like a sequencer's nursemaid. It will only allow the connected rhythm box or device to move on to its next note, when the Dr himself has heard an outside trigger. Thus the human drummer can regulate his mechanical counterpart. The only slight disadvantage is that it requires a constant and frequent trigger. There are tricks, however.

"At one point we were using Phil's bass drum on the first beat of every bar, and putting a tiny delay on that which nobody else could hear. That filled in the other three beats with echos. Another time we were having trouble getting the Dr Click to trigger the Emulator II, but we got round it by using the Dr Click to run a Roland MSQ700 which was empty except for a two-bar phrase, and the MSQ was then triggering the on-board sequencer of the Emulator which then ran the Wave PPG and the DX7... and later we scrapped the whole thing and did it with the Synclavier."

Five items of equipment supplanted by one. You interest me strangely. What else did the Synclavier do?

"We used a lot of samples in percussive ways, like flicking Bic lighters and lifting them by a fifth to give the most impressive cabasa you've ever heard. Tearing paper is another one. Slowed down it goes 'whhummmppff' and speeded up it's 'zic..zic..zic'.

"But", he coughs, augustly "it's important to use them in a musical format not like Woofo the Wonder Dog."

He also donated Mike Lindup a few bass harmonics to load in, especially four-note chords, problem being that harmonics be where harmonics are, and they can't be shifted to suit... unless...

"I've got a wang arm." It comes to us all. "I've had a Kahler fitted to the JayDee. The reason trems have had a bad reputation on basses is because people feel they have to use them like a guitar. But if you want a note that goes 'bahhhooow' (as close as you can get in print to a semi-tone drop), it's fantastic. A big brass job, great when used in conjunction with John Diggin's roller nuts. I only use it to bend notes down — there's a locking screw you can set on the tremolo to find the right interval — because I still bend harmonics up by pressing the string behind the nut. Still, we haven't used it on this album because there's nowhere for it to go. No point using something without a good reason. You're just pissing in the wind.

"I also gave Mike some thumbed notes which he wanted but we haven't used those either. Being sampled they take on a character of their own, every note sounds the same, y'know, like the Frankie stuff. You get cheesed off with it all sounding perfect. Bum notes rule the day."

Successful noises are dumped to a Sony F1 PCM digital recorder to be unearthed and turned into samples for later live shows. Favourite at the moment is a coin spinning on a leslie cabinet — not the initial 'clack', but the whiz-whiz-whiz as it circles to its death. That, suitably slowed down, represents the world's largest wooden spoon inside the world's largest metal bowl.

But enough technology. Sing us a song.

"I am pleased with my vocal performance on this album. Not being a lyricist, it's always been hard to know exactly what Phil and Boon who are writing the words, are on about. It's generally been a case of lyrics arriving while I'm standing at the mike. I'm singing verse one while verse two is being finished — not exactly prepared: (monotone), 'she-laid-there-and-I-gave-her-one.' (pause) 'oh-looks-like-I-didn't-give-her-one-after-all'.

"The reason we've made this album faster, and to better effect, is that we took January and February as pre-production time." In total, 21 ideas were pounded out in Mark's new eight-track loft, 14 of which converted to possible songs. Decisions as to the 'up', 'down' or 'loveness' of these numbers were thrashed out early and lyrics completed thus giving Mark the opportunity to study and express each verse and chorus individually.

"There has to be some kind of build to a song, after all. It's not enough to sing 'War-is-stupid-and-people-are-stupid' then spin it in for every chorus. The song's going to be exactly the same from start to finish. There's no need to do that."

So you see, nothing funny about Level 42 getting byte-wise at all. He who samples best is he who knows when the machine stops...