These New Puritans’ reissue of 2010 album Hidden was one of our highlights of last year, and because a groundbreaking, beautiful album is for life and not just the Christmas lists, we’ve pulled together a guide to the record for you.
We’ve enlisted Puritan Jack Barnett, producer Graham Sutton and mix engineer Dave Cooley to tell the story of the album, track-by-track, from Steve Reich and J Dilla influences to intense studio sessions in Prague.
Read on below to find out more about the making of one of tQ’s favourite albums of the 2010s.
‘Time Xone’
Jack Barnett: This was always intended as a prelude to ‘We Want War’ – to lull you into a false sense of security; maximum contrast. It was important to us to avoid the trap of bringing in classical instrumentation to make things sound ‘orchestral’ or ‘authentic’. We were going for the opposite – to make the music even more uneven and distressed. 2D and stark, like a charcoal drawing. I’d taught myself music notation in the preceding six months so this was a new world to me.
Graham Sutton: I’ve always thought the process devised and decided on to make something has a really important effect on its outcome. For Hidden, I thought it was important that the arrangements shouldn’t be added (as they so often are) as some kind of decorative effect after the fact. I felt quite strongly that they should instead be unapologetically at the heart of things, and that the tracks should grow out of them, which meant that we commenced making Hidden by recording the entire album’s brass and woodwind parts in one four-hour session at SONO in Prague. It was a pretty high pressure situation for all involved but felt fittingly bold. By the end of that one day we had an outline/foundation for most of the record.
‘We Want War’
JB: The taiko drums were very important to this. we hired three of them, delivered by heavy duty trucks. They were half-alive, seven feet tall, with hair and strange organic tissue growing out of them (like some road crew we’ve worked with). They resonate for about five minutes after they’ve been hit, like a gong. The eventual sound is all three layered up, I believe. One of the guiding intuitions of the song was that the kinds of rhythms in ‘Clapping Music’ by Steve Reich could mesh with something like the Diwali Riddim (which I first became aware of through Wayne Wonder’s ‘No Letting Go’, which prompted me to buy a Diwali Riddim compliation). You can hear the concrete and marsh in this.
GS: Where possible, I always tried to record as units rather than solo instruments, to get a feel of ensemble playing. Case in point, ‘We Want War’ has Jack, George and Tom all drumming together, clapping together etc, with them laid out in the room how they emerge from your speakers, no baffles or separation. Somewhat limits your options in terms of editing but more fun to just focus on getting it right!
Dave Cooley: Jack wanted a J Dilla-esque ‘side chain pump’ on several tunes on the record. That effect was originally inspired by early Daft Punk and Thomas Bangalter, and then later on with Madlib and Dilla overloading their samplers with low end. It turns out that you can get a similar pump in Pro Tools. I would run the kick drum into sidechain groups to get most of the other atmospheric elements to ‘blink’ in time with the music, tailoring the release to tempo. In the past I was using that technique on hip hop records but on this album it’s a very unnatural sound on natural elements. The first few moments of ‘We Want War’ are a good example of it when the acoustic drums get dunked down by the 808 bass.
’Three Thousand’
JB: This was the last song to be written for the album. This rhythm really wound up the neighbours on the drum kit at 3am. This is a great George [Barnett] drum song – brutal. The day I wrote it, I saw a rat the size of a horse in George and I’s kitchen. I used a technique influenced by Alvin Lucier on the outro: I recorded the keyboard line, then converted that sound to a shit quality MP3, then reimported it and converted
GS: This track always conjured up an image of Ricardo Montalbán in Fantasy Island for me for some reason.
‘Hologram’
JB: On the surface it evidently seems like a cheery pop song but it’s probably the most complex (‘complex’ is a shit word as complexity is overrated) song on the album.
The instrumental line-up is: three pianos, bassoon, trombone, french horn, two snares, two vibraphones, and I recently read someone describe it as ‘electropop’!
GS: I understood and totally got how Jack’s lexicon for the album wanted to encompass both the brutal and the radiant, shit and gold. Alongside sheer attack there was a need for smaller, more fragile pieces, and that contrast was vital to the album’s effect I think. The intro of ‘Hologram’ coming out of the back of the previous track is a specific moment I love, the interplay of the snares and pianos. The track has hidden depths I think.
JB: It was George’s idea to include the kids on this one, and that completely made the song. Lots of Foley techniques on it: broken glass, knives etc. We wanted depth but without the formal clichés of depth – no distortion or long repetitive jams, no blurry, tranquillised reverb; music without the mollifying effect of fuzz and distortion, every line should be clear and straight and should sharpen your nervous system.
GS: There’s great shitty guitar on this. I always appreciated Jack’s disrespect of the instrument – just a sound-making lump of wood and metal. He can get right classy on bass, mind. The taikos on the album were so great to capture, but absolutely ginormous and proved too big to get into the studio, despite them gamely taking all the doors off their hinges. Thankfully it was built inside a massive distribution warehouse, so we used that space instead to record in once all had gone home at night, which then contributed its natural reverberance.
DC: I was guided by the band’s note to value clarity over warmth and richness. That hi-fi approach juxtaposed with the aggressiveness of the drums is heard album wide.
Attack Music
JB: It was George’s idea to include the kids on this one, and that completely made the song. Lots of Foley techniques on it: broken glass, knives etc. we wanted depth but without the formal clichés of depth – no distortion or long repetitive jams, no blurry tranquilizing reverb; music without the mollifying effect of fuzz and distortion, every line should be clear and straight and should sharpen your nervous system.
GS: Great shitty guitar on this. Always appreciated Jack’s disrespect of the instrument – just a sound making lump of wood and metal. He can get right classy on bass mind.The taikos on the album were so great to capture, but absolutely ginormous and proved too big to get into the studio, despite them gamely taking all the doors off their hinges. Thankfully it was built inside a massive distribution warehouse, so we used that space instead to record in once all had gone home at night, which then contributed its natural reverberance.
DC: I was guided by the band’s note to value clarity over warmth / richness. That hifi approach juxtaposed with the aggressiveness of the drums is heard album wide.
‘Fire-Power’
JB: I remember this live for Hidden Live at The Barbican – the first time the live Foley technician hit the melon [to simulate brain destruction] it vaporised and rained down all over the children’s choir.
GS: This one has probably my favourite drum fill. Trivia: Tom Hein’s rototoms were recorded binaurally. God yes, the Barbican stage was a bit of a mess.
‘Orion’
JB: The chain sounds on this were produced in two ways. Firstly, by George walking them around a concrete floor and secondly, by alternately pouring and slamming them into a bucket, which acted as a kind of soundboard or amp. We tested out tonnes of chains in hardware shops and got some funny looks. I think it’s always a good sign when you are forced into awkward situations in what you do. A big influence on the choruses was the kids’ TV program Mysterious Cities Of Gold, a flying-over-unknown-continents kind of feeling, "up into the stars."
GS: This was an underrated track – a favourite to work on. Getting the prepared piano down was a lot of fun. The pianist, Faith Leadbetter, who is a consummate pro, didn’t bat an eyelid at the mangled tuning and dissonances. The transition from verses to choruses and back on this, opening up and shifting mood, along with the kids’ voices, encapsulates a lot of Hidden to me. Quick sonic chain tip for you after much research: go for the ones with smaller and lighter links.
DC: Checking my notes, I’m seeing that we were having some trickiness getting the Juno synth bass parts to ‘separate out’ clearly from the main bass lines since they shared some lower frequencies. The band wanted that melodic counterpoint between the synths and choir. I ended up subtly distorting the bass synth parts to get them to speak out more in the midrange. Ultimately it jigsawed together nicely.
‘Canticle’
JB: This was
One of those moments where, stripping things away, you find a song within the song. This was the woodwind session for ‘5’, with the brass and pitched percussion removed. Less is more etc.
‘Drum Courts’
JB: ‘Drum Courts’ was one of the album’s centre pieces and maybe my favourite. Some great George Barnett and Tom Hein psychic drumming.
GS: Live at the Barbican, this was a total highlight. We supplemented the PA there and really pushed it. The staff turned white as dust came down off the ceiling. Along with the strobes it was a beautiful assault.
‘White Chords’
JB: AKA the guitar song, otherwise the guitar had become a vestigial limb. This was made with my first ever guitar, £70 from the Argos catalogue when I was seven – served me well.
GS: AKA ‘White Cords’ for the Essex minded. I love Jack’s vocals on this, and I’m a huge fan of his voice generally. My missus reckons he sounds "more Southend than the Kursaal."
’5′
JB: It was very moving hearing these thick brass chords come to life during recording, from thin air, when previously only ever imagined. I wrote this on the college computers on Sibelius (thanks South East Essex Sixth Form College), just messing around, hearing back what I’d drawn in on shit MIDI sounds. On the last day of college I brought in a floppy disc to get it off the antiquated PC, so it would live on and be unhidden. Weirdly, we tried to record ‘5’ on Beat Pyramid. I remember Gareth Jones [producer] saying, ‘I think this is one for the next album’ – he was definitely right.
GS: Tracking the kids’ choir at a school hall in North London was the last bit of recording we did for Hidden. Revisiting their naivety today, combining with the interplay of the ensemble and vibraphones with all that’s happened this year, quite gets to me.
Bonus Tracks
‘Hologram Pianos’
JB: When you strip things away, you find a new piece of music, with qualities you can’t appreciate when it’s crowded out with the other components. This excavates the original three-piano-only composition.
‘We Want War (Brass And Woodwind Version)’
JB: The legendary (horrible, overused word, but completely justified in this case!) Phill Brown engineered the woodwind and brass sessions for the album. Ryan Lott, AKA Son Lux, flew over to help coordinate with the conductor (we’d worked together on the scores for ‘5’ and ‘We Want War’).
‘5 Malletts’
JB: More excavation work, songs within songs.
‘Hologram Chamber Mix’
JB: I love this mix of ‘Hologram’. It opens up more of the song, with the drums stripped away. It was always a touch and go decision, whether to include drum kit in the original.
‘Drum Courts Paris’
JB: Hidden Live was André de Ridder’s idea and he was central to its execution. This version of ‘Drum Courts’ is taken from the Pompidou Centre gig (where a children’s choir pulled out because the gig was too late at night for them). It’s faster and more brutal than the studio version.
‘5–Irreversible Berlin’
JB: This is taken from HAU in Berlin (where a children’s choir pulled out because the German parents realised they’d be singing "we want war". Luckily André scrambled together an emergency choir of his kids and their friends!). You may notice that ‘5-Irreversible Berlin’ crops up as a section of ‘Spiral’ on Field Of Reeds. I always like that kind of continuity and those relationships across albums – there are lots more scattered around.
