When did you realize music would be your occupation?

I was always the most musical one in my family. My sister is a very talented visual artist, she was about fifteen when I was born. I always found her creative world very exciting and mysterious. Very early on however, I was more drawn to music. I found out that I could sing and had a good sense of harmonic structure, how notes related and worked with each other. I loved being in choirs when I was growing up, the whole acoustics of a big space, you know, and people singing together in it, the whole humanity of it was very inspiring to me. I went to a boarding school near London while my parents lived in a field in the middle of the Essex countryside. This meant that during the summer holidays, well, during any holidays, it was pretty much just my dog, my piano and I. Eventually, my guitar joined the family. Because my friends were not there in the holidays I discovered the whole world of music. I eventually got a four-track and made my own songs and demos. I fell in love with all aspects of music-making very early on.

Awesome. Would you say that some sort of isolation is always creativity's best friend?

Yeah. I think it hones and focuses the mind, it lets you immerse yourself in the creativity without other things vying for your attention.

Jumping forward in time: how did you get into the producing game?

Not actually that much forward in time. When I was fifteen, I got a job making tea in a studio in North London. I did this for two weeks, then they offered me a job, just running errands etc, eventually working my way up to being an assistant in the studio. Of course I accepted, and of course my parents were mortified. They wanted me to go to college and complete my education, I don't know what they wanted me to become, but I'm sure they weren't expecting what I did become (laughs)! I just knew that I had to do it though, I had to grasp the opportunity. At that point, I was still very much, in my head, an artist. I don't think that's ever left me. I still contribute musically to all the productions that I'm involved with. When I started, the studio was very much an environment where there was a group of technical people in the room who worked together as a team. There was a Tape Op, there was an assistant, there was an engineer and a producer. In many ways, that's kind of gone now, all of these roles have been bundled together into one person now, the guy who's at the helm, on the keyboard, on the computer, running the show. It's very interesting to see how the whole dynamic of how a studio works has changed in the last 25 years.

Yet you do enjoy collaborative producing now and then, with Brian Eno, for example!

Yes I do, very much so! I've worked with different people over the last few albums, there are many great producers I've worked with over the years (many in the early years I basically learnt my craft from). More recently on Coldplay records I've worked with Brian Eno, Markus Dravs, Paul Epworth, Stargate); they are all amazing talents. You learn so much when you're in a room with someone, you learn to hear what they are hearing, and what they are drawing from, how they react to musical stimuli. It's a very complex thing, any art form is. There are so many emotions, and avenues for those emotions. I think seeing how different people derive these emotions is a very interesting thing. You can read a room and see what everyone is feeling from the music they're hearing. It can be very diverse.

That vast register can be heard on your various productions. The glove fits the hand so perfectly, whether it's Natalie Imbruglia's Lukas or Coldplay's A Sky Full of Stars. Are you a good listener?

I think I have to be. It's about getting to the heart of the song. Everything that I do (hopefully) serves the song, the song is both an idea and a story. It's very similar to medieval times, where the artist would tell the story in a dark room in front of the fire at night, draw people in and involve them in a world of their imagination, make a little microcosm for people to live in. It takes you away from somewhere, and it puts you somewhere else. If you can serve that song, and that initial idea, and embellish all the ideas that the songwriter has come up with and maybe even show them little paths to go down where you take it somewhere else and make the piece bigger and more involving, then that's kind of what I want to do. Also, it helps if you're into the music that you're working on, you know? If you love the sentiment, if you love the style, the beat, the energy behind it. I think it's very important that you just do what comes naturally to you. You don't try and force anything. Everything has to be pure from within. By the way, I was extremely saddened to hear of Tim's (Bergling) passing recently, a lovely man and also incredibly talented.

Could you do a production, wholeheartedly, for a song that you do not love?

I could mix it. My brain is always split in two when I'm working on music because I have the very technical side of things that needs to be balanced and maintained, and then there's the creative side, thinking artistically and thinking about the emotion behind the piece. I think it's easy to sort of switch off that more artistic side and focus on technical, sometimes. Before I started doing my own productions, I worked in various studios as chief engineer. I worked with lots and lots of different people, and some of the music I wasn't really that into, you know? But I did as good a job as I could, because I could switch off that side of my brain and enjoy the technical side of things, make sure that sonically it sounded as good as I could make it even if creatively it didn't move me.

Do you still keep a dog as company in the studio?

It was actually a cat (laughs)! It's my cat Dave, who's actually a female cat. She hasn't actually been in the studio for a few years, but I did a live album in 2011 and I was in the studio by myself for a long time mixing. The band was on tour, there was literally no one else around, so I used to bring my cat in every day to keep me company. There were some acoustic panels hanging from the ceiling, and she'd jump up onto a rack that was just above my head, and then jump onto the panels and she'd stay up there all day looking down at me mixing.

Thinking about it, some of those panels are made from a similar material as those kitty-fun-towers!

Yeah, exactly (laughs)! Luckily, she didn't rip the studio apart. That was a bonus.

That first studio you told me about, where in London was that?

It was a studio called Swanyard in Islington. They had two SSL rooms and a little programming suite upstairs. They also had a record company and a publishing company. People like Technotronic were on there. Remember 'Pump Up the Jam?' Or Adamski, his first record, where he collaborated with Seal? Killer?

Oh yeah. I can still see those MTV videos clearly, now.

Exactly. That's how old I am (laughs)!

You and me both. Do you find you usually add to or subtract from the source material?

At heart, I'm a reductionist. It's very easy to just stack more stuff, just putting more stuff on top of something, but I find that it doesn't make great music. It's fun to do, but it doesn't help. What is fun to do though is, do loads of layering, then take away everything that isn't absolutely necessary, or maybe save something that you're taking out for another part of the song. You have all these layers, and then you kind of strip it back to its basic components again. You know, you might have eight layers before, and now you're down to two, one of those layers that you've taken off might be an amazing part of something else. It's a balancing act. You throw everything at it; you take it away, rearrange it and then see what fits in the jigsaw, which parts work together and grow as an arrangement. Sometimes you find happy accidents where things that you wouldn't think would work - in your brain you wouldn't imagine that these two things would work - but they actually do when you try it. You stumble on something that has cosmic beauty to it, that really shouldn't, you know (laughs)!

When did you first hear about Elektron instruments?

I first heard of Elektron when Guy, the bass player in Coldplay, had a keyboard Monomachine, maybe in 2004? I borrowed it for a while. I had it at home for a bit, and just fell in love with the striking contrast between any other instrument that I'd ever encountered before. The whole thing about it being, on the surface, quite a cold, clinical piece of gear, but the depth of sound you could get from it! Cold and clinical, I mean that in a nice way. Precise and very electronic and computerish. It isn't kind of warm and fuzzy like an old Moog or something. Functional and very clean. I just love the off-the-wall quality of it. So when I discovered that Elektron made more pieces and different things as of the product lines of old, I kept with it. I just enjoy where Elektron has gone, and continue to go. It's really exciting! I think the future holds a lot for Elektron. It's difficult, because obviously everybody is in their computer these days, and Elektron are very proud, I think, in the way that they - I mean, everybody embraces computers, and Overbridge is going to be fantastic when it clicks but I still love the idea that they're still a standalone box, and it's like making music like we did when we had tape machines, use different boxes that sometimes work together, and just mix it all up.

Have you yourself gone through an analog phase, a digital phase and so on, or did you always use all tools at your fingertips?

I think the latter. When I started, the new things was Atari STs and MIDI programming. It was all about recording on tape machines. The first Pro Tools system I used was a two-track stereo thing, Sound Designer, it wasn't even Pro Tools at that point. It sounded awful, but it was great that you could comp a vocal and then just fly it back to tape without using extra tape tracks. The sound was very grainy, and harsh but you made do with what you had. Then a four-track version of Pro Tools came out, which was even more exciting. Going back to your question, I think it's important for me, where I am at the moment, to have a handle on as much stuff as I can. I mainly mix and record in the box (in the computer) these days but I've also got lots of MIDI controllers, analog synths, analog recording gear, and modular synths. The whole sort of cross-pollination between the electronic and the organic, I think that's where it's really interesting for me; where you have very human-based elements that are embellished by technology. That's what I've always tried to bring to the table, in various balances. Sometimes it's more electronic; sometimes it's more organic.

I'm glad you got your hands on a Monomachine keyboard! They're extremely rare. Do you know if Guy still has his?

No, he did a big clear out of all his gear, and I said to him 'have you still got that Elektron keyboard? I want to buy it off you!' and he said no. Aargh!

Too bad. I really love the Monomachine, the little I've seen of it. It's sort of honestly digital.

Very pure and precise.

At the other end of the spectrum, I hope Elektron always keeps the full range, all digital, but also the analog stuff. Would you agree that there indeed is this special, warm magic of analog gear?

Absolutely. I think Elektron have got a great balance between the two. There's life in the analog. There are all the little imperfections, there's all the non-linear stuff that happens to us every day in life. If you look up at the clouds in the sky, like the cumulonimbus I can see at the moment, they're all different, you know? It's the same with analog synths, and the sounds that the oscillators are making. Being able to control that chaos with digital, and bring it in to a world where everything is nice and tidy reproduced and manipulated and easily replicated, that is where all the magic is, I think, and that's where Elektron got it really right.

Awesome. I'm so glad to hear that. Do you own any Elektron machines at the moment?

I've got an Analog Rytm, an Octatrack, a Digitakt, a Digitone and an Analog Four. I've got a good line-up! I'll be honest with you: because I do try to embrace so much equipment, I never really get to know one piece inside and out. I'd love to have the time to be able to do that, but there's so much going on, there's always so many moving parts, that I take a certain enjoyment in finding these happy accidents, sometimes, not necessarily getting to know a piece of gear inside out but coming up with stuff that you don't really know how you're doing it! With Elektron stuff, obviously I know them; I just don't know them inside out. The chances of me finding something special in them is pretty high, even if I don't know what I'm doing!

When you're producing, are there situations or set pieces that bring to mind a certain bit of Elektron gear?

I think it's more complex than that. There are certain snippets sprinkled all over the place. I'm using it on lots of things. I particularly love the sound of the Digitone at the moment. There's an ethereal thing going on, there. It's a great little digital thing that has life.

What would you say is the best quality of the Analog Rytm and the Analog Four, respectively?

I love the low end of the Rytm, and I love the way that the Analog Four engines work together, the four voices. There's so much you can do with those four voices with syncopation, polyrhythms etc.

How'd you first get to know the guys in Coldplay? You're like the central hub that connects Coldplay and Jay-Z and all of these other huge names!

I got a call when I was working in a studio called Mayfair Studios, in about 2002. I had been chief engineer there for a very long time, but I was freelancing at that point. The studio manager called me and said that there's a band coming in, their producer and engineer can't make it in time, because they are finishing off a project in New York, but the band want to come in for two weeks and do some demos before the other guys came in to start making the record. So I went into the studio and and Chris (Martin) walks in. They had one album out at this time, it was the beginning of the second album, I kind of recognized him from the Yellow video (laughs) because that was on MTV in the studio all the time in those days. He walked in, said hi, my name is Chris, you're going to be working with us for the next two weeks. This was in 2002, remember, so obviously it hasn't been two weeks; it's been 16 years!

Longest two weeks ever!

Longest two weeks, yeah (laughs)! He just sat down at the piano and started playing, to see what the piano was like, and played a song called Politik, which was the first song on the second album, A Rush of Blood to the Head. He had me hooked about four seconds in. The hairs were standing up on my arm, like, this is awesome! There's a real energy here. So we did our demos for two weeks, and then Ken and Mark turned up, the producers, and I just kind of stayed on. We got some really great results. There were some beautiful B-sides that came out of those original demos. It was a very different way of working, all on two inch at that time, and then Ken and Mark brought in a Pro Tools system. I stayed for a lot of that record, as an engineer, then at the end of that record the band asked me to stay with them and help them organise their live stuff. I went on tour with them for a couple of months, it was the first time that they had backing-track stuff running, you know, orchestras and percussions and stuff. I'd be the guy pressing play for their backing track stuff. I would have stayed, but two months in I realised that the job wasn't as creative as I'd like, I'd rather be back in the studio, I wanted to be a producer. Touring life wasn't where my head or my heart was, I wanted to create. It was kind of a big decision for me, because they were doing amazingly and it was a great job. The second record really took off, they were flying. I said to the guys, though: I can't do this. I need to be in the studio. Against all odds they were very sweet, and understood, they said 'go.' I kept in contact with them once I left though, I used to hang out with Guy quite a lot, and Chris would get me in to do the occasional bit of engineering for him, which then evolved into production gigs; we did some Jay-Z stuff together and various other little bits and pieces. Then in 2006, Chris said to me: 'we're going to build a studio in Hampstead, North London. Do you want to help me do it?' Four albums later, here we are!

Awesome. You're also good friends, right?

Yeah. The guys are all so nice. They've never let their success go to their heads. They're just four friends. It's funny, whenever we're making records together, it's just a group of about 8 people (band, producers, techs) who get on together, making music that we love making. It's a very family-type atmosphere. Then the band go on tour and I'll visit them there (I mix a lot of their broadcast gigs) and it's the same guys but they've got a security team around them and something like 200 people employed for their live shows. It's a whole other world, it's a whole engine, it's big. You see how fans treat them, you know, they're the same four guys who were in the studio just six months ago but this is the other side of what they do, you know. It's crazy to see that. They're the same, just humble and lovely, regardless of the environment they're in. It's a bit of a wake-up call, sometimes, when I see them on tour.

What are you working on at the moment?

I'm doing some live albums for the band at he moment, actually. Coldplay live 2017.

Something from the Swedish leg of the tour?

I hope so! I can't go too much into details, but I'm going to do 96 mixes. It's crazy!

An off-curriculum question: do you believe in magic?

Yes, I do, definitely. There's stuff out there that we don't know about, and I think music taps into some of that. Certain little situations that find other situations create magic, if that makes any sense at all!

Can you still brew a perfect cup of tea?

Absolutely. It's like riding a bike. Once you learn it, it never goes away.

Interview by Daniel Sterner