Conversation with U2's Producer Daniel Lanois/Part 1

Alan Cross posted in his blog part of a conversation he had with Lanois about U2 new album.

Alan Cross: I was up this morning at ten after three downloading the U2 single.

DL: Oh! How was it?

AC: It’s not bad! It’s got some interesting sounds; I think that there was some pretty good production behind it.

DL: Ok. [Laughs]

AC: There was some really interesting sounds in that song. It’s kind of like when I first listened to “Achtung Baby” and heard “The Fly” and you think “This is the band that gave us “Pride in the Name of Love” and “With or Without You?” There are some really sophisticated sounds happening here.

DL: Yeah it’s a hell of a groove, and some of the sounds were provided by The Edge himself. The main guitar parts.

And then there are some nice bits of processing in there, there is a little [makes a laser-like sound that goes “dew dew”]—like a little sound that sort of scoots by, like a high speed sound effect, that’s one that was born through the process of studio manipulation, and it’s one that stuck. So that’s one of the little sounds, courtesy of Daniel Lanois.

AC: That’s got to be one of Adam’s best grooves in a very long time, no?

DL: I think the groove was fantastic. I like the fact that it’s got a nice interesting mixture of technology and hand-played drums.

AC: Now I want to ask you about the drums. Are those electronic drums or is he triggering samples? They don’t sound acoustic…

DL: Oh, that’s an acoustic drum kit on there!

AC: It is?

DL: Absolutely, but there is a separate track that features kind of a bass drum loop that we did of Larry, and it runs along side of the main kit and is featured in certain sections of it. I quite like the marriage of hand-played and the electro combination. I think is very special.

AC: Making a U2 album is never a simple process. They are an industry into themselves. You can measure part of the Irish GDP based on U2 output!

DL: [Laughs] I’ll take your word for it!

AC: So, putting together an album is a very intricate sort of a thing. You guys started working in Fez. Where did you go from there?

DL: We started in Fez Morocco because we wanted a musical and exotic location. One of my first conversations with Bono was one about future hymns—spiritual songs for the future—and he was at the opinion that Morocco would be a great crossroads for a universal feeling for the album.

AC: Did it work?

DL: I think it worked, it set a lovely tone. But the funny thing is everything sounded a little more Moroccan without even ever being to Morocco. So just by having the thought in our heads, it meant that are preparations prior to arriving in Morocco already had a little bit of exoticism in them.

He promised he would post more tomorrow...


source:www.exploremusic.com/home/TheMusicGeekBlog