The Age of Plastic

Production[edit]

The Age of Plastic was afforded a budget of £60,000 (equivalent to £320,000 in 2021).^[9] Engineer Hugh Padgham recorded the backing tracks at Virgin's Town House in West London,^[9][13] as Sarm East Studios was very small and Horn wanted to record real drums.^[13] The Buggles went to London's Wardour Street to recruit two women to appear on the album.^[9] The mixing and Horn's vocal recording were later performed at Sarm East Studios,^[9][10] and mixing was finished before Christmas 1979 for a 1980 album release.^[12] Sarm East mixer Gary Langan used a 40-input Trident TSM console to record and mix the album, which was housed inside the same control room as were two Studer A80 24-track machines and outboard gear that included an EMT 140 echo plate, Eventide digital delay, Eventide phaser, Marshall Time Modulator, Kepex noise gates, Urei and Orban equalizers, and Urei 1176, Dbx 160 and UA LA2 and LA3 compressors.^[10]


Vocals were recorded at Sarm East to a click track using a Roland TR-808 drum machine and other various machines and boxes that were synced to the tracks.^[10] As Langan recalls: "In those days of relatively limited technology we again had to push what we had to the limit... If, for instance, something required an effect, whether it be tape delay or phasing or some big, delayed reverb, the art was to get that effect right and record it... It all had to be done and then, as I said, it would influence the next process."^[10] Langan has noted that balancing the backing vocals in the songs was an issue because of the limited storage capacities of the time: "We'd make it as clean as we possibly could, bounce that down to two tracks and then we'd erase."^[10]