Happy Wednesday,
You can rely on The New Cue for Monday and Friday editions (unless it’s a UK bank holiday, when we rest). Wednesdays are more whimsical and rare TNC appointments, but this week we find ourselves laden down with time-sensitive content, mainly because we’ve taken the last couple of bank holidays off, so were coming at you for a midweek visit.
We don’t want to just bury everything on Friday, especially as we’re big fans of today’s subject, the journalist Kate Hutchinson, and the podcast series Kate’s just launched with dcs Audio, Studio Radicals, where she meets various producers, composers and the like to find out about their work and creative journeys. We think she deserves her own edition. You can listen to Studio Radicals here on Apple or here on Spotify.
And you can read about it below the line. There’s also a Release Valve with The Amazons ahead of their fourth album’s release this Friday. We’re making it a free edition because why not, but also please do consider subscribing if you’re at all able as there’s no such thing as free labour.
Enjoy the edition,
Ted and Niall
Kate Hutchinson & Studio Radicals
Hi Kate, please pitch us Studio Radicals.
Hello The New Cue, thanks for having me. Studio Radicals is a new podcast series from myself and dCS Audio that meets music producers, engineers, composers and musicians who create bold sonic worlds, either for themselves or for other artists. We meet the visionary making vast film soundtracks from futuristic and old-world instruments in a cottage in Yorkshire; a pioneer of electronic music on the coast of California; a vocal producer who arranges complex harmonies for pop stars; and producers who’ve worked on platinum albums, Grammy-winning albums and have had amazing experiences like recording the last Roberta Flack session. Sounds pretty good, right?
Who are your guests?
Episode one stars Marta Salogni who has engineered albums for Depeche Mode, Bon Iver, Frank Ocean and FKA twigs, produced English Teacher’s Mercury Prize-winning debut This Could Be Texas, and was hand-picked by Björk to work on her 2017 album Utopia in Iceland.
Then there’s Catherine Marks who won a Grammy for her work on the 2023 album from boygenius.
Atlantic Records’ former in-house engineer Ebonie Smith who engineered the Hamilton soundtrack and has collaborated with Angela Davis.
Legendary composer and electronic pioneer Suzanne Ciani, who designed Coca Cola’s iconic bubble sound you used to hear on all their adverts; and Miami-based engineer Maria Elisa Ayerbe, a genre-defying voice in Latin music. Back in the UK, I visit Ivor Novello-winning composer and incredible mind Hannah Peel
Rising vocal engineer Ramera Abraham; and Cicely Balston, the multiple award-winning mastering engineer, based at Abbey Road in London.
Tell us some of your favourite anecdotes from the interviews please.
If you’re a fan of boygenius, there’s a lot of great stuff about how Catherine Marks tapped into the intimacy of their songwriting when she produced their Grammy-winning album The Record – and also how she got the band Big Moon in gear for recording one of their albums by giving them a beach-themed dressing up box, full of inflatables. She talks about making your job fun and enjoyable every day, and that’s something that really resonated with me.
Cicely Balston, meanwhile, discusses remastering some guy called David Bowie’s back catalogue. Suzanne Ciani remembers breaking into the boys’ club at the dawn of electronic music. Ebonie Smith compares great production to a Broadway play and discusses recording the late R&B great Roberta Flack’s last session. Another anecdote that has stayed with me is more cerebral: how Marta Salogni sees sound visually and sees her role as a translator in the studio. If a band or artist asks her for a song to sound “like a Georgia o’Keefe painting hung in a club on fire”, it’s her job to try and bring that to life and create a sort of immersive exhibition for the music.
People often wonder about the mechanics and business of podcasting - what’s the secret for making it work, creatively and as a business?
How long have you got? This is a question for over a pint. There are a number of different podcasting models: we’re in a world of “always on” and often successful podcasts will be weekly, or more than weekly, building a community of die-hard fans around their shows and therefore stats to sell adverts. There’s the subscription model (which always-on also lends itself to) where you can publish a podcast through a platform Patreon or Substack and encourage listeners to subscribe and financially support it. Or, failing that, just be famous and you’ll probably get commissioned by a big platform.
I did neither of these things for my first podcast baby, The Last Bohemians; I was trying to make Radio 4-quality mini documentaries that stood alone, outside the system, and were timeless – more of an evocative audio series than what you might recognise as a podcast (ie people sat around the same table chatting) – and I practically bankrupted myself in the process. For Studio Radicals, I’ve continued the tone and style of The Last Bohemians but with dCS Audio, who’ve co-produced it with me, specifically Krysti Hamilton and Rachael Stevens. They’ve been very involved in the curation and execution, and effectively enabled me to take the idea and run with it. It has very much been a collaboration from the beginning, and I think that has only enriched the listening experience.
What else are you working on?
As you know, it’s a funny old time trying to make a living out of music, in any media or medium, but I’ve always enjoyed doing lots of different things and finding different avenues for my wild ideas. I’m excited to be starting a new fortnightly Friday morning slot on Soho Radio (10am-12pm) where I can play all the new stuff I love and chat to the musicians and artists who are exciting me the most. I’ve put The Last Bohemians on Substack in the hope that I might be able to fund a new series someday – I released an episode with Nikki Giovanni in March, recorded before she died last December, which was bittersweet. It’s also my twentieth year in London, and as a professional journalist, so I’d like to honour that in some way, maybe with some Music Journalism’s Not Dead Yet masterclasses or something.
What are your favourite records of the year?
I completely adore the new Emma-Jean Thackray album Weirdo: it’s thematically so incredibly brave and such a triumph of spirit and musicianship. She played every instrument on the album, and produced and mixed it, too. It blends grunge, jazz and P-funk and sounds totally fresh.
I’m getting into salsa more and more this year, and so Bad Bunny’s DeBÍ TiRAR MáS FOToS gets an honourable mention.
Yazz Ahmed’s A Paradise in the Hold is a stunner. And I’ve got to mention Marshall Allen’s New Dawn because releasing your debut solo album when you turn 100 is the ultimate checkmate.
Cheers, see you around hopefully.
That would be great. Pub?
Release Valve: The Amazons
Reading’s rock-pop angst-lords The Amazons return on Friday with their fourth LP, 21st Century Fiction, hoping to follow in the top-ten footsteps of its predecessors. So, we asked singing guitarist Matt Thomson if he’d like to fill in our Release Valve, and you know what? He did.
The first record I loved was…Led Zeppelin IV
The last record I loved was… Tom Waits - Mule Variations. Come On Up To The House gives me strength.
The musician I grew up most wanting to be is… Kurt Cobain
The greatest gig I ever saw was…Bruce Springsteen at The Forum, LA last year. Spiritual.
The greatest gig I ever played was…Somerset House, London last summer. It’s the closest we’ve got to the starting line.
My favourite group when I was 13 was…Slipknot
The story of my new album goes like this…Man, late 20s, lying on his bed, staring at the ceiling of his childhood bedroom.
I couldn’t have made the album without…The right people. Pete Hutchings, George Le Page, Quentin LaChapelle, Catherine Marks, Richie Kennedy, Bob Mackenzie, Mike Kerr, Ben Thatcher, Ella McRobb, Fiona-Lee.
The song on it everyone should listen to is…Joe Bought A Gun
The song I wish I’d written is… Over The Rainbow
The film everyone should see is…Network
The book that changed my life is: The Art of Acting - Stella Adler
The person who is making my favourite music in the world right now is…Chappell Roan.
The one thing that would improve music is: Abolish the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.