Árni Hjörvar Arnason is a busy bass player with fingers in a lot of pies – including The Vaccines, Mammút and his own music. He’s got an Audient iD44 audio interface and ASP880 8-channel mic preamplifier which are usually parked in his East London studio. This summer, he decided to take a few choice pieces of gear to Iceland to work on a new studio project.
It turned out to be a very busy summer of recording, so Audient asked him what exactly he’s been up to and when we might expect to hear the results of his efforts. Here’s what he said:
I play bass in The Vaccines and spend all of my downtime in a little studio I’ve got in Limehouse making various noises in various contexts.
The studio – which I have with a couple of mates – is a real geeky project space. Lots of old gear and overheating capacitors. Fuzz pedals and tape delays and 80s drum machines. Fantastic for geeks, but less than practical for anyone else.
“iD44 is the king of the portable studio”
I had an album project come up this summer which required me to split my time between the East London studio and a couple of different locations in Iceland, and that’s where the Audient gear came in.
The iD44 is the king of the portable studio. It’s the most versatile compact interface I’ve found and was perfect for on location recordings. I literally carried it as hand luggage! It was ideal when it came to vocals and simpler overdubs, and then – paired with an ASP880 – a very reliable workhorse for larger than life space drum recordings.
iD44 paired with ASP880: “a very reliable workhorse”
The flexibility of the gear then played a big part in me seeking out a slightly more adventurous project which involved taking some friends to the very furthest reaches of the west fjords of Iceland where we set up shop in an old village hall and recorded some of my own music for a week. I’m currently sifting through that material. It should see the light of day next year.
If you can’t wait for that, give your ears the treat of his Icelandic band, Mammút here on Spotify.
Thanks for popping in Arni. Audient looks forward to hearing more of all of it!
