🎧 Alan Moulder
Moulder’s musical career started in the early 1980s, at Trident Studios in London. As an assistant engineer, he worked with influential producers like Jean Michel Jarre, drawing from them great familiarity with electronic sounds and textures. Also an engineer at Trident was Flood with whom Moulder would often collaborate in the future. Moulder assisted in one of Flood’s recording sessions with The Jesus and Mary Chain, and found that the often fractious and troublesome band enjoyed working with him. The Mary Chain invited Moulder to engineer their live sounds and, eventually, to engineer their 1989 album Automatic. The album’s production was praised for its combination of thick, noisy guitar with a polished, listener-friendly tone, and the Mary Chain’s former label, Creation Records, soon had Moulder producing records for Ride, My Bloody Valentine and Swervedriver.
I recently listened to Suede’s new album. One of the things that stood out to me was the richness in some of the tracks, something that reminded me of The Cure. I then discovered the album had been produced by Alan Moulder. This lead me to a look at the other artists Moulder had produced. I knew of his work with Nine Inch Nails, but I did not realise that he was behind other artists, such as The Smashing Pumpkins and The Killers. It has me wanting to do a deep dive into the songs that he has had a hand in. I am always fascinated by the differences and similarities between artists and producers.