UNKLE Relying On Røde

Few bands can boast a line-up as constantly evolving as UNKLE; beginning with Mo' Wax co-founders James Lavelle and James Goldsworthy in 1994 and taking in members from Japanese hip-hop crew Major Force, Richard File and most notably DJ Shadow - whose debut album Endtroducing... was also released on Mo' Wax. As well as a revolving door of full-time UNKLE members, the band has also frequently collaborated with other artists, such as Thom Yorke (Radiohead), Roots Manuva and Josh Homme (Kyuss, Queens Of The Stone Age).
The current UNKLE line-up consists of James Lavelle (the only constant in the various line-ups) and Pablo Clements, whose previous work was with the band The Psychonauts. Having been on tour with UNKLE for over 18 months, James and Pablo are now looking to settle back down and spend some time writing and developing new projects.
In preparation for the next UNKLE album, the duo have so far spent two weeks in London's Doghouse studios, where they had access to lots of vinage microphones, but Pablo has preferred to use Røde microphones to capture the band's sound. He said: "We placed two Røde Classic II valve mics over the drum kit, and all you need is those and a kick drum mic to get the rawest drum sound ever. We found that we could get the drum mixes we were looking for simply by pushing up the room mics!"
A number of Røde's microphones have been used throughout the album sessions so far. The NT1000 - which Pablo describes as a "really good all-round microphone" - and has been used right across the recordings, including a key role capturing the acoustic piano sounds for which it was placed down low by the side of the piano.
Pablo is particularly keen on the high-end response of the NT1000. He said: "It has a sweet top-end, which really picks up and cuts through the mix. Recently we've been using the NT2000 on vocals as well, which has a really good high frequency response - very similar to the NT1000."
For future experiments, Pablo has just obtained a pair of Røde NT6 small diaphragm condenser mics and was eager to put them into action. He said: "I've heard that they work really well on piano, with the two mics placed inside the piano either side and panned left and right."
In UNKLE's project studio - which uses their kitchen as a live room - the duo feed their Røde mics into a selection of Universal Audio and Avalon preamps. Pablo said: "The Avalon is really nice, but our standard setup is to go direct into the UA 2-610 preamp, followed by UA LA-3A compressors to control the dynamics." Everything is then recorded into Pro Tools or Logic.
(KMcA)