Feb 25, 2026 · 1 hr 48 min · 10 segments
In this episode, John is joined by Mumford & Sons and producer Aaron Dessner to discuss how they wrote, recorded and produced the album ‘Prizefighter’. Mumford & Sons are a British folk-rock band…
Marcus MumfordGuest
Aaron DessnerGuest
Ben LovettGuest
John KennedyHost
Ted DwaneGuest
But before we start looking at that, we've got a couple of questions from our patrons.
So we get lots of questions from patrons for the artists that come on the show.
And one is from John Norman, who says, how have your production tastes changed from Sino More and later records? Which I think is quite an interesting thing because it's been such an evolution over time.
The first thing that springs to my mind is that I'm enjoying dry sounds more.
Because you start a band in little bedrooms or college dorms or getting into a bigger space, a vaulted space, and particularly singing together.
got pretty obsessed with reverb you know this was a time where fleet foxes to us were the biggest band in the world too right so the idea of a massive reverb and singing into it and enjoying that was really exciting i've been really enjoying dry things like listen to the drum sound on here like that thing is dry as a bone and with uh yeah i just think like my taste at the moment is for drier sounds that's the first thing that comes to my mind yeah guitars vocals drums
Anybody else? Ben, Ted, have you gone on a similar journey to Marcus? Yeah, I know what Marcus is talking about there.
It's almost like it takes more confidence and a bit more, you've got to have better sounds and better playing to be naked like that instead of using all the tools in the box, as it were.
I feel like when I listened back to some of our earlier stuff, we were so keen to emulate the dynamics and the intensity of the live experience.
It was like a thought at the time listening to other records that that was what we were doing.
the making of a record and the experience of listening to a record, I think it wants to be something that you can come back to.
You don't need to turn it down when it kicks off and you don't want to have to turn it up.
So it requires like a little bit more of an intent that it's like an entirely different process to making a recording.
And weirdly, it led me to, of all places, White Pony recently, the Deftones record.
Because in my teenage mind, I think of that album as being hard and quite like blow your face off.
And then I felt inspired to listen to it a couple of months ago, just because I remember the songs being so great.
And when you listen to it, like, yes, that's the story of the band and live shows and stuff.
But that record actually, you know, you can hear it, you can listen to it pretty loud.
And there's a lot of detail, a lot of musicality that you can just enjoy the song for what it is.
And I think that learning how to like harness dynamics and actually put the dynamics as much into the writing as the recording, rather than like making up for short man syndrome by like adding a couple of wedges to your feet, you know, like don't don't like manipulate the sound.
to make it sound bigger just like write a better lyric or write a bigger melody that it does it intrinsically that's been a big journey i think personally for like the last 15 20 years i think of it in that way it should just work in its kind of campfire scenario like the song should be if you want to write something epic it should be epic in its dna not because you've thrown 100 instruments at it
But before we start looking at that, we've got a couple of questions from our patrons.
So we get lots of questions from patrons for the artists that come on the show.
And one is from John Norman, who says, how have your production tastes changed from Sino More and later records? Which I think is quite an interesting thing because it's been such an evolution over time.
The first thing that springs to my mind is that I'm enjoying dry sounds more.
Because you start a band in little bedrooms or college dorms or getting into a bigger space, a vaulted space, and particularly singing together.
got pretty obsessed with reverb you know this was a time where fleet foxes to us were the biggest band in the world too right so the idea of a massive reverb and singing into it and enjoying that was really exciting i've been really enjoying dry things like listen to the drum sound on here like that thing is dry as a bone and with uh yeah i just think like my taste at the moment is for drier sounds that's the first thing that comes to my mind yeah guitars vocals drums
Anybody else? Ben, Ted, have you gone on a similar journey to Marcus? Yeah, I know what Marcus is talking about there.
It's almost like it takes more confidence and a bit more, you've got to have better sounds and better playing to be naked like that instead of using all the tools in the box, as it were.
I feel like when I listened back to some of our earlier stuff, we were so keen to emulate the dynamics and the intensity of the live experience.
It was like a thought at the time listening to other records that that was what we were doing.
the making of a record and the experience of listening to a record, I think it wants to be something that you can come back to.
You don't need to turn it down when it kicks off and you don't want to have to turn it up.
So it requires like a little bit more of an intent that it's like an entirely different process to making a recording.
And weirdly, it led me to, of all places, White Pony recently, the Deftones record.
Because in my teenage mind, I think of that album as being hard and quite like blow your face off.
And then I felt inspired to listen to it a couple of months ago, just because I remember the songs being so great.
And when you listen to it, like, yes, that's the story of the band and live shows and stuff.
But that record actually, you know, you can hear it, you can listen to it pretty loud.
And there's a lot of detail, a lot of musicality that you can just enjoy the song for what it is.
And I think that learning how to like harness dynamics and actually put the dynamics as much into the writing as the recording, rather than like making up for short man syndrome by like adding a couple of wedges to your feet, you know, like don't don't like manipulate the sound.
to make it sound bigger just like write a better lyric or write a bigger melody that it does it intrinsically that's been a big journey i think personally for like the last 15 20 years i think of it in that way it should just work in its kind of campfire scenario like the song should be if you want to write something epic it should be epic in its dna not because you've thrown 100 instruments at it
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