britneybaby
Jan 26th, 2006, 05:07 PM
http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/artslife/story.html?...26505a16&k=28775&p=1 (http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/artslife/story.html?id=0df22198-a411-4e52-a000-618c26505a16&k=28775&p=1)
Meet the man behind Britney Spears
Gavin Bradley lays down some of pop's biggest hits in his Toronto apartment
Mike Doherty, National Post
Published: Thursday, January 26, 2006
No one can predict the future of pop music, but Gavin Bradley could probably venture a good guess. From his 8th floor apartment in downtown Toronto, Bradley is crafting beats that are slated to form the foundations of tracks by stars such as Britney Spears, Dido, Nelly Furtado, and Joss Stone, as well as artists you've never heard of --but with his help you will.
Bradley's work is a prime example of how technology continues to change the way music is made. Largely gone are the days when, for instance, John Lennon and Paul McCartney would sit down with their guitars and simply say, "Let's write a swimming pool." Nowadays, the pool's location is scouted, foundations are carefully planned, and various contractors are consulted before a feasibility study is put in place. In other words, it takes more people and more stages to close the gap between inspiration and execution. For many artists, Bradley is there to provide the initial spark.
Growing up in Ottawa, he found himself drawn to his vocation from an impressively early age: "I was 11 or 12 when I realized that I wanted to cut songs up," he says. "I got some really bad home turntables, a small mixer, a synthesizer, and a two-track reel-to-reel that I could actually slice up the tape on. I also had an old pre-1900 piano, so I would make these weird cut-up tape loops with piano on top, and some hip-hop-style scratching. It sounded like experimental music: really sprawling, structureless."
Bradley's friends would react to his collages with the decidedly neutral adjective, "interesting." Undeterred, he left for Toronto to apprentice at recording studios in the mid-'90s.
As well as assisting in engineering other artists' projects, he began recording his own music, singing and producing a set of pop-song demos.
Music industry types responded with genuine interest, and Bradley's aptitude for programming creative house music led to a host of commissions for remixes from labels in Toronto and New York. The experience could be rather impersonal -- despite reconfiguring the work of artists like Beck and Public Enemy for the dance floor, he had no personal contact with them. Nonetheless, the odd message would buoy him: Bradley remembers Tori Amos's record-label boss calling to say, " 'I just played your mix for her, and she was on the floor freaking out.' That was really fun."
As Bradley became known for crafting both floor-filling freak-outs and atmospheric, trip-hop-flavoured chill-outs, he eventually came to the attention of Los Angeles-based hitmakers Rick Nowels (Madonna, Santana) and Holly Knight (Tina Turner, Aerosmith). Nowels, in particular, had begun working in a way suggested by hip hop, in which rappers craft verses and songs around beats supplied by producers. "If you sit down and just strum a guitar," says Bradley, "you're always starting from the same place, but if you get an atmosphere, or a different bass line that you never would have thought of yourself, it gives you a different jumping-off point." The original beats may eventually be gussied up or re-programmed by bigger names, but the genesis of these tracks is with Bradley.
With Nowels, he's been asked to "extrapolate the future" for a given artist "based on what's happening in music now and what I think they might want to do." He accomplishes this entirely from home, working on a desktop computer hooked up to a set of keyboards and effects racks, and one powerful set of speakers whose sound reverberates around his cozy, dark-green-painted apartment. Bradley's beats for Spears have a chipper, infectious feel influenced by '80s electro; for Stone, who's known more for her organic sound, he's supplied warmer programming with shuffling tambourines; Furtado gets intricate, calypso-esque rhythms; new Virgin Records signing Alaina Beaton, whom Bradley describes as "the female Marilyn Manson," gets scary-sounding music in 6/8 time ("the Goths love their triplets," he explains). Dido's material, in keeping with Bradley's own artistic leanings, is more atmospheric. Bradley's nothing if not versatile: a song written by Knight, slated for the FIFA World Cup CD, and under consideration by Def Leppard vocalist Joe Elliott, is a mammoth rocker featuring Bradley's rhythms.
You'd figure Bradley could call in a few favours for his own material, but on his new solo album, Deep Freeze, Philosopher Kings guitarist James Bryan (whose new boutique label, UMI, is releasing the project) is the only guest who could be considered a star.
Most singer/songwriters' debut albums feature their lyrical vision harnessed to someone else's sonic conception, but Deep Freeze's production itself is a statement. Bradley's trademark piano, which sounds as though it were recorded underwater, and there's an understated emotional quality running through even the most club-friendly material. "There's something about ambient spaces in songs," says Bradley, "where you can pull more emotion out of a vocal track or a piano part by just bouncing it around. Things carrying over like memories of something that already happened in the song, as a delay to the next chord or the next part -- I love that stuff."
One thing that Bradley hasn't gotten used to is hearing his music in clubs. "I'm happy," he says, "but it feels really masturbatory to be dancing to my own track that I know came out of my apartment. I tend to get really analytical when I hear it. I go, 'OK, let's hear if the kick drum is in the right place. Is the EQ right on the vocals?'"
Meet the man behind Britney Spears
Gavin Bradley lays down some of pop's biggest hits in his Toronto apartment
Mike Doherty, National Post
Published: Thursday, January 26, 2006
No one can predict the future of pop music, but Gavin Bradley could probably venture a good guess. From his 8th floor apartment in downtown Toronto, Bradley is crafting beats that are slated to form the foundations of tracks by stars such as Britney Spears, Dido, Nelly Furtado, and Joss Stone, as well as artists you've never heard of --but with his help you will.
Bradley's work is a prime example of how technology continues to change the way music is made. Largely gone are the days when, for instance, John Lennon and Paul McCartney would sit down with their guitars and simply say, "Let's write a swimming pool." Nowadays, the pool's location is scouted, foundations are carefully planned, and various contractors are consulted before a feasibility study is put in place. In other words, it takes more people and more stages to close the gap between inspiration and execution. For many artists, Bradley is there to provide the initial spark.
Growing up in Ottawa, he found himself drawn to his vocation from an impressively early age: "I was 11 or 12 when I realized that I wanted to cut songs up," he says. "I got some really bad home turntables, a small mixer, a synthesizer, and a two-track reel-to-reel that I could actually slice up the tape on. I also had an old pre-1900 piano, so I would make these weird cut-up tape loops with piano on top, and some hip-hop-style scratching. It sounded like experimental music: really sprawling, structureless."
Bradley's friends would react to his collages with the decidedly neutral adjective, "interesting." Undeterred, he left for Toronto to apprentice at recording studios in the mid-'90s.
As well as assisting in engineering other artists' projects, he began recording his own music, singing and producing a set of pop-song demos.
Music industry types responded with genuine interest, and Bradley's aptitude for programming creative house music led to a host of commissions for remixes from labels in Toronto and New York. The experience could be rather impersonal -- despite reconfiguring the work of artists like Beck and Public Enemy for the dance floor, he had no personal contact with them. Nonetheless, the odd message would buoy him: Bradley remembers Tori Amos's record-label boss calling to say, " 'I just played your mix for her, and she was on the floor freaking out.' That was really fun."
As Bradley became known for crafting both floor-filling freak-outs and atmospheric, trip-hop-flavoured chill-outs, he eventually came to the attention of Los Angeles-based hitmakers Rick Nowels (Madonna, Santana) and Holly Knight (Tina Turner, Aerosmith). Nowels, in particular, had begun working in a way suggested by hip hop, in which rappers craft verses and songs around beats supplied by producers. "If you sit down and just strum a guitar," says Bradley, "you're always starting from the same place, but if you get an atmosphere, or a different bass line that you never would have thought of yourself, it gives you a different jumping-off point." The original beats may eventually be gussied up or re-programmed by bigger names, but the genesis of these tracks is with Bradley.
With Nowels, he's been asked to "extrapolate the future" for a given artist "based on what's happening in music now and what I think they might want to do." He accomplishes this entirely from home, working on a desktop computer hooked up to a set of keyboards and effects racks, and one powerful set of speakers whose sound reverberates around his cozy, dark-green-painted apartment. Bradley's beats for Spears have a chipper, infectious feel influenced by '80s electro; for Stone, who's known more for her organic sound, he's supplied warmer programming with shuffling tambourines; Furtado gets intricate, calypso-esque rhythms; new Virgin Records signing Alaina Beaton, whom Bradley describes as "the female Marilyn Manson," gets scary-sounding music in 6/8 time ("the Goths love their triplets," he explains). Dido's material, in keeping with Bradley's own artistic leanings, is more atmospheric. Bradley's nothing if not versatile: a song written by Knight, slated for the FIFA World Cup CD, and under consideration by Def Leppard vocalist Joe Elliott, is a mammoth rocker featuring Bradley's rhythms.
You'd figure Bradley could call in a few favours for his own material, but on his new solo album, Deep Freeze, Philosopher Kings guitarist James Bryan (whose new boutique label, UMI, is releasing the project) is the only guest who could be considered a star.
Most singer/songwriters' debut albums feature their lyrical vision harnessed to someone else's sonic conception, but Deep Freeze's production itself is a statement. Bradley's trademark piano, which sounds as though it were recorded underwater, and there's an understated emotional quality running through even the most club-friendly material. "There's something about ambient spaces in songs," says Bradley, "where you can pull more emotion out of a vocal track or a piano part by just bouncing it around. Things carrying over like memories of something that already happened in the song, as a delay to the next chord or the next part -- I love that stuff."
One thing that Bradley hasn't gotten used to is hearing his music in clubs. "I'm happy," he says, "but it feels really masturbatory to be dancing to my own track that I know came out of my apartment. I tend to get really analytical when I hear it. I go, 'OK, let's hear if the kick drum is in the right place. Is the EQ right on the vocals?'"