Mojo : On early recordings, production was largely a matter of microphone placement and room ambience. What are the factors you consider most important in recording today?
Eno : Well, funnily enough, exactly those same factors! On the new James record, we decided to try something which nobody’s done for many years – which is, write all the songs, rehearse them, get the structures right, then play them live in front of people, and only then record them. When did you last hear of a band doing that, other than on their first album? I chose a brilliant old-school engineer, Gary Langan, who’s fabulous. The result was that we got a recording where you can just sit at the desk and push the faders up in a straight line, and it sounds fucking great!
I suppose that’s the reason why we had all those new songs being played live on the last tour. The reasons bands generally don’t do it is because of bootlegging. Pink Floyd did that before Dark Side of the Moon, and it was bootlegged to the last.
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