Mixing Hot Milk with Spirits

Manchester’s pop-rock sensations headline with Aston mics

Manchester pop-rock band Hot Milk killed it at London’s O2 Academy earlier this month, with Aston Spirits on hand to help capture their massive live sound. The gig was part of the band’s inaugural headline tour and followed their storming appearances at Download Pilot and the Reading and Leeds festival in the summer.

Hot Milk were nominated for ‘Best UK Breakthrough Band’ at the 2020 Heavy Music Awards and their rapid ascendency has not gone unnoticed amongst rock royalty; they supported the mighty Foo Fighters in 2018 and have been invited to open for them again on their 2022 UK stadium dates. They have also appeared with You Me At Six.

Fronted by Han Mee and Jim Shaw, the band have just released their second EP, ‘I Just Wanna Know What Happens When I’m Dead’ which, according to Kerrang, “…provides further proof as to why Hot Milk are one of the UK’s most hotly-tipped young bands.”

FOH sound engineer Joe Simpson explained how the Aston Spirit has also been an integral part of the band’s drum sound: “ I’ve been using the Aston Spirit in Omni as a ‘crush mic’ for the drum kit over a few live recording projects and found a couple of cool applications I think it’s really quite good at, so I decided to take the idea to the road with Hot Milk.

I’ve had some good results... omni pattern selected, capsules facing up and down and the mic tucked inside the centre image of the drum kit (see photo).

I go for quite a heavily processed modern drum sound with Hot Milk and there’s a fair amount of creative and parallel compression going on to get it punching through a ‘wall of sound’. In this position and feeding back into the mix, I found it added back some of the natural ambience of the entire kit without capturing stage bleed, allowing for tighter gates and fatter compression parameters with the close mics but leaving ghost notes, little nuances and drummer character in the overall drum sound. Obviously getting it in phase is an objective and not to be forgotten about!

It's also fun in parallel with a drum buss, slammed with a CLA-76 ‘ALL’ in style compressor for an over-saturated drum sound! However you want to drive it though, there are some cool options.”

Han and Jim, both on vocals and guitars, use Aston mics live on their stage guitar cabs and in the studio. We met with the band before their 02 appearance to present them with custom black Spirits engraved with the Hot Milk logo and their signature ‘flaming carton’ motif.

Check out Hot Milk’s music and tour dates on the official website

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