interview: hieronymus

Hieronymus is to a mixing desk what his fellow-countryman Johan Croeff was to an association football. He can bend it and stretch it to his needs like it is a piece of elastic. Louise Woodford of Free Radical Sounds went down to ask, among other things, about Hieronymus's involvement with Urban Dub.

Louise: You don't sound like you've got an English accent. Where are you from?
Hieronymus: I'm Dutch. I'm from Holland. The south. The cool bit, Den Bosch. I only moved to London following a fantastic woman, my wife Ruth.

Louise: You didn't produce the CapDown album did you?
Hieronymus: Yes, the dub mix on the CapDown Album was done by Hieronymus. The album was produced by Jeroen Melchers. But, actually, I AM Jeroen Melchers. That was me under a different name. So the dub mix was done by Hieronymus and the rest of the album was produced by me. Well, it's the other way round really. The dub mix was done by me, Hieronymus and the rest of the album was done by Jeroen Melchers which is my other persona. Hieronymus is an alter-ego. It's another person. It's another part of the brain. One part of the brain is functioning while doing dub. Another part of the brain is functioning when doing non-dub. It's a different approach. It's a different guise. Completely different people I suppose, if you see what I mean.

Louise: Would you say you've got quite an eclectic musical taste?
Hieronymus: Yeah, a good tune is a good tune no matter what kind of music it is.

Louise: I notice that you mixed "These Are The Days Again" on the Urban Dub Ten Inch.
Hieronymus: That was one of the first ones I did with Urban Dub. It came about after the Snuff and Urban Dub Tour. Urban Dub had done the Snuff Remix Album. I was doing sound for Snuff. I'm into my live dub. Urban Dub invited me over to the studio and we knocked out a couple of tunes. "These Are The Days Again" was one of the first ones. We were still sort of getting to know each other and seeing where we were at. We done more since then and I think they're all being compiled or put in a pile. We're knocking out tune after tune until we get a massive pile of tunes. It's pretty laid back. Everyone knows where they are with each other. There's no major agro going on. Roop's a nice chap, we all get on well. Marjorie Paris is really good with coming up with sort of four bar melodies. She comes up with fantastic hooks. There's one tune called "Thin Air" which might end up on the next Urban Dub album. It's got a fantastic hook to it. A little phrase like that just sticks in your head forever. It's what music is all about, if you've got a good basic melody. It's Roop's job to try to fit it in the arrangement. There's one thing recognizing the hook, there's another thing arranging it. People like DJ Shadow, Coldcut or the Ninja Tune have got their own studios making their own samples and loops. So it's like that. They get it together and I come in at the mixing stage when it's all pretty much set. So I come in and do my thing over it. My background is live mixing. I'm a mainly live engineer. That's what I've been doing for the last eleven or twelve years now. Working with bands, working in venues gig after gig after gig. In a way it's great because you've got to be quick, you've got to be able to improvise. You've got to work with whatever is thrown at you. I make bands loud. I make sure you can hear what's going on on stage. At a gig at the front-of-house there's a desk and that's where I am making the mix for the punters. I'm doing a live mix for the punters at the gig.

Louise: How many gigs have you done?
Hieronymus: I need a calculator for that. Say I do about 200 gigs a year. I've been doing it for 12 years. About two thousand gigs. I'm not trained as such so it's just down to experience. Knowing how a desk works is easy. The actual mechanics of it is piss easy. It's knowing what to hear and knowing how to get what you want to hear. That's the trick. Anyone can work a desk. I can explain to anyone in twenty minutes or half an hour how a desk works. Like I say, it's knowing what to hear and what you want to hear and how to get that. You could go on hundreds of courses, or go to college, but listening is the most important part. It comes from experience.

Louise: Is that how you get the effects on your records?
Hieronymus: Well, it's just the usual dub effects, isn't it. Delays, big verbs, stacking effects one on top of the other. It's just sort of recreating the old school dub. Like you've got your Lee Perry, Dr. Alimentado and that sort of stuff. They're old Jamaican dub geezers. That's what I've always been into. I'm really into that sort of mix-up, mash-up, create something new out of something that's there. What attracts me is sort of the soundscapes - the freedom of it. It's very free. The original dub is all very loose, very open to improvisation and it should be quite spontaneous. It's like jamming with the effects and the desk. In that respect the desk becomes an instrument like the drums or the bass, but it's the last instrument for the music to go through and it can make sounds by itself. You can apply it to anything. Reggae is an open music to use because it's quite low tempo and there's a lot of space to be filled up. It's very expressive. Yeah, that's why I like my dub. Nowadays you do get a lot of sort of stuff that is branded as dub but, if you listen to it, it's quite contrived. It's too thought of, whereas the whole point I think is that dub is not contrived. It is open. Yeah, you've got the odd fuck-ups here and there, but never mind let's go on to the next one - you're allowed. That's all part of the whole process. It's a very direct way of creating.

Louise: With whom have you been working recently?
Hieronymus: I've been working with a band called Yat-kha. They're an amazing band. They're like a Siberian throat singing band! They play their age-old folk music, but in a contemporary style with electric guitars, electric bass and also with traditional instruments. They play traditional songs with a drive behind it. I never heard anything like it before. They do amazing things with their voices. In the old tone singing they create two or three notes with one voice. They're very electric. I don't mean that in the literal sense, apart from the fact they are sort of electric guitar and electric bass, but they have a sort of rush about them that is very appealing. As I say, they're a unique band.

Louise: How did you come to work with them?
Hieronymus: It was through Jim Chapman. He called me when I was in Germany at the time, touring with King Prawn. He had previously employed me to do sound and tour managing for Snuff. He said that there was this band that needed a sound engineer for a UK tour. They're called Yat-kha. He described them over the phone and I said "Yes, please. It sounds interesting." So Jim set me up with the tour, I fell in love with the music and last year I toured with them for four and a half months all over Europe. This summer I'm touring with them again from April until July. I very much enjoyed it.

Louise: What attracted you to Urban Dub?
Hieronymus: I'd heard the Snuff Vs Urban Dub remix album. There's a couple of absolute stonkers on there. Fantastic takes on what normally is just sort of your average kind of punk. No, not your average punk. They are good songs, but punk rock hasn't sort of got the openings to dub up. I've toured with Snuff before that and they've always asked me if I could dub up their sound live, but the music hasn't got the openings in it for me to really do that. But then I heard the Urban Dub remixes that I thought were great. They basically rewrote the songs around the melody line. I was very impressed with it. I was honoured when they asked me to come and help out with some mixing. Previously on the Snuff & Urban Dub tour we had sound clashes live with Urban Dub. We had fun dubbing stuff up. I had a chance to express that thing. We had little sound clashes going on while Snuff were lashing away. So I came in to the studio with Urban Dub. We did a couple of tunes - "These Are The Days Again" and so on. I do feel that those tunes were still finding each other's ground. But now we're getting more adapted to each other. We know a bit more where we are coming from with each other. I think we can only get better and the whole vibe of it can only get better.

Louise: So are you now a member of Urban Dub?
Hieronymus: It's a bit of a weird one, because I am a touring engineer which is sort of my job and I don't actually write the tunes. I come in at the last stage when it's pretty much all set and I do the mix, set up the sound, the colours. So I don't know if I feel like a part-time member or a full-time member, it's hard to say. I sort of feel like a part-time member, because I do enjoy doing other things like Yat-kha, Snuff, doing straight-forward punk. I get sick of doing one thing all the time. I like variation. Also, my income is from touring. I go on tour for months on end. When Urban Dub are in the studio working on tunes, I'll be off gallivanting around Europe with bands. So I see myself more as a part-time member. I'm not a member of any band. I don't think I want to be, because you'll be tied down to one thing then. You'll have to make priorities then. I like to work with different people into different styles of music and keep it open - my eyes as well as my ears.

Louise: So are you a musical slut?
Hieronymus: I'm a musical prostitute. Anyone who pays me will do. But there are certain things I enjoy more than others. Recently I've done gigs with some dead famous bands. It's not necessarily always my style of music, but I appreciate it for what it is.I have to do it because I'm freelance and I've got to eat at the end of the day. For years I've toured with bands I really enjoy, but I've been barely able to scrape a living. There comes a point where you have to say "I'm sorry, but I have to make money." So, you have to whore yourself out. I used to work in places like the Underworld, Dingwalls as an in-house engineer.
I used to work at the Bull & Gate and the Dublin Castle - all those small venues.