Analogue Catalogue Staff

Many studios claim to offer analogue recording, but the reality of the experience is that they will occasionally use a tape machine to warm up some digital recordings. Our recording engineers, like our studio are analogue to the core. Analogue recording requires planning, decision making, trained ears and discipline. The digitisation of recording studios in recent years has meant that these skills are becoming increasingly rare but rest assured they are alive and well and in daily use at Analogue Catalogue.

Our engineers take what they do incredibly seriously, and each has over 20 years experience of working in recording studios. If recorded music represents the point at which art meets science then we are incredibly fortunate to have engineers with an intricate understanding and appreciation of both.

In the late 1980s, Julie was a student on the Audio Engineering course at University College Salford run by famed producer/engineer of the folk revival Bill Leader (Bert Jansch, Pentangle, Christy Moore, The Dubliners and many more). Upon finishing the course Julie was offered the job of tape-op at the now legendary Strawberry Studios, where she put her studies to practical use. Thrown in at the deep end of studio recording, days were spent mic-ing up the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra, nights spent mopping up after the Happy Mondays.

Julie later left Strawberry and went on to become head honcho at Mirage (formerly Pennine Sound Studios) and subsequently The Windings, in addition to freelancing at studios including New Order's Suite 16. These years saw her working with The Charlatans, 808 State, James, Sub Sub, A Guy Called Gerald, Inspiral Carpets, Monaco, Napalm Death, the Vienna Philharmonic, Intastella, The High, Revenge, Marion and Therapy? amongst others.

In 1995 Julie set up a 16 track analogue studio in an old Methodist hall where almost everything recorded there became a fave of John Peel including Mazey Fade (Domino), Prolapse (Cherry Red), Done Lying Down (Abstract Sounds) and her own riot grrrl pop combo Thrush Puppies who signed to short-lived 4AD offshoot Detox Artefacts. In 1997, disenchanted with the music industry, Julie split the Thrush Puppies, closed her studio and went looking to do something else. Music though, has a habit of never letting go. A year later she met Neutral Milk Hotel and fell in love with it all over again. NMH offshoot The Music Tapes stayed at her house using bits of her dismembered studio to finish their 'First Imaginary Symphony For Nomad' album, and she was off again.

Julie with Bob Moog, Glasgow 2004

An old Allen and Heath desk coupled with a 16 track Fostex 1/2" tape machine, augmented by various bits of outbard, mics and effects saw the birth of Analogue Catalogue mk1 in an old Victorian house in South Manchester. Recordings from here included Frances McKee's 'Sunny Moon', the Bridget Storm debut album and the 'lost' follow up to the Lone Pigeon classic 'Concubine Rice'.

In 2003 whilst on tour with Smog, Julie got a call from Funky Junk to say that the Trident Series 80B desk which had been on her wishlist for years had just been pulled out of Utopia Studios in Camden. One call to the bank and a maxed out credit card later the desk was hers. Work then began on what has since become the Analogue Catalogue we have today.

In recent years Julie has produced and/or engineered The Vaselines, The Aliens, The Shivers, Aidan Smith, Jeffrey Lewis, Willard Grant Conspiracy, Supreme Vagabond Craftsman, Player Piano, Unpoc, James Yorkston, Robin James, Elaine Palmer, King Creosote, Graham Massey, Nine Black Alps, Frances McKee, Lone Pigeon and more.

Raised by wolves on the outskirts of Dublin, Rob Cotter co-owns the studio with his wife Julie and likes to think of himself as the éminence grise of Analogue Catalogue.

He maintains the bookings diary, the website and dishes out beatings to the staff when they fail to live up to his notoriously high standards. He keeps his ear to the ground, his nose to the grindstone and his eyes on the prize.

BBC trained and with many years of experience under his belt Andy Popplewell is a highly skilled studio maintenance engineer who ensures that our desk, tape machines and outboard are all working as effieciently as the day they were made.

Andy also provides a professional archiving, analogue tape baking and transfer service via his own 40 Watt Productions. He can transfer analogue masters into digital format for archiving, remastering or remixing. Recent projects include Bucks Fizz, Section 25, 52nd Street, a-ha, Dollar and archival work for the BBC.