Birth of a career: Tim Bran pictured in 1990.

TIM BRAN has always loved music. He was only in his teens when, with younger brother Chris, he first ventured out in bands such as Rock Lobster, which supported Adam and the Ants at Beau Sejour, and The Limit.

And in the early 80s he started renting a rehearsal studio.

‘It was the bunker at Oberlands. I think it’s still going now [It is]. I rented it for not much.’

It was here, in a room with egg-box-lined walls, that Tim got his first feel for a recording studio.

‘It was Barry Gray’s. He wrote the music for the Thunderbirds and Captain Scarlet – all those Gerry Anderson shows. It was great down there making music with Jim [Delbridge], Nick [Windsor] and John de Garis.’

The set-up was quite basic, with a four-track portable studio which used one cassette to record four tracks, such as guitar, drums, bass and vocals.

‘The Beatles recorded on a four-track. It’s not good quality and we ended up with a 16-track.’

Other equipment, such as an emulator, oracle exciter, lin drum, and tape-to-tape, were to follow.

‘I learnt a lot. It was a good place to experiment.’

Tim recorded many legendary local bands in that studio, including A Drop in the Ocean, King Rat and the Soul Cats, Nemesis and The Risk.

During that time, Laurie Latham, a well-known producer who had worked with Manfred Mann, Jimmy Webb, Ian Dury and Paul Young, came to Guernsey to record Colour, the second album by The Christians.

‘Laurie let me hang out. It was really nice. I just learnt from him and took the knowledge back to the bunker. After a couple of years of him coming over, he mentioned that if I was ever in London, he might be able to get me some work.’

A couple of months later, Tim was in the capital and Laurie took him to The Groucho Club – the private drinking-hole for showbiz types.

‘Out of the goodness of his heart he organised a load of meetings at all the big studios and the next day I went to Island.’

After 20 minutes at the world-famous studios – which at one time or another had been responsible for such artists as Bob Marley, Jethro Tull, Frankie Goes to Hollywood and Cat Stevens – Tim was asked if he wanted to start on Monday.

Tim plays in The Limit, 1983.

‘I still lived in Guernsey. So I found a room – and it was just a room – and they threw me in the studio with big acts. It was the hardest work I’d ever done, 36-hour stretches sometimes. With Grace Jones, it went on for days.’

Tim was put to work on the solid state logic mixing desk.

‘It was a Dr Who-looking one and I spent a couple of months doing remixes. They literally threw me in. They had a 16-track over the road in the big studio for hip-hop acts. We did remixes for Mica Paris and Omar. They were good value for money, remixes.’

Trevor Wyatt was the studio manager at the time. Tim had worked with the remnants of Big Audio Dynamite and Trevor let him tour with them.

He also allowed him to go on a world tour with Julian Cope as a keyboardist after working on the singer’s Peggy Suicide album in 1991.

After that he formed a band with Big Audio Dynamite’s ex-drummer Greg Roberts. They called it Dreadzone.

‘Our second gig was supporting The Orb in Copenhagen Harbour. We played with Oasis and Primal Scream, did tours and played festivals. We didn’t sell many records but it was really fun. People loved it.

‘A lot put us together with the electronic crossover bands such as the Chemical Brothers, The Prodigy, The Orb. We always used to see them at festivals.’

Dreadzone were signed to Virgin and enjoyed a highly successful second album in Second Light, the first single from which, Little Britain, reached number 20 in the charts.

Then Tim got into technology.

It was the early days of personal computer technology and the internet was just kicking in.

‘This was before the world wide web and me and a friend, Willy Henshall, who was in Londonbeat, thought, wouldn’t it be great if a virtual band could play songs together over the net?’

They found two men in America, Canton Becker and Matt Moller, who had the technology.

‘I could play the guy’s keyboard in Chicago. It was amazing. MP3s hadn’t yet been invented.’

Tim managed to get funding (‘God knows how,’ he said) and wrote the software.

The result was Res Rocket, or Rocket Network, which worked as a file-transfer system, creating a virtual studio that could be accessed from any computer in the world with an internet connection.

Tim stayed in London while operations moved to San Francisco.

1990: Tim at an SSL desk, which remembers and records every slide moved.

Res Rocket was eventually bought out by Digidesign and became, in Tim’s words, ‘a corporate entity’.

By that time it was 2002 and Tim had been out of the music business for five years.

‘It’s hard getting back in. It’s like starting again.’

Luckily for him, Matt Black from the group Coldcut gave him a helping hand.

‘Youth, a legendary producer who was once in Killing Joke, needed a programmer-cum-session player. Matt said, “Get Tim”. And I’m still working with him at Olympic Studios.’

This is the point in a story where the subject ‘never looked back’. And it’s true of Tim.

Since hooking up with Youth, he’s worked with Primal Scream, Embrace and Sir Paul McCartney.

What’s the legendary man like? ‘It’s like meeting someone doing an impression of Paul McCartney. He’s just a nice guy who happens to look like one of The Beatles.’

Tim has been working with Sir Paul for weeks and there’s an album due out at Christmas which contains everything from folk to blues.

‘It was great fun. It’s Paul McCartney playing everything,’ said Tim.

‘It’s Paul McCartney on tap. I know he loved it.’