Grammy-winning Swedish producer, musician and songwriter Martin Terefe has worked with a wide range of artists, including KT Tunstall, Christina Aguilera, Cat Stevens, Jason Mraz, James Morrison, Train, A-ha, Mary J. Blige, Ron Sexsmith and Martha Wainwright. He is also the owner of Eastcote and Kensaltown Studios, in the heart of West London.

Founded in 1980 by musician and engineer Philip Bagenal and Chaz Jankel of Ian Dury & The Blockheads, the legendary Eastcote Studios, with its airy courtyard, has welcomed a long list of musicians through its doors, including The Pogues, Grace Jones, Depeche Mode, Massive Attack, Suede, Placebo, Adele, Arctic Monkeys, Mumford & Sons, Wolf Alice and Yungblud.

Sean Hannam spoke to Terefe about Eastcote’s legacy, his vintage Trident mixing desk, his role as a producer and how he thinks AI will affect the music industry in the future.

AMI: You’ve had a long relationship with Eastcote Studios, haven’t you?

Eastcote was the first studio in London I worked in, in 1993 – that’s how I met Philip [Bagenal]. I moved to London in ’96 and got a place across the road, in somewhere called The Saga Centre, but I loved this space – it’s such a crazy building.

AMI: What was the space like back then?

It was less developed – the big building at the front wasn’t there; it was a car park. There had been manufacturing going on, but it stopped when Philip started Eastcote Studios, so it was just artists and people wanting cheap offices. It was popular, though. It was almost impossible to get a space there, and it was owned by a family headed up by a retired army colonel – everyone called him The Colonel. I kept going there and asking him if there was any space, and one day he said, ‘Do you want a whisky?’ So, I had a whisky, and he said I could move in. That’s how I got to know Philip – we were studio neighbours for a long time.

In 2002, I still had the place over the road, but then I took out the lease on the area at the front [of Eastcote], and Kelly Pribble from Quad Studios, my friend Andreas Olsson and I built a studio — that was Kensaltown. So, I was working there and Philip was working at Eastcote, but he became ill – he had Parkinson’s disease – and wanted to stop working. At the time, it looked like there were no takers for the studio, and the people looking at it wanted to convert it into offices or flats, so I decided to take it over.

AMI: So many well-known acts have recorded at Eastcote over the years. What makes it so special?

Part of it was Philip. I don’t know if it was by accident or sheer genius, but he ended up inside several of the big English music movements. It wasn’t by advertising the studio to clients, and he didn’t have the latest technology – the studio was mid-level. It was a lot about his story: he wasn’t interested in the music business, he didn’t want to sign contracts, and there were no production deals. He just wanted people to come in and pay the bill. He was like a producer – if he’d been American, he’d probably have been Rick Rubin. He didn’t let A&R people and managers into the building; he used to tell them to bugger off, as it was where the musicians worked. The place is hidden away, and artists liked that. Philip wouldn’t have told Depeche Mode that The Pogues had been there… it wasn’t about that.

In the 2000s, it became a bit of a perfect storm. I was working on quite a lot of American stuff – big commercial acts. That was after 10 years of working with independent artists like Ron Sexsmith and Martha Wainwright. When I started working with KT Tunstall and James Morrison, we weren’t really doing anything different, but then some of those records became big at the same time. No one wanted to sign KT for eight years – they thought she was too old, the music was weird and no one wanted to listen to acoustic guitar. She was busking, and then she did that huge performance [Later… with Jools Holland, in 2004] and, suddenly, she had an album that sold six million copies.

At the time, singer-songwriter music wasn’t popular, but then there was a wave of it. Jason Mraz was a big one too – he came about at the same time as people like Jack Johnson – that soft guitar… It’s whatever becomes popular. I never felt that there was a huge difference in the kind of artists I worked with, but once that happened, obviously a lot changed.

Before then, I used to get a lot of work from the artists. The labels would be like, ‘Oh no – not that guy; he uses weird echoes and makes everything sound strange…’ Even if I was making the album, someone else would come in and make the single. After the early 2000s, that shifted and, suddenly, I was the guy the labels brought in for the single. I was working more with the labels and less with the artists – that becomes self-perpetuating. You get artists who are well-funded and poised for success, instead of having to work for eight years with a developing artist. After a while, when you’re on the frontline of the competitive music world, your mind changes a little bit. People pay you a lot of money, and they want the song to be in the charts, and you have to consider that. Even if you try not to, it’s a reality.

AMI: Let’s talk about some of the different rooms at Eastcote – Studio 1 is the flagship studio, isn’t it?

Studio 1 is the only studio that’s fully commercial – Studio 2 has been used commercially on and off. When Philip was at Studio 2, it was commercial, and then Tim Simenon was there for three or four years, so it was his place. There have been different producers who have made camp there. For the last few years, Studio 2 has been my studio, and when I’m not there, I rent it out.

AMI: There’s also Eastcote Mastering, which is a Dolby Atmos studio, The Writing Room, and The Shed, which is a small studio and has the step where Adele’s ‘Rolling in the Deep’ beat was stomped out…

Yeah – most of that song was done in The Shed.

AMI: The studios have a mix of new and vintage gear – the mixing desk in Studio 1 came from Island Records’ Basing Street Studios, but what can you tell us about the desk in Studio 2?

It’s an old Trident B-range [from 1973] and one of only 19 ever made. It has 28 tracks and discrete electronics, and it was designed by Malcolm Toft. Some people say it was from Trident Studios, but others say that was another B-range, so who knows? I bought it because I couldn’t afford a Neve, but I love it – I use it on pretty much everything. I had three of them for a while when I was over at Kensaltown. Suddenly, they became so valuable, and everyone wanted to buy the ones I didn’t use.

AMI: Can you tell us about some of the engineering team at Eastcote?

George Murphy is the chief engineer – he started working for Philip and he’s been here maybe 12–14 years. He’s great at mixing and he’s an incredible recording engineer – he keeps winning Grammys. We have a good new guy called Ed Clay, who came from an education programme – we work with schools and universities, so someone can come and do work experience at the studio as part of their education. Ed finished university and started with us, and George said: ‘This is the first guy out of everyone who’s been here who could be better than me!’ We have another great engineer called Liam Larkin.

AMI: Any good rock ‘n’ roll stories from your time at Eastcote?

There are a lot of them… I don’t know which ones are appropriate… There are quite a lot in my book [Like Trying to Catch Lightning in a Bottle: 40 Years of Making Music at Eastcote Studios]. Depeche Mode were in Studio 2 for 15 months and Dave Gahan doesn’t even remember being in London!

AMI: As well as a producer, you’re also a musician and a songwriter. How do you see your role as a producer?

It’s a really difficult question. When you’re working for a label, your role is to turn the budget that you’ve been given into a product that they can sell, but the role can vary and it can be very different now. Sometimes a song is made by a track producer, and then it’s sent somewhere. But the way I’ve been producing is like an arranger and sometimes that’s come through projects where I’ve been writing songs. With Train, for example, I was writing with them for one thing, and they liked the sound of the demo, so I ended up doing the whole Save Me, San Francisco album. They had started working on it with another producer, but they thought it sounded too slick.

I don’t do much electronic stuff… I don’t have a lot of patience when I sit in front of a computer. I have to get up and get out of the room. I love sitting with people and playing with them. If I have a production technique, it’s getting my favourite musicians in a room together, because I’m one myself, so I would be playing one of the instruments. A lot of vocalists want to sing on their own to something but, over the years, I’ve tried more to get the vocals done with the band at the same time, or at least some early versions, because I always feel that’s when they sing with the most energy. So, I guess I’m a kind of energy curator.

AMI: In a difficult time for the music industry, how do you see the future for Eastcote Studios?

I think we’re lucky because we’re in a niche – there aren’t going to be any AI servers here.

AMI: What’s your take on AI in music? Is it a useful tool or a threat?

It could probably be a tool in the right hands, but right now I think it’s a threat. If you’re talking specifically about the studio, I don’t think it [AI] is a threat because the people and artists who come in here probably aren’t involved in it, but I think [the opportunity] for humans to make library music has gone, and to some extent soundtracks – stuff that’s quite generic with the same kind of strings. Why would you spend a week-long, expensive process to do something you can do in a few seconds? I think pop music is slightly under threat. The big stars will always be there, but the Top 40 charts will be full of songs that sound indistinguishable. Playlists on Spotify are already full of AI.

AMI: Finally, is there any new studio tech that’s exciting you?

There’s a pedal I love. It doesn’t have AI in it, but it’s fully digital. It’s called Microcosm and it’s made by a company called Hologram [Electronics]. It’s impossible to figure out what it does – it just seems to resample and loop stuff in a random way. You can plug it in and stuff will happen. Every producer who sits in a room on their own should get one.

www.eastcotestudios.com