Section B · Production as the subject.

Hannett took the guitars out of the middle

Martin Hannett treated the centre of a stereo mix as something to be evacuated rather than packed, and the space he left is the most imitated texture of the period. These pages cover the equipment that made it possible — a steel plate under tension, a digital delay unit almost nobody could afford, a noise gate applied days after the take.

Everything filed under B

• B 01Hannett took the guitars out of the middle and left the space where they had beenMartin Hannett’s production put silence and distance where a rock producer would have put density, and that decision defines the era’s sound.
• B 02What a plate reverb actually doesA sheet of steel in a box, and the reason those records sound like a large cold room nobody was standing in.
• B 03Recorded flat, then ruined on purposeGating, compression and tape delay applied after the take rather than during it.

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