PAUL SMITH

• Location recording
• Sound design
• Broadcast mix

World Championship cyclist Ben Savage put the new range of Paul Smith suits to the test at London’s Hauser & Wirth Gallery on a set designed by Sonja Klaus.

Freak provided end-to-end audio services, including location audio on set and post production audio.

PROCESS

We started by composing an electronic music track, crafted from recordings made with a bike to complement the imagery. Director Michael Tamman liked the bike sounds so much that we were asked if we could compose the track entirely of bike sounds. Always seeking a challenge, we broke out the contact microphones and proceeded to create bass drums from hitting the tires with drum sticks, more percussive sounds by recording the chain, gear and brake levers, and drones using the cello bow on the spokes. With this palette of sounds we hit the studio to process our recordings until we achieve the final result, with what sounds like warped vocals singing over the top at the end.

The final composition is composed entirely of bike recordings made in the Freak sound studio and we got so carried away with this one that we even coded our own bespoke software sampler / manipulator, to be released soon, as we couldn’t find anything suitable off the shelf to create what we were hearing in our heads!