Phil Kelsey is one of DMC's most sought-after remixers. Wilf Smarties persuades him to talk us through a typical remix, in the hope of discovering some of the secrets of his success...

Before joining the DMC roster three years ago, Phil Kelsey worked in a restaurant; once installed at DMC, he wormed his way up from tea boy and into studio downtime, and worked up three releases (top 75) under the name PKA — a name he claims to hate, despite having it on his car number plate!

Now he's one of the most in-demand remixers on the UK dance scene; you may well have seen his name on TOTP after the name 'Gloria Gaynor'. These days, he tends to work almost exclusively with household names like Kim Wilde and Dannii Minogue ("I'm not a trendy club remixer. I like to think I can do mixes which satisfy radio, but, at the same time, can get played in 'trendy' clubs.").

In an earlier life he played in a band, admits he was influenced by Depeche Mode, and claims to have destroyed an Octave Cat whilst attempting to clean the key contacts! He also enjoys playing classical music, notably Chopin and Beethoven — and being an accomplished pianist is not an insignificant contributing factor towards his success.

THE REMIXER'S ART

What's your most successful remix to date [May 1993]?

"Ce Ce Peniston, 'Finally'. The original mix which came out first was by David Morales, and I was a bit sceptical about doing it myself, because I loved his mix... But I did it. I'm not saying mine is any better — it's different, it's got a lot more energy. His is a cool mix, and when it came out for a second time, my mix was the one that seemed to get played on the radio. I did three mixes for Erasure, one for the Abba-esque EP. The first one I did, I had Andy Bell on the phone all the time, but I feel that if you're gonna do a remix it should be what you do and not what you've been told to do by the artist, who's going to worry if their vocal isn't loud enough or something."

Fortunately Erasure liked his work, and offered him 'Take a Chance on Me'.

"At first I thought I'd try and do a disco version of it, then sacked that idea fairly quickly. I made this massive decision not to use any of the song apart from a sample of two or three of his words which I took from the middle-eight/bridge section which goes into minor chords. I took a few of the vocal lines from there, chopped them up, put one word from one sentence with another word from another sentence and made up a few new phrases. I came out with a ragga/toasting kind of thing. As soon as I did it I knew that was it. Then it went all trancey and ended up 14 minutes long.

"I think it's unfair when mixes become completely unassociated with the (original) song. You've basically done a track for that particular record label but you don't get any points, you don't get recognition for it like you should do, you're not treated like an artist.

"One OMD thing started off as a remix of a track called 'Love's Theme' which was a slow, 104 BPM, semi ballad. I ran through the multitrack and thought "God, I can't do anything with this".

But there were a couple of little vocal samples of this girl going "uhhh uhhh" in a sexy breathy voice, and a Mellotron sample of children singing which was quite good. So I took the samples off it, and did a 126 BPM progressive mix. Four days in Konk Studios resulted in a mix which OMD loved. They came back to me and said 'We've changed our minds about the first single. We're not going to be releasing 'Love's Theme', we're going to be releasing a track called 'Stand Above Me', but we still want to use your remix of 'Love's Theme' as the remix for 'Stand Above Me."

Because of Gallup rules Phil was required to throw a few gratuitous samples from 'Stand Above Me' into his remix, necessitating another trip into the studio.

"On the final mix the bass came out horrifically loud and they couldn't cut it, so they decided to release the original remix after all, under the pseudonym 'Liberator.' It rode high in the US club charts, Larry Flick gave it rave reviews in Billboard, but not once do I get a mention. Billboard were offering prizes for guessing who the artist is, and eventually they announced "Oh, it's OMD." I'd just like to say, is it **** OMD!"

REMIXING

I asked Phil to take us through his remixing technique.

"I do two different kinds of mixes, basically. I either do the Progressive Trance sort of thing, or I do what could be loosely described as American-sounding 'Garagey', piano, strings, much more traditional R&B/Philly style. That's the stuff I love doing. The other is a nice escape every now and again, but I wouldn't want to do it all the time."

You've got the multitracks from the record company. Where do you go from here?

"A couple of times I've just been sent vocals on DAT, which I hate. It's a day's work sampling them off and arranging them. It always happens to me with stuff from Italy: they don't use tape over there any more — just a rack of eight S1000s.

"Typical mix, day one. Get the tape, put it on the machine, see what there is. I've never once kept anything from an original mix except for vocals. I always strip it right back down to the vocals. I've always seen a remix as exactly that, it should be different to the original. If you start keeping things from the original then it's not really that different, is it?"

WHAT'S A REMIX?

Of course originally a remix was just a case of re-balancing and re-EQ'ing.

"I've had to do that: mix other peoples' productions, which I didn't enjoy doing much anyway. So I check the multitrack. If there's any nice kicks or loops in there, I'll put them onto DAT. Then I check the vocals out, see if they've been well recorded, check how many tracks of backing vocals there are — whether it's going to be a nightmare. It seems that lately, the last three or four mixes have had 12 tracks of vocals on, which you can do without. They're obviously produced by someone who doesn't know what they want. If you know what you want out of a vocal performance, it's there on one track, and the BVs will be bounced down onto two or maybe four tracks.

"The first thing I start off with is drums. I only ever seem to do four-on-the-floor stuff. Modern dance music wouldn't exist without Roland; the 909 drum machine is dance music. You could probably make a song out of a 909 drum pattern alone, it's that good. I used the real thing for the first time last week. I've got the samples, with which I'm very happy, but everybody says it's not the same as the real thing. So I hired one in, and it's incredible, it's so much better.

"I'll fine tune the 909 to exactly what I want on the day 'til it sits in. The nice thing about the 909 is that you can tune it with the bass line, 'cos I have had that problem when you're using really low bass sounds that it starts phasing with the bass drum — and it's a horrible sound.

"I do like to change snare drums, because I think they have much more character. I don't always use 909s, sometimes I use Woody Snares — he's got to be one of the best session drummers around."

Have you checked out the HR16?

"Yeah, there's one in there called Brush Snare... which I'm actually using at the moment. You have to EQ it a certain way. I don't like the full length of it, I like it clipped. Hi-hats tend to be either 909 or HR16. I prefer a sampled clap (to using the one straight out of the 909) because you can tune it."

THE BOTTOM LINE

How do you feel about bass lines? Should they truck through a whole song, or follow the chord changes?

"They can be either. On Ce Ce Peniston's 'Finally', the bass line was one of the biggest hooks in there. As soon as a bass line follows the chords it ceases to be a hook. The happy medium for me would be a song with a hook bass line, but you could still move the chords around on top of it.

"Next, I'll put down a basic piano part. I normally pick up the rhythm in the chorus to make it move more. Then I do the 'paddy' things; organ parts, live string lines, after which I'll do the other little hooks, other synth riffs and little sounds — the dubbier parts. I tend to always do two bass lines. An alternative (hook) one will do the same thing all the way through; for a darker, dubbier side to the mix, where you lose the song, I might add a couple of vocal samples or have some nice little riffs going on with a monotonous bass line.

"The last thing is the live piano, because when everything else is in. I'll know where it's needed most, and what it needs to do."

How much of your remix work is finished at Sarm?

"I tend to always go 48-track these days, especially if I've got 14 tracks of vocals on one spool! You've got the song parts, which follow the song, but whenever I get a riff and I'm not sure where I want to use it, I'll record it all the way through, so that way I can let it in and out where I need it — using mute automation. Then I mix the mother!"

BIG SOUND

Is there a certain magic that makes a studio production sound better than something you can do at home with a Soundtracs desk and decent sampler?

"It must be something about the circuitry of the SSL, but the sounds that didn't sound so hot in your 16-track studio suddenly sound much better."

What advice do you have for anyone else wanting to do your kind of studio work?

"I don't drink, I don't smoke and I don't take drugs. I have to say, if anyone is out there thinking about how much they'd like to be a remixer or a record producer, think twice about it if you want to enjoy life! There's no such thing as 'A Life' once you start working in a studio. Please don't get me wrong — I love what I do, that's why I do it. Just be prepared for it to take over your life."