mardi 13 juillet 2021

Kitchen Notes : Rob Robinson / Order of the Static Temple on Rise In Fire

Rob Robinson, fondateur d'Order of the Static Temple mais aussi membre d'autres belles bandes comme celles de Hate Dept. et d'Oghr a eu la gentillesse de nous lister les outils et méthodes qui ont permis la réalisation du dernier album de son principal projet : Rise in Fire, bien dans la veine d'une certaine Electro-Indus US.
Un bon mélange de soft et de matériel saupoudré de conseils de production.
L'histoire ne nous dit pas s'il a pu maîtriser le Lyra-8 que l'on voit sur la photo :)

Rob Robinson, leader of Order of the Static Temple but also member of other cult bands such as Hate Dept. and Oghr kindly took the time to share the list of the tools and methods used to produce the latest release on his main project : Rise in Fire, right in the vein of a pure US electro-Indus flavor.
A good mixture of software and hardware sprinkled with production advices.
The story doesn't tell us if he managed to masterise the Lyra-8 we see in the picture :)

Gears and software

What gears/software did you use for this album ?

DAW - ProTools with lots of plugins and soft synths lol. Rise In Fire used plugins from Arturia (CMI, DX7, Spark, Solina, CZ-1 to name a few), Roland SH-101 / JX-3P / Jupiter 8, Soundtoys, Sugar Bytes, Beatskillz, Eventide, UAD, iZotope.

For hardware we used 101music Blackbox, Oto Biscuit, Retro Mechanical Labs EFC Studio, Behringer MS-1 / VC-340, Lexicon PCM 41, Akai MPC Live.

Your favorite gear(s)/software(s) ?

I really enjoyed using Beatskillz DropX for drums on this one. Very sharp and aggressive, it made most of the tracks.

The Oto Biscuit is a wonderful bit crushing effect unit with an analog filter, also great for drum processing.

The Lexicon PCM 41 was a joy to use for vocal weirdness and almost stutter like effects.

Any evolution in your setup ?

The studio is constantly evolving. Much time was spent researching and demo-ing new tools, which is a large part of the fun! It’s possible newer material will use completely different pieces of gear.

Sound Design

Do you use/tweak presets ?

Very much so… presets are great to start with, then mangle from there.

Do you design you own sound ? On which synth/plugin in particular ?

Not from scratch… I’m jealous of people who can do that. Towards the end we were under a tight deadline so really didn’t have the luxury of building anything from the ground up.

Any personal synth story ?

I’ve always wanted to own a Roland VP-330, it’s one of the best sounding vocoders to my ears. They’re pretty out of reach these days, rare and expensive. When Behringer came out with the VC-340 it was a dream… very rich and inspiring analog strings, we used it on the dark string part in ‘Mangled Ethos’. And yes we also use the official Roland Boutique version!

Writing/composing method

What would be your main writing/composing method ? Do you start classical rythm/bassline then arrange around it ? Do you already have structure in mind ? Do you improvise, record sessions then select ?

Great question! Usually songs start by creating the drums, and then maybe a simple bass line. The arrangement happens totally on the fly while experimenting with different sounds. ‘Ridin’ In Sin’ has more of a traditional song structure, so does ‘This Is Not The End’, but that happened as the songs evolved. And then lastly come the lyrics / vocals, which always happen last lol.

Producing/mixing method

Do you produce/mix in the box or do you use mainly external gears (effect/comp/eq...) ?

Most of the mixing and production happens in the box, and then gets routed through hardware when mastering, to help add warmth and punch.

What is your most painful / enjoyable step in track production ? Sound design, arrangement, mixing, mastering ?

One of the most enjoyable things to me is the final mastering stage, when everything finally comes together and sounds cohesive. It’s exciting to push the track to it’s final level of oomph.

Most painful is probably vocal editing, which if your voice isn’t pitch perfect like mine, can get pretty tedious.

Rob's tips

Careful to use compression sparingly when in the box. If everything is compressed you’ll be fighting to regain dynamics later. And try to reserve your favorite plugins with color - EQ, compression, etc., for a smaller handful of instrument tracks.

The API 560 EQ for example is great for punchy mid range, but if used on everything it loses it’s magic. Use something with less color for repeated EQ tasks.