Rob Barker braves the wee small hours to find out about a marathon music project with a good cause.
It’s a rainy midnight and I’m stood on the edge of an oily black Sheffield street just off Bramall Lane outside the empty looking studios of G2. I’m here to talk about their album in 24 hours for War on Want but with no answer on the phone, I’m just considering scratching round for pebbles to throw at the window like some kind of lovelorn teenager when the door creaks open…
Soon I’m being led through the labyrinthine innards of G2. A converted industrial works building full of character, instrument-filled rooms and dog-legs (literally, in the case of one band’s canine mascot) repurposed as the brains trust for a musical masterplan. It’s pretty easy to find your way round the place once you use the towering pile of old pizza boxes partway down one corridor for navigation.
Rustic it may be, but the sounds that fill the corridors as the artists race to complete the recording of G2’s 15-track album in a day are startling. From the ‘Tubeway Salami’ electronics of three-piece Driftrun – who dash outside to give their magisterial track the final test by listening to it on their car stereo – to Jonny Kearney and Lucy Farrell, whose modern take on folk is so adorable you want to gather it up in your arms and run away with it to Gretna Green, G2 have put together a collection as chaotic and rich as the city’s musical heritage.
And from the time of my arrival to making my pale excuses as the clock wound round to 4am, the feeling throughout is of an exquisitely crafted and carefully managed scramble. The dashing between floors to setup artists and tweak recording on the mixing desk below is energetic, the swearing good natured and mostly aimed at releasing tension when the likes of Neil McSweeney’s performance casts an awed hush across the recording studio…
All the same it was a surprise to find G2’s co-owner Paul Harris so happy to spare CV time for a chat. We caught five minutes in between recordings to talk about the challenges involved in making an album in less time than it takes Jarvis to choose a jacket, War on Want’s birthday and the first rock and roll record.
CV: Introduce yourself sir.
I’m Paul and I run G2 Studios in Sheffield with my friend John
And what are we up to?
We’re doing a 24-hour album, which is a compilation album of 15 tracks including remixes and all sorts of things. From very, very heavy rock to nice summery pop to acoustic and folk. Little bit of everything. We’ve had a remix back from Aidy Carter so far, which is awesome. He’s remixed Kate Jackson’s song ‘Lying In Her Arms’ and it’s brilliant. Russ Autumn’s been mixing the actual band version of that and we’ve had that back as well.
Is there a schedule stuck up somewhere that nails down to the minute where you are and what you’re doing at any given time. So if I go “4am, where are you?” You can go “I’m on the loo, crying”?
Hopefully not! We did make a schedule. I think we even printed it out – but I don’t know where it is now. The way to look at it really is it’s kind of like a gig, so much as if you tell them to soundcheck at five, you’ll probably be soundchecking at six. To be fair we were only an hour behind this evening and we’ve got that back now.
It’s all about the initial setup with studios isn’t it? Have you gone with one set up so that you can save time by just making adjustments to each for each band as they turn up?
Yeah, the only thing that’s changed is the snare drum on a couple of tracks. We made sure our drum kit was sounding great before that’s what takes all the time, setting up the drums.
What continues to amaze me is that we’ve got the same drum setup and every single drummer on it has made the same drumkit sound very different. We’ve been using broadly the same amplifiers and again every guitarist has made that sound different. The amount of music that we’re recording means we have got to have a system to get it all done and it’s the musicians as always who’ve made the biggest difference to the sound rather than anything we’ve done behind the desk.
I guess, you want to make sure you’ve got that variety there. Is there a sense in which what you’re doing is a curation of a moment in time for the city’s music?
That’d be great if people though of it that way. It’s been really good getting mixes back and remixes back and hearing it come together. You can see the final album coming together.
So how did the project come about? (4.31) Did you approach War on Want with the idea or did they come to you?
[G2 Co-owner] John came up with the idea, a few months ago. It’s the sort of thing you talk about in the pub – but then we found ourselves doing it! And I don’t know really when the balance tipped from ‘Wouldn’t that be a cool thing to do?’ To us sitting here today.
Would you have been able to do this ten years ago? Just in terms of the technology and getting the album out there to people?
I think technologically if you were really on it you could do it. Motown did it you know what I mean? The Beatles did it. You can do an album in however long or short a time you want it but it’s only really possible to follow through with it with the idea of digital distribution. Pressing CDs, vinyl, cassettes takes time. We’ve only had to set aside two hours after we’ve finished mixing and mastering the album to get it online.
War on Want had it’s 60th birthday this year. The charity, developed from a letter to a newspaper, started the same year as Rocket ’88 came out, a single many credit as the very first rock n roll record. With music at a similar crossroads to the one Robert Johnson found himself at all these years ago, G2 and the artists they’ve worked with on their 24 hour album are both a throwback to that original spirit of innovation and a bold look ahead. I left the warm glow of their musical crucible dying to join the party again by clicking to buy.
G2’s is available to buy online.