Justin spoke to the legendary producer Goetz Botzenhardt at his studio here at Tileyard. Goetz teamed up with Rollo Armstrong (Faithless) in the nineties and their collaboration led to many of the big dance records and remixes of the time. He went on to record and mix the first two highly acclaimed Faithless albums and then recorded Dido’s multi-platinum selling album ‘No Angel’. He has also produced artists such as Bjork, Craig David, Sugababes and many, many more.
Justin: Your career has been pretty incredible, so please start by telling us about how you got started and who you’ve worked with.
Goetz: “I came to London in 1989, went to college for a year and then started as an assistant at a recording studio by the name of Swanyard Studios, just behind Highbury Corner. We had two SSL rooms there, and a smaller studio as well. We did a lot of big records there, and that’s where I learned how to be an engineer. It was a different time then, we were working with magnetic tape, and it was quite an interesting time in music, it was just when dance music was getting really big, we were working with Technotronic, and Acid Jazz was really big as well, and The Young Disciples and Incognito and all those bands came and recorded there. My first big jump from being an assistant to being a proper engineer and a mixer was when I started working with Rollo Armstrong, and we started Faithless which was a studio project, and we made a few records and eventually made “Insomnia” there, which blew up big, and then Dido, Rollo’s sister, came along after that, and I worked with them for about six years and just made tonnes of dance records and remixes.”
Justin: Were you always into dance music or was it just the timing of when you entered the music industry?
Goetz: “It was just the timing, growing up in the 80s there was a lot of dance and house stuff came along, before that it was more band stuff which I also really liked. But it’s always easier to make your name with a new style of music, of you can still do indie etc. but there’s already a bunch of people who are really good at it who get all the big jobs, so you have to create something new and ride that wave. I liked the immediacy of dance records, where you get your track pressed up to an acetate and you hear it in a club a week later, but of course now the turnaround is even quicker. After that period I worked with Craig David and the Sugababes into the late nineties and early naughties.”
Justin: How does it feel to work with such big names?
Goetz: “You sort of get used to it, because I started in a big studio, there was a constant flow of big superstars coming through, like George Michael, it was just one famous person after the other, but they’re just people aren’t they… and most of them are okay.” **Laughs** “Well, it’s more the entourage or the hangers-on who might cause problems.”
Justin: So, what are you working on at the moment?
Goetz: “At the moment I’m mixing for a film with a composer called Anne Nikitin, who was here just a second ago, and it’s a film called American Animals.”
Justin: How do the skill-sets differ when mixing a dance track compared with a score for a film?
Goetz: “Well, the main difference is that you’re working with surround sound for the film, also you deliver everything in stems, so you have to make a big template in Pro Tools and everything runs through all these different busses so that the final mixers can do edits when they dub the film. Also with film work, if there’s a decent budget you always have big orchestral recordings which again is a huge track count. It’s nice because they always record them in nice studios, like Air Studios, where my management is based, or Abbey Road, they’re the two big London studios where the orchestras get recorded for films, and they sound amazing and they know what they’re doing so it’s not that hard to mix. Then also sometimes the recordings come from Eastern Europe when the money is tight.”
Justin: Is that quite common, to record stuff abroad?
Goetz: “Yeah, because it’s much cheaper, so they go to Slovakia, Prague or Budapest, and the quality is fine, they’re still good players but they find it harder to play to a click for the really exact stuff and that’s the main difference, really.”
Justin: So, do you do a lot of film work at the moment?
Goetz: “Yeah I do a lot film work these days. It’s nice to vary your work, as you get older, it’s nicer sometimes. Some of the music in the charts doesn’t excite me that much, with all the autotune on the vocals. You have to be in your early twenties or late teens to get into that. But I like some of the dub-step guys, like Skrillex, they make amazing music. When you watch Glastonbury on the TV you think, wow there’s still a lot of amazing music out there these days, there’s more music now being made than there’s ever been.”
Justin: So you think the industry’s doing well, is it still thriving?
Goetz: “Well I think there’s a huge problem in that the writers and producers don’t really get that much money any more. If you’re a live band you can still make decent money, but when I started working you could make a hit record and make some serious money with that but now you have to have a billion plays on Spotify to get any kind of money to make a living from. Some of the younger artists might get adverts and make money from that but they don’t make money from record sales. A lot of records don’t even get produced properly anymore, it’s just someone in Logic on their laptop, and they just knock something up. It’s much harder these days, which is one of the reasons I diversified into film music because they still get paid decent money.”
Justin: Do you think Spotify is a good thing overall, or is it an unfair system?
Goetz: “I think it’s quite unfair on the writers as far as I can tell, but the labels do okay but I don’t really agree with the distribution model. I don’t think it’s Spotify that’s the problem but more the labels dealing in what’s most advantageous to them and not to the artists or the writers but it’s difficult to see how we can change that, unless everybody goes on strike!” **Laughs**
Justin: You’ve got an amazing studio here at Tileyard, how long have you been based here and how did you originally hear about it?
Goetz: “I’ve been here for five and a half years, and I heard about it through some of the other composers like Dru Masters and Sam Sim, and I moved here with Christian Henson who runs Spitfire, I used to mix all of his stuff.”
Justin: What’s it like working at Tileyard?
Goetz: “It’s great, people like Nick and Michael do a great job of connecting everybody, and it’s really cool, I like it.”
Justin: Do you find that you can collaborate easily with people here?
Goetz: “Yeah absolutely, you meet new people, and the thing with working in this industry and being self employed, the more people you meet the better it is, and I don’t really go out to parties that much anymore, so here it’s great. If you have your own studio away from everybody it gets quite lonely.”
Justin: We encourage our students to attend the networking parties here, and to get involved. Would you say the networking aspect is very important?
Goetz: “It’s vital, yeah. The squeaky wheel gets the grease!”
Justin: And finally, what would your advice be to the students here looking to start their careers in the music industry?
Goetz: “Just be creative and make great music, and play your stuff to people, and push to get out there because you have to get noticed. You have to open the doors for yourself, it’s a very competitive industry, and at the end of the day if your music’s no good you’re not going to get anywhere, that’s what it all comes down to.”
Justin: Thanks very much for your time, and we look forward to your masterclass with us next week!
For more information about Goetz, go to: https://www.goetz-botzenhardt.com/
