Urchin Studios

Yesterday we were very privileged to record ex-Spiders From Mars Legend Woodmansey who was playing drums on a friend’s project. Here he is back in the day with Bowie playing on The Old Grey Whistle Test:

Woody is a really gent and a pleasure to work with. He’s got great feel, a really deep pocket  and despite being not quite as young as he was in ’72 I can quite safely say that he’s the loudest drummer we’ve ever recorded.

Having recorded loads of drummers over the last four year in the same room and on the same drums it never fails to amaze me how completely different they all sound. When Woody started playing there was a quite profound familiarity in the sound, which I guess is no surprise as a lot of the records he’s played on are etched into my musical DNA. Still though, the session was a real reminder to me as to just how dependent the sound of any instrument is down to the person playing it and also how as engineers and producers we need to be flexible with our technical parameters in order to accomodate the best in each individual player.