ABSTRACT
This chapter explores a historical moment in British recording studio culture (1979–1984) when recordists’ aesthetic aspirations aligned with new technological capabilities in a sweeping embrace of studio artifice. Having experienced mid-70s punk less as political populism than aesthetic liberation, many postpunk musicians, engineers, and producers pursued experimental studio techniques aimed at constructing novel representations of performances, sounds, and ambient spaces. Their innovative methods made use of new machines—e.g., digital time-domain processors, samplers, and sequencers—that engineer Martin Hannett called “gifts to the imagination.” Though inventive production practices permeated the recording and mixing process, this chapter focuses on an especially apparent and ubiquitous site of creative play: a pop record’s primal core, the rhythm track.
