frank bough

Frank Bough Sound III

I don’t recall flagging up this really cool article last year from Sound On Sound, who interviewed Jez & Dan Austin about producing Kingdom Of Rust. A great insight into the recording process.

Williams admits that it wasn’t just this democratic approach, along with an obsessive attention to detail, that created such a long gap between Doves albums. There was a bit of writer’s block involved too, which the guitarist tackled by employing the radical Immersion Music Method, invented in 2001 by a pair of songwriters from Oakland, California.

“I was finding myself getting into bad habits,” he says. “Like music avoidance — instead of knuckling down and getting on with songwriting, you might find an excuse to get your emails or pop out and see your mates. So I read this amazing book [The Frustrated Songwriter’s Handbook, by Karl Coryat and Nicholas Dobson]. I’m simplifying it here, but basically what it boils down to is you have to write a song every half an hour for 12 hours. It’s incredible. I had my Logic all set up as a template, everything plugged in ready to go. Then quite a few songs started to come out of these sessions.”

In the tradition of their previous facilities, their latest studio is — bizarrely — named after former breakfast TV host Frank Bough. “It’s Andy’s perverse sense of humour,” his brother explains. Not that Frank Bough Sound III is likely to last much longer than its predecessors, since Doves are already becoming keen to move on.

“We’re getting a little bit tired of it now, ‘cause it was such an intense, long period to record this fourth album,” Jez laughs. “There’s only so much cowshit you can take.”

Also some good 6 Music news from Baldilocks at doves board. Doves will soon be doing a live session on the Lauren Laverne show. Will flag up more info when I get it.