Mercury Prize-winning producer Charlie Andrew, who rose to fame producing Alt-J’s first two albums (the second of which went straight to number one) has recently added an Audient ASP880 to his set up, describing the eight-channel mic pre and ADC as …’amongst his go-to mic pres because they’re so clean and transparent.’
Currently in his Brixton studio, working on an album with four-piece Mancunian band Money, he is enjoying using the new mic pre alongside his old ASP008 8-channel mic pre, giving him “…16 channels of Audient to use to capture the band.”
“I’m a big fan of simplicity,’ continues Andrew. “The gain is basically pretty much all I put my hands on, and the phase buttons to make sure when I’m recording drums I can quite quickly flip phase and see if I’ve got phasing right.
“Having the analogue to digital converters is a huge help, too,’ he adds. “We’re going to go to a pub to record on of the Money songs on an upright piano to get a bit more atmosphere. Having a 1U “interface’ with the mic pres and the converter, you can quite easily plug them into the back of something without having to lug a massive rig around. I’ll definitely be using the ASP880 for that.’
Andrew is also entering the world of songwriting: “I’m mainly co-writing at the moment,’ he says modestly, explaining that the most difficult part for him is starting. He has a knack to get around that, though. “I try and have lots of little fun toys around. I recently bought an old 1979 vocoder, plonked the artist in front of it and messed around with some chords whilst he was singing into it, and we got a cool little hook from that,’ he says. “The Audient is really good for capturing these “toys’. The mic pres are very transparent, very clear and very low noise – they’re just beautiful pieces of kit.’
With the latest albums from Marika Hackman and Sivu also credited to him, Charlie Andrew’s star is certainly in the ascendant. Audient wishes him the best of luck with it all.
