Headliner Magazine Issue 39

ISSUE 39 / OCTOBER 2021 SUPPORTING THE CREATIVE COMMUNITY

MAGAZINE / 39

HEADLINERMAGAZINE.NET UK £3.95 / USA $6.95 / CANADA $7.95

FIGHTING TALK

EDDIE HEARN NO TIME TO DIE

RECORDING BOND AT LONDON’S AIR STUDIOS

HANNAH PEEL

BREAKING PARADIGMS WITH HER LATEST PROJECT

STEVE LAMACQ

ON 30 YEARS OF NIRVANA’S NEVERMIND

“Lose your dreams and you might lose your mind.”

— Mick Jagger

©2020 QSC, LLC. All rights reserved. QSC and the QSC logo are registered trademarks of QSC, LLC in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and other countries. Play Out Loud is a trademark of QSC, LLC. Artist: Printz Board. Photo by Mikel Darling.

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SUP P

IV E C EAT O CR

ING THE T R O

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39 No, you’re not mistaken, that is Eddie Hearn, boxing promoter extraordinaire and one of sport’s most recognisable faces gracing the front cover of this issue of Headliner. Notorious for his legendary oneliners and renowned for representing some of boxing’s biggest names, including the likes of Anthony Joshua, Canelo Álvarez, Gennady Golovkin, Oleksandr Usyk, Vasyl Lomachenko and many others, he is not a man without ambition, nor one for standing still.

His latest mission is to reinvent the world of live events and sports broadcast. Not content with simply promoting an event, he is now heading up Matchroom Media, the newly launched production arm of his father Barry’s Matchroom Sport company. Under his leadership, this new entity will aim to shake up the look and feel of live broadcasts in their entirety by handling each and every aspect of the production process.

When Headliner paid him a visit at Matchroom Media HQ in Essex last month, Hearn passionately laid out his vision for where he wants to take live productions and how he plans to achieve these goals.

You can find out how exactly he intends to overhaul the industry in our interview on page 26, but what was particularly fascinating about our conversation was his obvious commitment to innovation in each area of event production.

From shoulder programming and complementary content surrounding events, to camera placement and the incorporation of technology that can offer impossibly intricate data and stats on events unfolding in the ring, there are no details he hasn’t considered for re-evaluation.

This kind of evolution is something we’ve been seeing in theatre and live music for the past decade or so, from ever elaborate visuals to the increasingly sophisticated tech powering immersive, object-based audio.

And with VR and AR capabilities expanding exponentially, who knows what live events may look like by the end of the decade?

What’s clear today, is that with figures like Hearn driving these changes, they may be upon us before we know it.

Daniel Gumble Head of Music, Headliner HEADLINERMAGAZINE.NET

18 / MARINERIS 14/ SITREKIN & DYRE GORMSEN 08 / HARRISON WALKER

34 / JOHN MURPHY

22 / JULIAN KINDRED

38 / NGAIIRE

26/ EDDIE HEARN

44 / IMMERSIVE AUDIO

54 / LIVE SOUND

48 / NO TIME TO DIE

58 / IAN BEVERIDGE

66 / STEVE LAMACQ 62 / TEFFLER

82 / BEN ABRAHAM

72 / TIM CARROLL

78 / AUDIO PRODUCTION

114 / TOM SPEIGHT

86 / THE ART OF ATMOS MIXING

110 / ASHIBAH 90 / SPOTLIGHT REVIEWS

118/ FICKLE FRIENDS

126 / HANNAH PEEL 122/ TOKYO 2020

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HARRISON WALKER

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Commitments

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COMMITMENTS

HARRISON WALKER Meet the aspiring UK trap artist who’s got the streaming model sussed.

“It was an absolute mess!” Londonbased independent artist Harrison Walker says of the lockdown period, which saw him quit his part-time job to take on an internship, only for it to immediately get shelved due to the pandemic. “I was in this kind of limbo where I wasn’t on furlough from my old job because I literally just left, and then I didn’t have a new job. So to be honest with you I was just sat at home, doing nothing.”

Well not nothing – Walker admits he watched “everything” (including Peaky Blinders possibly for the fourth time) and a lot of Marvel films. “I’m a massive nerd. So all the superhero stuff is right up my street!”

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Commitments

Like many singer-songwriters during the pandemic, Walker took a job to see himself through, developing a new hobby in the process – and not one you’d necessarily naturally pair with the hoodie-wearing trap artist: “I got a construction job as a landscaper and that really got me into gardening,” he grins. “We’ve got a little veg patch now; we’re growing peppers, lettuce, basil, mint – we’ve got it all!”

Inspired by the likes of Post Malone and The Weeknd, Walker describes his style as ‘melodic trap’, although some of his biggest influences are actually metal bands.

“Yeah, it’s a bit strange, because the music I make is very R&B and pop, but the music I listen to is very different.

One of my favourite artists of all time is this the singer from the band Letlive, Jason Aalon Butler. I’ve got their vinyl framed on my wall, so a lot of my inspiration actually comes from the metal scene. Don’t get me wrong, I do listen to loads of R&B and pop as well. I prefer to get inspiration from the underground artists that people don’t know so well.”

Walker has been releasing singles since 2019, and has been dropping a HEADLINER MAGAZINE

steady stream of tracks on Spotify as part of a wider plan. He’s since honed and matured his songwriting skills considerably with a mixture of catchy and confessional lyrics, and has been producing himself for the last few years (self taught), using Logic – although he says he can “potter around” in Ableton when he needs to.

“When I started producing, that’s what started changing my music. It was really acoustic and I was just getting bored of it. I first started producing the drums by getting Splice samples and cutting them up, and this changed everything. I also love doing vocal production – it’s my favourite part of the whole track. I’ll do all the main vocals and the harmonies, but then I’ll take them, cut them up and I’ll glitch them using loads of effects and then there will be little melismas of them in the song. They’re not overused, but if you listen to my songs, you’ll hear tiny vocal samples, but they’re not – they’re my vocals, but I’ve just messed around with them.”

That brings us onto the topic of the rise of bedroom producers; with so much technology readily available for producers of all levels, Walker doesn’t see the need to go into a recording studio now he’s seen what is possible to do from home.

“It just shows that you don’t need to spend money booking studio hire; if you just put the time in and learn to engineer yourself, then it will come.

Another reason people go to studios – which I get – is that they don’t have time to teach themselves, because it does take a long time; I’m still learning.

I find home studios so much better because you’re comfortable in your own environment as well, so the music you make is just you vibing with yourself without the pressure of other engineers in the studio.”

Drawing from influences including EDEN, brakence and Santino Le Saint, Walker released the single Shoot Me Down earlier this year, which after spending years writing for other artists, was a way to introduce a sound that was distinctly his.

“Shoot Me Down marks the start of a new personal creative movement,” says Walker. “It was me introducing a redirection, I think is the best way of putting it. I’d released songs like Lust before, but obviously I was quite new to it and I didn’t take enough time in terms of the mixing, so they were quite boring. This song was me showing that I’m at this next step now, and I’m actually taking this seriously.”

ASPIRING HEADLINER

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“I’M AT THIS NEXT STEP NOW, AND I’M TAKING THIS SERIOUSLY.”

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HARRISON WALKER

Commitments

Being an independent artist has its pros and cons; Walker benefits from having no outside interference when it comes to his music, but like many, juggles it around a full time job.

“I find the promotion the hardest bit, because you don’t have the backing of anyone with money. I work full time, and literally 80% of my funds that I get paid go into my music, plus I’m busy and do my music when I come home. The pros are you have fun and you can do what you want to do. I’d advise others to find their sound and to keep at it,” he adds.

“It’s a weird thing with music and luck, because everyone’s like, ‘you’ve got to be really lucky’, but you make your own luck. If someone blows up overnight, I bet you that for at least a year before, they’ve been putting so much work in, and then it’s just popped off. You’ve got to put the work in and be consistent.”

That brings Walker onto his Spotify strategy, as after originally planning to release an EP, he studied the model more closely and has decided to release as many singles as he can to build up a back catalogue before embarking on a complete body of work.

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“A word of advice – which I’m doing now, but I didn’t do when I first started releasing, and which I regret – is having a catalogue of songs ready.

I release a song every two months now without fail, and I would release a song a month if I had the money.

Just dish out songs as much as you can. I’m not saying just put them out there without any care or thought, obviously make them top quality and take your time. I took about a year out and I got a load of songs ready to go.

Consistency is definitely the key.”

His thoughts on Spotify?

“Well, I kind of get it, to be fair,” he considers. “Because if Spotify was paying out loads of money, they wouldn’t be able to survive. Don’t get me wrong, I do think they could pay out more. But I really like Spotify because you’re piggybacking them to get your music heard by new people.

Now, it is all streaming, and physical sales are more of a luxury rather than a necessity, although the streaming market is so saturated. There’s so many artists trying to get on the scene.”

In the absence of live gigs, earlier this year Walker tested out two QSC K12.2

active loudspeakers and one QSC KS212C sub with a performance of his 2021 single, Commitments.

“It had been so long since I’d performed, so it was great to get back with my guitarist. Even though it was in a studio and there was no audience, it was still nice to sing live, which is why I’m super excited for the gigs I’ve got coming up. The PA system was insane. If I owned it I would find some really cool venues, hire them out and set up my own gig. The sound was so clean and crisp, and the bass was…” he trails off. “I saw the subwoofer, and I was like, ‘Jesus, this thing is massive!’ But it wasn’t overbearing at all; it was so big because it just had to resonate, and it sounded beautiful.”

Check out Harrison Walker on Spotify to keep up with his regular single releases.

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QSC.COM INSTA: @HAZWALKERUK

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OPEN CHEST

An Immersive First

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How was Sitrekin’s Open Chest chosen as the song to launch Apple Music’s new lossless format available on iTunes using Dolby Atmos?

KT: Dyre was actually mixing Open Chest in stereo at the beginning of the year and suddenly he got into Dolby Atmos because of lockdown. He said, ‘I have this new format and it’s a three dimensional way of working with sound’, and I thought, ‘okay, this sounds amazing, let’s go for it!’ When I heard the Dolby Atmos mix, I had this feeling of almost coming home – everything was just in place. Finally I could hear this music the way I heard it inside my own head.

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OPEN CHEST

DG: Dolby Atmos felt like the perfect canvas for Kirstine’s music in that it’s very atmospheric and filmmic.

It’s almost like it couldn’t exist in stereo – of course it can – it sounds great in stereo as well, but Dolby Atmos definitely gives it a different dimension. In the States they’ve been doing Dolby Atmos for quite a while now, but nobody has really been pushing it in the UK with the new productions in that sense. They’ve been turning around the archives in studios here for a while, but for us, it’s very important to be on the front line, as well as of course picking up the old records and the stuff we’ve done in the past. For this new way of working, I think Kirstine is pretty much the perfect artist for it – she’s ahead of her time.

Dolby Atmos Music technology lets you precisely place and move sounds, and you can create up to 128 objects and bed channels in a Dolby Atmos mix; was mixing in Atmos a steep learning curve?

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AN IMMERSIVE FIRST

Danish artist Kirstine Stubbe Teglbjærg – aka Sitrekin’s – Open Chest recently became the first spatial audio exclusive to be released on Apple Music. The track was mixed

by Dyre Gormsen in West London’s Eastcote Studios. The singersongwriter and producer duo explain why the track was the perfect sonic launchpad for Apple Music’s new spatial audio/Dolby Atmos format.

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had it sounding pretty great. As long as you always use your ears and your intuition I don’t think you’re going to go too wrong. It is very technical and it takes some learning, but when you’re there, it’s actually not difficult at all. Dolby Atmos gives you the freedom to move stuff around, and all of a sudden instead of two stereo channels you have 128 objects to mix into, so that just gives you a much wider picture. You don’t have to stuff everything down the same pipeline, so to say. It gives you a different feeling when you listen to it because stereo is very often pushed to the limit and is really loud, whereas with Dolby Atmos, all of a sudden it’s very dynamic. Of course it can be loud, but it can also be very quiet, but super refined. I’m really hoping that this will also help the stereo format in regards to not pushing for super loud masters.

I think when people start discovering this, it will change the way we think about music.

DG: It took me about six months to really finalise the way I wanted to do it, but it didn’t take me long before I HEADLINERMAGAZINE.NET

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OPEN CHEST

An Immersive First

Do you think that more artists will embrace creating music in Dolby Atmos Music going forward?

KT: Some people have been very sceptical about a Dolby Atmos mix – would it be a fragmented experience?

Or would it be a whole experience of things working together? For artists it’s super inspiring to be able to have a much wider way of expressing yourself in terms of music production, and I think it’s going to be something that people want to do more.

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DG: I think this will depend on the artist and how excited they get about this.

If, like Kirstine, you get inspired by a medium like this and don’t necessarily want your drums to pump down the middle, for example, then there’s definitely room for rethinking how you want to create your soundscape for your songs. I’ve been through all the different phases of recording music and mixing music, so it’s great to go with the evolution of sound. Dolby Atmos is more than 10 years old; it’s something that’s been going on in

the film industry for a long time, and we’re just adopting it into the music industry, basically. You still feel that it’s a film medium, and I think this will get better with time – music is going to take this on. They’re working hard on developing it and they’re constantly moving, so it’s going to be really interesting to see where this is going to go. It’s very early days. @EASTCOTE_MASTERING @SITREKIN.MUSIC

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MARINERIS

Your New Home

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Your New Home

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MARINERIS After overcoming the paralysing fear that social media held over his life, Ukrainian singer, songwriter and producer Marineris brings us his indie-pop from the city of Kiev. And it comes with the strong message that sometimes, we really ought to put down our phones. Headliner discusses his approach of writing, singing and producing all his music, and directing his own videos, and how a young Ukrainian fell so hard for British bands like Oasis and The 1975.

Still in his early 20s, Marineris is already turning heads with his impressive creative abilities. He not only writes his songs, but produces them and directs his own excellent and colourful music videos. It would perhaps be strange if they weren’t colourful, considering in the last few months his hair has gone from dark, to orange, to platinum blonde.

“It was just me and guitar for such a long time,” Marineris says when asked about how he came to be adept in so many creative fields. “But then I

realised I should start to produce the whole arrangement. And that’s when I came to the computer; I’ve started to learn a lot about production. I’m selfdirecting my music videos because I’m working as a photographer in Ukraine, and I’m working with different musicians and artists. I was kind of already working in the music industry – that was my goal in the beginning, to be close to the music industry.”

platforms and blue-light devices have taken on our lives. Or in his own words, the song “is a calling to avoid the emotional numbness that the digital world can create inside us”. And it was undoubtedly released in an apt time – where more time spent indoors naturally resulted in more time staring at our screens.

Marineris kicked off 2021 with his single Petrified, a fairly withering take on the grip that social media HEADLINERMAGAZINE.NET

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MARINERIS

Your New Home

“PETRIFIED IS A CALLING TO AVOID THE EMOTIONAL NUMBNESS THAT THE DIGITAL WORLD CAN CREATE INSIDE US.”

“We live in this type of world at the moment when lots of information is coming to us everyday,” he says.

“Stories, all these advertisements – social media is everywhere now.

And I get the feeling that sometimes

HEADLINER MAGAZINE

I don’t even know if I really want something, or if social media made me think so. Petrified is about that feeling of being petrified because of the amount of information that makes it hard to understand what you really

want – what do you really love and who you want to be. For example, you see a rapper advertising some shoes, and you start thinking maybe you’d be happier if you had those shoes.”

EMERGING HEADLINER

There’s some very strong imagery in the song’s music video, directed by Marineris. For example, a gravestone with just the word ‘empathy’ displayed, and at one point the sky holds an exit sign — an exit from the digital madness we all too often become fully lost and intoxicated in.

And while Petrified is a very electronic and pop-based track, Marineris followed it up with a much rockier prospect with the heavy guitar bonanza in Prick, although interspersed hip-hop beats and autotune ensure this is no by-thenumbers track. And his love and influence from UK outfit The 1975 can perhaps be heard most clearly in his most recent release, My Band Could Be Your Home. As the name suggests, guitar, piano and even strings are at the forefront alongside his anthemic vocals.

“My Band Could Be Your Home is actually the title track for my album,” Marineris explains. “ I think the cool

thing is that all of the songs are completely different. The first single (Petrified) sounds like a classic ‘80s tune. Prick is pretty punk rock. But My Band Could Be Your Home is gonna be like the most classic Marineris song that I could imagine. I think that this will be very uplifting and meaningful.”

“My studio is actually just in my bedroom,” Marineris says as the conversation turns in the tech direction. “I wrote a whole album sitting on the same chair in the same room! The studio is really minimalistic, and that is what I love about it, actually. The most expensive thing is my laptop, which is a MacBook, and maybe that’s all that you really need these days to make some music!”

Not entirely true in Marineris’ case, as he relies a lot on his Scarlett interface from Focusrite. “I’ve had it for three years, and this is all you need to record something and to get nice quality. I’ve done 90 per cent of

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my album on the Scarlett and I love it; I couldn’t have made this record without it.”

And for plugins, it’s Soundtoys, Valhalla and Arturia that do the business for Marineris. “I love Soundtoys a lot. I also love the Valhalla reverbs and use them all the time. And Arturia are the main ones for me for synths. I’ve been using a lot of synths and keyboards recently.

I have the Arturia V Collection, which has the classic synth sounds, like Jupiter and Prophet.”

With the almost baffling amount of versatility displayed in Marineris’ singles so far and the fact he’s produced virtually every aspect of his creative process himself, to say he’s a name to look out for is a fairly gross understatement. Marineris believes his band could be your home, and the viewings are open now.

INSTA: @MARINERIS

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JULIAN KINDRED

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Creative Control

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Multi Grammy-winning producer, engineer and songwriter Julian Kindred – who’s made records with a broad and varied range of artists for nearly three decades – speaks to Headliner about the hybrid setup in his UK-based studio, and the interesting ways he uses oeksound plugins throughout his workflow.

Heavily inspired by the likes of The Police, The Smiths, Talk Talk and Tears For Fears, Kindred caught the recording and production bug around the age of 16. Peter Gabriel’s music had a massive impact on the young Kindred, as – like Kindred himself – Gabriel’s producer Daniel Lanois was also a Canadian.

The few months that followed the first UK lockdown in the spring of 2020 was – needless to say – a particularly grim period of time for creatives, especially those working in music. Luckily for Kindred however, the drought caused by the initial cancellation and postponement of projects was superseded by an influx of work, and he has remained extremely busy since.

In the early ‘90s, Kindred was presented with an opportunity to go to Nashville, where he ended up working at a studio that created demos for publishing houses, recording many of the city’s legendary session musicians.

He’d spend any free moments gatecrashing his colleagues’ sessions in neighbouring studios around Music Row.

“There are a few exciting projects I’ve been involved with recently in both a production and mixing capacity,” he tells Headliner. “Some really inventive, creative and experimental stuff that’s, gratefully, just been a joy to be a part of.”

“It was an incredible environment to be in,” he recalls. “Everybody was competitive, but also very supportive, and it all contributed to a healthy, nurturing and thriving community.”

Back in the UK, where he has resided for the best part of two decades, Kindred carries out his musical duties from his own Nonsuch Park Studio, a facility that he has lovingly created at the end of his garden.

“It has a mix room and a reasonably sized vaulted live room with a ‘65 Ludwig Super Classic in there,” he reveals. “It’s a really lively space, but one that I can control very easily in terms of making a dead drum sound or live drum sound.

“It’s completely hybrid, because I wanted to make the setup as flexible as possible so I can handle specific requests,” he continues. “I have situations where things are completely in the box, but because I’m also tracking my live room, I have 16 inputs going into the computer via Pro Tools HDX with a pretty healthy and recognisable complement of high quality front end gear, such as Neve, Focusrite and Amek.”

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Creative Control

And when it comes to plugins, there are two particular offerings from Finnish company oeksound – soothe and spiff – that Kindred admits wishing had existed much earlier in his career.

“The thing a lot of people are typically using soothe for – which is so beneficial – is just the easing down of really sudden, spiking frequencies; putting it directly on vocals, vocal parallel returns, and sometimes drums,” he explains. “The reality is that it’s also an extremely creative tool; I’ve done some pretty interesting things, like overdoing it and using it as an effect. It’s a very good substitute for things like low pass envelope filters, and automated tricks against loops/vocals etc.

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“I think there’s always some exploration that can be done within a track. Sometimes I’ll let go of any mix template and surprise myself, and soothe and spiff are both very, very good at throwing surprises your way if you’re open to how they can be used. They’re very futuredriven plugins, producing very progressive possibilities. Despite that, I do encourage people to develop their craft without relying on them, just through pure engineering and tactical miking. Then when either are used, whether by necessity or creative impulse, you really discover what they are capable of.

“Spiff and soothe are examples of a new kind of sonic weaponry. You can do things to the upper punch

or the body of the kick drum, or you can make the actual low frequency roundness thump harder,” he adds.

“These and so many more uses are powerful, whether you’re applying to taste or using them drastically.”

That being said, Headliner is not surprised to learn that every one of Kindred’s mixes from the last four years include some application of soothe or spiff...

“There are some exciting things going on here in the studio at the moment.

I’m also currently working on some of my own music,” he lets on. “There’ll be lots more stuff coming to light in the near future.”

INSTA: @JULIANKINDRED OEKSOUND.COM

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EDDIE HEARN

Fighting Talk

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FIGHTING TALK As one of the most successful and outspoken promoters in world sport, Eddie Hearn is not a man who deals in half measures. In addition to representing some of the biggest names in boxing, he has now set himself the meagre task of reinventing live events production with the launch of Matchroom Media. And, he tells Headliner, he’s just getting started…

A glorious, unimpeded view of London lies at the foot of the garden of Eddie Hearn’s Essex childhood home. It’s a remarkable vista that would be the obvious talking point when strolling across the property’s lush lawn if it wasn’t for the helipad, full-size boxing ring and audience seating area competing for attention.

The opulence and vastness of the sprawling estate encapsulate with precision not just the accomplishments Hearn has polished off to date, but also the loftiness of his latest ambition to dominate not only boxing as a sport, but also the presentation and execution of its broadcast and production.

Today, the former Hearn family residence has been repurposed to serve as Matchroom HQ, home of

Matchroom Sport, the promotion company launched by Hearn’s father Barry in the 1970s. Having grown up on an east London council estate, Hearn Sr’s entrepreneurial drive saw him go from purchasing a Romford snooker hall at the start of the decade to becoming one of the sport’s most influential figures by its close. Over the following decades he established himself as an iconic and formidable figure on the world stage, promoting some of the biggest boxers and fights in the sport’s history, as well as serving as chairman of the Professional Darts Corporation and chairman of Leyton Orient Football Club for almost 20 years between 1995 and 2014.

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Inevitably, Hearn Jr’s upbringing bore virtually no similarity to that of his father’s, yet he has unquestionably inherited the same aggressive, unrestrained ambition that drove his success. He has never underplayed the enormous privilege he was born into, but as he’s been quoted, he may have been born with a silver spoon, but he’s turned it into gold.

In recent years, Hearn has become arguably the most recognisable promoter in sport, particularly boxing, where he promotes the likes of Anthony Joshua, Canelo Álvarez, Gennady Golovkin, Oleksandr Usyk and Vasyl Lomachenko to name a few. He has also become just as famous in some quarters for his notorious ‘Hearnisms’ – a number of social media accounts have been launched devoted to sharing clips of some of his most memorable, often hilarious proclamations.

There is, of course, a lot more to Hearn than the showbiz sheen and comical outbursts that precede him.

His knowledge and understanding of his profession is meticulous, while the advantages he was afforded by birth have, if anything, increased rather than reduced his work ethic.

When Headliner joins him ringside at Matchroom HQ to discuss the launch of Matchroom Media – the company’s new live events

production arm – his tone is softer and more measured than many are used to hearing at press conferences and those aforementioned social media accounts. His message, however, is loud and clear. Matchroom Media is not just here to tweak the world of live sports production, but to rip it up and start again.

“Sport is about narratives, it’s about storytelling,” he explains. “Of course, it’s about glory and competitiveness, but for us as promoters, when we start an idea for an event, it’s almost a cradle to grave mentality, where you tell that story through the promotion of an event. And I felt we were getting to a stage where we built the narrative around each event, but ultimately, we didn’t have control over finishing the job. We’ve worked with some tremendous broadcasters, but I just made the decision to do it ourselves.

Particularly in boxing, sometimes, the way I perceived an event should look or feel didn’t, because we didn’t have that editorial control.

“It’s quite bold, because as a rights holder, when you sell rights to a broadcaster, they want to create the production and they own those rights. But in boxing it was a bit different. There were things happening at the execution stage of events that disheartened me, and it wasn’t done in the style I wanted.

Also, I spend my entire life on social media looking at the reaction of the fans and the viewers, and I had my own ideas about content, the analysis and presentation that I wanted to build. So, I decided with the timing of our new rights deal, whichever way we went, part of the deal would have to be that Matchroom Media would control live production for all our boxing, and it’s something we are looking at across all our sports.”

Having become disillusioned by the standard of live events production in boxing over recent years, Hearn insists he had no reservations about launching into an incredibly complex, not to mention highly competitive, world.

“When you realise the size of the job, that’s where the creative freedom comes in, and it feels like you can spread your wings and fly,” he beams. “Content is absolutely key. This isn’t just moving into live production, it’s a move across content and storytelling, something I’m very passionate about. But for the live production it’s a breath of fresh air. To go in and to mould the show is how it should be.

“WHEN YOU REALISE THE SIZE OF THE JOB, THAT’S WHERE THE CREATIVE FREEDOM COMES IN, AND IT FEELS LIKE YOU CAN SPREAD YOUR WINGS AND FLY.”

HEADLINER MAGAZINE

COVER STORY

“Of course, there is huge pressure because everyone… didn’t hope we’d fail, but there were definitely a few people in the industry who said, ‘it’d be nice if it didn’t work out’. So, you need the best people. We’re a young company and we like to give people the opportunity to move through the business, but with something as important as this you need steady hands, you need the best, credible people who have been there and done it. People like Jim Bentley and Andy Flynn, who have worked across BT and Sky. These are people that have produced and directed events for many years, but maybe haven’t been given the creative powers we’ve given them. Sometimes you’re working under a line manager or director who is

telling you how something should look.

We don’t want that; we want you to come up with the ideas. Yes, we have our ideas, but if you are the best for the job, show me. This is the chance to try things and put a different look and feel to live boxing.”

According to Hearn, the Matchroom Media approach to live production will offer untold advantages over the competition. By coming at the process from a different, more editorially driven angle, the possibilities, he believes, are limitless.

“Things become stale quite quickly, and live production for boxing has become incredibly stale,” he says. “From ring walks to lighting to content, it’s the

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same every week. We wanted to bring people who are fresh and bring a new energy, and a new audience, to what we’re doing. We’ve done that with the likes of Maya Jama; Laura Woods is one of the best presenters in sport, and Mike Costello who is the voice of boxing. And there’s Tony Bellew, Chris Lloyd, Darren Barker. It’s such a great analytical team, but fresh. Some broadcasts get tired very quickly. Now I look at it and I’m walking around with a smile on my face.”

Crucial to the future of Matchroom Media’s operations is its partnership with streaming platform and broadcaster DAZN, the firm’s exclusive broadcast partner.

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EDDIE HEARN

Fighting Talk

“You only have to look at the future generation in terms of how they are digesting content to know that streaming is the absolute future,” he says. “DAZN is a breath of fresh air in the sporting world. We’ve seen them in so many key markets, they are making incredible moves. This is a long-term play with a fantastic and aggressive business, that is allowing us to do things we couldn’t do with other broadcasters.

“We have a little bit of naivete about us as a production company. We have excellent people but we’re moving into a new world. We’re saying to boxing fans ‘we’ve listened’. We’ve seen on social media what people like, what they don’t like and we’re putting it all together. That’s what makes it so attractive for a broadcaster. DAZN put their faith in us, and it wasn’t just a rights deal, it was a deal that included Matchroom Media doing the entire production for all live boxing. That was a big move for them but they believed in us and our ability to deliver value for fight fans, and we’ve done it.”

The excitement and passion that Hearn harbours for this new venture is abundantly evident. So how does the cut and thrust of live events production compare to the thrill of boxing promotion?

“I get the same excitement, I really do,” he states. “It’s a different feeling, because on one side there’s the emotional investment of a friend who’s going to fight another man or achieve their dreams or become a world champion. But the pressure from a live production standpoint is also intense, because if you get it wrong…

“It’s a tremendous buzz to be part of the live production, because at the end of the night, before we go on air I have a different kind of nerves. I’m excited for the team because it’s a whole new experience. I know that this is so different to what people are seeing and that’s rewarding.”

HEADLINER MAGAZINE

“THIS IS A LONG-TERM PLAY WITH A FANTASTIC AND AGGRESSIVE BUSINESS.”

As an operation in its infancy, Hearn sees major expansion opportunities on the horizon. The most obvious being a rollout across new territories.

As for the biggest challenges in the business, he insists it’s all about delivering a quality production on the night.

“The deal with DAZN was always with a global position in mind,” he affirms.

“We did a huge deal with them in America to do 16 shows a year, 16 shows a year in the UK, four shows a year in Mexico, four in Italy, four in Spain. We’re going to be moving into Australia towards the end of the year.

It’s our vision to control the global world of boxing and to do that with one broadcaster is so unique. Traditionally, we would sell our rights to individual broadcasters in different territories.

Now, I can go anywhere in the world and say ‘you can only watch our shows on DAZN, wherever you are in the world’. It comes back to having a blank canvas to create a global schedule for boxing, and now we can do that by controlling the production as well.”

“It’s always the live production, but also the move into other territories. We had a show recently in Guadalajara where we did the live production… that was an experience! I definitely lost a few years of my life! It’s dealing with local teams, which is challenging but also very rewarding. That’s a big job, but the real challenge is the execution and doing it in a way we want to. Not keeping things simple, bringing in more guests, more positions for presentation, more analysis, more ways to use technology to improve the experience, whether it’s heart rates, punch stats or mics in the corner. There are so many ways to improve the viewer experience, but it’s all about delivering on that live production.”

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Fighting Talk

So far, he feels confident he has delivered on that promise.

“It’s early doors, so I don’t want to start gloating yet. But the start we’ve made has been tremendous and the production is on another level to anything we’ve seen before in British boxing. We didn’t want to come in and do some low-key production, we wanted to make noise. We’ve got to keep our heads down, keep delivering, keep innovating. It was time to do something different in the sport and it’s going to be a major move for us.

“The growth of shoulder programming, analysis, content HEADLINER MAGAZINE

while it’ll never be more important than the main event, it will sit alongside it in terms of importance,” he elaborates. “So, all our press conferences, weigh-ins, pre-show talks are all live streamed. That content is so important, not just for driving hype around the event, but delivering a great experience for the fans. As a rights holder it’s your job to deliver that for your broadcaster.”

With a growing number of successful boxing events under his (ahem) belt, Hearn is determined to move forward with Matchroom Media at rapid pace. His belief in the concept is unshakable, and if his

vision for the future of boxing comes to fruition, the complexion of event production in the sport may soon become unrecognisable.

“Not everyone will like it, I see that on social media,” he closes. “But show me a better production and better presentation in British boxing.

It’s not even close. And we’re only just beginning.”

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JOHN MURPHY

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Scoring The Suicide Squad

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JOHN MURPHY Before zombie films were all the rage, John Murphy was approached to score an indie movie that Danny Boyle was convinced no one would watch. 28 Days Later grossed more than $82.7 million worldwide, making it one of the most profitable horror films of 2002. The Liverpudlian composer (whose credits include Kick-Ass, Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels and Snatch) reveals how the film’s low expectations were a blessing in disguise, and how he was given free rein for this year’s highly anticipated The Suicide Squad.

What are your memories of scoring 28 Days Later?

It’s so weird how that movie happened, because nobody thought it was going to be a big film. I remember Danny Boyle ringing me up and saying, ‘I want to do this zombie horror movie, but I’m not sure that anyone’s going to want to see it’.

So he said that meant we could do whatever we wanted! We never saw it as a zombie film; we saw it as an apocalyptic road movie. I know you had all the infected wandering around looking like zombies, but they weren’t really zombies – it was what happens when you strip away that semblance

of what we think is civilization and go back to the primal roots. They were still human to us, and I thought one of the ways we can really separate this from it feeling like a zombie film is with the music, so I suggested that we should try to avoid having big, scary music in the scenes where there was violence.

With the most aggressive, violent stuff, we tried not to have music there, and then all the moments where you would never usually have music in a zombie film – that’s where we get to the humanity, and that’s where we used the music. That’s why we had these beautiful Protestant hymns throughout, and the effect of it was

brilliant, because it slows the movie down in a lot of ways and makes it a bit more thoughtful, a bit darker and more real.

I was trying to do a zombie score in a way that wasn’t a zombie score.

I thought it might be cool to do the score in an ambient way, so I was using a lot of reverse stuff and making things very lo-fi, because I thought, ‘if civilisation breaks down, then the sound of music is not going to be this clear thing’ – I wanted to make it as if the music was dying along with humanity.

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JOHN MURPHY

Scoring The Suicide Squad

“WE WANTED THIS SCORE TO HAVE ATTITUDE.”

Following 2016’s Suicide Squad, expectations were high for The Suicide Squad to be better; how did you approach this score?

This is a very different movie with a very different director, but people are going to inevitably compare the two films. For me, it was working on something fresh, so it was nice to have a clean slate and just go for it. I met with the director, James Gunn, and he loves music – you can feel it in his movies. He said to me that he wanted the score to be different to what people would expect; he was basically saying to me, ‘I want you to do what you do, and not try to be somebody else’. We wanted this score to have attitude.

The Suicide Squad is made up of supervillains and antiheroes; how did this play out in your music?

I always like anti anything! What I loved was the fact that they were the bottom of the supervillain barrel – they’re these lame ass villains and antiheroes. I mean, who doesn’t want to go and see a movie with PolkaDot Man? It’s like, ‘what’s he gonna do?’ So you’ve got this humour right from the get go. These aren’t noble Avengers-type heroes, they are very much broken, flawed people, and ironically, very human. That meant HEADLINER MAGAZINE

that I could start the score in a very raw, belligerent way to show that these guys don’t really want to even be here – they don’t want to be heroes. I started the score in a very dirty, punky way that fitted in with how they started their characters. As the story developed and the characters

started to become more heroic, it meant that I could grow the score out, sonically and emotionally, and with more colour and scale to go all the way towards the end where they start to become heroes.

COMPOSER

It’s a funny score in a way because we had all these emotional backstories and flashbacks throughout the film; the score is almost like a crescendo right the way to the end, but interspersed with colourful, emotional moments that actually don’t ever appear anywhere else in the movie. It’s a strange shape of a score, and it’s certainly not a classic superhero score, but because the movie is so comic book – which makes it incredibly dynamic – that strange shape kind of worked. It felt like I was doing an indie movie because I was really only dealing with James and the producers, and the vibe was like, ‘let’s see what we can get away with; let’s push it’, so it felt like I was doing Lock Stock or something because there was no worrying about offending people or if something might be too much. If it

made us laugh or made us excited, then it was in. It just happened to be on this huge movie! I always love it when you do something in a way that no one expects, but it still works; that’s always the biggest thing for me.

You are a long-time Genelec user; what have you got in your studio?

I love Genelec! In the mix room and my main room we have Genelec 8050As with a 7070A subwoofer. The 8050As are also our main reference speakers in the two other studio rooms, and I use 1031As for my synth bay and the little 8010As for my laptop. Genelecs all the way! We’ve used Genelecs as our main reference speakers since 28 Days Later. These don’t tire you out like some speakers do, and they’re very easy to do long hours on. It’s a trust thing with them, because when you’re doing music in

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movies and you’ve been to dubbing theatres and you watch the movies back and things sound like you want them to sound, you know there will be no terrible surprises. I don’t think I’ll ever use a different type of speaker because I just know what they sound like; I listen to Genelecs every single day I work. We also mix things in our own studio before they go to get mixed because you can’t just send a load of random shitty-sounding stuff to a mix room that’s gonna mix it in 5.1 because it’s never gonna work.

If we’ve made them sound good here, then they’re gonna sound good somewhere else.

JOHNMURPHYOFFICIAL.COM GENELEC.COM

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NGAIIRE

The Hard Way

Photographer: Daniel Segal

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NGAIIRE Not everyone is going to ‘get’ Ngaiire. But the personal journey the Papua New Guinean, Australian-based R&B soul singer undertook while putting her third album, 3 together made her realise that being a multi-faceted woman of colour is perfectly acceptable, even if it causes people to shift uncomfortably in their seats.

In her own words, Ngaiire (pronounced Ny-ree) is a bit odd, a bit queer. Known for her boisterous costumes, stellar vocals and tight beats, she knows the music industry has struggled to put her in a box for years – “I constantly had to field useless enquiries from white people who wanted to know if we all still ate people, or why I was so pretty for a Papua New Guinean” – and doesn’t beat around the bush about not being “the right kind” of black to be commercial enough.

Full of joy, but also a little (rightfully!) angry, Ngaiire feels a walking contradiction at times – torn between her Papua New Guinean roots while now living in Sydney in a predominantly white space that operates on stolen indigenous land.

She’s just turned 37 when Headliner speaks to her; “a bit past the used by date according to industry standards because [I] had a baby, but fuck it, I’d like to see you pull a human out of your dick whilst creating an album!”

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“And definitely not your normal cup of tea out of a fucking dainty little English teacup,” she says, grinning wickedly. “As much as I’ve tried to pour myself into that teacup over the years, I’ve accepted that I’m really better suited to a brilliantly well-charcoaled aluminium kettle full of black tea leaves cooked on a very lived-in fire built upon the soil that smells like my mother, my Aine, my Pupu and those that came before who said, ‘reach for the stars but always come back to us’.”

a contemporary context, although it quickly turned into an “expensive therapy session” on the damages code-switching can create for women of colour when trying to survive in spaces that don’t understand where they come from.

3 began as an experiment in 2017 to go back to her home country in the hopes of extracting unique aspects of her culture to present in

Photographer: Daniel Segal

Although she doesn’t always channel this fiery defense – in fact, she’s fun and self-deprecating during our interview – at once philosophical and down to earth – and she doesn’t take herself too seriously. She celebrated her lockdown birthday with a Zoom party (Ngai Paul’s drag race: prison hoes & lockdown woes), where her friends dressed in drag and performed her songs to her. She likes tequila and margaritas, doesn’t drink coffee – “it makes me crazy” – and she’s a bit obsessed with death, sex, life, spirits, fashion, expensive cocktails, art, board games, rice and bully beef, sitting on the beach all day, and living beyond her means.

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“I NEEDED TO BE STRETCHED, I NEEDED TO BE TURNED INSIDE OUT.”

“It was challenging, but I’m a big believer that everything happens for a reason, and I think it really stretched me, creatively,” she reflects. “You can get so comfortable coasting along as an artist, so for my journey I needed to be challenged in that way. As someone who’s a Papua New Guinean who has lived in Australia for a long time, because my music is so personal and so connected to who I am, I needed to go back to rediscover my centre. I needed to know that I actually don’t need to prove to anyone who I am as a Papua New Guinean woman making contemporary music: that’s who I am, and if no one wants to come to the table, or no one wants to do the work to understand what that means, then that’s on them. Just make the music that you want to make – I wouldn’t have come to that realisation without having made that trip, even though it was hard. I needed to be stretched, I needed to be turned inside out.”

A highlight of 3 is unquestionably the pleading ballad, Him. With lyrics including: ‘Please don’t let him think that he’s the reason that I went away / Please always be kind to him, be strong for him, oh Lord I pray’, even without knowing the context, there can be no doubt that a deeply personal story lies behind the song. Ngaiire shares that the track is a letter to her then-unborn son.

“I tried to keep this story quite private just for my own safety, but the more people that asked me, the more I feel like it needs to be told,” she shares, taking a deep breath HEADLINERMAGAZINE.NET

NGAIIRE

3 The Hard Way

Photographer: Daniel Segal

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“During the time that we were putting the album together I got quite sick; I had cancer when I was a youngster. The album is about three years late because I had some really, really major issues with health.

During my pregnancy with my first and only child, I had crazy, acute abdominal pains. I was in so much pain to the point where I was on so many narcotics and opioids, and I was popping eight to 12 Endones a day. When it didn’t touch the sides, I would head back into hospital and they put me on morphine. Because I was pregnant, no one could run the normal tests that they would normally run, so everyone was speculating and doing a trial and error thing to try to find out what was wrong with me. It got to a point where I thought, ‘this pain is actually going to kill me’.

If I was in a building and there was a glass window, I would have run through that window because the pain got to the point where it was completely unbearable. I remember sitting down with my husband and we had to have a tough conversation: ‘What if you don’t make it? What if our child doesn’t make it? What if you both don’t make it?’ It was just the worst conversation to have, and the song, Him came out of that. It’s HEADLINER MAGAZINE

me asking, ‘what am I going to leave this child if I don’t make it and he survives?’ I’ve kept it to myself a long time, and talking about it more makes it easier to carry.”

Ngaiire gave birth to a healthy son in 2018, which put everything in perspective, including whether or not people ‘get’ her as an artist.

“That was the turning point,” she confirms. “After I had my son I had a few operations to try to rectify the situation, and I got better. During that time, I lost so many shows and I was completely out of control of my own body, my career and my relationships with people. At that point, I was like, ‘it really does not matter if people get me or not’. I started to realise that what actually mattered is life – the fact that I am alive – I’m living and I have a healthy son and a happy family. As long as I’m true to who I am, and I’m honest, and I’m a kind and respectful person to other people, I don’t have to prove where I come from. It’s tiring trying to prove yourself to people, and I don’t want to do that anymore, especially when it comes to music and trying to fit into a box that people have set up for you.

“This album is about me letting go and accepting that not everyone is going to get me. I don’t even want to be easily figured out anyway,” she furthers, pointing out that the album’s opening interlude-style track, 3, sets the tone for the whole album.

“It’s the hallmark of the whole last three years of putting the album together. The lyrics are: ‘when I count to three, let go’ – and that’s all it is, there’s no other lyrics. There are so many things that we hold on to through life that we think are positive for us, or what we think other people would want to see in us to make them feel comfortable, but there are so many negative aspects to holding on to those kinds of things. I just hope that it’s a song that people can listen to and go, ‘okay, I’m gonna breathe through this moment in time’. I am full to the brim of stories that many don’t have the privilege to hold within themselves; some I know quite well and some live deep in my DNA that I won’t have enough lifetimes to unpack. But the ones I know, I will tell them how I want to, because I can.”

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L-ACOUSTICS

Spatial Awareness

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SPATIAL AWARENESS Dubbed “the pioneer of nomadic electronic music,” Paris-based producer and head of the Mille Feuilles label, Romain Delahaye – a.k.a. Molécule – has become renowned for his innovative recording techniques, often captured in some of the unlikeliest of locations. Now, he and sound designer Hervé Déjardin have brought a 360-degree spatialised sound experience to concert audiences listening in complete darkness, in the round. With the title Acousmatic 360°, the duo have taken the concept on tour, with L-Acoustics’ L-ISA Immersive Hyperreal Sound technology at the heart of the show.

Among the most challenging settings Molécule has recorded in are a fishing boat in the Atlantic, a village in Greenland and the surf swells of Nazaré in Portugal. More recently, he captured the sound of Thomas Ruyant’s monohull during the Vendée Globe yacht race. He then transforms his recordings into spatialised music

with the help of sound designer Déjardin, who is also the engineer in charge of developing immersive audio at Radio France.

Now, Molécule and Déjardin have brought a 360-degree spatialised sound experience to concert audiences listening in darkness, in the

round. With the moniker Acousmatic 360°, the duo have taken the concept on tour, using L-Acoustics’ L-ISA Immersive Hyperreal Sound technology. The pair came up with the Acousmatic 360° concept following a performance at Paris’ Rex Club in 2018 where, as an experiment, they performed in the dark.

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L-ACOUSTICS

Spatial Awareness

“WE CAN TAKE THE TIME TO CREATE MOVEMENTS AND BRING THE AUDIENCE ON A JOURNEY WITH US.”

“Although the concert was scheduled for an hour, we kept going for over two hours because people were so into it,” Déjardin recalls. After gathering audience feedback via a podcast, the live setup was developed with further shows at La Cigale as part of the MaMA festival.

The show sees Déjardin and Molécule perform in the centre of the auditorium, with an L-Acoustics Syva system circling both the performers and audience. “We have a special relationship with the audience because they are so close,” said Déjardin.

“With Acousmatic, we’re not on a pedestal, we’re in the middle of the show,” added Molécule. “In terms of what spatialisation adds to the show, there is a higher quality to the work and performance. At the same time, we have the pleasure of hearing the same sound as HEADLINER MAGAZINE

the audience and the quality of the audio allows me to be really specific with the movement of the sounds, which means I can go deeper and deeper into the performance.”

The circle of 12 Syva, two Syva Low and four L-Acoustics KS28 dual 18” subwoofers, provided by S Group, was chosen to deliver substantial SPL with no distortion.

“Syva is really impressive in this respect; when you’re in the surround system, you feel like you’re in a protective cocoon. It’s a very new experience,” Déjardin continued.

IMMERSIVE AUDIO

Upon returning to the studio to mix these recordings, Déjardin explains that using L-ISA means many of his live mixes already have instruments and sounds precisely localised. As such, he claims that he is able to pinpoint his live mix so well because the Syva cabinets reproduce accurately, and because recording in object mode avoids the restrictions of conventional stereo. Utilising a mixture of software that he patches into L-Acoustics’ L-ISA Controller, he develops movements for each sound.

“The spatialisation allows me to reinforce the key moments of the music,” he says. During the live

performance, softer moments are taken as opportunities to produce a quieter sound, while the 360° capability is used to enhance the crescendos.

Discussing the difference between a stereo show and an immersive show, Molécule commented that live immersive shows have a tendency to play extended versions of songs.

“We can take the time to create movements and bring the audience on a journey with us,” he said. “We use the studio track as a base for us to jump off and fly, allowing us to improvise in the live show, where

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I can react to what Hervé is doing.

The immersive audio is important to achieve that synergy between us.”

According to the pair, it is their ambition to take their music as a showcase “to the four corners of the world”. For Molécule, he believes that more and more venues should consider equipping themselves for immersive shows.

“In our immersive live performances, I find that the sound is even better than in my own studio,” he said.

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GEOFF FOSTER

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For Your Ears Only

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GEOFF FOSTER The name’s Foster. Geoff Foster. You’ll know the three-time Grammy award-winning recording and mix engineer’s work from film scores ranging from Romeo and Juliet, Love Actually, The Dark Knight, Inception, Black Swan, The Pirates of the Caribbean series, Moulin Rouge, Dunkirk, and many, many more. Just before the lockdown took hold of the world, Foster finished work on the much anticipated (and delayed) new James Bond film, No Time To Die as the score engineer for long time collaborator, Hans Zimmer’s music, and also recorded the orchestra for Billie Eilish’s Bond theme, No Time To Die at AIR Studios in London.

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For Your Ears Only

You’re no stranger to working on Bond films; how did you get involved with working on the No Time To Die score, and where did you start?

Bond is about the songs, the theme, and it’s BIG. You’re not required to reinvent the wheel here, you’re required to take the wheel to new highs. Yes, you can write things and use new themes and all that kind of stuff, but when Bond is doing Bond stuff, Bond is what it has to be. The previous composer didn’t do that, and in the end he found himself being shown the door. Hans called me up and said, “It’s a big secret, but it looks like this is coming my way; are you available?” And I said, “of course I’m available”. He said to me, “you’ve done more of these than anybody else, so I really have to have you here because you know what’s expected”.

Bond soundtracks are such an integral part of every 007 film: how do you capture that quintessential ‘Bond’ sound?

Interestingly, there were a few debates about whether or not the theme should be swing, and I said, “it’s got to be swing because that’s the theme.”

People are in love with the Bond theme, it’s the fifth character. It’s not just Bond, a bad guy and a few girls, there’s the music, and everybody HEADLINER MAGAZINE

wants to hear the music. Everybody wants that little adrenaline rush you get when Bond pulls something magical out of a hat to get himself out of a tight spot. You hear the theme and it’s like, “This is what we want. This is entertainment”. It’s everything that you go to a Bond film for. There have been some Bond films where they’ve not done that and they’ve ended up hiring somebody to put the Bond theme in afterwards. You go to see a Bond film, you want to hear the Bond theme, just like if you go to see Star Wars, you want to have the Star Wars theme – it’s part of the beast.

Where did you start with recording the score at AIR? Hans said to me, “do what you need to do to get it to sound like a Bond film”, so I did my preferred setup in the hall. The trick is to get the sound in the room, so make sure you get the right notes on the page and then you put the best players in the world in the room.

When we did Casino Royale, at the end section there’s a line where a guy on the floor who’s just been shot says, “Who are you?” Bond says, “The name’s Bond. James Bond’’ and then we go into the Bond theme. It was actually in the script that we should never hear the Bond theme until this

moment, and then you do and it is an amazing moment.

We had around a 70 piece orchestra for No Time To Die and because we wanted the flexibility to change the balances in the mix and to put instrumentation together that just can’t be recorded in the same room at the same time, we recorded it in stems.

We did the strings and the woodwinds in one set of recordings and then recorded the brass afterwards. This allowed us to make a bigger brass sound and then control the balance between the brass and the strings in the mix afterwards.

When we did the main song we actually had the whole band in the room for the entire time because we ran it as a full performance and then stemmed a few bits out so that they could be played within the mix, but the score was more calculated – we wanted control over lots of this stuff.

Hans’ style and creative process requires a degree of separation, not just for the mix but also creatively so that he can try ideas, so there is an ongoing creative flexibility created by the way we record stuff.

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GEOFF FOSTER

For Your Ears Only

The theme song was written and recorded by Eilish and Finneas in three days while on a tour bus in Texas, which was then recorded with Zimmer at AIR with the 70 piece orchestra; what was the approach as to how the song should sound?

Image: Spitfire Audio

There were a couple of arrangements that were on the cards. Billie had done a very soft and delicate vocal, and Hans had done an arrangement that mirrored this and kept the band out of the way for most of the song.

Matt Dunkley, who has arranged and done lots of stuff for Hans before, was sort of overseeing this, and he added an arrangement of a bigger version which we ran down. We got the quiet, softer version, and then we ran the big one down. While playing back the softer version Billie turned around and said, “Where’s the big band? Why am I not hearing the big band?” She had clocked the big band and said, “that’s what I want”. The issue was, her vocal was soft and delicate. She said, “I’ll just re-sing it”, and she did!

She demonstrated that she’s got a fantastic big voice, which she doesn’t spray all over her normal records.

Normally it’s quite controlled, but she turned up and delivered on that because that’s what we all want – that huge, big band, big orchestral sound is the Bond sound. So the larger bits got added in and she then sang to them, and in my humble opinion she did a brilliant job. She showed us a whole new side and why she is such a superstar. It’s a really tough gig; my heart always bleeds for anybody who actually takes it on because you’re looking to do something that’s going to get an airing. If you mess it up you’re going to get absolutely pounded for it by the Bond fans because they know what they want, and if you don’t deliver something that ticks those boxes then they are the first to scream and shout. I think she did it brilliantly.

HEADLINER MAGAZINE

Given that Billie and Finneas are known for recording everything in their bedroom, how did that translate to working in the huge space at AIR with an orchestra?

Like all music, it’s a journey. Billie was a prime example of this. I don’t know if they’d worked with an orchestra before, but there was a real sense that there was stuff going on that they were like, “Oh, I didn’t know you

could do that; that’s interesting”. They first had to become huge stars before someone handed them a budget and said, “go away and make a record with an orchestra”. If you listen to that record, it has a quality to it that you can’t get out of a box – you need to stick 70 people in a room and say, “play these notes and do it this way” to get that kind of energy.

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“IF YOU MESS IT UP YOU’RE GOING TO GET ABSOLUTELY POUNDED FOR IT BY THE BOND FANS BECAUSE THEY KNOW WHAT THEY WANT.”

AIR is known for its unique Neve consoles; tell us about how you used the 88R to record the Bond score and Eilish’s song, No Time To Die… Neve desks have always got this feel for warmth and energy and give you a velvety smooth quality, and yet at the same time, it’s as hard as steel. AIR has a 96-channel desk, so there are a host of opportunities to put up lots of mics. Again, we were talking about Hans’ desire to have close mics, distant mics and mid-distance mics and all that kind of stuff. So it’s a workhorse that, from an engineering perspective, allows you to put out a lot more mics than you’ll use in the end, but they’re all just there in case you want them and you haven’t got to bring in racks of outboard to achieve that flexibility.

It’s also great for sorting out multiple headphone feeds.

If you’ve got 70 musicians in a room, some of them want to hear click only, some want to hear what’s happening on the other side of the room, and some just want to hear the bass and drums on tape, and maybe whoever’s in the booth. So it’s a very, very flexible console and you can turn it into so many things – it’s three or four consoles wrapped up in one, basically.

colour the sound too much”, but I love the way they colour the sound! They give you that punch. With that Casino Royale scene I mentioned, that ‘BA-DA!’ energy that you get is pure, but it’s also got this real clout too; you feel like you’ve been hit by the sound and that’s something that those mic pres do.

I do get a bit geeky; I always put them across the room microphones first because those are the elements that I use the most – that’s where the bulk of the sound for an orchestral recording comes from. Then I know I’m going to push the faders up on the mids, the basses and things like that so that you’ve got that weight and clarity, and I always put those things through the Montserrat. Then the rest of the console is built in Neve pres, which are still brilliant, but are a little purer and a little more straightclassical, if you like.

AMS-NEVE.COM

How did the Neve 88R console preamps and the remote 1081R and AIR preamps help on the Eilish and Hans Zimmer sessions?

AIR has 48 channels worth of the Montserrat pres and I always love those because they add a little bit of grit and they are modelled on the mic pres for the console in Studio One, so they have this really rough, tough quality that gives you breadth and depth. I know a lot of classical engineers that go, “I don’t want those because they HEADLINERMAGAZINE.NET

D&B

Achieving The Impossible

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ACHIEVING THE IMPOSSIBLE Last month, German pro audio giant d&b audiotechnik completed its SL-Series of top-of-the-range line arrays with the launch of the new XSL System. Headliner caught up with product manager, Werner ‘Vier’ Bayer and head of R&D acoustics, Matthias Christner to find out what the new system has to offer, and to delve into the company’s constant ambition to ‘achieve the impossible’.

HEADLINER MAGAZINE

The smallest system in the series, the XSL is designed to offer an energy efficient package in a lightweight form and is available in installation-specific and mobile touring variants.

“The performance-to-size ratio of the XSL System is unlike anything available in the current sound reinforcement market, or within the d&b portfolio,” said Bayer at the time of launch. “For installation, the system’s broadband directivity control drastically improves

the ratio of direct to reverberant sound in acoustically-critical spaces. In short, it will clean up your room. For mobile, a small footprint and improved sonic performance are really valuable.

It’s an enormous step; it’s really impressive.”

“Going into the design of this product we were actually a bit sceptical about whether we could achieve the signature SL-Series directivity performance in such a compact

LIVE SOUND

format,” Christner added. “We’re really thrilled, slightly stunned and very proud that it works so well. I truly believe that the sound quality, dispersion and clarity delivered by XSL will spearhead the evolution that we all expect from smaller arrays in the future.”

XSL’s compact dimensions bring the SL-Series feature set – two-way active design, high SPL and cardioid low frequency performance – to a wide range of installations and events.

The new line delivers cardioid performance across the full frequency spectrum, resulting in reduced audio spill onto open mics on stage; enhanced clarity and impact of individual instruments; and less colouration of mid-range build up in venues and on broadcast and recording feeds.

Furthermore, XSL loudspeakers deliver broadband directivity using patented SL-Series cardioid techniques to

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control low frequency dispersion.

The XSL System’s sonic performance is achieved via this unique pattern control and is enhanced with d&b enabling technologies such as d&b ArrayProcessing.

The XSLi installation systems, along with the installation specific 40D amplifier, will begin shipping in October. The mobile XSL package will begin shipping in January 2022.

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Achieving The Impossible

Here, Bayer and Christner open up on what the final addition to the SL-Series means for the pro audio market...

What does the new product range add to the SL-Series?

WB: The new d&b XSL System scales the industry-leading features of the SL-Series — outstanding broadband directivity control and extended low frequency performance, to comprehensive rigging, cabling and transportation solutions — into a smaller, lighter weight, more energyefficient package to suit an even broader range of segments and applications.

“FLEXIBILITY AND SCALABILITY HAVE BEEN EVEN MORE IMPORTANT TO OUR CUSTOMERS SINCE THE PANDEMIC.”

Has the company seen higher demand for more compact products since the start of the pandemic?

WB: I would say that flexibility and scalability have been even more important to our customers since the pandemic. With the XSL Series we are able to provide our installation customers with broadband directivity control to drastically improve the ratio of direct-to-reverberant sound in acoustically critical spaces. For our mobile customers, the XSL offers a smaller, lighter weight footprint and improved sonic performance.

Are there any new markets you’ll be looking to target with the new range?

WB: The XSL is so versatile that it will be a good fit in a broad range of markets, from HoW, corporate, stadiums, performance venues; you name it – the XSL will bring the quality and power.

Also, because we have installationspecific and mobile touring variants available, there is no limit to where the XSL can provide value.

Are there any particular applications or settings that you see being an especially good fit for these products?

WB: XSLi for permanent installations, is ideally suited to venues with a high dependency on the clarity of spoken HEADLINER MAGAZINE

word, and with the need for a high power, full spectrum performance.

The XSL mobile version addresses the needs of the broadest range of touring applications. Both XSL and XSLi can be deployed as a stand-alone, selfcontained package, or as a delay, or fill system to accompany its GSL and KSL siblings.

How challenging was it to fit the capabilities of this range into such compact dimensions?

MC: It was definitely challenging. As always at d&b, we set out to achieve the impossible and in this case we wanted to achieve more SL. In other words we need to replicate the entire feature set of the SL-Series in a compact package. We were all sceptical as to whether we could capture the power of the SL-Series in a lighter weight form without compromise but our R&D department is unwavering in their commitments.

A certain minimum size is needed to provide the proper acoustic path length around the cabinet in order for the cardioid low frequency control to work, so we needed to get it just right,

and after many years of research and endless testing, we are finally ready to bring this game changer to the market.

What sets this range apart from the competition?

MC: Only d&b has the broadband directivity control and varying bandwidth capabilities in a package of this size. The performance-to-size ratio of the XSL System is unlike anything currently available. Not to mention the fact that the holistic d&b workflow delivers significant advantages, especially when considering the enabling technologies. From planning with ArrayCalc to OCA remote control

by R1, System Check, Array Verification, ArraySight, ArrayProcessing and NoizCalc; the range provides a very complete and unmatched feature set to the installation and mobile proaudio markets.

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Foo’d For Thought

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IAN BEVERIDGE Veteran monitor engineer Ian Beveridge, who has worked extensively with the likes of Foo Fighters, Green Day, Weezer and more, tells Headliner how he got HEADLINER MAGAZINE

into mixing live sound, shares stories of his formative years on tour with Nirvana, and reveals why he uses JH Audio in-ears both at home and on the road.

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Beveridge is the kind of person who is never not-busy. Toronto-based but recently found in-and-around L.A doing shows to promote his friend Dave Grohl’s new book, he had become acquainted with mixing Foo Fighters’ immense live shows remotely during quarantine, a pursuit which he says served as a pleasant respite from touring life, as well as a real education.

“Essentially how that worked was, there’d be a mixing console on site at the venue where the band was playing, and then I would remote into the editor that was hooked up to the console via TeamViewer,” explains Beveridge. “Clair Global devised a system where we could tunnel audio between the venue and me. My cue bus was sent to me and then I had a talk-to-stage mic that was sent to them, and then we just did a Zoom call or Webex call to actually hook up the video.

“I was in Toronto doing a bunch of shows and the band were in Los Angeles, and as far as latency was concerned, the biggest it got was about 40 milliseconds, which was slightly awkward for communication because of the delay, but still doable.

All I had was a D/A interface, my JH Audio IEMs for monitoring, and a Yamaha PM10 console to create shows from a template.”

Like most in the music industry, Beveridge started out playing in bands, which sparked his interest in recording. After accumulating some gear, he hired rehearsal spaces in his native Edinburgh and recorded bands for free, completely immersing himself in the craft. He was soon asked to be the sound engineer on tour for a local band, catapulting him head-first into the world of live sound.

“The guy that booked that band was called Russell Warby, who’s the Foo

“AT THE TIME, I REALLY, REALLY FELT LIKE I WAS WATCHING HISTORY BEING MADE.”

Fighters’ booking agent to this day,” he remembers. “He called me up in ’89 and said, ‘I’ve got this American band coming over called Nirvana and they’re looking for crew - do you want to do it?’ Russell sent me the album Bleach in a cardboard box, and for want of a better expression, it completely blew my doors off. So with a little encouragement from home, I said yes.

“The greatest memory of all was watching the fever of the audience – the crowd was insane. I was just a young kid at the time, and I remember thinking, ‘I bet this is what it was like watching Zeppelin in 1971’. Dave talked

about it just the other day actually – he said that the first thing he would do when he got on stage was check where the exit was, in case things got crazy. At the time, I really, really felt like I was watching history being made.

“There was one show I remember, where I think they played eight bars of one song and then just smashed the gear up,” he adds with an air of fond recollection. “You never knew what you were going to get. We had incidents where the barricades would be on the verge of collapsing, with people being carried out left and right after passing out from the heat. It was just madness.”

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Foo’d For Thought

Beveridge is a long-time user of JH Audio’s Roxanne IEMs, using them to duplicate Grohl’s wedge setup as a cue system. Interestingly, it’s been at least 10 years since he’s used a conventional cue wedge for mixing.

“With IEMs you can just be more accurate in what you’re doing,” he says. “With modern amplifier and speaker technology, most mixes these days pretty much sound identical.

In the old days that wasn’t the case; the crossovers might have sounded slightly different because of the manufacturing technology and the design of the speaker box itself, so there were way more variables.

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“It can be difficult to establish a reference point on wedges, but once you have that consistent reference point on IEMs, you can take that with you everywhere, because your in-ears are not subject to the acoustic environment.

And from that reference I can hopefully then draw logical conclusions.”

Beveridge is working all the way up until Christmas mixing more Foo Fighters shows, and is hoping to head out on a full year tour with the band in 2022, doing what he does best.

“Dave’s probably the hardest working guy in music,” he signs off.

“We’ve been doing these shows promoting his new book at the moment, and I’m sure there’ll soon be some other kind of side projects that the band will be involved in, so we roll on!”

JHAUDIO.COM

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TEFFLER

Musical Highs

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Teffler is one of those DJs who simply doesn’t care that summer is over, he will keep serving up those sunny beats, rain or shine. This American songwriter and producer got his big breakthrough in 2017 with Never Let Me Go, leading to collaborations with Afrojack’s record label, tours of Europe, and even a performance at Liverpool’s legendary Cavern Club.

He gives Headliner the scoop on the persistence that went into this success and how a partnership with Waves plugins has changed the game for him.

“I was watching an MTV award show in 2012,” Teffler says when asked about where it all started for him. “Calvin Harris was playing and the moment I saw him on stage, it just clicked: ‘this is what I want to do. I want to be a dance music DJ’. Before that, I would listen to a bunch of stuff on the radio, from The Neptunes productions, songs written

by Max Martin, Katy Perry. But Calvin Harris really intrigued me – seeing how he was able to make crossover dancepop music, with catchy melodies and also with the hard dance beat.”

“I WENT THROUGH THE WAVES SUITE LIKE A KID IN A CANDY STORE!”

In terms of the song that put Teffler onto the trajectory he’s on now, it was Never Let Me Go, in 2017. “It went viral in quite a few Spotify charts in different countries,” he says. “In the USA and the UK in particular. That was what started to really catapult everything. It got me to tour in the UK and I did a bunch of college shows in the US.” That trajectory led to him being booked for his most major US festival appearance thus far for 2020, but with that year being that year, Teffler faced the disappointment of cancellation.

The silver lining was that he found time to go and learn more about the music industry and improve his already considerable music production skills. A partnership with plugins giants Waves, he explains, has helped no end.

“I connected with them last year after I DJed at a conference and a Waves rep was there and saw me play,” he says.

“Before meeting them, I remember I

spent four months mixing the vocals on Good Love because I wanted it to sound right. Everything I used was Waves, from the CLA-2A, to the Vitamin.

So when I got the opportunity to work with them, it was a dream come true. I sent the song out to a few mixers, but I wasn’t really satisfied with the quality.

Some had too much reverb, or it was over compressed, so I decided to learn

mixing myself. I got the Waves Suite and that was my introduction to it. I went through everything like a kid in a candy store, trying them on vocals and the drums – trying the Saturator, the H-Delay, putting them on the bus. I thought, ‘wow, this is great!’”

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Musical Highs

And on the flipside, Teffler’s favourite new plugin from Waves is the Vocal Bender. “It’s amazing, I’ve been using it a ton. I had the vocal for this song I recorded in 2018 – the summer when I came back from Ultra Music Festival. But everything was going from tropical to a deeper sound. I like to present songs in a way where I can easily market them. So I kind HEADLINER MAGAZINE

of chilled out that song. Instead of having the bulk of this re-recorded, I created a second layer and I put the Waves OVox on it to beef it up, and had some great results with the Vocal Bender. It just sounds amazing.

I’m going to put up a video tutorial on how I achieve that so people can hear it.”

Teffer’s music is best served sunny side up — it’s all available to stream now if you need some upbeat beats, and be sure to also check out his peek-behind-the curtain video tutorials on how he uses Waves plugins in his process.

WAVES.COM TEFFLERMUSIC.COM

Evolution Wireless Digital

Evolving with you.

Embrace the power of a digital UHF system, ready for any RF environment. Evolution Wireless Digital raises the bar by providing the highest dynamic range of any wireless system currently on the market, utilizing advanced features that simplify your setup and guarantee the most reliable connection. www.sennheiser.com/ew-d #EvolvingWithYou

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30 Years Of Nirvana’s Nevermind

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STEVE LAMACQ On September 24, Nirvana’s 1991 breakthrough masterpiece Nevermind celebrated its 30th anniversary. To mark the occasion, Headliner spoke to legendary broadcaster Steve Lamacq about his personal experiences with the band and what singled them out as one of the world’s most influential rock acts.

Having interviewed the band’s enigmatic leader, the late Kurt Cobain, in London ahead of the release of Nevermind, Lamacq, who was writing for the NME at the time, sensed immediately that Nirvana’s ambition was not simply to repeat the formula that spawned their debut 1989 record Bleach, an undoubted underground hit but one that never threatened to boil over into the mainstream. With an unabashed passion for melody and dynamics not typically heard within the punk rock scene from which they emerged, their next record was always going to be a more accessible, expansive affair, albeit infused with the same bristling intensity and frustration that fuelled their earlier work.

What Lamacq, nor anyone could have sensed, least of all the band themselves, was the fact that Nevermind would go on to be not just one of the most successful and influential rock records of the ‘90s, but one that would continue to inform the genre’s landscape for many more decades to come.

Here, Lamacq reflects on how Nirvana broke out of the US punk rock underground, explains how that iconic black and white image of Cobain came about and ponders the role of radio today in breaking new talent…

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sat on Kurt’s bed to do the interview.

It lasted about half an hour and it was that that really convinced me of where they were going. They didn’t understand why you couldn’t be a punk rock band in spirit but have melodies like the Beatles or REM. They wanted to do something different and to hell with what the underground thought of it. They wanted to make big, expansive music with an emotional edge.

When did you hear Nirvana for the first time?

I was sent a cassette that had Sliver on it, which was the last single they released before they signed to Geffen. It had about three or four very rough demos of songs that would end up on Nevermind. I remember there was a quite distorted version of Polly. These songs were an obvious progression from the Bleach album and gave a hint of what they wanted to pull off, which was taking American punk rock and some of the British influences they had accrued along the way and taking this fierce, intense frustrated, rebellious feeling of punk and giving it a sense of melody.

They were over here for a run of about four dates just before Sliver came out, so we sorted out an interview. I went to a hotel in Shepherds Bush and met Martin Goodacre, the photographer, and it was this standard B&B they were staying in. We were told the number of their room and Krist opened the door and there they were. Three beds, all sleeping in the same room.

Krist did virtually the entire interview under the bed covers because, as he said, “I’ve caught one of your British colds”.

Dave, who was the relative new boy, was just busying himself tidying up the room, putting stuff in a bin liner full of their socks and pants, and I HEADLINER MAGAZINE

We finished the interview and Martin had to take more photos. We came out and it was a freezing cold day.

There was a playground with a climbing frame, and Martin was desperate to get some individual shots. He did Krist, then Dave and then wanted a solo shot of Kurt, who by this point had almost lost the will to live, and had just plonked himself on the bottom rung of this climbing frame.

I remember Martin standing over him saying “come on, just look up” and he wouldn’t. This happened a few times and then Martin said, “if I promise you this is the last photograph I’m going to take today, will you look up?”

And Kurt looked up at him with that big, doe-eyed expression, Martin clicked, and that is the iconic photo that ended up being on the front of all the magazines when he died.

It was that moment in time. At that point we left, and we really did feel there was something special here.

What was your impression of them at that point? Did you feel the ambition from them to go on to make a record like Nevermind?

What they wanted to do musically was stretch themselves and really move people. But I never at any point got the impression that they wanted to be famous or be the biggest band in the world. If anything, they underplayed themselves as people. There was no inkling. I don’t think they’d thought about what would happen with the record, they just wanted to make the best record they could. The success that

followed must have been unnerving for them. As a gang of people who had lived as outsiders, to then discover that there’s not just a hundred, or a thousand, or a few thousand outsiders who felt the same way, but to find out there were millions… that would fry anyone’s mind.

When did you first hear Nevermind?

I received a promo of the album on cassette. And it was a bad time for the album to come out. There is always competition, but it came out in the same week as Screamadelica by Primal Scream and Use Your Illusion

by Guns N’ Roses, and I think there was a Pixies album, too. I was reviewing Nevermind for the NME and in the four reviews pages the lead albums were Primal Scream, Guns N’ Roses, Pixies and on the final page I was given 400 words and there was a little picture of Nirvana. I remember the sub editor saying there was about nine inches for the headline, and after about five minutes standing there he said the page had to go because the bike courier had arrived to collect it, so I just said “why don’t you just write ‘Nevermind: The Bollocks’?” And that was used as the headline. Fortunately I gave it nine out of 10 and said it would be the rock blueprint for the ‘90s!

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“THEY JUST WANTED TO MAKE THE BEST RECORD THEY COULD. THE SUCCESS THAT FOLLOWED MUST HAVE BEEN UNNERVING FOR THEM.”

What were your thoughts when you first heard the album?

What did you make of them as a live act?

It’s just a brilliant record. It would be great to go back and listen to it for the first time again in the context of what was around at the time. There was nothing outside of Sonic Youth that had that drive and edge. It was so well produced as well, without taking any of the power away.

It wasn’t as scorchingly raw as Bleach but it sounded like a big rock record, but also a tender one. It just sounded great and was unlike anything else around. The closest thing to it in spirit was probably something like Goo by Sonic Youth.

I remember they did the Kilburn National, and by this point they’re beginning to take off. Dave was well embedded into the band now and they were just jawdropping. This was something else, just the noise around the room. It was brilliant.

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Did it feel like overnight success for them? Or with hindsight was it something that took a little longer to really take off?

Yes, it did happen very quickly. They’d been around for a while and had made Bleach and toured the UK before. Then Sliver came out, which is a great little single, but it didn’t change the world, and then the cassettes of Nevermind started going round. And when they performed on The Word, that was when it started moving very quickly to another level. People just couldn’t get into gigs to see them and within months everyone was talking about them. At the time there wasn’t a huge amount of alternative radio but all the clubs were playing Smells Like Teen Spirit.

How different is the process for bands breaking today? And what role does radio have to play in elevating the profile of artists?

It depends on what genre you’re working in. You can make a career HEADLINER MAGAZINE

out of social media platforms if you’re a certain type of artist, perhaps something a bit more commercial.

Acts that are a bit more accessible and commercial, they didn’t need to pay their dues in a van, but then they never did. The difference between then and now… with someone like Nirvana, they had done so much work before it really happened. And everything was ready for them. They’d made their first album, where they made their mistakes, they got the line-up sorted, so there is a difference between what happened with them then and a brand new band.

Some new artists throw themselves at radio too early. People who give me demos at gigs will tell me they formed nine months ago and here are some songs they recorded in their dad’s cellar. And I always say to them, “before you give this to me, do you think when you do your next demo in a few months’ time it’ll be much better?”

They say, “yeah it’ll be loads better!”

So, I’m like, “well take that back then and come back in a few months”. I

don’t want to listen to the rubbish one! I admire their confidence but don’t blow it with a rubbish demo.

But radio can still be really, really integral for a lot of artists. Take a band like Idles. They had been playing for a long time and had some line-up changes, and they had just finished making their first album when I started playing them on 6 Music. That was really important for them. You have to be a good band of course, but we help introduce you to the right audience.

You can listen to an extended interview with Lamacq in full at Headliner Radio and www.headlinermagazine.net.

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See what’s possible at dbaudio.com/club

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Staying Focused

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STAYING FOCUSED It’s been an eventful time for many pro audio companies of late, but Focusrite has arguably been busier than most. With feet in both the studio/home recording market and the world of live sound, the UK firm has felt the immense challenges inflicted upon the touring industry by the pandemic, while also experiencing the boom in studio product sales as a result of lockdown. Here, CEO Tim Carroll offers Headliner some unique insights into how the business has fared during this most turbulent of times, as well as his plans for more acquisitions and further expansion…

Two years ago, Focusrite was on the brink of making two of its most intriguing acquisitions to date. The first arrived in the form of loudspeaker manufacturer ADAM Audio. The second, and perhaps most eyecatching, came in the form of live sound icon Martin Audio. It was a move that seriously captured the international touring market’s attention and singled Focusrite out as a company looking to break into new markets to become something of a 360 pro music and pro audio solutions provider.

However, the Covid outbreak that would stop the world in its tracks just a couple of months after the agreement was announced put paid to any plans for this eagerly anticipated partnership to begin in earnest, at least on the touring front. Rather than standing still and waiting for the chaos to blow over, Martin Audio set about expanding its already growing integrated systems offering, releasing a number of brand new lines for the installation market.

Focusrite, too, has released a volley of new products over the course of the

pandemic, adding a raft of interfaces and studio items to its already hugely popular catalogue.

Meanwhile, the firm’s appetite for a shrewd acquisition has shown little sign of abating, having recently bought synth manufacturer Sequential.

To find out more, we caught up with Carroll to find out where the recorded music and live sound industries are headed and what the future holds for the business...

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“IT IS VERY EARLY DAYS FOR LIVE SHOWS RETURNING, BUT WE HAVE SEEN A STRONG RETURN ON INSTALLED SOUND SOLUTIONS”

How has Focusrite’s business been impacted by the pandemic? What kind of trends have you been seeing?

The Focusrite Group has seen a mixed set of results during this time. At the beginning of the pandemic and lockdowns, demand for our products associated with the creation and streaming of audio (audio interfaces, reference monitors, keyboard and pad controllers, groove boxes and synths) all saw large increases in demand. Primary use case was still music creation but all use cases, including podcasting, streaming for meetings, social media live events, and gaming increased as well. On balance, demand for live/tour sound solutions came to a grinding halt and timelines for installations paused. As we all know, it is very early days for live shows returning, but we have seen a strong return on installed sound solutions, including our new commercial audio brand offerings under Optimal Audio.

What impact has lockdown had on the home/project recording market?

From our viewpoint, pre-pandemic, we were already seeing more people getting into home recording than normally trending. I attribute this to a number of artists that had recently hit the chart, with the majority, if not entirety, of their albums done in their home. This was not really anything new, but the stories and quality really seemed to inspire people. Coupled with newer and growing content HEADLINER MAGAZINE

forms, such as podcasting, live social feeds, and streaming workflows, all home recording categories for us were doing extremely well. The pandemic and lockdowns just accelerated this and from our view, has materially expanded the base… more new folks jumped onto the technology, had a great experience and shared that experience with friends.

Have you seen any specific product ranges performing particularly well during this time?

Anything to do with capturing and editing of audio: interfaces, reference monitors, keyboard and pad controllers, groove boxes, music creation software and synths are the big ones for us.

Has the rise in home recording led you to ramp up R&D in this area?

Our group has traditionally had a large investment in R&D as a percentage of revenue, so I wouldn’t say we ramped up, but we did reprioritise some of the roadmap to accelerate the launch of some products. If I looked across all the departments, I would say the one area we really ramped up on was customer support and the onboarding journey that Focusrite/Novation customers experience when they install one of our products. With such a large rise in customers, we needed to ensure our service and onboarding journey continued to be world class and several notches above the competition.

With live events returning, do you anticipate people spending less on home studio products?

I think there will be a natural rebalancing for those who had been playing live gigs and doing home recording, but my view is that the experience many had in utilising tools such as live social media feeds, blogs, etc. to share with and cultivate new listeners is going to stick. I’ve talked to a number of artists who are already thinking about how they will balance their time between live events and home-based recording/broadcasting.

What can you tell us about the new Clarett+ interfaces that have just been released? What was the thinking behind this range?

The Clarett range of interfaces have been a go-to solution for many audio professionals and facilities for years.

As with all of our products, they have a natural product life cycle - typically four or five years in this space. That is usually the amount of time for us to incorporate new innovative features and tech, including customer feedback and factor in real world reqs such as new I/O protocols etc. The Clarett+ were originally scheduled to come out a bit later, but as with many, they were a victim of the AKM fire in Japan.

Knowing how important these are to many of our professional customers, we had our R&D re-prioritise the roadmap so that there would not be a huge gap in availability. The team really outdid themselves on this: not

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only hitting a crazy timeline, but also ensuring that these new versions up the ante on what was already a very high bar: feedback from customers and the press so far has been incredibly positive.

The company recently acquired synth manufacturer Sequential.

What can you tell us about your plans for the brand and how it will operate within the Focusrite family?

Synthesizers have been in our portfolio for a long time, with a great legacy of Novation products like the UltraNova, Bass Station, and more recently Peak and Summit. When we heard that

Dave Smith was looking for a longterm home for the Sequential brand, it felt like an opportunity to really bolster what we already have with what is arguably one of the most iconic brands in the world of synths. As with ADAM and Martin, Sequential will continue to run independently.

Dave desired to step back from the day-to-day operation of the business and focus entirely on creating new synths. We have brought in a great guy, David Gibbons, as CEO. Dave, David and the Sequential R&D team are hard at work on some killer new products; one just released a few

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weeks ago, the Take 5. Over time and when travel is really a viable thing again, there is a desire to have the Novation and Sequential R&D teams meet and talk about the art of possibilities. There is so much great DNA in both these groups that one could imagine some really interesting outcomes.

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Staying Focused

“WE HAVE LOTS OF ORGANIC EXPANSION PLANNED, AS WELL AS OUR EYES ON A NUMBER OF POTENTIAL ACQUISITIONS.”

It’s also been almost two years since the acquisition of Martin Audio. How frustrating was it to have made that move into the live sound and installation market just before the pandemic struck?

Well, it was certainly a shock when the pandemic really hit just a few months after we acquired Martin. However, Dom Harter and his leadership team have done a fantastic job in managing through these times. Additionally, one of the big draws for us to Martin was how much focus and investment they were putting on the installed sound side of the business. As you are probably aware, we also launched Optimal Audio earlier this year, a new brand dedicated to the installed sound market. This part of Martin’s business has fared well through the pandemic and along with tight control the management team put on expenses, resulted in a positive finish for the year. Now with live events starting to come back, we expect Martin’s live sound business to jump right back and be stronger than ever.

What are your plans for Martin Audio over the coming months?

A number of plans - debuting more new products, including development in some new areas of the market, ramping up production for the very strong reaction to the Optimal Audio offerings, and working very closely with all the live events companies to ensure a smooth return to normality over the course of this year.

What are the biggest opportunities for Focusrite at present?

Our core markets continue to grow. More and more content is being created and people everywhere are utilising our products for their creative endeavours; at the hobbyist level through the more demanding professionals.

We see ample opportunity to continue playing a big part in these workflows and expanding our footprint as well.

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We have lots of organic expansion planned, as well as our eyes on a number of potential acquisitions that could complement our current brands.

And the biggest challenges?

Staying focused and putting our energies to the things that really matter. The world is full of distractions and hurdles right now - pandemic, lockdowns/extended work at home scenarios, component shortages, freight/logistics nightmares. We have weathered all of these really well, mostly due to having such a fantastic group of passionate people who are absolute professionals at their jobs. Our goal is to continue to navigate through these challenges and never lose sight of what our core mission is: removing barriers to creativity and bringing best in class tools to anyone who wants outstanding audio.

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JIMMY CARTER

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Rock & Roll President

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JIMMY CARTER: ROCK & ROLL PRESIDENT Part-rockumentary, part-presidential portrait, Jimmy Carter: Rock & Roll President traces how rock music helped propel Jimmy Carter to the White House, portraying him as the first US president to openly embrace rock ‘n’ roll, forging close bonds with Willie Nelson, the Allman Brothers and Bob Dylan along the way. For Atlanta sound mixer Aaron ‘Cujo’ Cooley, this was a dream project...

Cooley grew up around live music in New York where his stepfather shared the stage with Sly Stone, Ronnie James Dio and members of the Doobie Brothers. When Cooley later moved to Georgia, he became a FOH mixer working with Christian rock bands.

More recently, he adapted to the pandemic by buying a 16-foot box truck from retiring audio engineer, Jim Hawkins – which he had been using for location recording and broadcast production work – and retrofitted it.

He cherishes the musical history behind the truck: “I have Jim’s business card hanging in the truck as an homage, and the set list from the last gig that the truck did, which was an Otis Redding celebration night in Macon. And I have Jim’s old chair!”

His appreciation for music history made taking on the Jimmy Carter: Rock & Roll President job a no-brainer.

“I was seriously interested. Not only because of Jimmy Carter and his history, but the music aspect involved artists that I grew up listening to, and had been fans of for my whole life.

There was zero hesitation on my part,” he reflects.

“I have been fortunate to have been selected to work on some really fun and exciting documentary and film projects. Rock and Roll President was easily at the top of the list for checking off some of the bucket list items. Sitting down and listening to living legends like Jimmy Carter and Willie Nelson and then learning the real backstory of music, politics and the people behind it was absolutely amazing.”

and a wide variety of over 40 other Lectrosonics transmitters.

“Lectrosonics is the only brand of wireless that I use for mission critical applications,” he confirms. “I can use a digital hybrid SMV transmitter right next to a digital DBu transmitter in the same receiver and experience no crosstalk, no lack of service, no lack of RF and no loss in performance. Lectro is on point, making the digital products backwards compatible, realising that their users have a budget, and that they like their legacy gear. And the performance is just incredible.

Cooley is a longtime user of Lectrosonics wireless gear, and his extensive arsenal includes Lectrosonics D Squared equipment, M2 Duet Series IFB equipment, SR series receivers, HEADLINERMAGAZINE.NET

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“I AM OFTEN SURPRISED AT HOW WELL THE EDITORS CAN MAKE A TERRIBLE-SOUNDING LOCATION ACTUALLY SOUND GOOD! BUT THAT ALWAYS BEGINS WITH MY GEAR GIVING ME THE BEST POSSIBLE SIGNAL TO RECORD.”

“When I added in the Lectrosonics D Squared digital transmitters to my work, so much of our location problems disappeared!” he adds. “I have a rack of 10 D Squared receivers and M2 Duet series equipment.

I have about 40 Lectrosonics transmitters of every iteration all the way back to the 400a, plus two SR receivers in my bag rig. I have a lot of Lectrosonics gear!”

While recording the audio for Jimmy Carter: Rock & Roll President, anything filmed on Willie Nelson’s bus was a challenge.

“We were at a venue, so there was a fair bit of ambient noise, and the amount of wireless in use for the stage performance was definitely a challenge that had to be considered.

With Lectrosonics gear, I am able to turn down the RF power to a very HEADLINER MAGAZINE

low setting and scan easily for clean space. Then it is just a simple matter of knowing that the robust RF front end in the receivers will make sure I get the signal I need.

“Whenever I watch the work that I’ve been a part of, I am never really surprised at how well the audio turns out from the Lectrosonics side of things,” he adds. “I am often surprised at how well the editors can make a terrible-sounding location actually sound good! But that always begins with my gear giving me the best possible signal to record. Using the Lectrosonics wireless, I know that I will have a solid base for the editors to build from.”

Cooley says that Lectrosonics has never once let him down: “I have grown so accustomed to the fact that it just works, I sometimes forget

just how good it is! I don’t have to overthink it and I don’t have to worry about it. If I do my part, I know my Lectros will do their part. And I do not treat my gear like fine china; I don’t use it like a hammer either,” he adds, laughing.

“It has been dropped, dragged across the ground, kicked, thrown, and fallen on…probably hundreds of times. It lives in a road case and gets baked in the humid summer heat of Georgia, the dust and pollen, and the outdoor elements. Day in and day out, my Lectrosonics gear just works.”

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War Of The Worlds

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Ben Abraham has a habit of putting his foot in it. During his interview with Headliner, the L.A-based Australian singer-songwriter reveals he is not a huge music fan, he hates London, assures us that he’s an awful person, reveals the name of his (then) unannounced forthcoming album, and discloses that despite his music career taking off in a way it never has before, he wishes he was a screenwriter.

“My first ever trip to London was in November of 2015 and I lived there for a month, and the weather was miserable! I’d never been and I hated it. Just to clarify, I have since gone back during different times of the year and I love it,” he adds quickly.

It’s these types of admissions that make Abraham such a joy to interview – he’s refreshingly unguarded and laid-back to the point that Headliner jokes that his management might be having words with him after the interview.

“I’m quite an awful person,” he retorts (he’s of course, nothing of the sort). “I’ve got to fool people into thinking I’m a nice guy.”

This leads quickly to his second confession in minutes: “I often have to

confess to people that I’m not a huge music fan. I obviously do like music, I love music,” he corrects himself. “There’s music that I listen to that really moves me, but I am not the consumer of music that I hope my fans are! Even when it comes to gigs…” he trails off. “I remember Radiohead coming through Melbourne a few years ago and I just wasn’t going to buy a ticket even though they are my favourite band in the world. A friend of mine was like, ‘You’re an idiot and I’m buying your ticket and we’re going’, and then of course, I went and had the best time.

But I just don’t like live music. I don’t see a lot of live music!”

Between admissions, Abraham talks about his forthcoming full-length debut for Atlantic Records, the title of which Headliner has been told is confidential (“it feels dumb… my album’s called Friendly Fire and it comes out next year”), which promises to spotlight the cinematic yet emotionally raw sensibilities that he has previously shown in penning songs for artists like Demi Lovato, Macklemore, Kesha and The Chicks.

However, despite his success in the songwriting world, he initially intended to work in film.

“I still wish I could be a screenwriter.

“I SPENT A LOT OF THE FIRST ESTABLISHING YEARS AS AN ARTIST BEING IGNORED BY THE AUSTRALIAN MUSIC INDUSTRY.”

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I don’t think I’m good enough. I am much more of a film fan than I am…” he trails off again. “If there’s a music festival and a film festival in Melbourne, I will ignore the music festival and sign up for 30 films at the film festival. In the process of doing a screenwriting course, I had a job at a hospital and started playing music for sick kids, and I realised how immediate it is to make music. Bearing in mind I’d grown up playing music with my family [his parents played together in an Indonesian pop group], but it just never crossed my mind that I would want to do it for myself. But it came to me a lot more naturally, so I very quickly sidestepped the dreams of my screenwriting career.”

His 2014 self-released debut LP Sirens earned widespread critical praise, leading to a 2016 reissue via indie label, Secretly Canadian.

“When you are self-releasing, it’s like you’re pushing this boulder up a hill, and it feels like at some point, someone will jump on board this machine and take over and the boulder will tip over the edge and start rolling down the other side.

Signing to the label, I realised it was just a different version of the boulder – I’m still pushing it up the hill and working towards something. I spent a lot of the first establishing years as an artist being ignored by the Australian music industry,” he points out. “My audience would build, but the industry itself wasn’t really interested in what I was doing.”

His heavy-hearted single, War In Your Arms, taken from the forthcoming album, was the final nail in Abraham’s screenwriting coffin.

“Through that song I ended up ultimately getting signed by Atlantic Records. It became the yardstick by which we made the rest of the album.

There was always a lot of intensity and pressure around that particular song.

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When it came to finding a producer for the album, I always knew that I wanted to make the album in the traditional Peter Gabriel way where I had one producer across the whole thing. So because of that, it was really hard to find a good producer that could not only tackle the expectations of a song like War In Your Arms, but that would be willing to go the distance with me for the album.”

Despite meeting with various super producers, it was tricky to find one willing to take on the entire album.

“When you’re at that level, often you’ll take a song, but why would

you take on a whole album when you could just do 12 songs with 12 different artists? We ended up using War In Your Arms as the way to find the producer, so we started sending it out and we would basically say, ‘whatever you do with this song will tell us if you’re the right producer for the album’. It was through that process that I met James Flannigan.

I have 10 versions of the song on my computer from different producers, but James’ version was so special and huge. It just captured the emotional scope of the song. It was intense, it felt classic, but also felt fresh and exciting.

“What’s interesting about this particular song is that it was not telling a specific story. I wrote the chorus as I walked through Melbourne, and it didn’t feel connected to anything,” he admits.

“For a while, I wrestled with that because it doesn’t feel as deeply truthful as some of the other songs on the album, which were much more autobiographical. I reflect on it now and I’m like, ‘wow, it actually is deeply personal’. I didn’t realise at the time, but it was at the end of a relationship and things were difficult, I just wasn’t cognizant of it when I was writing.”

Photographer: Danielle Levitt

“IT WAS REALLY HARD TO FIND A GOOD PRODUCER THAT COULD NOT ONLY TACKLE THE EXPECTATIONS OF A SONG LIKE WAR IN YOUR ARMS, BUT THAT WOULD BE WILLING TO GO THE DISTANCE WITH ME FOR THE ALBUM.”

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Photographer: Danielle Levitt

Thinking ahead to next year’s album release and the promise of performing live again, (which Abraham’s fans will be relieved to hear he has actually missed) – “I’ll be honest, I’ve probably started going a little crazy without having the live music aspect, although it’s been so long I don’t even know if I know how to play guitar anymore”, he searches for the right words:

bolder choices. I think it’s the best work that I’ve ever made and I’m really proud of it. I hope people connect with it, otherwise I’ll be out of a job.”

Friendly Fire is out January 21 2022.

BENABRAHAMMUSIC.COM

“When people listen to the album, I hope that they go in knowing that it tells one story. Sonically it’s so much bigger, more dramatic and more exciting than my first album.

This one’s a bit more aggressive in its production – they’re HEADLINERMAGAZINE.NET

OLLO AUDIO

The Art of Atmos Mixing

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IMMERSIVE AUDIO

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“IN MANY WAYS, IMMERSIVE SOUND IS DOING WHAT BLU-RAY DID FOR VISUAL CONTENT.”

As music and audio technology evolves and production processes grow ever more diverse, it’s essential to ensure your studio skills remain fresh. Here, OLLO Audio CEO Rok Gulič sits down with Berklee College of Music’s John Escobar and acclaimed engineer and producer Matteo Marciano to talk best practice production techniques, immersive mixing in Dolby Atmos and how to make sure your studio skills are future-ready…

Rok Gulič: Is immersive audio more than just surround sound?

MM: It really is. Imagine if you were to mix either a soundtrack or a song in a small dub stage. You would have 7.1 or 5.1. These are still very well used but the problem was always about how you would move audio and how accurate would your mix be after you move from a smaller scale dub stage to a movie theatre? If you are moving objects from a channel-based point from speaker to speaker, you have to think about how well that panning will work on a

larger system. Moving from channelbased to object-based audio, it is now possible to mix things from a different perspective. It puts the listener at the centre of what’s happening, almost with a 360-degrees platform. It allows people to listen to music in completely different ways, and we as mixers can be more creative.

We can pick and choose where we want sounds to be. The great thing is how Atmos allows us to translate these mixes into different systems.

So, it’s easy to downsize from a 9.1.6 to a 5.1 to a stereo, and you can then decode that into binaural applications.

In many ways, immersive sound is doing what Blu-ray did for visual content. The industry has helped people understand that they can have better audio. And with platforms like Tidal and Apple Music, the industry is educating people on how to fully enjoy music and sound.

RG: What’s the difference between Dolby Atmos, object-based audio and binaural or ambisonic recording?

JE: With mixing in general, people think of there being two different approaches, either recreating or creating a mix. You’re either recreating the exact moment a musical performance took place, or you’re overdubbing and creating a world that didn’t exist physically at the moment of performance. Binaural and Atmos downmixing versus capturing ambisonics is that same idea. When capturing ambisonics you are capturing the actual acoustics and physicality of what is happening at that moment.

In capturing those directions, you’re already dealing with the phase correlations of the object; the phasing alignment of the reflective surface around you. We now have a bit more control of that in Dolby Atmos. Using the Atmos render in binaural mode, I have the plugin to decide, objectby-object, how much or how little binauralised spacialisation I want to add. There’s so much room for creativity.

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RG: What do you need to consider before making a decision on whether to make a project an Atmos project or an ambisonic project?

MM: The first consideration is about where the main platforms are going. If you think of Netflix and Amazon, they are all moving towards an Atmos format. Atmos is starting to take on more importance in the industry, so I would prefer to do an Atmos mix and have a 5.1 mix that I could recreate afterwards. With Atmos, if you have a powerful enough system, you can start working in Atmos from your home, then you can always take that project to a larger scale studio if the project requires a larger scale mix.

RG: Where do headphones sit in this scenario? How can they be best utilised when mixing immersive audio?

JE: Dolby Atmos is becoming the standard and that’s because it enables you to recreate a speaker setting but also allows you to start an Atmos mix in headphones. Then you can come into a room and check it in a full speaker system. A lot of times I prefer to do it that way around, starting in headphones because most consumers will be using a headphones-based system. So my mix has to

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translate to that format. That’s one of the reasons Dolby is becoming so predominant. It’s accessible to more people and everyone has a set of headphones these days, and most people have a device of some kind that has the power to utilise Atmos.

You can watch the full conversation between Gulič, Escobar and Marciano at the Headliner Hub YouTube channel or listen at the OLLO Chat podcast channel at Headliner Radio.

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SPOTLIGHT

BABY AUDIO Baby Audio recently launched its brand new TAIP AI-Powered tape emulation plugin, but does it deliver?

Headliner finds out…

This is a new one on me; I’d never heard of Baby Audio until a request for a review, together with a link and a licence key, showed up in my inbox. A quick search on Baby Audio threw up a number of interesting plugins, specifically one called Super VHS, which is a fairly popular and incredibly low priced, lo-fi ‘80s style tape emulation.

So Baby Audio are no stranger to this style of plugin, however there are so many tape emulators, saturation and modulation recreations – some of which I already have – that it might seem strange to bring yet another similar plugin to the market. Well, that’s exactly what I thought until I started using it!

A.I. rules!

Taip, or T.AI.P as the GUI suggests, is an AI-powered tape plugin. Instead of using algorithms to emulate what

happens in the analogue circuitry of a tape machine, this plugin uses an AI algorithm which has spent thousands of hours detecting the difference between the dry and wet audio examples.

This isn’t utilising the AI algorithm while listening to the audio you feed it and making decisions in real-time; the learning has already been done for you and has been broken down into a number of flexible parameters.

The wet signal is adjusted with the aid of a control panel sporting a very HEADLINERMAGAZINE.NET

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useful and musical set of controls, which give you everything from tape hiss to a badly biased and calibrated tape channel.

I’d like to say I can tell which tape machine was used, but my memory

isn’t that good these days, so if I was to hazard a guess I’d plumb for the two-track Studer A67 or Revox B77 which shared some of its circuitry.

Either way I doubt very much if anyone had the gaul to deliberately push the original machines to

produce some of the range of sounds that this plugin is capable of. Seems these days rules are there to be broken, and the musical landscape is far richer for it!

level at which it’s driven actually seems to stay fixed at the level set by the right reel - output level control.

meter showing input signal level and likewise on the right, the output signal level. Above the TAIP logo in the middle is a handy bypass button simply named Baby Audio, which allows for a quick A/B of processed and dry signals.

IN CONTROL The interface is laid out like a tape machine in a very logical and obvious way. The left reel is the drive control and the right reel the output level. Driving the input level is what creates the analogue style tape distortion; the more you drive it the more it distorts and breaks up. One point to note is the signal; although it can sound louder, the

Between the reels is a Drive AutoGain On/Off switch and below that a Mix fader which blends original with processed signals. On the left side is a very stylish slim level

CONTROL FREAK This is where it starts to get interesting, and with care-free manipulation of the bottom bank of controls, some really freakish sounds can be achieved; probably well beyond what you might think possible from other, mere emulation tools.

On the bottom left of the control panel are three horizontal faders: Noise, Wear and Glue. Noise adds a healthy adjustable amount of background hiss to your audio signal but closes off a bit like HEADLINER MAGAZINE

it’s being gated about a second after the audio signal finishes. If you wanted it to run for an entire track you would need to place it on a track with constant audio on it from start to finish. The second fader marked Wear produces a really lovely wow and flutter style of modulation and degradation.

Reminded me a little of a few years back when I made an attempt to go back through a collection of cassettes to retrieve some of my melody ideas; 30-40 years on they hadn’t fared so well!

Below that is the Glue fader. This seems to change its characteristics depending on what kind of source material the plugin is placed. For example, on percussive material it seems to behave as though with a slower attack giving a more aggressive sound with a longer top end decay. Either way, it glues the drive and source together in a very musical way, giving a lovely range of subtle to upfront compression.

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“THE FLEXIBILITY OF TAIP FROM BABY AUDIO IS IMMENSE AND CAN TAKE YOU DOWN PATHS YOU HADN’T THOUGHT OF GOING DOWN BEFORE WITH YOUR CREATIVITY.”

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In the middle are two option switches.

Input switches between Normal and Hot and Model switches between Single and Dual. Hot, as you might expect, gives a subtle boost to the nature of the distortion and seems almost superfluous to the power of the Drive control. However after some time playing with it, it’s possible that Normal and Hot are two slightly different flavours of saturation which become far more obvious as you increase the Drive.

The Model option of Single or Dual was slightly harder to work out as the differences here are far more subtle. But in headphones while I was making the video the sound in Dual Model is bigger and bolder which

leads me to conclude that Single is going through one tape machine while dual is sending signal through two tape machines.

On the right hand side are three more horizontal sliders which start with the presence control. As is usual, the presence gently lifts the high-mid and high frequencies and brightens up the signal. Whereas all the faders so far have operated from left-to-right to increase values, the last two start in the centre and provide plus or minus values. The controls are described as Hi-Shape and Low-Shape and I think they are a modern twist on the old bias and EQ gain settings that were used to calibrate tape machines and make

adjustments for the different formulas of professional audio tape that are available.

Although it’s many years ago now, I remember regularly listening to and stripping tape with test tones which were used as a means of setting the correct bias for the tape so it could easily be moved from studio to studio. While these controls don’t directly relate to any particular known analogue control, what they produce is the sound of a correctly to a badly set up tape recorder. If you move to the right they enhance the frequency range and to the left they seem to break down and remove those frequencies.

IN USE I had a lot of fun making the video and reviewing this plugin. I just kept smiling while trying to make things sound as bad as I could – things just kept sounding good however bad they became. The flexibility of TAIP from Baby Audio is immense and can take you down paths you hadn’t thought of going down before with your creativity.

It was exceptionally good at putting the human touch back into programmed music. It brought flat and soulless audio to life and put the dynamic back in drab. This is a plugin everyone will love.

CONCLUSION It’s actually easier these days for musicians and producers to create high quality in the box music with modern technology. Whether that music is good or not is very much in the hands of the consumer. The thing is, good music is not always the best programmed or the technically best played or even the cleanest. Sometimes you just need to dirty it up a bit to make it sound real and alive again. And this is another very good tool to help in the pursuit of musicality. Whether it’s bit crushers, valve emulations, distortion and saturation enhancers or analogue summing amplifiers, there are no shortages.

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What sets TAIP from Baby Audio apart is its musicality, ease of use and its price. I expected that a high quality plugin of this nature would set me back $150 plus, but the retail price is expected to be a very modest $69. I’m so impressed I’ll be checking out some of the other plugins from Baby Audio.

BABYAUD.IO

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SONARWORKS X MERGING

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SPOTLIGHT

SONARWORKS SOUND ID REFERENCE MERGING ANUBIS This was a really good idea which I’m sure more than a few people have suggested in the past. More importantly, these two companies took onboard this great idea and have come up with a really excellent solution to the modern scourge of latency and far-from-ideal acoustic environments.

Both of these products I use in my own studio setup, and I’ve reviewed them both on previous occasions for Headliner’s Spotlight Reviews section. So when I heard that this top secret collaboration was about to reach fruition, I just had to get hold of their relevant Beta versions and have a play with it.

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FAR FROM IDEAL The pandemic signalled a major change in work habits. Suddenly everyone was working from home, studios had closed or had restrictions on how many people could congregate in a given space, hence mix engineers and producers started to move their equipment into makeshift home studios. Not to be outdone, musicians and creatives – devoid of social interaction, the ability to perform and more importantly the usual channels of collaboration – took to communicating over zoom, WhatsApp and Messenger and

swapping ideas, files and stems via WeTransfer, Google Drive and Dropbox.

Amidst all the upheaval and while the bottom had literally fallen out of the live sound industry, the sale of digital home studio equipment saw a sudden growth, and the boom in digital interfaces along with the continued growth in Apple Mac sales and steady sales of musical instruments has ushered in a new respect for the do it yourself, creative generation.

The thing is, kitchens are for cooking in, living rooms are for watching television in, garages are for cars and bedrooms are for… well, sleeping in, unless of course yours, like mine, has a small studio setup in the corner which, let’s face facts, is far from ideal! Acoustically, sticking any audio source in a symmetrical style box is bad news, which is why professional studios tend to be interesting shapes with plenty of angles, acoustic baffles and curved surfaces.

THE SOLUTION Of course, you could treat your room by carpeting the walls or hanging baffles from the ceiling, but there’s a much simpler and more cost effective way to do this. Load Sonarworks SoundID Reference on your computer and either use the package with the included mic if you have a set of speakers, or download the profile for your set of headphones and turn them into a reliable source for monitoring and mixing your projects. However, when you use it as a memory resident system-wide sound device it adds a fair amount of latency.

SoundID Reference also comes as an AU, VST and AAX plugin for your DAW’s output or master bus.

Much lower latency but you have to remember to turn it off before you run any export, mix or bounces. If only you could use the dip of your interface to do the room correction for you.

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Hello Merging Technologies’ Anubis interface; the first interface with room correction technology courtesy of Sonarworks, built in. This for me is a game changer as you’ll be able to see and hear from the video (which you can view on the Headliner Hub YouTube channel), switching the room correction profile off and on not only gives you a better canvas with which to perfect your mix, but there is no perceivable latency, unlike the desktop version of SoundID Reference. The latency figures for a SoundID Reference profile on the Anubis vary slightly depending on the sample rate, but at 44.1kHz it’s just below 2ms. At 96kHz it’s below 1ms and at 192kHz is less than 0.5ms.

One of the really fabulous aspects of this combination is the ability to load more than one SoundID Reference profile. For example, I loaded my room correction onto the speaker output and by routing my

Alt-Mix to my headphone output jack was able to load the profile which Sonarworks created for my Sennheiser HD600 headphones. So now it doesn’t matter whether I’m mixing, tracking, or simply listening to Spotify and YouTube; everything is set up to give me the best possible audio in my optimum comfortable working/listening position or in my headphones.

Essentially I now have two options which give me an almost identical and consistent sound, which are both neutral in terms of their frequency response and sound reproduction.

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The Install Process This was a three-step process which involved a firmware update in the Anubis. I then ran uninstalled from the Merging folder and then installed the new Merging driver package. Finally, I ran the Beta release upgrade from Sonarworks for SoundID Reference and it all just worked.

Jeremy at Merging sent me a copy of their pre launch presentation video of the new products, and at this point I started a screen recording of me exporting and uploading the profiles to Anubis which you can find on Headliner’s YouTube channel. At the time of writing, I’ve been living with

this setup for nearly two days, and so far it’s been rock solid.

For example, you could load a laptop or iPhone profile which will help you check that your mixes are accessible on the widest range of listening devices. Sonarworks even has a profile that imitates the average car sound system, to save you actually having to needlessly burn fuel just to check your mixes!

Another really neat ability of SoundID Reference is analysing a studio that

you’ve produced your best work in, and setting that as your target EQ. SoundID Reference can then create a custom profile so that you’re now working in your home-from-home so to speak. With multiple profiles at your fingertips, you can immediately change your sound to suit your workflow.

Mission Flexibility Room correction and headphone profiles will work irrespective of which mission you are in. I work in the Music Mission while Headliner CEO Paul Watson works in the Monitor Mission. No matter what mission you’re in, you can load up to two correction profiles on different outputs at the same time. However, this doesn’t limit the number of profiles you can store in Anubis.

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A REAL GAME CHANGER If you don’t have a well appointed, professional studio at your disposal then this may well be the combination you’ve been waiting for. For me, this is just brilliant. The number of times I’ve had to switch from the memory resident to the plugin to track – countless! Then run off a bounce only to discover I’ve left the plugin enabled on the master bus, in effect double correcting my audio. Well, you can imagine my frustration.

Of course once you’ve used Sonarworks SoundID Reference’s room correction on one project, you can never go back to not having it at all. However, we’re in the business of looking forward. I knew about custom profile creation and

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the Sonarworks custom created mix tools; other than when I first reviewed SoundID Reference, I’d kind of stopped using them in favour of just keeping my room correction. Now you can store all the profiles directly in Anubis and change with three taps of your finger; that’s a real game changer. But to marry up the best room correction software in Sonarworks SoundID Reference with the best and most cost-effective audio interface in Merging Technologies Anubis, is pure genius!

MERGING.COM SONARWORKS.COM

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DynOne 3

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Headliner gets to grips with Leapwing Audio’s acclaimed DynOne multi-band dynamics processor plugin to see just how useful this tool can be for mastering projects...

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SPOTLIGHT

While I don’t profess to be anywhere near competent enough to be a mastering engineer, I fully appreciate the expertise and experience that goes into mastering the great music that we consume on a daily basis. A great mastering engineer will not only get the best out of a mix for all the formats on which it’ll be published, but will often pass on feedback as to where a mix could be improved.

However, with a move to more performance and feel-oriented music, with mixes created as the music evolves, getting the perfect mix is easier said than done.

Mastering engineers call upon an ever expanding arsenal of specialist tools to help give themselves every chance of success.

Leapwing Audio is one such company creating clever new ways of dealing with old, but ever present

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problems. I recently looked at their rather excellent StageOne plugin and I’m also a fan of CentreOne, which has a new way of dealing with a lack of width and phantom centre issues, a common problem with stereo files these days. Adding to this stable of mastering capable tools is DynOne, which as the name suggests, is a dynamic processor with a twist.

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DynOne 3

Dyner for Five DynOne is a five band intelligent parallel compressor with some clever tricks up its sleeve. The first and most obvious thing is the rather simplistic interface, which holds a similar look and feel to other Leapwing plugins. On the left and right-hand sides are the In and Out faders. The In controls the master level in before any parallel split and the Out, the master out.

In the centre section are the five faders for each band, separated by a frequency value which can be changed by dragging up or down. The individual bands themselves can be active or disabled, while Solo lets you hear a band in isolation. The bands can also be linked or unlinked, adjusted and then relinked in any combination you like using an individual Link icon next to the Solo icon. Moving from left to right along the lower edge is the Parallel Mode On/Off button, which you can change the default position of in Settings.

The Centre-Side Mode button is well worth checking out; it stopped me in my tracks so to speak, and I got carried away listening to a variety of different source material. It is just such a great musical enhancement and at no point did it sound anything other than transparent. In CentreSide Mode a further option appears in the top bar with a C and an S joined by the usual paper clip, and if you disconnect them you can toggle between, giving you control over the sides as well as the mono information in the centre.

Bottom right is the filter selection button which moves from Low Latency, through Ultra Quality, to Master Quality filters. As you’d expect, the higher the quality, the more processing power used. This is also true of the CentreSide Mode which again uses more processing power than Left-Right Mode.

Parallel Thinking To get to grips with the parallel aspect of DynOne, I left it in its default preset and went to the Parallel Mode On/Off switch on the bottom of the interface. Playing a couple of different mixes and clicking through a selection of DynOne’s presets revealed a vast change in the audio from one to the next. Clicking on the Controls section reveals a set of controls which lead you to another unique feature. The attack and release values are not set and fixed; they are specified as a range and HEADLINER MAGAZINE

then intelligently act within that range as a measure of guidance. This would go some way to explaining why, even though the presets were so wildly different in terms of the nature of the resulting sound, the majority were truly transparent.

favour of a fluid self-defining attack and release speed, operating within a set of guide parameters. You could say that with an intelligent algorithm monitoring the source audio, it’s better placed to make that kind of on-the-fly judgement.

This is the heart of the dynamic compressor, and again Leapwing has come up with a unique solution to varying and dynamic audio. The most obvious difference is that the traditional Knee control has gone in

You’re still able to tailor how much compression you need with the Ratio, and when with the Threshold.

Although soloing an individual band to make adjustments was quick and easy, I did find the disparity in

SPOTLIGHT

level between Parallel Mode On and Band Solo slightly off-putting, having to adjust the output slider up approximately +12dB and then remembering to drop it back down before switching back into Parallel Mode.

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Again, the option to adjust a value in all the bands at the same time is there by using the Bands Linked button. I found and could hear some of the tricks which mastering engineers might employ for particular situations and I surprised myself

at how, what looked like a pretty complex plugin, actually proved to be relatively easy for a novice to multi-band parallel compression to understand.

that be low latency, ultra quality or master quality. This is a unique approach to intelligent compression, and with the rather amazing sound in Centre-Side Mode, this plugin is very impressive. With support for sample rates up to 384kHz (DXD) and

available as a 64-bit plugin in VST, VST3, AAX and AU on macOS and Windows, this is a serious tool at a modest price.

CONCLUSION As I may have mentioned earlier, I’m no mastering engineer, but that doesn’t mean I can’t appreciate the unique thinking behind this plugin. I was impressed by the sound quality first and foremost. The phase-linear filters are clean and flawless, whether

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Fusion Vintage Drive & Fusion Stereo Image

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FUSION VINTAGE DRIVE & FUSION STEREO IMAGE

SOLIDSTATELOGIC SSL (Solid State Logic) has lifted the lid on two brand new plugins in the form of the Fusion Vintage Drive and Fusion Stereo Image.

The dual release kicks off SSL’s new DAW plugin development programme, which will see scheduled monthly releases of new software production tools. The company will also launch a series of tape echo, delay and de-esser processing plugins before April 2022. All plugins will be available individually or as part of the SSL Complete Bundle subscription pack.

The new SSL Fusion Vintage Drive and Fusion Stereo Image plugins are modelled on the acclaimed Fusion analogue hardware processor. They will be complemented over the coming months by additional Fusion favourite processing colours, Violet EQ, HF Compressor and Transformer.

“To develop SSL Fusion Vintage Drive and Stereo Image plugins, which accurately emulate the coveted Fusion hardware, our DSP software engineers worked closely with the original analogue hardware designers to extract, understand and model the key characteristics of the circuitry in each

of the modules,” explained Jonathan Sandman, product manager, SSL studio plugins. “Using a combination of real-life measurements and a deep understanding of how the circuits work down to a component level, we’ve tried to capture the signature sound of the box, as well as its ease of use.”

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Fusion Vintage Drive & Fusion Stereo Image

“BEING ABLE TO HAVE MULTIPLE, GREAT SOUNDING, DIGITAL INSTANCES OF VINTAGE DRIVE IS REVOLUTIONARY.”

The SSL Fusion Vintage Drive plugin is based on the Vintage Drive section of the SSL Fusion, bringing its nonlinear saturation circuit characteristics directly to the DAW. The Density and Drive controls on the plugin are designed to interact to produce harmonics, soft-clipping and natural compression.

The new plugin has been engineered to produce subtle harmonic saturation and soft compression, described by the company as ‘reminiscent of driving vintage hardware into the analogue sweet spot, to all-out authentic analogue distortion’. As such, the Fusion Vintage Drive plugin is an ideal fit for music creators looking to add an organic analogue sensibility to their tracks, groups, mixes and masters.

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Meanwhile, the SSL Stereo Image plugin is modelled on the mid-side processing circuit from the SSL Fusion stereo outboard hardware processor. This true-analogue circuit utilises a technique that separates a stereo signal into two channels: a sum (L+R) for the sounds in the centre (Mid) and a difference signal (L-R) for the sounds on the left and right (Side) which allows users to narrow or widen the stereo image using the WIDTH control.

Furthermore, the SPACE circuit is a frequency-dependent width control based on the concept of Stereo Shuffling, enabling users to add an array of depth effects into their mix. The Stereo Image plugin also offers an all-new SHUFFLE control for changing the frequency cut-off in the SPACE circuit. This means users

can now add weight and presence or carve space in the stereo field.

These and all upcoming plugins are compatible with all major DAWs and computer operating systems, and support VST2, VST3, AAX and AU plugin formats. “[These] are great additions to my plugin arsenal,” said producer Alan Moulder, who has produced work for the likes of Royal Blood, Nine Inch Nails and The Killers. “Very happy with how much I’m using them.”

Grammy Award-winning mix engineer Wez Clarke, who has worked with such artists as Ed Sheeran, Sam Smith, also said: “Being able to have multiple, great sounding, digital instances of Vintage Drive is revolutionary.”

SPOTLIGHT

Nigel Beaumont, SSL managing director, commented: “This announcement demonstrates our commitment to provide SSL legacy and future production tools to a wider audience of music production and audio creatives with plug-in versions.

By providing different ownership options, we are also simplifying how

users can evaluate and then invest in this hugely-expanding suite of authentic SSL creative software tools.”

All individual Fusion plugin perpetual licenses will be priced at $199/€159/£139 ex local taxes and will be available with an early adopters 25% discount for the first 30 days from

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their launch. Alternatively, they will be available as part of the SSL Complete Bundle subscription, currently only $14.99 per/month.

SOLIDSTATELOGIC.COM

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ASHIBAH

My Eyes Only

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ASHIBAH Having already taken South America by storm, Danish/Egyptian DJ, producer, songwriter and vocalist Ashibah is now laser-focused on bringing her explosive sets to an international audience, and has been using her downtime during the pandemic to get in the studio and “make as much music as humanly possible”. And as a self-confessed control freak, she pretty much does everything herself…

“I try to at least,” she tells Headliner when questioned on the matter. “But I’m also good at figuring out what my limitations are and reaching out to people who are better than me that can help.”

And while she mostly works within the house music genre, there’s something quite niche about her approach in terms of its methodology, her unique vocal, and her sound’s overall appeal.

“The vocal is what connects everything for me,” she explains.

“I always try to start with a good melody and achieve a nice crossover between house and something that people can connect with lyrics-wise.”

Ashibah’s latest record My Eyes Only, which she released on Defected sublabel D4 D4NCE, demonstrates her polished and refined sound at its very best; her exquisite self-recorded vocal

combining effortlessly with audibly slick production.

“It happened in lockdown,” she reveals. “I was in the studio and I wanted to write one of those songs that just uplifts people wherever they are. All my songs I write with my partner, who also happens to be my wife. We sat in the studio with another songwriter, and started working on the lyrics and melodies. After we did the vocal, I threw all the production HEADLINERMAGAZINE.NET

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My Eyes Only

Photographer: Nikolaj Storm

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“I THINK THAT ONCE YOU DEDICATE YOURSELF TO SOMETHING AND REALLY GO AT IT 110%, IT ELEVATES THINGS TO ANOTHER LEVEL.”

out and started from the beginning, because I felt it gave the track a completely different vibe.”

Born in Denmark, Ashibah’s family moved to Cairo when she was a small child, where she lived until the end of high school. In the pursuit of a musical career, she moved back to Denmark, although she soon fell in love with Brazil after making some tracks that particularly resonated with Latin American audiences.

“I did move to Brazil for a while, but then moved back here to Copenhagen because of Covid,” she says. “I love to travel and I love adventures, so I just kind of go where the music takes me.

“Those three places have got very different, unique musical communities, each with their gems, so I try to take the best out of all of those worlds.”

Clearly inspired by her rich cultural heritage, it’s from her waterfront studio in Copenhagen where Ashibah joins Headliner for this very interview over Zoom: “I had a bigger studio and I decided to scale down because HEADLINER MAGAZINE

I felt like I wanted something cosier and smaller, so that when I bring songwriters in here, they feel comfortable and can turn on their creative button when they feel like it. I have some analogue synths here and there, but because

I’ve travelled so much I’ve tried to create a setup that is really flexible.”

Ashibah’s setup is also a minimalistic one, and includes her laptop, audio interface and her Shure SM7B mic, along with an SSD

ARTIST

and start playing with,” she says. “I’m really excited about that. Next year I’m headed for the US, and then hopefully we’re going to hit the European summer next year…”

disk and a set of headphones from Danish modular headphone company AIAIAI Audio, “which are pretty much my favourite things that I can take anywhere.

“I also have my vinyl and DJ setup in the back,” she adds. “Sometimes I love being able to stop, go put on a couple of tracks, and just stand there and have a little fun.”

This month sees Ashibah back out in Brazil for her latest tour, “so I’ve been trying to get as many vocals and tracks done as possible that I can take with me on the road, and start testing

And as the conversation comes to a close, Headliner is interested to learn that Ashibah is certainly not your average DJ and music producer; she is in fact the youngest ever player on the Egyptian national basketball team.

“We were a basketball family, and my dad put a ball in my hand as soon as I could walk,” she recalls fondly. “I was really good at it so I played in school, and then I was going to head to college in the States, but I decided to go to Denmark and pursue music instead, because while I tried a lot of things, music was always the one thing that was loudest within me.

However, I kept playing basketball and got better and better, and then I went to tryouts and made the national team which was an amazing time; it was so

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much fun. You get to travel and you meet so many great people when you play at that kind of level.

“I think that once you dedicate yourself to something and really go at it 110%, it elevates things to another level, and it was at that point I really felt like things completely changed with my music. I’m a bit of a control freak, so I decided that I’ll just learn everything about music production, as much as I possibly can!”

Keep an eye out for more new music from Ashibah, which Headliner is told will be dropping very soon…

ASHIBAH.COM

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TOM SPEIGHT

Good Vibes Only

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TOM SPEIGHT Since 2014, London-based singer-songwriter Tom Speight has been steadily gaining momentum on the UK and international stages, headlining shows and supporting some of the biggest acts in the business. Having just dropped his second album Everything’s Waiting For You at the end of September, Speight spoke to Headliner about making the record, his approach to songwriting, and what it’s like being endorsed by Sir Paul McCartney…

Recorded with producer Chris Bond in Devon/Rich Turvey in London and featuring contributions from regular collaborators Lydia Clowes and Turin Brakes, Everything’s Waiting For You was written as lockdown loomed, and was recorded over a socially-distanced summer as live events reached a standstill.

Sunny song titles, exuberant guitars, scintillating electronics and an abundance of beautifully soulful backing vocals are among its biggest draws; the record is a celebration of living life to the max.

“When I was a kid, it was the whole Britpop movement that really tweaked my ear and got me into music,” Speight recalls. “And then when I started writing songs I was leaning more towards the likes of David Gray, Damien Rice etc. My mission is just to write (hopefully) good songs that will stand the test of time.

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“Generally speaking, the key for me is the melody, and the feeling that it gives me afterwards - and also, am I excited to play it again? I just think I’ve become a bit more comfortable in recent years, and a bit more confident in what I do.”

And while it’s this unassuming confidence that makes Speight so likeable as an artist, and indeed a person, his personal life hasn’t always provided the smoothest of rides.

Speight has lived with Crohn’s disease for 14 years, and was hospitalised with the condition for two months while making his folk-drenched debut album Collide. These days, he is a big supporter and ambassador for HEADLINER MAGAZINE

Crohn’s & Colitis UK, using his musical platform to raise funds for the charity.

“I think sometimes people do take their health for granted,” he says. “For me, the most important thing is my health and then my music – I’m just happy to be in a good place at the minute.

“At least two songs from my debut album I started writing while I was in hospital, so these songs definitely wouldn’t have come out of anything else but that experience,” he adds.

“The other side of it is just this incredibly hopeful message, which I think runs through my songs, of taking on the world. Some of my songs have been a direct response to coming out

of hospital and just wanting to live life to the full. I’ve definitely struggled a lot with not being in the present and feeling anxious and worrying about the future, which then is a vicious cycle of damaging my own stress levels, which has a knock-on effect with Crohn’s.

“It has definitely shaped me as a person which has then affected my music, because all my songs are written about my own experiences really.”

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“GENERALLY SPEAKING, THE KEY FOR ME IS THE MELODY, AND THE FEELING THAT IT GIVES ME AFTERWARDS - AND ALSO, AM I EXCITED TO PLAY IT AGAIN?”

SOAK UP The first song that Speight made after the easing of lockdown in the UK was the mellifluous summer anthem Soak Up, which he recorded at The Gatehouse at Abbey Road Studios.

A self confessed old-fashioned songwriter, he admits that he prefers the process of being in a professional studio environment, rather than making music from his bedroom.

“When we made that track, it was just such a joy to be making music again; plus it was sunny and I was wearing shorts, which you can’t always get away with in London,” he laughs. “Rich Turvey and I have been friends for something like 15 years, and it feels great to be working with one of your best mates on some new music.”

While Soak Up is probably the most poppy track on the record, fans of Speight will undoubtedly find this latest offering a treat to the ears.

“If you’ve been a fan of my music before, there’s definitely loads of stuff that you can get into on the record,” he says. “And then if you haven’t heard of my music, and you’re listening for the

first time, I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised that there is quite a big palette of sounds, like there’s some very acoustic tracks on there, but then there’s also this kind of anthemic, summery vibe with tunes like Soak Up.” Having previously played Glastonbury’s Acoustic Stage, and performed in venues around the world, Speight is no stranger to belting out his songs to massive live audiences. Like many pure singer-songwriters, it’s clearly this side of his craft that he really lives for. February 2022 will see Speight head out on a string of UK dates in support of Everything’s Waiting For You, culminating at Lafayette in London on February 11.

incredible,” remembers Speight with a grin. “I played him six of my songs and I really wanted him to say ‘oh, let’s just change this part’ or something, so that I could then say I co-wrote a song with Paul McCartney, but I couldn’t get that out of him!”

TOMSPEIGHTMUSIC.COM

And it’s not just his loyal fans from whom he’s gained support from over the years. Speight was fortunate enough to be in the same room with Sir Paul McCartney while studying at LIPA, and upon hearing his music, the Beatles legend said he “wouldn’t change a thing”.

“I had a long period with him in a oneon-one songwriting session which was HEADLINERMAGAZINE.NET

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FICKLE FRIENDS

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Seeking Euphoria

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FICKLE FRIENDS One of the most exciting hybrid-sound bands to come out of the UK, Fickle Friends combine pop and indie rock with huge flashes of guitar and synths complementing Natti Shiner’s irresistible vocals. And on their huge new single, Love You To Death, the band channels the guitar god himself, Prince. Headliner jumps on a Zoom with lead singer Shiner to talk about their upcoming album, how writing this new music helped when therapy didn’t, their mission to be a carbon-neutral band, and how she balances her life as a singer and yoga teacher.

At the time of speaking, Fickle Friends have just passed 120 million streams.

Shiner is happy to hear this, as it’s news to her. “That’s great!” she says.

“That’s pretty exciting. I try not to chase these milestones because I get a little bit too obsessive. It starts to haunt me a little bit — I let things like that wash over me now. So if some good news comes my way, I’m like, ‘yay!’ But I’m not constantly pining for it.”

Describing themselves as “euphoriapursuing indie-pop”, Fickle Friends have been going since their 2013 formation in Brighton, where they are all based with the exception of Shiner, who lives in South London. Their debut album, You Are Someone Else, broke into the top 10 of the UK album charts, which has seen them tour the world and make big appearances at festivals such as Reading and Leeds.

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Seeking Euphoria

The band’s new single, Love You To Death, sees the guitars come right to the forefront, and it’s brimming with the sound and attitude of the legendary Prince, almost as if his spirit took hold of Fickle Friends. It’s a strutting track, with delicious riffs, electronica just on the right side of dark, and wonderfully airy vocals from Shiner.

“The music always was more guitardriven when we played live, just because it seemed to work that way,” Shiner says of this new direction. “I think we’ve come through that phase of shiny pop music. It’s a bit more angsty now. And the songs we’ve been writing have a bit more grit about them. And because we’ve been writing a lot more guitar parts, Jack [Wilson, who also plays synth] has got a lot better on guitar. And now he plays live and it allows us to create this more engaging, fun live show. We recently played a festival and it was the first time we didn’t have to prompt a mosh pit ourselves, it just happened!”

Speaking on the day of the song’s release, the first from their upcoming album Are We Gonna Be Alright?, Shiner confirms that “Jack and I were listening to a lot of Prince! I’d wanted this song to be more sparse, not overpowered with loads of different elements. So we started with the guitar loop. And I took on this new character when I was singing it, like I was channelling Prince. It has some of my favourite riffs and solos we’ve ever had in a song. But I definitely think it’s a bit of a Marmite tune. I haven’t even looked on the internet yet to see if people have started playing it!”

Not to worry; at the time of writing, it’s sitting pretty at well over 100,000 streams after a couple of weeks. But, as mentioned earlier, Shiner tries to not get too lost in the numbers. Is this thanks to her other life as a yoga teacher and practitioner, a practice and philosophy she loves to introduce people to via her social media?

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“I DEFINITELY THINK IT’S A BIT OF A MARMITE TUNE. I HAVEN’T EVEN LOOKED ON THE INTERNET YET TO SEE IF PEOPLE HAVE STARTED PLAYING IT!”

“I think the philosophy of yoga is just a really beautiful thing,” she says, with an air of calm. “The guidelines of how to live your life are really inspiring. I think it makes me a more grounded person, which I can channel into music and into meeting fans or playing shows. It allows this broader view of the world, which ties into me caring greatly about environmentalism, veganism — all this tooty fruity stuff, like I’m this walking stereotype!” she laughs.

Love You To Death will really inject some swagger into your day; give it a listen as soon as possible. It’s also a wonderful appetiser for their upcoming sophomore record, Are We Gonna Be Alright? And be sure to follow Shiner on her socials – she truly is making her corner of the world a better and more holistic place.

FICKLEFRIENDS.CO.UK

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OPTOCORE

Big In The Game

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The Tokyo 2020 Summer Olympics took advantage of a vast Optocore network for the Opening and Closing ceremonies, representing what is said to be the largest deployment of Optocore audio network devices ever seen.

This was according to Norwest Head of Special Projects, Andrew Marsh, whose company has a long pedigree of fashioning vast digital broadcast networks for spectacular Games Opening and Closing ceremonies, built around Optocore devices.

To give an idea of scale, he says, “The system we provided for our client, Hibino Corporation, comprised just under 1,000 audio signals transported on each main and backup network.”

As usual, Norwest duplicated the 21-node system to provide full

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redundancy. “And we used every one of them,” reveals Marsh, “along with our usual set of HP switches in RSTP, using our spare pairs of fibre.”

he says. “With the addition of some custom firmware and macros, we were able to switch between main and backup devices seamlessly.”

These switches controlled the entire audio system at multiple field locations and control rooms. The network design was a collaboration between Marsh himself and John Watterson, Norwest’s Senior System Engineer at the head of a combined team effort.

They also purchased additional X6RTP-and X6R-FX converters and added Optocore D-SUB cabling. “This was a necessity with our stock of X6R-TP and DD32-R devices where an AES breakout is required. On the output side, this cabling will also feed our Lake processors.”

Norwest, who already hold a large inventory of Optocore devices, expanded further for this event, to include a number of M12-BNC devices among the 50 Optocore interfaces deployed.

“These act as the primary MADI devices where signals are routed on and off the network which interlink us with replay devices or other suppliers,”

Delaying the Games by a year, and then staging it under severe Covid restrictions, impacted on the traditional ceremonies which bookend the two weeks of competition. Attendance was scaled back in the Olympic Stadium, both for the athletics parade and artistic elements.

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“WHILE OUR NETWORKS KEEP GETTING BIGGER THEY REMAIN RELIABLE AND SIMPLE.”

However, there was less compromise than might have been imagined. “In fact the show was largely performed live, with most parts utilising live microphones as compared with a ‘normal’ ceremony. The most important part of our job was ensuring safe delivery of the live speech mics, such as that of IOC President Thomas Bach, the Japanese emperor’s Opening of the Games, or the athlete oaths. Our approach or design didn’t fundamentally change.”

However, they needed to compensate for a sonically unforgiving stadium, with a long decay time. “It also bled a great deal of sound to nearby residents, which meant many rehearsals were conducted at very low levels or sometimes with no PA system on at all. From an infrastructure point of view, the cabling installation posed many challenges as some of it was closer to permanent installation paths rather than temporary.”

A major advantage of Optocore, noted Marsh, is the ability to operate interchangeably on both Multimode and Singlemode fibre over long distances – the former for distances up to 350m, the latter for longer paths such as to the compound of host broadcasters, OBS. This provides a massive benefit.

“Being able to select fibre transceivers is essential these days, so we are always grateful for that feature. Coming into this event, we were able to re-terminate our entire fleet of fibre optic cables to have expanded beam connectors and associated panels. This really sped up the installation and testing phases.”

DiGiCo consoles were deployed at both FOH and monitor locations, feeding a Ramsa PA. The consoles were connected to the network via MADI, and the control and programming of I/O was done entirely in the audio patch using the Optocore software.

“We have a long history with Optocore,” concludes HEADLINER MAGAZINE

Marsh. “Their collaboration is always appreciated, and we have absolute faith in their superior technology. I don’t know of any other system which would allow us to have 21 nodes of dedicated professional audio I/O in a ring network, and with such simple to use software.

“Now, with the addition of high channel count MADI devices such as the M12s, along with macros in the software control, we feel there is no reason to look elsewhere for other MADI type routers and switchers – it is all contained within Optocore. And while our networks keep getting bigger they remain reliable and simple.”

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The Last Watch

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“You know nothing, Jon Snow” wouldn’t have meant much to Northern Irish artist, composer, producer and broadcaster Hannah Peel in 2019, as she was one of the few people that had never seen one episode of Game of Thrones. No shame (shame!) of course – that was until she was asked to compose and record the soundtrack for Game of Thrones: The Last Watch, a feature length documentary chronicling the creation of the show’s most ambitious and complicated season. A binge-watch to rule them all followed...

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“It was the classic, ‘Oh my God, this series is so huge – I am never going to even start this because I’m never gonna get through it!’” Peel laughs, remembering when the documentary’s director Jeanie Finlay told her that she had over 900 hours of footage to edit down to just under two hours.

“I bought a house in Northern Ireland and that summer I had builders that were knocking down walls, and all I could do was binge-watch the whole of Game of Thrones because I had no other choice, because I couldn’t work at home! That was technically my job for a month, and I totally got into it and loved it. I made a massive list of themes and music as it was going on, and one of the things that I took from the score was that I loved the low strings that were used in the original series – there’s a lot of cello and a lot of double bass.”

Her epic binge-watch paid off, earning her a 2019 Emmynomination in the Outstanding Music Composition For A Documentary

Series Or Special (Original Dramatic Score) category, although midway through the project she actually started from scratch again.

“Jeanie wanted different tracks for different types of weather because of the extreme conditions that they filmed in, like hot Spain and Croatia, the icy winds of Iceland, and in Northern Ireland, the rain and the darkness of winter,” she explains. “So I gave her loads of electronic stuff because I wanted to stay away from the original score in that sense. But when we placed it to picture, it just

didn’t work – it was just not right at all. So I went back and we went for the more handmade, acoustic feel. It is filmed in Northern Ireland, so it has got a folk element to it.”

At only four episodes long, scoring the music for Channel 5’s psychological thriller, The Deceived – about a woman who falls for her married lecturer who mysteriously disappears – fortunately did not require such intense cramming. She won an MPG Award for Original UK Score Recording of the Year for her efforts, which she does not take for granted.

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“IT BECAME THIS BIG, MASSIVE MISSION OF SCORING STRINGS LEFT, RIGHT AND CENTRE TO ADD TO THE DRAMA AND TENSION.”

“What’s wonderful about the MPGs is that they recognise the mixing and the engineering as well – it’s not just about the composer. That’s really important because a lot of people behind the scenes often don’t get a look in at all,” she points out. “And in particular, because the score was recorded in Northern Ireland – you know, Northern Ireland is not London – it was really important for all of us that they were acknowledged as well.”

atmospheres, and I was like, ‘Oh my god, how am I going to do this with the timeframe that I have?’ It went from being a soundscape-type score to being more in line with a Hitchcock film. I basically had about two and a half weeks to write, record, mix it, send it off and get all the exec notes back. It became this big, massive mission of scoring strings left, right and centre to add to the drama and tension.

The score is a mix of string quartet, electronics and Kontakt instruments, and recordings sampled from the house on set, although this project also had a sudden change in direction.

“I think that’s why it was acknowledged by the MPGs because it went against the curve of what is possible and how much work – in a very small time frame – goes into this stuff,” she considers. “I learned a lot about the way I work and how to drive that forward, and the limits I can go to as well.”

“I said that I wanted to go to the house because it’s integral to the story; it’s a beautiful old house so I wanted to sample sounds from in there,” she explains. “They had a massive array of crystal cut glass, so I ended up using a lot of that and making those sounds into this ethereal instrument that became like the voice of the house – this ghostly presence. They had these gorgeous, huge old doors with big brass handles, and I ended up recording loads of samples and sounds. Then they decided they wanted the music to drive more like some of the epic, big budget scores with those beautiful, big string lines and HEADLINER MAGAZINE

HANNAHPEEL.COM MPG.ORG.UK

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