PASESUK
Produced by PASES
HABAÑERA
For the artist Zoë Mace
This project started out with (the incredibly talented) Zoë Mace coming to us with her idea to bring a modern twist to some of the most well known classical music. She had decided that Bizet’s Habañera was the ideal candidate for this transformation. We immediately jumped at the opportunity as we had never taken on a project like this before; completely reinventing a song from the ground up with the aim of bringing it to new audiences.
We spent a little while trying to find the right tone for this modernisation before the bulk of the production started. This involved recreating that iconic main ‘riff’ (or ‘ostinato’) to varying degrees of insanity until we found just the right level which we felt effectively carried the original rhythm and emotion of the song, while simultaneously feeling epic, modern and powerful for today’s audiences. We then sent this brief audio clip over to Zoë to make sure she was happy with the direction, and thankfully she loved it just as much as we did!
Once we had found this basic tonality and sound of the song, it was time to get the arrangement together. We listened a whole lot to the Angela Gheorghiu version of the song on Spotify to really find how the textures in the song change from section to section, and also try to find the overall ‘flow’. We used this somewhat as a template (also making sure to have the section lengths exactly right, otherwise obviously the vocals wouldn’t fit), and put in the bare-bones we needed to build around.
When the skeleton of the song was in place, we scheduled a recording session with Zoë. She came to the PASES studio and we spent the day tracking her amazing vocals (this was our first time hearing operatic vocals live, and we were blown away by the performances we heard, Zoë is incredible). We got Zoë to record a huge number of takes, harmonies, and other backing vocals just to be sure we had everything we needed to create the scale we were all after. (Fun fact: I don’t think we’ve ever put the input gain as low as we had to for some of Zoë’s big high notes, the power she has is just next level).
At this point, we needed to fill out the production around the vocals. We knew we wanted that amazing performance to take centre stage the whole way through, so we went on a hunt to find elements which would support it well. Midway through this process the trailer to Glass Onion: A knives Out Mystery came out, which happened to have an absolutely amazing modern instrumental version of Habañera as its score. At first we were a little disheartened that somebody had done such an incredible job with it (making our unfinished version sound a little weak by comparison), however we soon realised that we would be foolish to not simply take inspiration from this brilliant rendition, and use it as an incredibly helpful reference. This gave us the idea of pushing the Zoë Mace version more into a film-music-type direction. This is where elements such as the reloading sounds, the ticking and some of the more atmospheric synthesiser parts found their origin. These changes really helped the production find its own personality, and from there, the mix came together relatively quickly.
After we were finished, we sent it to Zoë for the final thumbs up, and she loved it. We were absolutely over the moon! The final link in the chain was to get the track over to Felix Davis at Metropolis Studios (this man is a wizard) for final mastering. He definitely brought the whole thing up by several notches (as he always does).
Everyone who worked on this has done an amazing job, and we are ALL ecstatic with the way the final result sounds. We had a fantastic time working on this for Zoë, she’s an absolute dream to work with, and we really cannot wait to do more with her!
Pre- release Habańera was aired on BBC Introudcing - listen to the broadcast here:
(27 minutes, 24 seconds in)
Listen to Habańera and watch the music video here:
"Working with Charlotte and Louis was the best experience I could have wished for. From the initial consultation and outline of my vision through to the finished product, they were able to completely exceed the idea I presented to them (a difficult and demanding brief!) and create a track that wowed me beyond belief. Not only are they incredibly talented producers, but they are also both wonderful multi-instrumentalists and vocalists themselves. This made experiences like working out vocal harmonies, adding additional live instruments, and even providing contrasting backing vocals an ease to include in the production, which just created the perfect sound for the song. I would recommend PASES Production to any singer in a heartbeat - regardless of genre, project scale or desired outcome, their incredibly vast knowledge of sound production is capable at exceeding any expectation you may have. I cannot thank them enough!"
Zoë Mace