Kid Harpoon Chooses PMC twotwos
London-based musician Kid Harpoon, known for his production and songwriting work with Florence & The Machine, Calvin Harris, Joel Compass and Eliza Doolittle, has bought a pair of twotwo.6 loudspeakers, the new compact nearfield reference monitors from UK manufacturer PMC, featuring low-distortion ATL™ bass-loading technology, digital inputs and signal processing, and Class-D amplification. The twotwos have been installed at the production studio Kid Harpoon set up in north-east London.
"I'd been looking for a new place for a while," explains the fast-rising producer. "I was working in my flat when I met Florence and we started writing together. That led to all sorts of work and I had an office studio at Sarm for a bit, but it wasn't soundproofed and I couldn't really mix there. My aim was to find somewhere where I could properly finish mixes. Then this place came up — it used to be Mr Hudson's writing and production studio. It's properly treated, but once I got my gear in here, I could tell I needed better monitoring.
"I've had speakers that make everything sound great when you're recording. That makes everything go well when you're tracking and mixing, but then when you listen back somewhere else, the mixes sound really bad. I always thought my mixes sounded wicked in my old studio, but then I'd take them to my friend Nick's studio, and they would sound really weak. Nick [Denton, Dizzee Rascal's manager and producer] always laughed at my feeble bass!"
Kid Harpoon's US-based manager also looks after producer/mix engineer (and PMC user) Rich Costey, who got in touch to suggest that he tried the new twotwos as a solution. "I was working on two remixes for friends when I got them, and when I set them up I realised it sounded like there was loads missing in the mix. I balanced the tracks better, adding just a couple of things, and my friends loved the results. Sonically, they had expanded, and you could hear everything properly.
"The speakers have so much detail. One of my favourite things since I got them has been sitting listening to other records with my engineer at the end of each day: stuff we love, Bowie, Gnarls Barkley… With the twotwos, you can really hear how they were made.
"I thought these speakers would probably help me out, and it instantly worked. I feel like if the tracks I mix sound good here, they'll sound good elsewhere, too. They now have that transferability."
Kid Harpoon's latest production and songwriting credit is 'Over The Love', the Florence and the Machine track on the soundtrack to Baz Luhrmann's The Great Gatsby, released in May.