Stormzy

We were influenced by albums like Kanye [West’s] The Life Of Pablo, Frank Ocean’s Blonde and all of Drake’s stuff from a sonic point of view. We were really working on getting a high-end vocal sound, which would be great against the darkness of the drums and the bass and it would allow Stormzy’s vocal to really cut through. The main mic we used was a Brauner VM1 into an Avedis preamp, into an API 550 EQ and a Tube Tech CL1B compressor, so it was a pretty high-end chain. We also used the UTA preamp as well, which has its own EQ on different tracks. Then we would take Stormzy’s vocal and bounce it out through the desk and through another compression stage – we’ve got the UTA Fairchild compressor, which is incredible.