Judie Tzuke - Press Cuttings.
The following article was published in 1989, origin unknown.
!H O M E T A P I N G
JUDY TZUKE
Judy Tzuke has made six albums all of them top forty hits. With the release of her 7th, Turning Stones, she tells Keith Grant home really is where the heart is.
Turning Stones is Judy Tzuke's seventh studio album and her first for Polydor, her third record label. The album was recorded in her own studio situated at the bottom of her garden, in the small town of Weybridge in Rural Surrey.
Produced by her long standing musical associates Paul Muggleton and Mike Paxman(Pax), who both share writing credits with Judy, as well as providing guitar, keyboard and programming skills, the album marks the end of a three year silence during which Judy was involved in a somewhat dispiriting wrangle with the powers that be, over the direction her career should take.
"I actually signed to Polydor about three and a half years ago," she explains, "But wrangles with the company over demands to use name producers led to a year spent working with such people which came to naught. We actually completed the album but didn't like it at all - I couldn't promote it because it had nothing to do with me. By this time John Williams had become head of A&R at the record company and he agreed with me. He and David Munns (MD) heard the demos that I'd done with Paul and Pax and they encouraged us to do the album again, along the same lines.
"These demos had been done on a B-16 in the front room, a setup that we had used to record much of the previous album The Cat is Out, our first serious venture into home recording, which we thn mixed at Maison Rouge Studios. By the time we came to do this album things had gotten too big for the front room so we decided to build a full studio."
"We had this purpose built building erected to house it, The Tango Hut. It took five months to construct. The architect was very particular regarding the sound proofing, so as not to annoy the neighbours."
"The equipment was installed by Mike Silverston from HHB," continues Pax. "We didn't want to be stuck with a single 24 track machine because we wanted to be able to slave up, so we went for two E-16's. The desk we chose was an AHB Sigma - apparantlt they're not selling too well because people expect they should be more expensive and seem suspicious at the mid-price tag. It's a 44 input channel desk with 96 channels in mix down mode. For the money it's brilliant, very easy to use and perfect for a computerised set up like ours. You can have everything running into the desk, permanently hard wired, just bringing things up on the relevant faders. The studio is completely tie lined for audio, video and MIDI, with everything running into my desk."
The control room is 14' by 14' and the live room is 12' by 10'. The live room is deadened with acoustic tiling which is removable if you want to increase the ambience. The live room is large enough to get a kit in comfortably."
"Some original tracks on the album were started with the B-16 demos which we time coded and we were able to use as parts where we just coudn'yt recreate things. We use the PRO-24 to drive all the keyboards. These are a D-50, and M1, a DX7 and the old TX modules, a JX3P and an RD300 piano. There is also a Yamaha CS-80 which is the best sounding synth ever made - we play it as well as sampling from it. It's really nice to play, with a solid weighted feel to the keys. We have an S-1000 and an S-900 as well as an old S-612, which is brilliant because it's basically naff."
"We also have a lot of guitar processers," chips in Paul. "The ADA preamp, and Axxeman as well as Rockman, and a selection of actual amps. The ADA system is best played through speakers. We also like the sound of the guitar straight into the desk for that clean sound you can get from a well set up instrument."
"Drum sounds all come off the S-1000 and S-900," says Pax. "We sample a lot of real drums and have lots of drummer friends who keep us supplied. We also make up drum samples from the oddest sounds, like Paul's son walking up and down in a huge box of stones. We also tend to put down the hi-hats and percussion and more recently we have been using a live kit doubled up with samples. You can play into the computer and play around with it."
The album features four guest musicians augmenting, Judy, Paul and Pax; Andy Shepard on Saxophone, Bob Noble on Keyboards (Joan Armatrading), classical violinist Nigel Kennedy and Simple Minds bassman, John Giblin.
"John played with us before he was in Minds," states Pax, "Paul and I play well. The sequenced bass parts are from the S-1000. We never use bass sounds from the D-50 or the DX7, they're too thin and we don't like them. We've got a vast library of samples we've made up, mostly from the CS80. We also sample real basses which we distort in different ways."
"We've got a Korg SDD 3000 delay which is completely knackered but produces great samples. Nobody knows what's wrong with it but we certainly don't want it fixed."
"When I was recording a lot with these big producers, they tried to reproduce a lot of these sounds which were on the demos with all their technology but they always failed miserably," muses Judy.
"For Judie's vocals we use an old AKG C12 with a value power pack," continues Pax.
"We love old valve mikes and things - we're desperately looking for an old Fairchilds compressor at an affordable price."
"We use a very moderate amount of eg from an old Allen Heath System 8 desk which really suits my voice." says Judy. "The eg on the Sigma isn't so sympatetic. I don't ever double track the lead vocals but I do on the backing but never more than three times."
"Judy does a lot of harmonies and we spend a lot of time on that," says Paul.
"That for me is my favourite bit," she adds, "I can mess about with lots of different harmonies when the lead is down and the pressure is off."
The main monitoring duties are undertaken by a wall mounted Yamaha NS1000s, a set of NS 10's on the desk supplemented by a set of Aiwa walkman speakers for checking the degree of bass poke.
"A healthy attitude to processing ensures a welcome lack of effects overkill," Pax again, "We don't use too many effects, rather we make full use of what we have. The Drawmer compressors are used very little, we put things down clean with a full dynamic range. You've got to use a machine like the E-16 with respect, putting all that sound onto half inch tape, you can't put things down too hot."
"We use the Lexicon PCM 60 and 70 and an SPX 90. There's also the SDE 3000 and 2000 DDL's, the ones that aren't knackered. We've just got the Alesis Quadraverb, which is well good, and there is a Rocktron Hush gate."
With the recording complete, Paul, Pax and Judy went into Farmyard Studios where Steven W ATylor (Howard Jones and Tina Turner) took care of the mixdown.
"We dumped 32 tracks of Fostex down onto a Mitsibushi X850 digital machine for operational ease. Steve's really fast, he did it all in a one-er, mixing two songs a day. We just explained what we were aiming for and he knew right away what we wanted. The whole thing was mixed in a week, painlessly."
All of Judy's albums have been top 40 hits and her best known single Stay With Me Till Dawn is still being regularly spun on the airwaves, 10 years after the event. The release of Turning Stones, on 3 April, is preceeded by the current single We'll Go Dreaming, and the band are currently rehearsing for the British and European tour, getting to grips with all the technical possibilities of live performance that have occured in the last three years.
"The studio has almost been emptied, except the desk," laughs Paul.
"But everything is going to be played on stage, no tapes or automation."
"It's so complicated setting everything up, though," complains Judy. "I haven't had the chance to sing yet. The band we've got are good enough to play on, even if all the technology crashed. Sometimes I wish it would."
Keith Grant
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