|
Mission Implausible-Early History of Torch Song/William Orbit/Laurie Mayer/Grant Gilbert
Torch Song - the very early years. (Complete
version of site as one page) Pre commercial release information. Who is W. Wainwright ?- September 1982 'Electronics & Music Maker' From Schoolhouse to Multitrack - February 1984 'Home Studio Recording'
Webmaster says:- '...I first heard Torch Song whilst on vacation in Toronto, Canada (1984). In subsequent years I collected various Torch Song commercial releases until........ In late summer 1994 I responded to a 'Wanted' advert in Record Collector magazine. Another collector was seeking any material by Torch Song. I was amazed that anyone else in the UK was even aware of Torch Song (especially in 1994!) and, having spare copies of some of their product, I was pleased to help. Since I also wanted additional Torch Song material for myself, I asked this collector whether he had been offered duplicate copies of anything interesting. A Laurie Mayer 12" was the only stock item. However, he had been offered a demo cassette but had declined because, in his opinion, the person was asking for too much money. I contacted this other person and was quite shocked at the amount being asked but, after some deliberation, decided to go ahead with the purchase.
I purchased the cassettes in October 1994. The following is quoted verbatim from a letter, written by the seller, enclosed with the cassettes: "....As a result of placing an advert in Exchange & Mart in November 1983 to sell a Nakamichi N581 cassette deck, Grant Gilbert contacted me and a price was agreed to include a photocopy service manual and delivery from my home in Watford to Guerilla Studios in Maida Vale, London. (Early in December) myself and a friend, an electronics engineer, delivered the deck to 16, Blomfield Road. There Grant introduced us to William Orbit who also maintained the equipment. As we had a common interest in recording and electronics we chatted for a couple hours and were shown around their studios in the detached garage. I asked what sort of music they wrote and Grant kindly opened a mailer to be sent to a record company and gave me items listed below: 1) 13 Track Demo Cassette sent to record companies July - December 1983. TDK AD C60 (1982 packaging BATCH CODE top edge of shell: ANE1227). Shell marked side A with a photoset cut out of group name and phone number. Side B, photoset name on plastic clear film. TDK inlay card with photoset group name on a plastic film on spine; typed track listing set on to clear plastic film stuck onto inlay. 29 MINUTES MUSIC EACH SIDE APPROX. 2) 2 Mixes of 'Prepare to Energize'. White label blank shell cassette (duplicating type), chrome screwed shell. Printed inlay with fake 'rubber stamp' type printing, dark grey print on white glossy card. No other details except group name and song title. MIX 1: 3Mins MIX 2: 5Mins 11 Seconds
3)Compliments slip for group giving group name and Absonplay Ltd, their company which owned the studio, address, phone no., VAT & Company registration numbers. I think you will agree from the sound quality that the demo is a first generation copy from the 2 track reel to reel master. I found the sound stunning - almost CD quality. Let me know what you think, also what tracks are unreleased, rerecorded, remixed etc. I have made a safety copy in the event of a mishap etc. I suggest you listen to the tape once, copy it and listen to the copy. As the music is not to my taste the cassettes have only been played twice. They have never been copied off or loaned out. I believe these items are the first to be put onto the collectors market (barring friends of the group). You have a very rare artifact there. Keep it in Mint Audio condition. Happy listening! K.G. 31st October 1994..."
And that is what I have done. I made a cassette copy in 1994 and finally copied the original to DAT in 1999. Having inserted start IDs I then transferred it to CDR using a professional HHb CDR-800 Compact Disc recorder. The sound is a little 'bright' but is, nevertheless, superb. The track listing of the original demo tape, pictured below, is:
SIDE 1 SIDE 2 Typed under the track listing is the message, 'Entirely recorded in our 8-track studio Nov 1982 - July 1983'.
So that's the story of the demo/promo cassettes. The following articles are reproduced from the original UK magazines in which they featured. Chris Bent, April 2001, revised August 2005
Text of article which appeared in September 1982 issue of the UK magazine 'ELECTRONICS & MUSIC MAKER':-
CASSETTE REVIEW Electronic & Music Maker's CASSETTE REVIEWS aim to give an
indication of what readers are up to musically, and also include a short
appraisal of their work. EXCLUSIVE OPPORTUNITY FOR E&MM READERS! Each month our Tape of the Month Winner will have the chance to discuss their music with Martin Rushent, top producer for Human League, Altered Images etc. at his Genetic Sound Studio! This Month our Tape of the Month winner is: Torch Song: W. Wainwright, L. S. Mayer and Grant Gilbert TORCH SONG (London W9). 8 tracks. Shure mics, Atlantex DI boxes. Teac A2340SX 4-track recorder; Nakamichi 6702X and 550 cassette machines; Tangent Series 4 12/4/2 mixer; Yamaha EM180 6/2 mixer-amp; Roland RE201 Space Echo; Toshiba Adres AD3 noise reduction; MXR Flanger; Rebis noise gate; Rebis headphone amp; B&W speakers. "A very accomplished and interesting three-piece unit, primarily recording-based because of equipment limitations and permutations. Dense rhythmic textures are drawn from a starting point of SH2 triggered by the 8000 via the sequencer on one channel, building up voice, bass and the rest over the other three tracks, adding more at the transfer stage. Only non 4-track take is the first version of 'Red Skies' on our tape, a lush and impressive spread accomplished at various 16-track studios. But their own 4-track version later on is better; more investigative, with some beautiful tape-sourced (we guess) chords appearing and further evidence of tape games emerging. The rest is equally good: the fractured rhythms and atmospheric interjections of 'Broken Blossom'; the harder rhythm and ringing drum of 'Tattered Dress'' with Mayer's story-line vocal her best on the tape; the marvellous bass on 'Mister Blue'; the treated guitar of 'Strange Cargo' recalling Heads/Belew; and the panned dub-funk of 'Gato Del Noche'. Everything seems inspired and clever without becoming supercilious. Torch Song tell us that a short tape of two of the tracks is currently doing the rounds of the A&R departments - let's hope their ears are pricked." Music: 7 Production: 6 Presentation: 6 Tape: 4
Question: Does anyone possess a copy of either of the cassettes mentioned in the above article? If so, please
Text of article which appeared in February 1984 issue of the UK magazine 'HOME STUDIO RECORDING' In a special feature, Home Studio Recording takes a look at
a group of young musicians, Grant Gilbert, William Orbit and Laurie Mayer, who
have used their passion for recording to raise themselves above the level of
'bedroom' studios to the point of having their own complex 24-track set-up. Here
Torch Song's Grant Gilbert explains the band's philosophy and gives some insight
into how they have achieved such recording success, as well as taking us through
the various stages of their studio's evolution. Torch Song From Schoolhouse To Multitrack
When I was at school I never considered myself as a producer of music,
although I had always been an avid consumer of it. There was an awful lot of
good music being played in London pubs at around that time, but the first person
who inspired me to start actually playing music was probably Eno, because he was
the first one to show that you could make music without having had any formal
training in it. Cassette Mastering When it came to choosing a mastering machine, I chose a
Nakamichi cassette deck instead of the usual Revox, because we couldn't afford a
reel to reel and a cassette recorder, and since cassettes were the medium
everyone else was using, I went out and bought a Nakamichi 670ZX. It was a
brilliant machine, and in fact it still is, because I've just got an Aiwa 770,
which is supposed to be state of the art, and even though it's got things like
an LED real-time counter, it can't touch the Nakamichi for sound quality. I'm
not so sure about the newer Nakamichis because they seem to be going more for
the domestic market now, but we used to master on to the 670 with metal tapes
and get some very god results. Buying Secondhand We also decided to buy secondhand equipment wherever we could, because that way it's possible to get better products for your money. So, for instance, we bought a Brenell Mini 8 tape machine instead of something like a new Tascam, simply because the Brenell was a one-inch machine, and the signal-to-noise ratio with one inch tapes is so much better, it makes buying the equipment secondhand worthwhile.
(PICTURE TO BE SCANNED AND POSTED HERE) Professional Work Hiring the studio out to professional users gave William and I our first taste of working as engineers and producers, because very few of the people who came in to record knew the first thing about how to go about it. But the main purpose behind the studio was still as a means to produce our own music, and after a short while our own compositions became more disciplined: it became possible to divide sections of our work into recognisable songs, but that didn’t mean the studio became less important to us. In fact, I’d say the reverse was true because I know William for one spent almost all his available spare-time working on pieces in the studio. The only real major problem was that we were almost constantly on the verge of bankruptcy, and during the year we had the eight-track system, we had to keep going to various different parties asking them to bail us out! Fortunately our confidence seemed to have a good effect on people and we had the advantage that since most of our equipment was second-hand, we could use it as a form of financial security without the risk of it depreciating suddenly. The thing about buying all your gear new is that you lose money almost before you walk out of the shop… Eventually however we realised that we needed a 24-track set-up in order to continue with our work, so I began a massive PR campaign and sent demo tapes to more or less every major record company in existence. I didn’t bother with independent labels because I knew they wouldn’t be able to give us the sort of financial backing that we needed. We were very surprised at the favourable reaction our music got, because we were at a disadvantage in that we weren’t a gigging band, but a lot of companies seemed interested in us and the only problem in the end was choosing which one to go with and sorting out contractual details. Eventually we signed with IRS three months ago.
Sending tapes to record companies is a very long and random process. We sent cassettes to just about every company we could find, and sometimes it would be six months before the A&R people wrote back, by which time of course, our music had changed totally. To try to combat this, we sent tapes in under different band names, and I remember two letters from PRT one morning, one rejecting us as ‘Tiger, Tiger’, the other asking Torch Song to come along for a chat. When IRS got in touch with us and said they were interested, I honestly didn’t know who they were, because I’d written off to so many major labels I hadn’t really thought about independents at all. What I’d done was send tapes to just about every label in the Melody Maker yearbook, regardless of whether or not I’d heard of them. IRS is owned by Miles Copeland who as you probably know is also manager of the Police, and he loved our tape as soon as he heard it. When we were invited up to the company offices to meet him he just said, “I want to sign you up. What do you need?” So we told him we needed a 24-track studio, which is no small thing to ask for, and we told him that because of the sort of music we were producing, we needed a good 24-track, not just the cheapest available. So we were talking about a lot of money for a lot of sophisticated equipment, and we were very surprised when he agreed to let us have what we wanted. I think basically he realised that what we were asking for wasn’t really all that much in relation to what we wanted to achieve. We told him that we were essentially a studio band and that all our evolution had been in studios, and what we really needed to do was to make an album to get all the material we’d already written down on to tape and then on to record. What was so refreshing about IRS was that they seemed to have total confidence in the way we were going about things. A lot of the companies who expressed interest in us – like Phonogram, for instance – liked a lot but as soon as we said, “we want to produce ourselves” they backed off. They refused to believe we were capable of doing the job ourselves and they refused to let us do it so early on in our career. They wanted to force another producer onto us, but obviously, because we were so interested in recording and because we’d been producing ourselves for so long at home, it was very difficult for us to accept that sort of thing. IRS also saw the potential of our working with other artists once we’d got our own studio together. They saw the significance of our role as producers in our own right, independent of our own musical interests, which is quite unusual. The First Release Our first single is ‘Prepare To Energize’ which is a twelve-inch only. It’s really only intended for the clubs; it’s not really what you’d call a chart record. Of all the songs on our demo tape, it was the one that received the most favourable response, because a lot of people, like ourselves, are very excited by the new wave of New York dance music. We were very interested in that particular genre of music and we decided that we wanted to make some kind of contribution to it. Even though it’s really completely different to anything else we’ve ever done, it’s a very significant release for us because it was the point where we were trying out a lot of new musical and recording techniques. These included things like recording lots of sequencer patterns on different tracks and syncing them all together using a triggering device a friend had built for us. It was also the first time we’d used the 24-track equipment, and for comparison purposes we put the original eight-track demo version on the B-side of the single. What is interesting is that both mixes are getting a very favourable reaction in the clubs, and if anything it’s the original working that’s proving most popular. What you’ve always got to bear in mind is that eight-track is perfectly acceptable for some sorts of music. Far too many people today assume that you’ve got to go 24-track in order to achieve anything like reasonable results, but that’s a myth really. I think the twelve-inch single is really a wonderful medium, because it enables you put out an ordinary seven-inch version for chart purposes and do something totally different for the clubs. A lot of people nowadays are recording tracks as twelve-inchers and then editing them down for the seven-inch, which I think is perfectly healthy. The problem comes when musicians and engineers start doing thins the other way; recording a short track and then padding it out for the twelve-inch simply because the latter has now become such an attractive commercial proposition. Different Producers What can also be interesting is that some bands are getting one producer to take charge of their A-side mix and getting another one in to do the B-side, which seems to me to be a much better use of the extra inches of vinyl than putting on a couple of previously unreleased bits of rubbish that nobody’s interested in. You can look at the two mixes of the Human Leagues’ ‘Fascination single and the difference between the two is incredible, and it’s also very interesting from a creative point of view. What you’ve got to say though is that that sort of mixing and editing only really works if the material is specifically intended to be dance music, because it’s only then that it’s likely to be heard and appreciated. Often there are versions of tracks which are only sent to clubs as opposed to being commercially available on record, which I think is also quite exciting because it means that things are being recorded purely for danceability rather than to make money.
(PICTURE TO BE SCANNED AND POSTED HERE)
Outboard Equipment When we went from eight-track to 24-track we realised that our outboard equipment just wasn’t good enough. Obviously it would have been possible for us to have carried on using that equipment and to have made an album using it, but in the end we had to make a decision about the quality of recorded work we were aiming for. What has been noticeable in recent years is the extent to which the Japanese have been applying themselves more and more to professional audio products. In a sense they’ve brought an entirely new philosophy to manufacturing studio equipment. When you look at something like the Otari MTR90 24-track machine we have, it’s very evident that the makers have applied a lot of the technological lessons they’ve learned through making hi-fi and so on. If you compare our machine with something like a Studer, say, or an MCI, it certainly appears to be streets ahead in terms of the application of technology. You can see it at the other end of the scale to with people like Tascam and Fostex. Because the Japanese approach to manufacturing is so different from anybody else’s, it’s pretty obvious that they’re going to be the first people to come up with, say, applying cassette technology to professional or semi-professional recording, and they’re probably the only people who are going to make much money out of it either. Much the same thing now seems to be happening with outboard gear. Obviously the Japanese companies aren’t going to make much of an impact at the top end of the market, because that’s something they’ve never been good at, but they’ve started coming up with all sorts of budget equipment that nobody else can even approach, like Korg DDL, for instance. Once we’d got all our 24-track equipment together, we realised that we were going to have to spend more than IRS’ advance in order to get all the musical instruments we needed to further our work, so we decided to start letting the studio out once again on a commercial basis, and to that end we bought a lot of instruments that many potential clients are familiar with, like a LinnDrum rhythm machine and a Roland Jupiter 8 synthesiser. We also had a friend of ours put CV outputs on to all our bits of gear, so that you can sync up all the rhythm machines we have, the Linn, the Movement, the Roland TR808, and some Simmons modules. That’s given us a vast catalogue of electronic percussion sounds that a lot of people have found useful when they’ve come to the studio…’ HSR
Webmaster comments: “Well that’s about it. Apart from an editorial from the above HSR magazine and a Torch Song compliment slip, which I have, but cannot find at present, there is no more early history material – unless you know otherwise?
This page is part of www.vinylgems.co.uk
|
