Where The Mystics Swim

by Mike Heron

When Mike Heron decided to record his first solo album since 'Smiling Men With Bad Reputations' in 1971,  Offbeat had just been going for a couple of years as a pre production studio and the studio gear was, lets just say, skeletal. With my recording budget for the album I was able to invest in 2x Adat -8 track digital recorders - which were kept in sync by an ADAT BRC Midi and SMPTE code generating machine.

Percussionist Dave Haswell was instrumental in me getting the gig and he stayed in a remote cottage in the Humbie area of East Lothian. We decided to lay down the backing tracks for the album there using midi and digital tracks] and hired in a Neumann U87 to record most of the parts, one careful overdub at a time.

This allowed us the luxury of time and once we were happy we had the bulk if the music done we went to Jon Turner's Palladium Studios to mix and master.

The musicians that accompanied Mike on the album were Guitarist John Rutherford and Bassist Stewart Smith and Dave on Percussion. They had been gigging the material which really helped the record take shape. 

The songs were great and it was my biggest challenge to date as a producer to do justice to the album. Introducing Midi to Mike's music was seen as quite controversial at the time, but the production wouldn't have been as good without it in my view, although it may have upset some purists. I think it's really stood the test of time and hopefully you'll agree on listening to the sample on this page.