MIDNIGHT OIL: A STUDIO TOUR
Australian Musician Issue 14 Winter 98Midnight Oil's current release - a retrospective collection titled 20,000 Watt RSL - is far more than just a collection of great songs; it also represents a fascinating journey through a myriad of recording techniques. Over 21 years, ten studio albums and two EPs (created on four different continents with seven different producers), Midnight Oil have tried every conceivable approach to recording and sound production.
They've recorded traditionally, with an emphasis on live performance, on albums like Place Without a Postcard (produced by legendary British producer Glyn Johns) or their recent release Breathe (produced by Midnight Oil and Malcolm Burn). They've delved into the furthest reaches of early 80's studio experimentation with producer Nick Launay on albums like 10,9,8,7,6,5,4,3,2,1 and Red Sails in the Sunset. They've achieved a high pop sheen at Rhinoceros Studios with Warne Livesey (Blue Sky Mining) and they recorded Earth and Sun and Moon in a disused warehouse. These days, they're comfortably working with loops and samples with young Australian producer-de-jour Magoo on their yet-to-be-released new album, Redneck Wonderland.
"When we record, we're very instinctive and we draw on the talents of whoever's around," says the band's guitarist/keyboards player Jim Mogninie. "We're a little predatory, I guess, in that we'll take ideas from people, learn from people, who we surround ourselves with. All of our records are very different, but it's still the same band. It's not planned and it's not predictable, it has lots of ups and downs."
For Moginie the one rule which has driven Midnight Oil's relentless creative drive is a desire not to repeat what's gone before. "If we're playing in the studio and we arrive at something that feels like something we've done before, we stop. We're constantly looking for ground that hasn't been covered before, but it's by doing that that you arrive at moments of revelation."
The four founding members of Midnight Oil have been working at this for a very long time (bassplayer Bones Hillman, a former member of The Swingers, joined in 1990 for the recording of Blue Sky Mining). Early albums like Head Injuries (recorded at 301 with Les Karski) were exercises in simply harnessing the band's terrifying live power and energy. As singer Peter Garrett puts it, "it's the sound of us going at it as hard and as loud as we can. All that impetuous youthful enthusiasm, the can-we-make-it-any-louder attitude."
It wasn't until the band travelled to London in 1980, at the invitation of veteran British producer Glyn Johns (The Who, Rolling Stones etc), that Midnight Oil came into close contact with what they'd come to regard as 'proper' international recording techniques. Although recording with Johns was a somewhat difficult process ("we were just this young band and he had a lot of other stuff going on in his life," remarks drummer Rob Hirst), the band relished the opportunity to work in a different environment with someone who had a direct link to many of their greatest musical heroes.
"The main reason we travelled to Britain to record Place Without a Postcard was that, at that time, the feeling was that the records sounded better," says Peter Garrett. "It was that. And also perhaps a feeling that we needed to find new horizons to conquer. It was a very important album to us, because it was our first real experience of stepping outside Australia, writing songs about Australia."
While Postcard indisputably gave rise to some wonderful songs (including Don't Wanna Be The One and the atmospheric Armistice Day) it was the band's sessions the following year at London's Tonwhouse Studios - with a very young Nick Launay - that paved the way to the band's first real sonic triumph. Utilising state of the art digital technology, including synthesisers and first generation Linn Drums, the band crafted a sound like nothing anyone had heard before. Songs like US Forces and the bands breakthrough hit, Power and the Passion, represented revolutionary use of the recording studio.
"10 to 1 was a really fun album to make," says Jim Moginie. "We really had that sense of unlimited possibility."
"With that album, we were one of the first Australian bands to get into sequencers and synthesises," says Rob Hirst. "10 to 1 was quite a landmark album at the time, and still stands up really well, because it managed to combine all the aggression and frustration of Midnight Oil with some amazing studio stuff courtesy of Nick."
By the time the band regrouped to record once again with Nick Launay in 1984, they chose a completely alien environment - Tokyo - to work in. Somewhat stranded in this futuristic city, many miles from home and isolated from their surroundings by a formidable language barrier, Midnight Oil reached deep inside themselves to create Red Sails in the Sunset, an album that was almost physcedelic in its scope.
"Our brief at the time was just to throw away any boundaries regarding what music could be or should be," says Rob Hirst. "For that reason some people felt it was some unholy, unfocused mess, and other people regard it as the best album we ever made."
"It was an amazing time," concurs Peter Garrett. "I'd go into the studio and there'd be three tape machines looped up, engineers running around doing all sorts of stuff. In many ways it was a wonderful experiment, and it stands up together really well."
Never content to rest on their laurels, the Oils quickly changes tack - twice. First they recorded four raw, unadorned rock and roll songs (including the masterful Hercules) with American dance producer Francois Kervorkian at Sydney's long forgotten Paradise Studios (Species Deceases). Shortly afterwards, they began developing their interest in Aboriginal music and an inter-related spirit of place and sense of space. After recording the magically evocative Dead Heart with Nick Launay at 301, the band travelled into Australia's central desert for a life changing experience touring remote Aboriginal settlement. On their return they settled into the Albert's studio in Sydney's Neutral Bay with producer Warne Livesey to record the album that would become their international passport: Diesel and Dust.
"There's been a kind of folky element in Midnight Oil for a very long time," says Rob Hirst. "I think you first heard it in songs like Kosciusko, but it really burst forward when we did Diesel and Dust."
"Warne is a really talented guy," says Moginie. "I mean there was a kind of tension there, because he likes things to be smooth and nice, and then you've got us, and we never really wanted that. But the combination worked. He's a very musical producer."
The band's follow up album - also produced by Livesey, in conjunction with the band, but this time in Sydney's state of the art Rhinoceros Studios - saw Livesey achieving an even higher level of sheen. It remains a controversial album for the band, but there's no denying the commercial accessibility of the album.
"Warne's whole thing was to get as close to aural perfection as you possibly could, or as close as we were ever going to get - and Rhino was the sort of place to do it," says Hirst. "The record does sound amazing. The studio was the great white hope at the time, although it wound up being a bit of a white elephant. It was indulgent, excessive, and I guess for us at the time it was the kind of luxury that's afforded to bands with a hit album, which we had."
"I didn't realise that we were making a commercial record, and we certainly never set out to," says Moginie. "We were actually a bit confused going into that record, we didn't really have the goods, but we ended up going for good songs and lots of acoustic guitars, and it worked."
After a lengthy break, Midnight Oil returned to recording in 1993 - again with Nick Launay - at the distinctively low-fi Megaphon Studios in the Sydney industrial suburb of Petersham. The result was Earth Sun and Moon.
"We are a reactive band, we're constantly rebounding from something - so after the high tech studio experimentation of all those 80's albums, we definitely swung the other way with Earth Sun and Moon" says Peter Garrett. "It was a return to analog recording, not too much stuff laid on top, not too precise."
"Earth Sun and Moon was supposed to be rougher than it actually was," says Hirst ruefully, "I mean, it stands up really well but we took too long to make it and some of our production instincts kicked in, we cleaned it up too much."
With the band's 1996 studio album Breathe - recorded in New Orleans and Sydney with Malcolm Burn, Midnight Oil aimed for as many live performances, and as few effects, as humanly possible. Songs like Underwater or Surf's Up Tonight revealed a warmth to the band's personality that stood in dramatic contrast to the youthful energy and relentless attacks of earlier albums.
"Breathe was supposed to be an atmospheric, spiritual album - and I think we succeeded in doing that," says Moginie. "I really enjoyed making that album - and I learnt an incredible amount in doing it."
"With Breathe," explains Hirst, "we set out to make an album that was literally the five of us playing an album that would be timeless in the sense that there's no little production gimmicks or manufactured sounds that would tag it to a particular era. You'd just hear the music."
With Redneck Wonderland, Midnight Oil are again looking into the future with an album that will startle many listeners. Utilising contemporary production techniques to achieve a brutal, dynamic and completely contemporary production sound, The Oils are striking out in a new direction once again.
"In this band, what happens sometimes is that everyone else charges off down some road, creatively speaking, and one person is left dawdling along behind with their satchel over their shoulder," says Peter Garrett with a smile that suggests that that 'someone' might just have been him from time to time.
"But you go along and do your bit, you know, because you're in a band and that's what you do - and you have to place some trust in people after all these years. And you all hope that you'll come back in sync, which inevitably happens at some point. We always manage to come back into sync."