Martin Birch - Catalyst:The Pivotal Role of Deep Purple’s Sound Engineer on the Classic Mk2 Albums

The final chapter of Part Two by Jan-Peter Herbst is an appreciation of the pivotal role of Deep Purple Mk2’s sound engineer, Martin Birch in the recording of In Rock, Fireball, Machine Head and the ‘live’ Made in Japan. It examines how he encouraged and captured the loud and distorted, riff heavy, hard rock sound of the Mk2 Purple band in the studio and on stage. In this respect, Herbst seeks to situate Birch’s emergence, as an innovative sound engineer and later producer, as coinciding with the emergence of the heavy metal genre itself and its defining aesthetic criteria: the group pursuit of absolute musical and instrumental loudness. It was this driving aesthetic of pushing sound capture into the ‘red zone’ by means of instrumental speed, aggression, energy, and intensity, that provided the challenge for the young, up-and-coming studio engineers, like Birch, to find a way to capture the ‘live’ sound of the band in the studio and thereby ‘define’ on vinyl the heavy metal sound. But as Herbst also notes, while the pioneering albums of Black Sabbath and their recording engineer Tom Allom (as well as his work with Judas Priest), have been acknowledged as a formative influence on the development of the heavy metal ‘sound,’ Purple’s sound engineer on all their classic albums, has not been afforded the same level of appreciation. Paying tribute to Birch’s contribution to capturing and defining the classic heavy metal sound in the studio and thereby on vinyl, the chapter aims to decipher Birch’s sonic signature by documenting his role in the recording of three of Deep Purple’s classic and hugely influential albums – In Rock, Machine Head, and Made In Japan. The analysis acknowledges Birch’s innovative engineering of heavy metal in its formative phase, both sonically as an art form, but also in respect of the producer’s role, which has become a blueprint for later producers to this day. Birch also recorded and produced Ritchie Blackmore’s Rainbow (1975-1986), David Coverdale’s Whitesnake (1978-1984), later Black Sabbath (1980-1981), and most notably Iron Maiden (1981-1992).