The studio guitarist’s guide to happiness and personal fulfilment, as related by session ace Mitch Dalton. This month: Hi-Tek with Low-Tech (1981-2021).

Mitch discusses recording Hi-Tek, in Low-Tech times

It was a bitterly cold Summer’s day, a few short years after the Wright Brothers had taken to the skies with their hairbrained contraption. And lo, Mr Bell’s invention burst into life with news of the outside world. For it was David Katz, a busy music contractor of the era. Sadly, his motive in contacting me implied no offer to my pecuniary advantage Instead, he suggested that I contacted Richard Niles. “He’s a great arranger. I think you two will get on. He’s waiting for your call. ”Which is how I came to visit his charmingly bijou apartment in London’s then affordable Belsize Park. There he sat, a quietly spoken American gent with an obscene beard and a goatee sense of humour. He appeared either to have dropped a value tab of acid or to have unpacked a parcel that had sent him as high as Annapurna. The explanation was the delivery of the Teac/Tascam 414, a quaint four-track recorder/mixer utilising digital audio cassette tape. Well may you smile indulgently while positioned strategically in front of your current Pro Tools mega rig, but this was a game-changing piece of kit. And thus we set to work. At which point I became aware within five minutes that this cove knew both his onions and his ostinatos.