10 Albums Every Bedroom Producer Can Learn From, Part 1

Occasionally you hear an album that changes the way you look at your own music-making efforts. Over the years, I’ve noticed there are certain records which I keep coming back to, for a number of different reasons – maybe they started a whole new style of music. Or maybe the artist made something that transcended genre boundaries.

Usually it’s one of these, plus the always inspiring fact that they made their album in their bedroom with limited gear, and with no motivation other than to represent their ultimate personal musical vision.

Some of the records below were made by relative or complete unknowns, with minimal gear, no industry funding or influence on the results. Others were made by established or at least experienced ‘stars’, but who rejected studio excess in favour of going back to basics with limited equipment and a brave new direction.

Either way, they all represent what can be achieved, completely regardless of expensive studio gear and resources. The thing they all have in common is that they all had a very focused vision, and knew what they wanted to say and how they wanted to say it.

Often, more gear – whether real or virtual – can just get in the way. So do like these guys and say more with less. Enjoy.

1. DJ Shadow – Endtroducing (1996)

Endtroducing was Josh Davis’ debut album, and in it’s way it re-wrote the rules of Hip Hop. It sounds like a soundtrack album to Davis’ own life, incorporating a massive range of lost gems sampled from forgotten vinyl archives that he discovered ‘lying dormant’ underneath his local record store. This sounds like it’s made up, but check out the turntablism documentary film Scratch (2001) for interviews with Shadow recorded at the store, surrounded by huge piles of records that appear to have been there since the beginning of time itself, and were the natural fodder for all Shadow’s best work.

The album features almost completely instrumental tracks, with snippets of vocals and funny spoken word clips. It was built entirely from those sampled records (the very first record to do so) using only an Akai MPC60 sampler. Shadow used to go over to his friend Dan Nakamura’s house (aka Dan ‘The Automator’ of Gorillaz, Handsome Boy Modelling School etc.) to work and seek advice, sitting in Nakamura’s mothers attic where the studio was set up…

2. Richie Hawtin / Plastikman – Closer (2003)

Hawtin brings out his Plastikman alias every few years – he has said that it would be unhealthy to stay in the mindset required to make Plastikman records for extended periods of time. You can tell what he means when you listen to Closer – it’s so minimal, and yet so deep, constantly twisting and morphing in really subtle ways.

Much of the album was made with Hawtin’s ubiquitous Roland TB-303 and 909 synth and drum machines, but he also made heavy use of particular software instruments from Native Instruments. He says he started the album by finding just the right synth pad sound on NI’s FM8 soft synth, and which is used in some aspect on every single track. He also programmed drums and percussion elements using NI’s Battery drum sampler.

This album was also the first time that Hawtin was determined to incorporate his own vocals into his music – the resulting pitched-down, stream-of-consciousness ‘internal’ monologue on album opener Ask Yourself is a great example of making something all the more memorable because it was such a struggle to conceive and create.

Hawtin was living in New York at the time, and on the last night before he moved out of the city for good, he went out at night with a DAT recorder and taped a whole library of different atmosphere tracks. These ghostly ambiences weave subliminally through the album, and I think it’s one of the reasons the record has so much depth.

3. Elbow – The Seldom Seen Kid (2008)

Elbow had to record label and no producer when they made this album. It went on to win the UK Mercury Music Prize as best album of the year. It’s a great example of a band using really modern, DIY techniques to create unique sounds and textures for their songs.

The Seldom Seen Kid was produced by the band’s keyboard player Craig Potter, and although they had access to a large rehearsal room at Blueprint Studios in Manchester, the album was really created ‘in the box’ on an extremely minimal studio set-up. Potter didn’t even have a control surface for operating the Pro Tools rig, preferring just the mouse and keyboard.

“We’re very much the sort of band that writes in the studio. A lot of it is us in the studio building sounds… quite often we end up layering and building a song sat round the computer.”

“We’re not necessarily satisfied with straight-up guitar sounds or keyboard sounds or bass sounds… We’ll get a sound on the guitar but we’ll think, ‘Well, it’s sort of what we were thinking of…” The band also use a lot of distortion and saturation plugins to colour their sounds and create a a really big, layered sound.

4. The Prodigy – Always Outnumbered, Never Outgunned (2004)

After making one of the biggest electronic albums ever with 1997’s The Fat Of The Land, Liam Howlett spent nearly 8 years coming up with the next one.

But in truth, he had already written another album’s worth of material in the couple of years after Fat Of The Land. The problem was, he was starting to immitate his own style – a fact not missed by anyone who saw the video for 2002’s Baby’s Got A Temper single. Howlett’s answer: chuck the studio full of hardware gear, get a laptop with Propellerhead’s Reason virtual rack, and sit in bed watching Moonraker and making beats.

Always Outnumbered, Never Outgunned brought the Prodigy punk/electronic sound up to date, whilst retaining almost everything we liked about them in the first place. All it took was for Howlett to switch up his working method and stop things going stale – same producer, different tools.

5. Aphex Twin – Selected Ambient Works 85-92 (1992)

This album helped define not just a genre but a whole era in electronic music. Taking the ‘ambient’ template from Brian Eno, Richard D. James lays off the heavily processed beats and glitches that he would become known for later. Here, you can tell within seconds of opening track Xtal what you’re in for – simple drum machine patterns and drifting, timeless pad sounds – all basic individual sounds that come together to give an impression of amazing depth and subtlety.

I’m going to quote Pitchfork now, their review sums up nicely the impact this album had:

“They say next to no one heard the Velvet Underground’s first album when it was released, but everyone who did went on to start a band. Listening to Selected Ambient Works 85-92, one can’t help but imagine the seeds being planted in the imaginations of the lucky few who were there when it all began. Nestled in these simple, undeniably danceable tracks are the roots of contemporary IDM. And despite its somewhat primitive origins, the final product remains among the most interesting ever created with a keyboard and a computer.”

In short, if you make music in your room, you need to hear this – it’s influenced pretty much every electronic musician of the last 18 years.

Stay tuned for Part 2, featuring:

6. James Holden – The Idiots Are Winning (2006)

7. Calvin Harris – I Created Disco (2007)

8. Flying Lotus – Los Angeles

9. David Holmes – This Film’s Crap, Let’s Slash The Seats

10. Matthew Dear – Leave Luck To Heaven (2003)

Please leave a comment if you like the article! And let me know what your favourite inspiration albums are.