Marika Hackman Revisits Her Song "Skin" at Abbey Road

Hi, I'm Marika Hackman,

and we're here at Abbey Road Studios

to record an Abbey Road Amplify

and Pitchfork London session.

So today I took a song from my first record called Skin.

It's the 10 year anniversary of my first album.

So it felt like a nice opportunity to mark

how far I've come in many ways

and revisit all this stuff.

So I decided to just take it in a bit

of a different direction

and not recreate what I had before.

So yeah, kind of like I'm doing a cover of my own song.

[guitar strumming]

I am very kind of instinctive

and I like serendipitous play,

so I kind of like to just strip everything back,

bring it down to just a guide vocal, guide guitar,

build everything up around it,

and then remove those kind of initial aspects

to see what's kind of...

The crust that is like left behind.

So yeah, I kind of, I knew what tone I wanted,

so kind of taking it off the guitar

and putting it onto the Rhodes

and kind of flipping on its head,

making it darker and moodier.

It's like I had kind of sonic kind of images in my head

rather than an actual plan.

♪ Perform the task instead ♪

The Gatehouse is a great studio.

I like the size of it.

It feels like you're really...

Especially working with a small team,

like, you feel really kind of like nestled into your space

and it's so easy to jump between the control room

and the live room and doesn't feel kind of intimidating

despite the fact, you know, it's part of Abbey Road,

which would be quite terrifying.

But I had lovely Paul and Ed helping me out,

doing engineering, and setting everything up for me.

So yeah, it's a small crack team today.

It makes everything a bit faster, I think.

Yeah.

♪ The burning sun, I'm west ♪

I think something very important

is to not be intimidated by spaces and situations.

If, you know, you are a musician, you are a songwriter,

you can assert that side of yourself

and you don't need to kind of take a back seat.

And if you have a decision, you have a creative idea,

then you should follow that through

because ultimately you're the one with the vision.

You've come up with a song.

People can throw ideas around

and ultimately that's helpful in the end,

like having that collaborative thing or a sounding board.

But if you have a clear, strong idea

and someone says, Don't do that,

or, Try this, don't listen to them.

Also, can we hear just no reverb on the main vocals?

And then only have a bit of reverb on the behind?

[Speaker] Yeah, yeah.

Like completely dry?

I think so.

I brought a few of my own guitars.

We did the guides guitar on,

I've got a 1950s Gibson like parlor guitar

and then I've got a 124-year-old baritone guitar

with a rubber bridge.

And that's actually what we did some plucking on.

'Cause it does, it sounds more like a...

Kinda like a harp almost.

It felt less guitar driven,

which is kind of what I was going for.

And then I played...

There's a lovely piano over here that I was playing

and played on the Juno a bit as well.

Got some nice synth sounds and things like that.

[gentle piano]

This morning I've spent the time

doing a tracking guitar and vocal,

so we can get a kind of something to build on.

But then I decided that the backbone of the track

should be the Rhodes to make it different from how

I originally recorded it 10 years ago.

So what I said earlier actually to Paul

was that it's like we can build it up like a paper mache,

and you know, in essence, that guitar

that I originally laid down is the balloon.

And then we can pop that at the end, take it out

and see what's left and keep it really sparse.

So done a bit of piano, done a bit of Rhodes,

and after lunch I'm gonna do a lot more vocals, I think,

and try and layer up a lot of that.

And maybe a little bit of baritone guitar

and probably a little bit of Juno.

And I think we're gonna keep it pretty simple today.

So we'll see how that goes anyway.

♪ Myself was lost to me ♪

♪ But I'm not dead ♪