Interview with Mads Bjerke (Spiritualized engineer)

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angel-sighs
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Interview with Mads Bjerke (Spiritualized engineer)

Post by angel-sighs »

Not listened yet. Seems like they mainly cover the recording and mixing of Pure Phase

https://youtu.be/nAlt1kEihzs
BzaInSpace
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Re: Interview with Mads Bjerke (Spitualized engineer)

Post by BzaInSpace »

An hour or so in, very interesting from the production side of Spiritualized from Pure Phase onwards, and I think Mads Bjerke was a very patient fellow to sit through that.

The interviewer, the love-child of Nathan Barley and Russell Brand (I mean his heart is in the right place I think) - a shirtless, vaping man with the worst nazi youth haircut I’ve seen since the noughties made it… challenging to watch or listen.

“I’ve been in bands mate!”

He does mention the forums at the beginning though. In a non-positive manner. It’s alright mate!
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Re: Interview with Mads Bjerke (Spitualized engineer)

Post by sunray »

Apologies, but my inner tosser just can't ignore Spitualized in the thread title :)
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angel-sighs
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Re: Interview with Mads Bjerke (Spitualized engineer)

Post by angel-sighs »

sunray wrote: Mon Apr 04, 2022 11:54 pm Apologies, but my inner tosser just can't ignore Spitualized in the thread title :)
Guess i'll leave that there just to eat away at ya :D
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Re: Interview with Mads Bjerke (Spitualized engineer)

Post by heisenberg »

BzaInSpace wrote: Mon Apr 04, 2022 7:41 pm

The interviewer, the love-child of Nathan Barley and Russell Brand (I mean his heart is in the right place I think) - a shirtless, vaping man with the worst nazi youth haircut I’ve seen since the noughties made it… challenging to watch or listen.
I pissed myself at this description :lol: Suprised this video has shown up on Youtube- I heard it was only available to paying members of trashbat.co.ck :lol:

So the good stuff starts at an hour in? Cos I am really struggling with Russell Barley too. As for the dig at the forums, I don't think it is particularly pedantic or geeky around here. The Steve Hoffman forum, fair enough. Then again, I think 'd rather listen to some Comic Book Guy lookalike from the Hoffman board bore me to death about the mastering of some crap Metallica album than Barley here namedropping his pals at Rough Trade and the fact that he shares a dealer with Bobby Gillespie. :roll:
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Re: Interview with Mads Bjerke (Spitualized engineer)

Post by spzretent »

You got way further than I did. After the Forum dig plus the shirtless guy I just turned it off.
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angel-sighs
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Re: Interview with Mads Bjerke (Spitualized engineer)

Post by angel-sighs »

Even if the interviewer rubs you the wrong way, I would advise persisting. Some great insight into the recording of the bands albums.
Just have it on in the background and treat it like a podcast- then you don't have to see his shirtless torso if you don't want to!
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Re: Interview with Mads Bjerke (Spitualized engineer)

Post by spzretent »

angel-sighs wrote: Tue Apr 05, 2022 2:55 pm Even if the interviewer rubs you the wrong way, I would advise persisting. Some great insight into the recording of the bands albums.
Just have it on in the background and treat it like a podcast- then you don't have to see his shirtless torso if you don't want to!
I am not wired that way. To start off by insulting people who post here was bad enough. Then I happened to catch the length of this YT video. I am not all that interested in the engineering process. If it were half an hour maybe. I am not ever inclined to spend two hours on the engineering of any record including my all time favorites.
I know others are who post here are. To each their own.
There was certainly no need to insult Forum members.
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Re: Interview with Mads Bjerke (Spitualized engineer)

Post by sunray »

angel-sighs wrote: Tue Apr 05, 2022 9:44 am
sunray wrote: Mon Apr 04, 2022 11:54 pm Apologies, but my inner tosser just can't ignore Spitualized in the thread title :)
Guess i'll leave that there just to eat away at ya :D
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angel-sighs
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Re: Interview with Mads Bjerke (Spitualized engineer)

Post by angel-sighs »

spzretent wrote: Tue Apr 05, 2022 3:02 pm
angel-sighs wrote: Tue Apr 05, 2022 2:55 pm Even if the interviewer rubs you the wrong way, I would advise persisting. Some great insight into the recording of the bands albums.
Just have it on in the background and treat it like a podcast- then you don't have to see his shirtless torso if you don't want to!
I am not wired that way. To start off by insulting people who post here was bad enough. Then I happened to catch the length of this YT video. I am not all that interested in the engineering process. If it were half an hour maybe. I am not ever inclined to spend two hours on the engineering of any record including my all time favorites.
I know others are who post here are. To each their own.
There was certainly no need to insult Forum members.
Yeah I know what you mean. I don't actually mind long podcasts myself, but the knock at the forum is a bit strange. Firstly I don't really see us as that kind of forum at all, plus anyway wouldn't that be the perfect audience for this? He's contradicted himself a bit there.
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Re: Interview with Mads Bjerke (Spiritualized engineer)

Post by sm-iom »

sunray wrote: Tue Apr 05, 2022 4:26 pm
angel-sighs wrote: Tue Apr 05, 2022 9:44 am
sunray wrote: Mon Apr 04, 2022 11:54 pm Apologies, but my inner tosser just can't ignore Spitualized in the thread title :)
Guess i'll leave that there just to eat away at ya :D
But...but...my OCD...emotional trauma...mental anguish...victimisation...WAAAAAAHHHHHHH!!!!!! Yada yada yada...
Fixed :D
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Re: Interview with Mads Bjerke (Spitualized engineer)

Post by BzaInSpace »

sunray wrote: Tue Apr 05, 2022 4:26 pm
angel-sighs wrote: Tue Apr 05, 2022 9:44 am
sunray wrote: Mon Apr 04, 2022 11:54 pm Apologies, but my inner tosser just can't ignore Spitualized in the thread title :)
Guess i'll leave that there just to eat away at ya :D
But...but...my OCD...emotional trauma...mental anguish...victimisation...WAAAAAAHHHHHHH!!!!!! Yada yada yada...
I didn’t change that for that reason. Sunray? More like Snowflake. 🤣
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BzaInSpace
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Re: Interview with Mads Bjerke (Spitualized engineer)

Post by BzaInSpace »

Seriously, it is worth listening to though. Although I did listen to it as semi-background stuff doing work notes and cooking dinner.

Mads appears as a lovely guy. Very glad he got involved with Spiritualized which sounds like absolute pure luck and chance: and he was the right person at the right time.

Some takeaways - Jason had done several mixes of Pure Phase and couldn’t get the sound he was after, and was ready to scrap it all and start again until the dual mono-mix idea was suggested by John Coxon and Mads helped realize that.

A world without Pure Phase is a world without a certain type of feeling, IMO.

He helped loads on LAG. I always knew that ‘Come Together’ has that rippling Pure Phase effect - the way the bass instruments flicker throughout - its the most obvious example of the Pure Phase sound.

- LICD took Mads 18 months of his life. Amongst many others. The stories there are amazing.
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Re: Interview with Mads Bjerke (Spiritualized engineer)

Post by BzaInSpace »

What’s not amazing was Dangerous Dangerfield kept continually interrupting Mads, even when he was going go to talk about Amazing Grace, “yeah but mate? Can we not talk about my stint in producing videos, yeah?”

That horrible sound he would make when viewers would donate crypto shit to him. Fuck, just no…
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mc
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Re: Interview with Mads Bjerke (Spiritualized engineer)

Post by mc »

I listened to this whilst pottering with other things in the background, and it was very interesting once I got over the rather irritating interview style. Well worth persevering with if you have the time and inclination. Intriguing hint from Mads that J was pretty depressed and out of it during the recording of LAG.

However, this is a prime example of something that really gets my goat nowadays - this would have been sooooo much better transcribed as an interview. We would have never needed to see that helmet's face or torso, all the nonsense bits and interruptions could have been edited out for clarity, and overall it'd have taken (me at least) 10 minutes at most to read. I didn't need to see nor hear any of that; I just wanted the information. I get and accept videos are great for accessibility reasons, but it would be lovely to have both. The art of the written interview might be dying, sadly...
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Re: Interview with Mads Bjerke (Spiritualized engineer)

Post by spzretent »

mc wrote: Tue Apr 05, 2022 9:42 pm I listened to this whilst pottering with other things in the background, and it was very interesting once I got over the rather irritating interview style. Well worth persevering with if you have the time and inclination. Intriguing hint from Mads that J was pretty depressed and out of it during the recording of LAG.
You are 100% correct MC. This would have fit perfectly in a Recording type magazine or web site. You could seriously target the perfect market. Many of whom either post or lurk here.
The person who did this YT video must fancy himself some budding YT star. Why on earth would he show up shirtless and with a Hitler haircut? I mean seriously?
I would imagine Jason was pretty depressed during the recording of LAG. His girlfriend just left him. Someone he toured the world with and recorded 2 records with. How could he not be. We have all been there just not this publicly.
Bza- I can't imagine a world without Pure Phase either. I just never get into the minutiae of it.
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Re: Interview with Mads Bjerke (Spiritualized engineer)

Post by mc »

spzretent wrote: Tue Apr 05, 2022 10:06 pm I would imagine Jason was pretty depressed during the recording of LAG. His girlfriend just left him. Someone he toured the world with and recorded 2 records with. How could he not be. We have all been there just not this publicly.
Oh yeah, I'm not in the least bit surprised - I'd be exactly the same in that situation. I guess I found it intriguing because J has always been at pains to downplay the influence of his and Kate's breakup on LAG. That of course doesn't mean it didn't destroy him on a personal level, as I imagine it did.
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Re: Interview with Mads Bjerke (Spiritualized engineer)

Post by sunray »

So FM Spaceman is a YouTuber now.
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Re: Interview with Mads Bjerke (Spiritualized engineer)

Post by angel-sighs »

BzaInSpace wrote: Tue Apr 05, 2022 6:35 pm What’s not amazing was Dangerous Dangerfield kept continually interrupting Mads, even when he was going go to talk about Amazing Grace, “yeah but mate? Can we not talk about my stint in producing videos, yeah?”
The interrupting annoyed me too! Need to let people finish answering questions before asking the next one.
There was some great details in there. The Pure Phase double stereo mix was done on a small akai sampler type thing with a tiny screen.. and took literally weeks.

And the painstaking piecing together of the LICD orchestral arrangements by Jason finding the melody of each part he wanted on a keyboard.. transcribing all that into sheet music. Then on the first day of the sessions, the printer broke! :)
Would love to hear those original LICD dictaphone demos! Missed opportunity with the reissue there :)

All the talk of Jason bankrupting record labels in pursuit of his vision doesn't seem like a myth at all. Mads had high praise for Jason as an artist and said that he was by far the musician who was most driven in terms of wanting to get the music sounding like the vision he had in his head.

If people just want to get to the meat of this interview I would recommend starting just before the 1 hr mark, and going until about 1hr 45mins.
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Re: Interview with Mads Bjerke (Spiritualized engineer)

Post by sunray »

Like spzretent i'm not too interested in the engineering process but that was a pretty good interview. Mads comes across as a really nice fella, i laughed a few times during it (even at Dangerfield's forum comments tbh).

"There would have been 200 tracks of instrumentation on some of it...That's quite a lot when the core of the band is a four-piece" :lol:
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Re: Interview with Mads Bjerke (Spiritualized engineer)

Post by synthiA »

Fantastic interview! Mads was able to finally explain the myth that Jason has been running since PP came out. It never made sense to me that they would cut a master mix tape every few bars to offset milliseconds.
Yet, I don't think he deflates the story at all and in fact brings a lot more of the details of the end result beyond natural phasing effects that is usually the end of it.

As for the interviewer, he has his own style that might rub some the wrong way but I think in that, he does a pretty good job. I didn't hear him interrupting so much but stoppng Mads and slowing tbings down a bit to really highlight what has been brushed under the rug and left unchecked for nearly 30 years.

Jason loves myths and legends. He has said many times how he likes to believe the brith of rock and roll happened when Robert Johnson sold his souls to the devil at the crossroads. Like many great novels, the narrator cannot be trusted and often drops many clues as to why, yet we continue to buy it because it's exciting!!! We are along for the ride!!!!
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Re: Interview with Mads Bjerke (Spiritualized engineer)

Post by BzaInSpace »

synthiA!

It’s great to have some old-skool outpatients/people get back here every now and again.

I agree with mostly everything you’re saying, I just wish as a few mentioned above it was done in a more easily listening to the ear/visual format.

That’s all. As I said there’s some great info there.
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Re: Interview with Mads Bjerke (Spiritualized engineer)

Post by mkb »

Mads seems like a lovely guy, and was very interesting, but I'm slightly concerned by him doing an interview with that guy (Google "Chris Dangerfield far right" and you'll see why).
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Re: Interview with Mads Bjerke (Spiritualized engineer)

Post by mc »

Jesus wept, I had no idea. Just assumed he was some random youtube non-entity. That's horrible :(
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Re: Interview with Mads Bjerke (Spiritualized engineer)

Post by angel-sighs »

Ah man thats disgusting.. same, i thought he was just a random youtuber.
He got in touch with Mads via the youtube comments section and was asked to come on the stream. I am hopeful that Mads didnt know either, you wouldn't necessarily do a full background check would you?
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Re: Interview with Mads Bjerke (Spiritualized engineer)

Post by BzaInSpace »

A far-right mentalist who loves sex-tourism and is 100% against Islam … FFS.

That bit at the end when he speaks to his “girlfriend” suggested all kinds of wrong anyway. Cambodia.
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Re: Interview with Mads Bjerke (Spiritualized engineer)

Post by BzaInSpace »

The weird thing is, this horrible guy has a lot of posts on the Steve Hoffman music corner regarding Spiritualized.

Maybe he thought in his brain-wrong, robo-paedoshit he could get away with it there.
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Re: Interview with Mads Bjerke (Spiritualized engineer)

Post by sunray »

So he IS FM Spaceman after all :lol:

Funny thing is, for once i self censored myself as the paedo-alert in my head went off massively with this guy and the Cambodia connection, but i thought i'd be on dodgy ground here so said nowt. Oh well.
In fairness, it's still a decent interview :roll:
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Re: Interview with Mads Bjerke (Spiritualized engineer)

Post by mc »

am I missing something? Is Dangerpedo really FM Spaceman, or are people kidding? (I skipped the entire start of the vid and only started playing it when Mads actually appeared onscreen, so didn't hear the forum dissing part)
Last edited by mc on Sat Apr 09, 2022 11:13 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Interview with Mads Bjerke (Spiritualized engineer)

Post by sunray »

mc wrote: Sat Apr 09, 2022 11:12 pm am I missing something? Is Dangerpedo really FM Spaceman, or are people kidding?
No, just my little joke.
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Re: Interview with Mads Bjerke (Spiritualized engineer)

Post by mc »

sunray wrote: Sat Apr 09, 2022 11:13 pm
mc wrote: Sat Apr 09, 2022 11:12 pm am I missing something? Is Dangerpedo really FM Spaceman, or are people kidding?
No, just my little joke.
fair enough!
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Re: Interview with Mads Bjerke (Spiritualized engineer)

Post by mc »

still not entirely sure why FM Spaceman left/was removed, was it because he was posting dodgy links to copyrighted music, or something else I missed entirely?
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Re: Interview with Mads Bjerke (Spiritualized engineer)

Post by sunray »

mc wrote: Sat Apr 09, 2022 11:15 pm still not entirely sure why FM Spaceman left/was removed, was it because he was posting dodgy links to copyrighted music, or something else I missed entirely?
He had a massive racist meltdown and earned himself a lifetime ban (this is actually true and not one of my attempts at humour).
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Re: Interview with Mads Bjerke (Spiritualized engineer)

Post by mc »

sunray wrote: Sat Apr 09, 2022 11:49 pm
mc wrote: Sat Apr 09, 2022 11:15 pm still not entirely sure why FM Spaceman left/was removed, was it because he was posting dodgy links to copyrighted music, or something else I missed entirely?
He had a massive racist meltdown and earned himself a lifetime ban (this is actually true and not one of my attempts at humour).
bloody hell, I missed that :O I assumed it was all the massive playlist links he posted, and (IIRC) a dodgy link to ANH as well.
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Re: Interview with Mads Bjerke (Spiritualized engineer)

Post by mkb »

mc wrote: Sat Apr 09, 2022 11:12 pm (I skipped the entire start of the vid and only started playing it when Mads actually appeared onscreen, so didn't hear the forum dissing part)
The forum-dissing part isn't particularly bad tbh, he doesn't even specify this forum, he just says he thought about promoting the interview on "forums" but when he looked at them he thought the people on them seemed a bit nerdy or pedantic or whatever (I'm paraphrasing).

In terms of speaking about Spiritualized and the interview itself he isn't particularly objectionable – a bit annoying in an "I took drugs in the 90s" way, but nothing actively offensive. So I can see how, if that's all Mads has engaged with him about, it seemed fine to be interviewed by him. It's the other stuff in his background that are major red flags.
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