Few London recording studios boast a client list that spans  decades and encompasses international and UK acts with such depth as Southern Studios. Started by the late John Loder, Southern Studios is most known for as the place where Jesus and Mary Chain recorded Psychocandy. 

With adjacent record label Southern Records and an IT company founded by Loder, the company is a multifaceted independent enterprise. Despite its legacy and reputation, Birrell  lets the bands recording at the studio dictate the sound of their music. He explains: “Personally, I like to keep things really simple and let them do their thing. Often I will try and use weird production techniques and they will say, ‘No, no, we like it just like it is, straight and in your face’. So I usually just chuck the band in the room, mic it up and then mix it. I generally use standard distance miking and utilise the overdrive of various mic preamps. Often I will run the whole drum kit through a preamp and run it back to another channel to add some crunch because it brings things foreward in the mix and adds presence.”

Birrell joined the studio as an assistant to John Loder in the mid 80s and eventually took over as head engineer so that Loder could take on a managerial position over the companies. When Birrell began running the studio he brought it up to speed by adding a Pro Tools rig, a few extra nice mic preamps, a Chiswick Reach stereo valve compressor and some other nice bits of kit.

Despite the studio upgrade and addition of Pro Tools, Birrell has still never mixed a record inside a computer. “I use a mixture of plugins and outboard and the studio’s 24-channel Raindirk Series III Vintage Desk,” Birrell states. “I prefer the sound of the eq outside of the computer, although there are certain plugins that have aspects that I like. I track to a tape machine into Pro Tools and then use whatever works best for the sound I want to get, i.e. plugin or outboard.

“The Chiswick Reach compressor is great on everything, especially vocals. I use it on guitars and very heavily on vocals, but hardly hear what it is doing, and it does a really good job. I also use the mic preamps on our Drawmer 1960 pre a lot to get a bit of overdrive.”
The studio also has a collection of pedals that can be heard making swirling sounds on recordings from Dalek and No Age. “Dalek came in and did a song for our experimental Latitudes series,” Birrell says. “And they had the song on the laptop already and they started looping everything through all my pedals and I recorded it.”

The legacy of Southern Studios has helped shape the sound of modern bands across many genres. The strong relationships of the label and the studio, coupled with its principles, have continued to keep it in the forefront of the modern alternative music scene. Birrell furthers: “There are a certain amount of bands where you can say that the manufactured pop thing has taken the rock thing and made it a package, but there are a lot of bands out there that are still doing their thing: making people jump, making things leap out of the speakers and challenging people with their dynamics. I think that Southern, the label and the studio, has promoted that expression over the years. That was something that John was involved in and I am involved in and the label is involved in.

www.southern.com/studio