DJ and former Happy Mondays guitarist Kav Sandhu set up the band Blitz Vega in 2018 with former Smiths bass guitarist Andy Rourke, and was recording a new album in Los Angeles and New York when the Covid pandemic closed the project down. The band scattered to various parts of the world with Sandhu returning to the UK, where he set up a project studio and put a Prism Sound Titan audio interface at the heart of it.
‘There is no doubt in my mind that the Titan saved me,’ Sandhu reflects. ‘Without it, I would never have been able to capture high-quality vocals and guitar at home. Thanks to Titan, I was able to continue working and being creative during lockdown, which was really important to me.’
Titan is a multichannel interface that offers analogue and digital I/O at sample rates of up to 192kHz via a simple USB interface. It was designed specifically for recording with DAWs such as Pro Tools with high-quality audio. It has features from Prism Sound’s Orpheus, but with USB connectivity and an MDIO interface expansion slot that allows for direct connection to Pro Tools HDX systems.
Sandhu’s project studio is ‘really nice and basic’, with Pro Tools and Logic on an iMac, and Yamaha and KRK monitors powered by Yamaha amplifiers – as well as some big PA DJ speakers.
A wide range of other equipment is also being used – some in Sandhu’s studio and the rest in project facilities owned by Rourke and Will Kennedy.
‘Nothing can replace the vibe of working with a full band, but the Titan has made recording remotely as good as recording vocals and guitar parts separately in any full working studio,’ Sandhu says. ‘It’s great because you can capture something as soon as you get that creative spark. You don’t have to travel anywhere. It’s changed my life because I can capture everything I need, and sometimes it’s better than recording in a recording studio.’
Working remotely, and with band members in so many different locations, required Blitz Vega to think outside the box. Producer Will Kennedy ran recording sessions via Zoom, and then pulled everything together in his LA studio.
‘It was good that a lot of the bands parts were done before we left LA last spring, but since then I’ve personally been adding vocals, extra guitars and keyboards on the tracks for our forthcoming album and EPs,’ Sandhu explains. ‘Once Will has finished with the recording sessions, we send the tracks to Jagz Kooner and he mixes them.’
Sandhu adds that the Titan interface is very easy to use and took very little time to set up: ‘It captures the audio exactly how I want it and it doesn’t mess with the sound. It’s direct, so everything we record sounds the way we want it to sound. From a creative point of view it has made life massively easier. These days, instead of recording demos at home, I can record finished and complete audio as soon as I feel that creative spark and the quality is good enough to use on the final record.’
Blitz Vega’s new album is nearing completion with a release date to be announced soon.
More: www.prismsound.com
