The Clockworks and Bernard Butler by Jill Furmanovsky
The Clockworks and Bernard Butler spent a day in Studio Three.
The Clockworks and Bernard Butler have continued Abbey Road‘s Lock-In series with the recording of their collaborative single Mayday Mayday.
“I was excited by the lock-in experiment,” Butler said. “I chose to listen to nothing ahead of the session and work ‘blind’ on the day.”
There was no long-term plan for an album, I had never seen the band perform and I had little idea how their other songs sounded. That way we would all act instinctively for the purpose of the singular recording. I wanted to see how the musicians responded individually and collectively to our instincts by posing questions to decisions they had already made within the mechanics and emotional flow of the song. How thrilling it could be to turn these responses into sound.
“The process proved to be effective – the band were more than willing to throw their song into the ring, deconstruct and listen through the ears of someone listening for the first time, for that is exactly what happens when they are trying to attract any new listener to their music.”