Flood is the professional pseudonym of Grammy Award-winning British post punk and alternative rock record producer and audio engineer Mark Ellis. Flood's long and varied list of work includes projects with recording acts like U2, Nine Inch Nails, Depeche Mode, Erasure, Nick Cave, PJ Harvey, Sigur Rós, The Smashing Pumpkins, The Killers, and many others. His co-production collaborations have included projects with Brian Eno, Daniel Lanois, Steve Lillywhite, and longtime collaborator Alan Moulder, with whom he co-founded the Assault & Battery studio complex. In 2006, his work with U2 led to his sharing of the Grammy Award for Album of the Year for How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb.

Early years[link]

Mark Ellis was born on August 16, 1960 in London, England.^[1] As a child, Ellis attended St Olave's Grammar School in Orpington, England. He began his music career as the vocalist for the band Seven Hertz. From 1978-79 he was also the bassist for the Mod revival band The Lambrettas. During that same time, he began his professional studio career as a runner at Morgan Studios in London.^[2] Ellis also was a runner at Battery Studios in London and held apprenticeships at Marcus Studios and Trident Studios.^[3]'

Freelance and Some Bizzare Records[link]

Flood moved up to house engineer before going freelance in 1981, the same year he worked as assistant engineer on New Order's debut album, Movement. The following year, he engineered Ministry's debut album, With Sympathy. He then became associated with Stevo's Some Bizzare Records label, leading to work with Cabaret Voltaire, Psychic TV, and Marc Almond's side project, Marc and the Mambas, among others.^[2]

Mute Records[link]

Following his work with Some Bizzare Records, Flood began working with Mute Records as their preferred producer, helming his first true production project with Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds on From Her to Eternity (1983–1984) and the follow-up album, The Firstborn Is Dead (1984). His work at Mute was as producer, co-producer, or engineer with each of the label's major acts, including Depeche Mode, Vince Clarke and Erasure, whose debut album Wonderland (1986) and its followup The Circus (1987) he engineered.

Mainstream commercial success[link]

Flood's first mainstream commercial break came in 1987 when he engineered U2's The Joshua Tree alongside producers Brian Eno and Daniel Lanois. Shortly thereafter he co-produced Nine Inch Nails on debut Pretty Hate Machine along with John Fryer, Adrian Sherwood, and Keith LeBlanc. He also worked with Depeche Mode on their most commercially successful album to date, Violator. In 1991 he returned to work again with U2 on Achtung Baby along with Brian Eno, Daniel Lanois and Steve Lillywhite. The following year, he also returned to work with Depeche Mode to record the album Songs of Faith and Devotion and co-produced three tracks of Nine Inch Nails' Broken EP.^[4]

In 1993, Flood shifted from engineering U2's albums to producing them, sharing duties with Brian Eno on Zooropa.^[5] In 1994, he worked again with Nine Inch Nails, this time on The Downward Spiral. In 1995 Flood co-produced The Smashing Pumpkins' album Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness with long time collaborator Alan Moulder, and PJ Harvey's album To Bring You My Love. Shortly thereafter, he assisted producer Nellee Hooper on Sneaker Pimps' Becoming X.^[6] He also collaborated with Dave Bessell, Gary Stout and Ed Buller to create Node; an analogue synth heavy project that produced a single album, Node.

In 1996 Flood teamed up with U2 once again to produce Pop, released the next year. The following year, he assisted Billy Corgan and Brad Wood on The Smashing Pumpkins's 1998 album Adore and co-produced PJ Harvey's album Is This Desire?.

2000 to 2005[link]

In 2000 he co-produced Machina/The Machines of God by The Smashing Pumpkins with Corgan. He also co-produced Erasure's Loveboat with the Vince Clarke and Andy Bell (singer) of Erasure. The following year Flood worked again with Depeche Mode, remixing the single version of Freelove, and in 2002 he produced Richard Warren's Echoboy album Giraffe. He also co-produced I To Sky, by JJ72.

In 2003 Flood re-worked Cars for Gary Numan's album Hybrid. The following year he produced London based The Duke Spirit's debut album Cuts Across The Land. In the same year co-produced U2's 'How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb'. In mid-2005 he mixed a-ha's eighth album, Analogue. The same year, he produced Soulwax's album Any Minute Now. Later that year, Flood also mixed Placebo's album Meds.

2006 to 2010[link]

Flood co-produced The Killers' album, Sam's Town in 2006 with fellow English producer/engineer Alan Moulder. Later that year he remixed the debut single by Dark Room Notes, Love Like Nicotine. At the beginning of 2007, he co-produced PJ Harvey's album White Chalk with John Parish and PJ Harvey. He also co-produced a couple of songs on the Goldfrapp album Seventh Tree, which was released in February 2008. In late 2007/early 2008, he produced Sigur Rós's Með suð í eyrum við spilum endalaust in Iceland.^[7]

Flood and Paul Hartnoll of Orbital co-produced the 2008 album by The Music, Strength In Numbers. He produced the 2009 album by The Hours, See the Light. He joined Steve Lillywhite again in 2008 to work with 30 Seconds to Mars, on This Is War. And then worked with Editors on In This Light and On This Evening. He also collaborated with Nitzer Ebb again to finish up their first new release in over a decade, Industrial Complex. In 2010, he produced Belong by The Pains of Being Pure at Heart and Let England Shake by PJ Harvey.

Studios[link]

Flood had a studio in Kilburn called The Bedroom.^[8] He later opened the Assault & Battery studio complex with longtime recording partner Alan Moulder.^[9] In 2008, Miloco Studios opened Assault & Battery 2, a tracking and mix studio in Willesden Green. Assault & Battery 1 came under the Miloco umbrella in Summer 2009, and both Flood and Moulder remain involved with the studios.

Production style[link]

Frequent collaborator Billy Corgan has said of Flood, "Flood’s incredible. Flood is a tremendous producer. Flood is very masterful with the sonics, but where he really shines is he’s a great idea person. And I don’t mean like he tells you, "Oh, put this chorus here." It’s more like he can see an ambiance of the song that you don’t necessarily see and he would really fight with us – not negative a fight, just he would really kind of push us to say there’s another vibe here that you can get to."^[10]

Pseudonym[link]

According to producer Mark Freegard, Ellis' ubiquitous pseudonym, "Flood," was given to him by producer Chris Tsangarides during Ellis' early days at Morgan Studios and while The Cure was there recording. As a young studio runner, Ellis was responsible for responding to numerous requests from the recording artists and staff for tea and bacon sandwiches. Ellis kept up with the numerous requests for tea while the other runner remained largely unavailable, leading to Tsangarides nicknaming them "Flood" and "Drought."^[11]

Selected engineering/production credits[link]

Selected production credits:^[12]

References[link]

External links[link]

• Flood biography on artistdirect.com
• 1997 interview with Flood by Paul Tingen in Sound on Sound magazine

Contemporary picture of the flood that struck the North Sea coast of Germany and Denmark in October 1634.

People seeking refuge from flood in Java. ca. 1865-1876.

Flooding of a creek due to heavy monsoonal rain and high tide in Darwin, Northern Territory, Australia.

Jeddah Flood, covering King Abdullah Street in Saudi Arabia.

Flooding near Key West, Florida, United States from Hurricane Wilma's storm surge in October 2005.

Flash flooding caused by heavy rain falling in a short amount of time.

Dozens of villages were inundated when rain pushed the rivers of northwestern Bangladesh over their banks in early October 2005. The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Terra satellite captured the top image of the flooded Ghaghat and Atrai Rivers on October 12, 2005. The deep blue of the rivers is spread across the countryside in the flood image.

A flood is an overflow of an expanse of water that submerges land.^[1] The European Union (EU) Floods Directive defines a flood as a covering by water of land not normally covered by water.^[2] In the sense of "flowing water", the word may also be applied to the inflow of the tide. Flooding may result from the volume of water within a body of water, such as a river or lake, which overflows or breaks levees, with the result that some of the water escapes its usual boundaries.^[3]

While the size of a lake or other body of water will vary with seasonal changes in precipitation and snow melt, it is not a significant flood unless such escapes of water endanger land areas used by man like a village, city or other inhabited area.

Floods can also occur in rivers, when flow exceeds the capacity of the river channel, particularly at bends or meanders. Floods often cause damage to homes and businesses if they are placed in natural flood plains of rivers. While flood damage can be virtually eliminated by moving away from rivers and other bodies of water, since time out of mind, people have lived and worked by the water to seek sustenance and capitalize on the gains of cheap and easy travel and commerce by being near water. That humans continue to inhabit areas threatened by flood damage is evidence that the perceived value of living near the water exceeds the cost of repeated periodic flooding.

The word "flood" comes from the Old English flod, a word common to Germanic languages (compare German Flut, Dutch vloed from the same root as is seen in flow, float; also compare with Latin fluctus, flumen). Deluge myths are mythical stories of a great flood sent by a deity or deities to destroy civilization as an act of divine retribution, and are featured in the mythology of many cultures.

Principal types and causes[link]

Riverine[link]

• Slow kinds: Runoff from sustained rainfall or rapid snow melt exceeding the capacity of a river's channel. Causes include heavy rains from monsoons, hurricanes and tropical depressions, foreign winds and warm rain affecting snow pack. Unexpected drainage obstructions such as landslides, ice, or debris can cause slow flooding upstream of the obstruction.
• Fast kinds: include flash floods resulting from convective precipitation (intense thunderstorms) or sudden release from an upstream impoundment created behind a dam, landslide, or glacier.

Estuarine[link]

• Commonly caused by a combination of sea tidal surges caused by storm-force winds. A storm surge, from either a tropical cyclone or an extratropical cyclone, falls within this category.

Coastal[link]

• Caused by severe sea storms, or as a result of another hazard (e.g. tsunami or hurricane). A storm surge, from either a tropical cyclone or an extratropical cyclone, falls within this category.

Catastrophic[link]

• Caused by a significant and unexpected event e.g. dam breakage, or as a result of another hazard (e.g. earthquake or volcanic eruption). See outburst flood.

Human-induced[link]

• Accidental damage by workmen to tunnels or pipes.

Muddy[link]

• A muddy flood is produced by an accumulation of runoff generated on cropland. Sediments are then detached by runoff and carried as suspended matter or bed load. Muddy runoff is more likely detected when it reaches inhabited areas. Muddy floods are therefore a hill slope process, and confusion with mudflows produced by mass movements should be avoided.

Other[link]

• Floods can occur if water accumulates across an impermeable surface (e.g. from rainfall) and cannot rapidly dissipate (i.e. gentle orientation or low evaporation).
• A series of storms moving over the same area.
• Dam-building beavers can flood low-lying urban and rural areas, often causing significant damage.

Effects[link]

Primary effects[link]

• Physical damage – Can damage any type of structure, including bridges, cars, buildings, sewerage systems, roadways, and canals.

Secondary effects[link]

• Water supplies – Contamination of water. Clean drinking water becomes scarce.
• Diseases – Unhygienic conditions. Spread of water-borne diseases.
• Crops and food supplies – Shortage of food crops can be caused due to loss of entire harvest.^[4] However, lowlands near rivers depend upon river silt deposited by floods in order to add nutrients to the local soil.
• Trees – Non-tolerant species can die from suffocation.^[5]
• Transport - Transport links destroyed, so hard to get emergency aid to those who need it.

Tertiary and long-term effects[link]

Economic – Economic hardship, due to: temporary decline in tourism, rebuilding costs, food shortage leading to price increase, etc.

Control[link]

Main article: Flood control

Autumn Mediterranean flooding in Alicante (Spain), 1997.

The River Berounka, Czech Republic, burst its banks in the 2002 European floods and houses in the village of Hlásná Třebaň, Beroun District, were inundated.

Pittsburgh floods in 1936

Floods in Bangladesh 2009

In many countries across the world, rivers prone to floods are often carefully managed. Defenses such as levees,^[6] bunds, reservoirs, and weirs are used to prevent rivers from bursting their banks. When these defenses fail, emergency measures such as sandbags or portable inflatable tubes are used. Coastal flooding has been addressed in Europe and the Americas with coastal defences, such as sea walls, beach nourishment, and barrier islands.

Europe[link]

Remembering the misery and destruction caused by the 1910 Great Flood of Paris, the French government built a series of reservoirs called Les Grands Lacs de Seine (or Great Lakes) which helps remove pressure from the Seine during floods, especially the regular winter flooding.^[7]

London is protected from sea flooding by the Thames Barrier, a huge mechanical barrier across the River Thames, which is raised when the sea water level reaches a certain point.

Venice has a similar arrangement, although it is already unable to cope with very high tides; a new system of variable-height dikes is under construction. The defences of both London and Venice would be rendered inadequate if sea levels were to rise.

The Adige in Northern Italy was provided with an underground canal that allows to drain part of its flow into the Garda Lake (in the Po drainage basin), thus lessening the risk of estuarine floods. The underground canal has been used twice, in 1966 and 2000.

The largest and most elaborate flood defences can be found in the Netherlands, where they are referred to as Delta Works with the Oosterschelde dam as its crowning achievement. These works were built in response to the North Sea flood of 1953 of the southwestern part of the Netherlands. The Dutch had already built one of the world's largest dams in the north of the country: the Afsluitdijk (closing occurred in 1932).

Currently the Saint Petersburg Flood Prevention Facility Complex is to be finished by 2008, in Russia, to protect Saint Petersburg from storm surges. It also has a main traffic function, as it completes a ring road around Saint Petersburg. Eleven dams extend for 25.4 kilometres and stand eight metres above water level.

In Austria, flooding for over 150 years, has been controlled by various actions of the Vienna Danube regulation, with dredging of the main Danube during 1870–75, and creation of the New Danube from 1972–1988.

In Northern Ireland flood risk management is provided by Rivers Agency.

North America[link]

Another elaborate system of floodway defences can be found in the Canadian province of Manitoba. The Red River flows northward from the United States, passing through the city of Winnipeg (where it meets the Assiniboine River) and into Lake Winnipeg. As is the case with all north-flowing rivers in the temperate zone of the Northern Hemisphere, snowmelt in southern sections may cause river levels to rise before northern sections have had a chance to completely thaw. This can lead to devastating flooding, as occurred in Winnipeg during the spring of 1950. To protect the city from future floods, the Manitoba government undertook the construction of a massive system of diversions, dikes, and floodways (including the Red River Floodway and the Portage Diversion). The system kept Winnipeg safe during the 1997 flood that devastated many communities upriver from Winnipeg, including Grand Forks, North Dakota and Ste. Agathe, Manitoba. It also kept Winnipeg safe during the 2009 flood.

In the U.S., the New Orleans Metropolitan Area, 35% of which sits below sea level, is protected by hundreds of miles of levees and flood gates. This system failed catastrophically, in numerous sections, during Hurricane Katrina, in the city proper and in eastern sections of the Metro Area, resulting in the inundation of approximately 50% of the metropolitan area, ranging from a few centimetres to 8.2 metres (a few inches to 27 feet) in coastal communities.^[8] In an act of successful flood prevention, the Federal Government of the United States offered to buy out flood-prone properties in the United States in order to prevent repeated disasters after the 1993 flood across the Midwest. Several communities accepted and the government, in partnership with the state, bought 25,000 properties which they converted into wetlands. These wetlands act as a sponge in storms and in 1995, when the floods returned, the government did not have to expend resources in those areas.^[9]

Asia[link]

In India, Bangladesh and China, flood diversion areas are rural areas that are deliberately flooded in emergencies in order to protect cities.^[10]

Many have proposed that loss of vegetation (deforestation) will lead to a risk increase. With natural forest cover the flood duration should decrease. Reducing the rate of deforestation should improve the incidents and severity of floods.^[11]

Africa[link]

In Egypt, both the Aswan Dam (1902) and the Aswan High Dam (1976) have controlled various amounts of flooding along the Nile river.

Clean-up safety[link]

Clean-up activities following floods often pose hazards to workers and volunteers involved in the effort. Potential dangers include: water polluted by mixing with and causing overflows from sanitary sewers, electrical hazards, carbon monoxide exposure, musculoskeletal hazards, heat or cold stress, motor vehicle-related dangers, fire, drowning, and exposure to hazardous materials.^[12] Because flooded disaster sites are unstable, clean-up workers might encounter sharp jagged debris, biological hazards in the flood water, exposed electrical lines, blood or other body fluids, and animal and human remains. In planning for and reacting to flood disasters, managers provide workers with hard hats, goggles, heavy work gloves, life jackets, and watertight boots with steel toes and insoles.^[13]

Benefits[link]

There are many disruptive effects of flooding on human settlements and economic activities. However, floods (in particular the more frequent/smaller floods) can also bring many benefits, such as recharging ground water, making soil more fertile and providing nutrients in which it is deficient. Flood waters provide much needed water resources in particular in arid and semi-arid regions where precipitation events can be very unevenly distributed throughout the year. Freshwater floods, particularly play an important role in maintaining ecosystems in river corridors and are a key factor in maintaining floodplain biodiversity.^[14] Flooding adds a lot of nutrients to lakes and rivers which leads to improved fisheries for a few years, also because of the suitability of a floodplain for spawning (little predation and a lot of nutrients).^[15] Fish like the weather fish make use of floods to reach new habitats. Together with fish also birds profit from the boost in production caused by flooding.^[16]