fentonsteve on interviewing A Certain Ratio
I was offered the chance to interview A Certain Ratio when I go to see them play in Nottingham next weekend. Trouble is, I’m not going to get there early enough to conduct an afternoon interview, and I want to catch support band Sink Ya Teeth. So, after racking my brain for questions (which, it turns out, is really quite hard), and crowd-sourcing a few more from the likes of DocVolume, we did it by email.
I played the inquisitive nerdy uber-fan. Guitarist Martin Moscrop (in the hat) and drummer Donald Johnson (in the middle) provided the answers.
Going back right to the start, what was working with Martin Hannett like? Hooky’s and Stephen Morris book suggests he was hard work. Did he make Donald do each drum part separately? Did he try to freeze you out of the control room during mixing? Did someone at the studio really zero the desk and ruin his mix of To Each?
Martin: Everything that needs to has been said about Martin Hannett’s working practices. He liked to instil an element of confusion into the young musicians he was working with and create an atmosphere of tension » Continue Reading.