Martin Rushent

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Martin Rushent 2011

Martin Charles Rushent (born July 11, 1948 in London , Enfield district , † June 4, 2011 in Upper Basildon , Berkshire , England ) was an English music producer , arranger , sound engineer, music studio owner, composer and musician.

childhood

Rushent attended Micheden Grammar School in Southgate, Middlesex. His interest in the music industry was sparked when he was a singer with the school band on test recordings for EMI at their Manchester Square studio. He himself described it as a "great experience" and wanted to become a music producer. His father had previously given him a four-track recorder, on which he had recorded his own versions of the Hollies' song, Stay, with several of his own vocal and a guitar track.

After finishing school, Rushent initially worked in a chemical factory, but quit this position again as he initiated a business but was not allowed to close it. While looking for a job in a recording studio, he worked in his father's engine business. After a job around 1967 as a projectionist in the London dubbing studio Advision Studios , he helped out there in the evenings as an operator of the tape machines and rose to become assistant engineer and finally sound engineer. He finally gave up the position at Advision in 1976 to work as a freelance sound engineer in music productions.

Career

In the first half of the 1970s he worked as a sound engineer for David Essex , T. Rex , Yes and Shirley Bassey, among others . His recording studio established in 1979, Genetic Sound Studio in Streatley near Reading , Berkshire, was considered one of the world's most modern music studios in the early 1980s. In the late 1970s and early 1980s he produced chart hits for Buzzcocks , The Stranglers , Generation X , Altered Images and The Human League , including the globally successful album Dare! the British new wave band The Human League, for which he received a BRIT Award for best British producer in 1982. With Love and Dancing by The Love Unlimited Orchestra , he also produced one of the first remix albums. The British Phonographic Industry awarded Love and Dancing with a platinum record .

As a sound engineer, Rushent worked in the first half of the 1970s for T. Rex and their debut album Electric Warrior and for Fleetwood Mac on the album Future Games . For the prog band Gentle Giant he was responsible for the albums Acquiring the Taste , Three Friends and Octopus ; in the latter, his laughter can be heard at the beginning of the instrumental The Boys in the Band . Rushent worked for United Artists Records for a long time as the sound engineer for Shirley Bassey , best known for her theme songs for James Bond films . He oversaw the Bassey albums I, Capricorn , Never Never Never , Nobody Does it Like Me , Good Bad But Beautiful and Love, Life and Feelings . During this time he met Basey's producer Martin Davis, a mentor for the connections in the music industry. One of his last albums as a sound engineer was the David Essex album Out on the Street .

Early producer works included the albums Take Off Your Body by Compost (Columbia Records, 1972) and Air Cut by Curved Air (Warner Bros. Records, 1973). His first productions, in which he was also involved in the composition in addition to the production, are the singles Down at the Club by Chaos (Polydor Records, 1973) and Rub Out by Jeff Britton & the Spitfires (Decca, 1976).

Martin Davis, the later founder of Radar Records and then A&R manager at United Artists Records, offered Rushent a position as a producer and talent scout in 1977. He gave up freelance work and joined United Artists Records. At this time he heard Grip , a demo tape of the still unknown band The Stranglers, and was able to win them over for the label. He produced the Stranglers' first three albums, Rattus Norvegicus , No More Heroes and Black and White . The first two albums were created on a 16-track recorder in a very short time by letting the band record their songs several times and then doing the post-production. In order to get the live sound of the band, the production was limited to mixing the vocals and overdubbing the instruments. All three albums were successful in the UK Top 40 and established Rushent's reputation as a hit producer. In addition to the Stranglers, he also produced between 1978 and 1980 for the Buzzcocks on the albums Another Music in a Different Kitchen and Love Bites , for Generation X on their debut album Generation X , for 999 on the albums High Energy Plan and Separates . For the French band Téléphone he produced the albums Téléphone , Crache Ton Venin and Au Cœur De La Nuit .

Rushent founded the record label Genetic Records, which belongs to WEA and Radar Records , in 1979 and set up a recording studio, the Genetic Sound Studio, in Goring on Thames near Reading. The London office of Genetic Records was located directly above the Blitz nightclub , which was the nucleus for the New Romantic movement. Rushent often visited the club and was enthusiastic about the sound of the nightclub-associated bands Visage , Ultravox and Spandau Ballet , but could not win the groups for Genetic Records due to disputes with the parent company Radar. Visage's debut album Visage was the first album recorded in Rushent's studio.

After the breakup of the Buzzcocks in 1981, Pete Shelley asked him to produce demo tapes in order to get a new record deal for a solo album. Production at Rushent's studio ended with Shelley's debut album for Island Records , Homosapien , in which Shelley sang and played guitar and Rushent took on synthesizers and drum sequences. The album is one of the first releases on Rushent's Genetic Records label. Simon Draper , one of the co-founders of Virgin Records , asked him to do something similar for the band The Human League because of the drum sound on Homosapien . The band's songwriters and synthesizer players, Martyn Ware and Ian Craig Marsh, had left The Human League and Philip Oakey and Adrian Wright re-formed with Susan Sulley, Joanne Catherall, Ian Burden and Jo Callis (of The Rezillos ). Rushent was to oversee this new beginning in March 1981 as a producer, because the press concentrated on Ware and Marsh and their new bands British Electric Foundation and Heaven 17 . Instead of remixing the multitrack band recorded in Sheffield for The Sound of the Crowd in March 1981, Rushent suggested Philip Oakey and Adrian Wright leave Sheffield and record the piece from scratch in Genetic Studios. The band was happy with the result and the single reached number 12 in the UK charts. In August 1981, The Human League's next single, Love Action (I Believe in Love) , reached # 3 in the UK Top 40 and Rushent was hired by Virgin Records to produce an album for The Human League. The production of Dare! , which reached two platinum records in Great Britain as an album, was in the British charts for 73 weeks and led them for 4 weeks, took about a year due to the complex programming of the sequencer .

Dare! is considered a milestone in record production. Dare! was the global breakthrough for The Human League and British synth-pop because of its commercial success . The album merges synthesizers and electronic percussion with mainstream pop music for the first time. The single Don't You Want Me topped the charts in Great Britain and the United States, among others, and is one of the 25 best-selling singles in Great Britain with over 1.4 million records sold. Rushent received for producing Dare! In 1982 the BRIT Award, The Human League received the BRIT Award for best British newcomer and a nomination for a Grammy for best newcomer. Dare! received a nomination for the BRIT Award 1982 for best album.

The commercial success and the pressure on new releases on the part of Virgin Records caused Rushent to post one of the first remix albums ever, Love and Dancing , because the band could not record any new pieces on tour. It is controversial whether Love and Dancing came before Non Stop Ecstatic Dancing (Vertigo / Some Bizzarre, 1982), Soft Cell's remix album for Non Stop Erotic Cabaret (Vertigo / Some Bizzarre, 1981) . Since especially Philip Oakey was not enthusiastic about Love and Dancing , the album was released in the style of Barry White's Love Unlimited Orchestra with The League Unlimited Orchestra by Rushent and reached number 3 in the British album charts. Love and Dancing received a platinum record from the BPI on November 1, 1986 . The remix was made with the multitrack band from Dare! prepared. Rushent created new tracks using delay times, phase shifts and feedback from the original tape, copied them onto tape and then spliced ​​the individual tape fragments back together to form a master. The Love and Dancing master tape is said to have had around 2200 splices, so it couldn't be rewound and forwarded before Rushent copied it onto a new master tape. This type of production became groundbreaking for remixing pieces of music.

Because Susan Ann Sulley is said to have insulted Rushent during the preparations for the album Hysteria, he canceled the collaboration with The Human League. Instead, the work intensified with other bands such as the Altered Images around Clare Grogan on the single Happy Birthday (Epic Records, 1981) and the albums Pinky Blue and Collected Images , the Go-Go's around Belinda Carlisle for the album Talk Show and again Pete Shelley on the album XL-1 .

He produced numerous commercially successful and less successful bands, such as The Members, Leisure Process, White China, Then Jerico , Circus Circus Circus and Do Re Mi, and then sold his studio until the early 1990s . He retired completely from the music business for health reasons, after having worked as a consultant for Virgin Records for some time and the record company was sold by Richard Branson in 1992 .

Until his death on June 4, 2011, Rushent lived in Upper Basildon near Reading with his second wife Ceri Davis and their daughter Amy. He set up a new recording studio and produced his son James' band from his first marriage to Linda Trott, Does It Offend You, Yeah? who have favourited girl group The Pipettes and beatboxer Killa Kela .

Genetic Sound Studio

The idea of ​​uniting the recording studio and record label in one hand is based on the concept of Motown with the labels Tamla, Motown and Gordy and the Motown Recording Studios (Detroit) . He wanted to produce records based on the model of Phil Spector and worked intensively with synthesizers in order to achieve a method of music production with synthesizers similar to Spector's " Wall of Sound ". In addition to studio equipment, he bought a Fairlight CMI , a Synclavier, a Roland MC-8 Microcomposer and a Roland Jupiter for around £ 250,000 and began to experiment with them. The microcomposer was one of the first sequencers , the Fairlight CMI one of the first samplers . Both devices together allowed the programming of complex and very precise rhythm sequences that no longer sounded like an acoustic drum kit and did not require a drummer. A little later, drum machines like the Linn LM-1 or the TR series from Roland would take over these functions.

Studio 1 was built according to conventional criteria with a large recording room and a small control room. The small control room served as a model for Studio 2. There, the entire instrumentation, including a 32-channel mixer and several tape machines, was combined in a relatively small room, but not rigidly wired in order to obtain the greatest possible flexibility. Following the American model, the studio had four work areas: the percussion area (initially Dr. Click from Garfield Electronics), the fairlight area, the synclavier area and an area for analog synthesizers (Roland System 700). A computer translated the different machine languages ​​between Fairlight, Synclavier and Roland MC.

Rushent changed the previously common format for the notation of a 24-track tape on a single sheet of paper into the form of a book in which each track was given its own page. Each of these pages could describe the recording bar by bar and contained information on the tempo , the control voltage , the step time , the keystroke time or the number of the drum pattern used. This notation is due to the changed conditions when recording synthesizer music.

Selection of albums that were created in this studio:

Discography (excerpt)

Albums as a sound engineer

  • Electric Warrior - T. Rex (Polydor Records, 1971)
  • Future Games - Fleetwood Mac (Reprise Records, 1971)
  • Three Friends - Gentle Giant (Vertigo Records, 1972)
  • I, Capricorn - Shirley Bassey (United Artists Records, 1972)
  • Never Never Never - Shirley Bassey (United Artists Records, 1973)
  • Nobody Does it Like Me - Shirley Bassey (United Artists Records, 1974)
  • Good Bad But Beautiful - Shirley Bassey (United Artists Records, 1975)
  • Love, Life and Feelings - Shirley Bassey (United Artists Records, 1976)
  • Out on the Street - David Essex (CBS Records, 1976)

Albums as a producer

  • Rattus Norvegicus - The Stranglers ( United Artists , 1977)
  • No More Heroes - The Stranglers (United Artists, 1977)
  • Téléphone - Téléphone (EMI Records, 1977)
  • Black and White - The Stranglers (United Artists, 1978)
  • Another Music in a Different Kitchen - Buzzcocks (United Artists, 1978)
  • Love Bites - Buzzcocks (United Artists, 1978)
  • Generation X - Generation X (Chrysalis Records, 1978)
  • High Energy Plan - 999 (PVC Records, 1978)
  • Separates - 999 (United Artists Records, 1978)
  • Crache Ton Venin - Téléphone (EMI Records, 1979)
  • The Raven - The Stranglers (United Artists, 1979)
  • Au Cœur De La Nuit - Téléphone (EMI Records, 1980)
  • Homosapien - Pete Shelley (Island Records / Genetic Records, 1981)
  • Dare! - The Human League (Virgin Records, 1981)
  • Love and Dancing - The League Unlimited Orchestra (Virgin Records, 1982)
  • Pinky Blue - Altered Images (Epic Records, 1982)
  • Collected Images - Altered Images (Epic Records, 1984)
  • Talk Show - The Go-Go's (IRS Records, 1984)
  • XL-1 - Pete Shelley (Island Records / Genetic Records, 1983)

Prizes and awards

  • 1982 BRIT Award - Best British Producer for Dare!

literature

  • Simon Reynolds: Rip It Up And Start Again . Hannibal Verlag, Höfen 2007, ISBN 978-3-85445-270-6 (Chapter 17 Electric Dreams: Synthiepop ).
  • Simon Reynolds: Totally Wired - Postpunk Interviews and Overviews . Soft Skull Press, New York 2010, ISBN 978-1-59376-286-5 (interview with Martin Rushent).
  • Michael Norman and Ben Dickey: The Complete Synthesizer Handbook . Zomba Books, London 1984, ISBN 0-946391-35-1 (Chapter 9 Eurythmics / Plank / Rushent ).

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d Martin Rushent. In: telegraph.co.uk. June 7, 2011, accessed June 21, 2011 .
  2. ^ Martin Rushent: Synth-pop pioneer and innovative producer of the Human League, the Stranglers and Buzzcocks. In: independent.co.uk. June 9, 2011, accessed June 21, 2011 .
  3. ↑ a b c Tom Flint: Martin Rushent: from Punk to Electro. In: soundonsound.com. February 1, 2007, accessed October 23, 2010 .
  4. ^ A b Richard Buskin: Human League 'Don't You Want Me'. In: soundonsound.com. July 1, 2010, accessed October 30, 2010 .
  5. ↑ a b c Linda Serck: Pangbourne producer to the stars. In: bbc.co.uk. November 16, 2009, accessed October 28, 2010 .
  6. ^ Jeff Britton & the Spitfires - Rub Out. In: purepop1uk.blogspot.com. March 29, 2008, accessed October 27, 2010 .
  7. ↑ Téléphone - Mes Vinyles. March 14, 2009, accessed October 30, 2010 (French).
  8. ^ The Go-go's Notebook. (No longer available online.) In: gogonotes.blogspot.com. February 4, 2009, archived from the original on March 5, 2012 ; accessed on October 27, 2010 (English). Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / gogonotes.blogspot.com
  9. ↑ See Reynolds, Rip It Up ..., p. 341.
  10. ↑ a b Certified Awards Search. Retrieved on October 29, 2010 (eng, search criterion: Human League).
  11. ↑ The Human League: Dare! in the Official UK Charts (English)
  12. ↑ Stephen Thomas Erlewine: Dare! - The Human League. In: allmusic.com. Retrieved on November 2, 2010 (English): "One of the defining records of its time" (Eng. "One of the key albums of its time") "
  13. ↑ Don't You Want Me. In: songfactscom. Retrieved October 29, 2010 .
  14. ^ The BRIT's 1982. In: brits.co.uk. Retrieved October 30, 2010 .
  15. ^ Human League. In: trouserpress.com. Retrieved October 29, 2010 .
  16. ↑ player : League Unlimited Orchestra: Love and Dancing. In: play.wordpress.com. June 16, 2010, accessed October 30, 2010 .
  17. ↑ Love and Dancing. In: allmusic.com. Retrieved October 29, 2010 .
  18. ↑ See Reynolds, Totally Wired, p. 300
  19. ↑ Does It Offend You, Yeah? In: laut.de. Retrieved October 29, 2010 .
  20. ↑ a b Norman / Dickey, p. 131
  21. ↑ Philip Burns: Genetic Studios. (No longer available online.) In: A History of British Recording Studios from the 50s - 80s. Archived from the original on June 3, 2011 ; accessed on June 22, 2011 (English). Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.philsbook.com
personal data
SURNAME Rushent, Martin
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Rushent, Martin Charles (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION English music producer, arranger, sound engineer, music studio owner, composer and musician
DATE OF BIRTH July 11, 1948
PLACE OF BIRTH London , Enfield district
DATE OF DEATH June 4, 2011
Place of death Upper Basildon , Berkshire , England