Hi, my name is Cenzo Townshend
and we're at Decoy Studios here in Suffolk
which is my base
and has been for about four years.
I was a recording engineer for many years
working mainly with Ian Broudie
and Steven Street where we recorded
everyone from Blur to Ordinary Boys to
Kaiser Chiefs and then we shared a
studio together in Olympic called The Bunker
and that's when I started to
specialise in mixing so I was in studio
three in Olympic for about
three or four years purely mixing.
When Olympic unfortunately closed I moved to
Metropolis where I spent two years
before I managed to set up a small room
here in this building while we built the main studio.
I kind of modelled it on
a studio called September Sound that
used to belong to the Cocteau twins in
the 80s and was built by Pete Townsend
and the upstairs room was
a big nice area
with glass frontage overlooking the Thames
and that's roughly where this was modelled on.
I was adamant that all the rooms in this building
would be useful spaces that people wanted to be in.
There were compromises
made in some areas to make sure that
these booths and live spaces were big
and airy and comfortable with glass doors
and daylight because I spent
literally 20 years without seeing any
daylight so I was quite keen to to see some.
When I first arrived here this
studio was an empty barn with an office
and I moved in to the office to start
with to mix a Maccabees album.
I then went on to a couple of other albums
while we were building this
and this took pretty much two years to complete.
Decoy Studios comprises of my mix room
which is an SSL 6000 room
and this control room we're in now
which is an Audient room
The live room is
predominantly constructed for drums so
that drums would sound good in there.
The library is the vocal booth if you like
although we have recorded drums in there
it's big enough for a string quartet if we need to.
The iD22 we use for the iMac
in there so we do some prep or
some pre and post production or if
anybody comes in with a laptop and wants
to do some work it's a very quick way
for us to integrate
their laptop or whatever they're
using is just one plug and it's done.
It's got two great microphone amplifiers
in it so we do use it for reamping.
We have used it to do piano overdubs when
we're busy in here.
if somebody wants to do a piano
or a guitar we can work from the
Library and just use the iD22 for inputs
which works fine and it sounds fantastic,
no noise which is exactly what
we need for that kind of work especially for pianos.
We were without it for a little while
Hugo from the Maccabees spent a
lot of time in the Library then when he
left here he borrowed one of our iD22s.
In fact I've never seen it again actually to be honest.
So mixing wise here
we've worked on, we've had four
number-one albums which has been fantastic.
The Maccabees was one number 1 we had
we've done two Maccabees albums here.
George Ezra was number 1
Passenger I think was a number 1 album
Apart from that we mix a lot of radio singles
everyone from Christine and the Queen's,
to SOAK, to Tom Jones,
James Blunt and Ed Sheeran
a Jake Bugg album.
So it's quite an
eclectic mixture of music that we work
on here it's either whole albums or radio singles
mainly BBC Radio 1 and Radio 2 mixes.
We mix predominantly in a kind
of hybrid situation where we use a lot
of the automation in the box but the
summing is done on the consoles.
We do have a lot of analogue equipment which is
something I'm still passionate about
using and I still use as much as I can.
Most of the equipment that you will see
is patched in and need to use daily.
I tend to use Pultecs and 1176s on vocals.
I have an EAR compressor which is
great for vocals and bass.
We use a lot of passive equalisers
we use a lot of hardware effects like Eventide H3000s
and Bricasti reverbs.
Plugins are fantastic they just do a great job
but there are certain things that I can
only get from hardware
something like the Lavry or the H3000.
I use a mixture of different speakers here
in here we've got my old
trusty KRK 9000Bs that are fantastic,
quite evil sounding so one has
to be a little bit careful with them.
I've got the Amphions which are a new
discovery to me which I love.
The smaller ones in here
and I have the larger ones next door.
Yamaha NS10s without which I couldn't work.
I could have all the speakers in the world but I'd
have to have a pair of Yamaha NS10s
maybe it's because I've always
listened to them but there's something about
them that works and translates very well.
Using an analogue console is
something that a lot of clients
that I have come here, is a luxury that they
don't often have.
The sonic footprint of
a console for me, if we record a band and
the whole band is recorded through the
console, or 95% of it you
might want to use it an esoteric
microphone amplifier for something or whatever
but generally if most of the
instruments are going through the
console while you're recording it
there's a cohesion that happens
it's something that happens that gives the
recording a footprint, an inherent sound already
that is very difficult to
achieve using three APIs on the
snare drum and 2 SSLs on your overheads
and a Neve on the kick drum.
It becomes a little disparate for my
liking really to be honest.
I have all these microphone amplifiers
I've got 16 Neves and in fact more
but we found that
we don't actually need to use them
we found that the sound of the console
is so good and I really like the glue that
happens between the instruments when we
use the console and it's just on its own.
For mixing again it has a similar effect
it imparts an analogue
feel/sound to the mix which is great
and and for guys who are learning
how to engineer
to do it on a work surface
on a console is much more intuitive.
We can show them how to do
things far quicker than
than on a DAW to be honest
and also it leaves them with a more in-depth
understanding of what exactly is
happening where the signals going and
why you have to have the gain right on
the mic amp before the output before it
goes to a compressor.
It's just a
it's a much more intuitive way of teaching
somebody to work.
you