Headliner Issue 50

ISSUE 50 / JANUARY 2024 SUPPORTING THE CREATIVE COMMUNITY HEADLINERMAGAZINE.NET UK £3.95 / USA $6.95 / CANADA $7.95

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BUILT TO BE BAD

GRACE GACHOT JAUZ

FIVE YEARS OF THE WISE AND THE WICKED

THE SNUTS

ON THEIR UPCOMING THIRD ALBUM

HANNAH PEEL

MEET THE NEW F-LIST PRESIDENT

SoundOn is TikTok’s all-in one platform for music creators

DEJA

Check out my new song Tu Tu

Young Athena

Distribute your music for free at soundon.global Images: Young Athena, DEJA and Josh Barry performing at SoundOn presents.

Josh Barry

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SUP P

IV E C EAT O CR

ING THE T R O

NITY MU M HEADLINER MAGAZINE

50 For the first time in what feels like an eternity, the pro audio and AV industries enter a new year with a trade show double whammy, as NAMM and ISE both return to their January start dates. It’s a shock to the system, but a welcome one, as two of the biggest events on the business calendar are restored to their natural state, setting the tone for the year ahead with a veritable raft of new products, announcements, and updates. In many ways, it all feels like a new beginning.

In keeping with the pervading sense of new year optimism, our cover star for this issue is an artist very much tipped for big things in 2024.

Having made significant steps in her career via SoundOn (TikTok’s very own distribution platform) in recent months, Grace Gachot is looking to take on the world this year, as we discover in a wide ranging interview that navigates not only her career so far, but the realities of life as a recording artist in today’s market.

We also hear from Scottish indie rock four-piece The Snuts, who, after a No.1 debut album and a Top 3 follow-up, have opted to leave their major label home to set up their own independent record label to release their third album Millennials. In a candid and revealing chat, frontman and songwriter Jack Cochrane gives us the inside track on their major label departure, as well as their hopes

and ambitions now that they’ve broken out on a path all their own.

Meanwhile, award-winning artist, producer, and composer Hannah Peel joins us for an insightful conversation about her new role as president of The F-List for Music, which serves as a directory for women working in the music industry, as well as a support hub for female musicians and industry professionals of any kind. We also talk about her glittering career so far and what the future holds.

All in all, it’s an issue jam-packed with reasons for all to be excited about the weeks and months before us.

So, depending on where you are when you read this, we wish you a safe journey, or the best of luck in dealing with the jet lag. Until next time!

Daniel Gumble Head of Content

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22/ RICH KELLER 08 / THE WILD THINGS

14/ GRACE GACHOT

38 / LD SYSTEMS LIVE SESSIONS

32 / AARON HORN

42 / THE SNUTS

54 / INSTALLATION

26/ JAUZ

48 / HANNAH PEEL

58 / HERDÍS STEFÁNSDÓTTIR

64 / PINAR TOPRAK

68 / UMI

80 / LIVE

74 / RECORDING

88 / EVERYTHING AUDIO 84 / PRO AUDIO

94 / BUSINESS

100 / PRODUCTION SOUND

106 / LIGHTING

THE WILD THINGS

Seeking Paradise

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SEEKING PARADISE

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THEWILDTHINGS The way things have aligned for London’s The Wild Things is almost out of a fairytale — singer Sydney Rae White and guitarist Rob Kendrick met while on tour with The Who musical Quadrophenia, after which they would not only get married, but form the band together. This also exposed them to The Who’s Pete Townshend, who has produced some of the band’s music and has been a huge proponent of the band. Sydney White chats to Headliner about performing at Madison Square Garden and the Royal Albert Hall, the band’s recent singles and their upcoming sophomore album.

It’s a bitterly cold night in St Albans as The Wild Things take the stage at The Horn music pub. The fact they have the Saturday night slot instead of a covers act like The Smyths or Pure Coldplay in itself says a huge amount about the belief in this band. And while it’s a relatively small room they are playing to, it quickly becomes apparent this band will play every show with the same swagger and energy — whether it be in a small satellite commuter city such as St Albans, or opening for The Who at Madison Square Garden.

Energy is the key word; Sydney White may be a diminutive frontwoman, but she’s a vocal powerhouse, and her performance is perhaps brimming the strongest as she leaves the stage to jolt around the audience for this year’s HEADLINER MAGAZINE

single Heaven Knows. Rob Kendrick, who towers over his bandmates and the audience, is constantly demanding full participation, spending a lot of the set at the very front of the stage ensuring no one in the crowd is taking their eyes off this rock extravaganza.

White’s brother Cameron on bass and drummer Pete Wheeler do not share a misstep between them and are often beaming smiles at the mere opportunity to get to do what they’re doing. Other huge highlights are their recent single Paradise and their outrageous cover of Abba’s Does Your Mother Know? which predictably gets the whole room bouncing.

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THE WILD THINGS

Seeking Paradise

Speaking to Headliner a few days after the gig, White has a free day back in London to do laundry and recuperate before completing their first headline tour, concluding with a hometown performance at the 100 Club in Central London.

“We’ve just recently come off tour with Kiss,” White says, with Hollywood Hulk Hogan, her bulldog, snoring away in the background. After doing huge venues with Kiss, she says this tour of grassroots UK venues is nice because “we get the opportunity to leave the venue and explore a bit, and we didn’t get to play some of these cities on their tour. We don’t really care where it is, we’re just happy to be playing! When you start a band, they don’t really tell you that playing shows is quite a small part of the job, there’s so much admin and social media to do, so we’re excited to be on the road again.”

Both White and Kendrick have appeared on screens, the former’s biggest role being in Uncle for the BBC and then Netflix, also appearing in other hit UK shows like Misfits. Kendrick meanwhile has popped up in many shows, none huger than Bridgerton.

White is keen to stress that music is her first love (but don’t tell her agent that), meanwhile, Kendrick had never really thought too much about pursuing a band, but he didn’t take too much convincing to join the band.

“I started acting when I was nine years old,” White says. “My first job was Les Mis (Les Misérables) in the West End, and there is singing in that, of course. I always knew I wanted to do music too.

I think as the band has grown, my love of music has overtaken acting — I find there’s a lot more creative freedom when you’re playing your own music, I find it a lot more cathartic. More so than reading lines, even though I do love it, and it’s nice to escape into a character. Although I do that on stage HEADLINER MAGAZINE

“THE SYDNEY THAT STEPS ONTO THE STAGE ISN’T THE SAME SYDNEY WHO GOES SHOPPING IN TESCO.”

to a certain extent anyway — the Sydney that steps onto the stage isn’t the same Sydney who goes shopping in Tesco.”

If you listen to The Wild Things, you’ll likely be struck by what a classic rock sound they have, with big riffs that are more catchy than pounding, White’s vocals booming rather than shouty, and many of the tracks featuring a Hammond organ donated to them

by Pete Townshend himself. It’s little surprise to hear White and her brother grew up with her parents playing lots of Elvis and The Who records in their formative years.

Speaking of The Who, White being cast in the ‘60s legend’s staged rock opera version of Quadrophenia was even more life-changing than she could ever anticipate. Cast alongside Kendrick, the pair have since become married, and Townshend, noticing both of their talents, has become something of a mentor for The Wild Things.

“It was my first ever tour, I moved out, I met my boyfriend and now husband. I met Townshend, and every night I was singing what I consider to be one of the best albums of all time. And it gave me this insight into this world of mods and rockers — my dad was a mod

back in the day, he was on Brighton Beach [referring to when violence broke out between the mods and rocker groups in 1964]. It was this way of transitioning into adult life for me, and sparking the journey of the rest of my life.”

The first of The Wild Things’ new singles last year was Heaven Knows.

It opens with a riff that is a total earworm, but when the drums kick in, its catchiness doesn’t undermine the fact it will get heads banging with ease. Meanwhile, the chorus is brimming as White sings “Heaven knows my name” repeatedly. And, like quite a few of the band’s recent tracks, you can hear the Hammond organ that Pete Townshend donated to the group. It’s not hard to see why White particularly loves performing this live so much.

“I need to check this with my brother, but it might be the organ he wrote and performed Baba O’Riley on, which is insane,” White says. “It’s definitely my favourite song to play live. For this one, I have my guitar taken off me, so I get to run around like a mad woman and get my cardio in for the day. It’s such a fun song to sing, so cathartic to sing, scream and let it all out.

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THE WILD THINGS

Seeking Paradise

“We wrote it just as we were about to go on the Kiss cruise — we wanted to have something really punchy and upbeat for that. That was also when we decided to cover Abba because it doesn’t get much more rock and roll than that. But Heaven Knows was so much fun to write that it just flowed out of us and was a really quick writing process.”

Next up was Paradise, a Summer release for the quartet. This may sound like a big statement, but its chorus really could be counted among the best to be released last year. Juxtaposed by a bluesy riff and lyrics that are comparably snarled in the verse, the chorus soars with gorgeous guitar work from Kendrick as White switches to more angelic vocals and croons: “Days go slowly / Years run by / Nights are lonely / Ink’s run dry”.

When asking White about this song and its lyrical content, this instead prompts her to reveal the concept behind their upcoming second album, Afterglow. “We’re not at a place in our career where it’s feasible for us to call this a concept album,” she explains. “So we’re calling it a ‘choose your adventure’ album. The whole record is about this fictional town in America, and an event that happens over the course of one evening, almost a bit Twin Peaks, supernatural type thing.

You can listen to the songs in any order you want and make your own story out of it. But each song tends to be about one person in the town.

Paradise is about a female character in the town looking back on her life, and it ties in with a couple of the other characters.

“But from an outsider perspective, when you haven’t heard the rest of the record, it’s about nostalgia, and how that can simultaneously make you feel great and terrible. It’s very cathartic for us onstage. Because we can so easily look back at last year HEADLINER MAGAZINE

and think, wouldn’t it be so good to be back onstage at Madison Square Garden, isn’t that depressing? But it actually isn’t depressing at all, it’s absolutely amazing.”

While waiting for the new album, there’s just the small matter of The Wild Things’ latest single, Red Side Of The Moon, which is both a cover and collaboration with drag queen Trixie Mattel, star of RuPaul’s Drag Race.

“A few people in our inner circle questioned us doing this,” White says. “But what is more rock and roll than drag? Nothing, I’m sorry! I came across Trixie Mattel on Drag Race, and I was immediately taken with her. I then found out she was a songwriter, and I did not expect it to be this folk and country-style music.

I fell in love with Red Side Of The Moon, and just used to sit upstairs at my parents’ house singing it with my guitar. And then last year, we were doing this thing called the singles club, where each member of the band would choose a song for us to cover.

“So when we covered Trixie’s song, she ended up seeing it somehow

and asked us if we’d like to release it as a single. So, after I stopped hyperventilating, we got it recorded and sent it to her, and then she sent a version back with her singing on it. And I’m just so grateful. We’re playing it on tour and it’s a nice dip between the heavier stuff in the set.”

And with their headline UK tour wrapped now, it’s just a case of trying to get any last details out of White regarding the next singles and the album release, with its date not scheduled just yet. With a wonderful air of freedom, she says, “In terms of the next singles, it’s completely up to us because we’re an independent band! So expect lots more from us, and the album will definitely be out in 2024. We’ve been sitting on it for a while, so I’m so excited to be sharing it finally.”

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GRACE GACHOT Built To Be Bad

GRACE GACHOT HEADLINER MAGAZINE

COVER STORY

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BUILT TO BE BAD London-based songstress Grace Gachot recently spoke to Headliner about her latest release Built To Be Bad, how she developed her passion for songwriting, and the support she has received since signing to SoundOn, TikTok’s music distribution platform.

It’s already been a frantic start to the year for fresh-faced rising pop star Grace Gachot, yet her chirpy excitement for what’s to come is palpable as she joins Headliner for a chat over Zoom on a stormy Tuesday in January. Her schedule has been jam packed with meetings and of course, getting stuck in with all things music.

Gachot garnered a fierce passion for the creative arts from a young age - acting, singing and dancing for her family at every given opportunity. She quite simply loved performing, and at 10 years old when she watched a school musical production of Oliver!, shortly followed by her first ‘adult’ music experience at a Jessie J concert, the fire in her belly was well and truly fueled.

Growing up in Spain with parents from a myriad of European backgrounds, Gachot’s musical influences were broad to say the least.

“There was this one song by Laura Pausini – an Italian artist – called Lui Non Sta Con Te, and I made about 1,000 different dances to it,” she begins in earnest. “I still don’t know what that song’s about! I would just listen to a lot of whatever my parents were playing around the house. Lady Gaga had just released Born This Way, and although I was probably not supposed to be listening to that album at the age I was. I would know and sing along to every word.”

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GRACE GACHOT Built To Be Bad

Gachot admits that she took a risk pursuing music, yet it paid dividends sooner than she could have imagined. In her Spanish hometown, she would sing at local events and restaurants from the age of 15, and was soon picked up by a London-based guitarist and producer who introduced her to the world of songwriting. From there the ball was rolling, and when she finished school she travelled to London in a bid to immerse herself in the industry.

“You do get slapped in the face, and you do learn the reality of it very quickly, but I don’t regret it at all,” she says. “I feel like it was the best step, and then I was just writing solidly and HEADLINER MAGAZINE

absorbing everything for two to three years, learning who I am as an artist and my sound.

“Singing live is very different from singing into a microphone in a studio.

It’s a whole different skill and a whole different muscle, so I had to let go of what it is to sing live in a restaurant, and just start singing into a mic and writing songs. I released my first song, Fuckboy Tragedy, completely independently at the end of 2022, and so I learned so much of the process of putting that together, going through the distribution company and publishing – I had to learn the whole thing, but it was really cool.”

If the name of Gachot’s debut single hasn’t already given it away, love songs have served as her biggest inspiration when it comes to her lyrical content.

She counts Lionel Richie, Roberta Flack and Whitney Houston as some of her idol vocalists, and loves the way their songs talk about love.

“I just feel like it’s so pure and real and honest,” she tells Headliner. “And that’s the approach that I try to take with my music. I love the singersongwriter genre and very relatable, vulnerable lyrics.

COVER STORY

“Soon after that release, an A&R from SoundOn reached out to me and explained how their platform is connected to TikTok. It turned out their office was just two train stops away from me in London, and it was the first big opportunity like this that had come my way. I didn’t actually have a TikTok account at

the time, because for me posting was always a bit of a chore; I just wanted to make music. That all changed when I was picked up by SoundOn, and I’m so grateful that it happened at a time when I didn’t have much of a following. They saw my potential just through one song.”

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Gachot’s newest song, Built To Be Bad, has echoes of a modern power ballad, and is the latest in a string of singles that she has now released with SoundOn.

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GRACE GACHOT Built To Be Bad

“To me, it’s definitely the most special song that I’ve released so far,” she ponders. “I was in the middle of a heartbreak, and it was just so real and raw at the time. I went into the studio with a producer who I looked up to called Ollie Green; I’d never worked with him before so I put a lot of pressure on myself for that session.

I offloaded everything I was going through to him. He picked up on things I said during our conversation and created something beautiful out of it, even though I was feeling terrible. When he sent me the song, it sounded like an exact account of what I was going through – just a storm – and although I felt terrible at the time of writing, it felt so fresh to me and I loved it.

“When you go through something awful, it’s sometimes hard to find the silver lining, but with songwriting you really can just take all the pain and turn it into something amazing. Every song comes about differently for me because it depends on how much emotion I’m feeling in the moment.

Sometimes I’ll have a concept or idea and I’ll record it myself with some piano and basic production, and other times I’ll have a thought while I’m walking somewhere, which I’ll write in my notes and then regurgitate to whoever I’m in a session with.”

“IT’S NOT ABOUT HAVING TO SPEND A LOT OF MONEY – IT ALL JUST DEPENDS ON HOW STRONG YOUR IDEA IS.”

Gachot admits that she never knew how powerful and gratifying TikTok could be for music promotion before she got involved with SoundOn. The support she has received from the platform has been second to none; she has now released four songs and admits that she has found it incredibly fun connecting with their audiences.

depends on how strong your idea is and how well it connects.

“It blows my mind every day,” she says. “There’s so many ways you can promote now and every time we’ve done it, the best performing outlet has always been TikTok. You can get such amazing organic growth and reach, so it’s not about having to spend a lot of money – it all just

“Often you can’t really tell what will connect, and that’s the fun part. It’s also a bit tiring sometimes because you’ll edit one video for hours and then get 300 views when you post it, but then you post something that you’ve put little effort into and it gets way more views. So while I think

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you have to develop quite a chilled mentality around it, it’s the most powerful form of music promotion right now. It allows people to connect to you and your songs in the way that you want to be perceived.

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“THE MORE THAT YOU DEVELOP A NICHE, THE MORE YOU’LL START TO FIND YOUR AUDIENCE AND A REALLY NICE COMMUNITY TO ENGAGE WITH.”

“With every post that you do, you’re probably going to reach a bunch of new people. The more that you work on it and develop a niche, the more you’ll start to find your audience, and then it becomes a really nice community to engage with if that’s the right audience for you.”

Gachot’s new year resolution is to find a balance between writing, releasing

music, and playing live. While she didn’t play many shows in 2023, this year is looking like an entirely different beast for the humble singersongwriter.

she reveals. “I’ve been looking to build my audience online first, and then hopefully have them come to the show. That’s the plan right now and I can’t wait.”

“I will do a show in London probably around May time, and that’ll be exciting because I haven’t really put much of my time towards that yet with everything else being so hectic,” HEADLINERMAGAZINE.NET

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GRACE GACHOT Built To Be Bad

Questioned on the personal highlights of her music career so far, Gachot explains how she recently ended up receiving support from popular BBC Radio 1 DJ Jack Saunders.

“He posted a TikTok competition asking people to send him their music, and I would never usually sign up for something like that, but I had Built To Be Bad coming out in three weeks and thought I might as well send him it and see what happens,” she recalls. “I didn’t expect anything from it at all, but two days later I was in a meeting and checked my phone – it said ‘Jack Saunders mentioned you on TikTok’, and that was a feeling of pure euphoria that I’d not felt in a very long time.

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“Basically, he picked my song out of all of the thousands of emails he got, and that meant so much to me. I’d never had any recognition from radio before that, and it gave me a lot of hope for the song before and after I released it. Since then he’s supported it on his radio show and online. Jack’s been a massive help in my career so far and it really means a lot to me, I think more than he probably knows!”

As far as the near future goes, promoting, teasing and testing new songs on TikTok via SoundOn is Gachot’s laser-focused prerogative.

“I’m looking to give Built To Be Bad some new life before releasing the next single,” she concludes with an

infectious smile. “And then there’s also a duet that I will potentially be doing with an artist, which will be out in May if that all works out.

“Life outside of music is a bit on hold; there’s no such thing as a personal life these days. But it’s fine because music is my purpose at the moment, although I do think a holiday should probably happen soon!”

TIKTOK/INSTA: @GRACEGACHOT SOUNDON.GLOBAL

RICH KELLER

The man behind the beats

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THE MAN BEHIND THE BEATS

RICH KELLER HEADLINER MAGAZINE

ENGINEER

For more than 30 years, New Jersey-based engineer Rich Keller has been shaping the sound of hip-hop as we know it, applying his signature touch to many of the genre’s defining records. Headliner joins him for a chat about his storied career and why he always relies on Augspurger® Monitors.

“I can take it all the way back to one moment,” a smiling Rich Keller says as he recalls the moment music came into his life and set him on a path he continues to tread to this day. “It was Elvis. It was the late ‘60s and it was the comeback special. I was about five years old, and I was so inspired by him and the whole thing.”

Joining us from his home in New Jersey via Zoom, it is immediately evident that Rich Keller is going to make for excellent company.

Having worked with a towering line-up of superstars from the world of hip-hop and beyond, he’s used to sharing stories and insights about the stars he’s worked with and the records he’s shaped. He does so with a smile and gusto that

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makes it feel like he’s telling them for the first time.

music, specifically with his Roland TR707 and Fostex eight-track.

Among those he has worked with include DMX, Swizz Beatz, De La Soul, PDiddy, Ruff Ryders, Nas, Miles Davis, Alicia Keys, Lil Wayne, Mariah Carey, Method Man, Snoop Dogg, Rick Ross, Ja Rule and many others. But even when describing his formative years, the natural storyteller in him shines through.

“I ended up meeting a guy who asked me to be an engineer for Pete Nice’s (3rd Bass) solo record,” says Keller, explaining his entry to the world of engineering. “The producers for that record were The Beatnuts who were coming up at the time. From there we became friends and The Beatnuts asked if I’d come with them to be their engineer. We went to Chung King Studios to finish their first EP, and from there they started remixing everybody. And I wound up meeting all those artists they were mixing.

“After seeing Elvis I wanted to play guitar,” he continues. “I got into second grade and an accordion teacher came to the school and I had a free lesson. From then on it was just a ride. I started that at seven, by nine I was playing guitar, then I hit junior high and they put a trombone in my hand. In eighth grade I was getting into big band jazz and started playing bass.”

In the mid ‘80s, it was with bass that he made the first significant strides in his musical career. As a jobbing bassist, he was earning a living playing parties and weddings across the city. In his spare time, he was also dabbling with electronic

“RZA AND WU TANG WERE IN THE OTHER ROOM HOLDING COURT, LIGHTS DOWN, CANDLES, IT WAS WU TANG CENTRAL!.”

“I never planned on becoming an engineer,” he continues. “I was in my 20s, doing alright playing bass. But the engineering started and I had an aptitude for it. I understood what artists were looking for, and I learned from the hip hop producers that there were no rules. And they knew I could play a lot of instruments, I could mix, produce vocals. You end up being indispensable.”

Given his eclectic musical background, how did he become so tightly intertwined with hip hop?

“I’ve thought about that,” he says before a pause. “Had I chosen the path of, ‘Hey, I want to be a music engineer’, it would have been different. But I learned on the job, so someone would be like, ‘Yo, make the kick harder, dog!’. Those were my instructions, so it was like, spin the knob! I had no formal training, I just did what I could to get the sound I needed.

“Had I specifically chosen to become an engineer I wouldn’t have made it, as there were already guys doing that thing in the rock world. With hip hop I was coming in with a new style of music and I was a new engineer that never told the producers, ‘no’. Some of them HEADLINERMAGAZINE.NET

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RICH KELLER

The man behind the beats

“I RESPOND TO THE EMOTIONAL CONTENT OF THE VOCALS AND I TRY TO RIDE IT LIKE A WAVE.”

had been paired with old school engineers who would tell them they can’t do certain things. I never told them no. And I never said no to any job, even if it was at the expense of my own sanity.”

To this day, he remembers the first big job that established him as an engineer of note amongst the hip hop scene.

“It was Method Man’s Bring The Pain,” he says. “I mixed that song, it was a platinum single. “It was one of those middle of the night calls. The manager of Chung King called me - RZA had been through a few engineers, it wasn’t working. He said, ‘Rich, this Wu Tang group is here, they want an engineer, you want to come in and try this mix?’. You never say no, so I show HEADLINER MAGAZINE

up, RZA shows me around and left me to work. He and Wu Tang were in the other room holding court, lights down, candles, it was Wu Tang central! An hour later I said come in, and he went through it, looking over what I did. He’s a pretty quiet guy. Then he goes to the kick drum – and I remember this so clearly, it was on the Neve VR60 – he took the frequency and dipped it to 60 and put the gain all the way up to the clip. I was like, ‘Damn, the speakers are popping!’. He says, ‘That’s how it’s supposed to be’. I said, ‘Close your eyes’, and I dialed it back just so that the speakers weren’t folding.

“In an hour we were done. He says, ‘How much do you charge?’. I said $1,000 a mix is my rate. He says, ‘Nah man, you were here for an hour. I’ll give you $400’. I said, ‘That’s it?’ And

he wrote me the check and said, ‘Yep’.

That was the last time I worked with RZA, on one of his biggest records.”

Before long, Keller was fielding midnight calls on a regular basis, becoming one of the go-to engineers of the era. As for what it was that set him apart from his peers, he highlights what he believes became known as something of a signature Keller style.

“The feedback I’ve always gotten is on the vocals and the bottom,” he says.

“It’s like cooking. Everything has to culminate at the right moment, then you have to not overcook it. You have to instinctively know when to keep moving. I respond to the emotional content of the vocals and I try to ride it like a wave.”

ENGINEER

Crucial in establishing that signature sound are the Augspurger® Monitors he has long been an advocate of. There is scarcely a defining hip hop record from the past three decades that hasn’t been influenced by these systems, such is their propensity for conjuring, as Keller puts it, a “godlike” mix of super low, potent bass, and ultra clear mids and highs.

“I was not a speaker-holic in the early ‘90s, but I remember the first room I went in with Augpsurger speakers was Sony Studio A and they had the 415 and dual 18 subs and that was great,” he says of his first experience. “By the late ‘90s they were in all the main rooms. Everywhere. With Augpsurgers it’s really simple. The clarity of the mids and the highs and the power of the low end is just beautiful.

It gives you that sound and feeling of being in the club or the stadium. And you could count on them. I have a pair of Solo 8s with the 12-inch subs on the bottom in my room and I love them, for the same reasons I did then.”

While Augspurger® Monitors are used on all manner of styles and genres of music, Keller believes that there is something intrinsic within the speakers that lends themselves perfectly to hip hop and rap.

“It’s really to do with the bottom,” he elaborates. “When I hear other speakers they have limiters and they crap out.

They just don’t have the clarity. Augspurgers are clean, they have tons of headroom – I never have to crank it all the way up to get the volume I need – and you can get there easily.”

Before we part ways, Headliner asks if there are any notable moments or experiences that standout as being especially pivotal or memorable from his career so far.

Fully aware that to even scratch the surface of this question he’d need an extra few days to work through the extensive

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catalogue of tales and stories at his disposal he points to one that exemplifies the essence of what he delivered so much success.

“OK,” he says with a glint in his eye. “I get a call at midnight from Sony asking if I can go over to Puffy’s house as he needs some help on a session. I get there and he’s all dressed up and goes, ‘Here’s the mix, here’s my assistants, you’re supposed to be the best, so show me what you got’.

So he leaves and goes to the club, and I quickly realise his board doesn’t work. The EQs are all funky, it’s just decaying.

So I say, let’s move this down to Chiung King – he expects me to do my job, I need a place I can work. So I took the reels and the assistants say, ‘He’s not gonna like this!’. I don’t give a shit, he asks me to do my job so I’m gonna take control and make shit happen.

“I get there and at 4.30am doors swing open and in he comes with all his security and goes, Who the f**k do you think you are, moving my session?’. I said, ‘your board is fu**ed up, no wonder it sounds like shit’. He goes, ‘You’re digging a big hole, playboy’. I’m like, ‘Why you calling me playboy?’. He’s like, ‘Well, sir’, and I go, ‘Why sir? My name is Rich!’. We’re having this ego battle and he can see I’m a little bit older than him and he says, ‘I’m calling you sir because I respect my elders’. So I say, ‘Why don’t you call me sir playboy then?’ and everybody laughs and he says, ‘OK Rich, you’re gonna stand up to me no matter what, so let me hear what you got’.”

And did he like the outcome?

“He really liked the track,” he laughs. “And I spent the next five years working with him.”

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JAUZ

Wise/Wicked

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JAUZ Esteemed DJ and EDM producer Sam Vogel, better known as Jauz (pronounced jaws), talks to Headliner about his new project that celebrates the five-year anniversary of his debut album, The Wise and the Wicked, his discovery and love of UK drum and bass, and the unique Wise vs. Wicked tour that he embarked on last summer.

Jauz’s motto of “music has no boundaries” would come across somewhat clichéd if it wasn’t matched by his eclectic range of production styles, from chill trap and future garage to the more aggressive side of dubstep.

Having first began uploading remixes in 2013, it wasn’t long before the San Francisco native’s tracks caught the attention of Diplo, Skrillex, and Borgore. Through his singles and

collaborations during the mid-2010s, Jauz earned a reputation as one of the pioneers of bass house, and his work later in the decade helped kick off the speed house subgenre. His ambitious, cinematic 2018 full-length album The Wise and the Wicked, which topped the iTunes chart less than two hours after its release, touched on everything from bassline to electropop, and five years later, he is celebrating the record’s anniversary in a big way.

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admits to Headliner. “At the end of the day, I did it for me and no one else. So after realising the five year anniversary was coming up, I wanted to try to allow the songs to have as much life as they can.

“I wanted these albums to really illustrate the two parts of this story I started telling in 2018, and hone in on the sound of each of these worlds. From a creative perspective, my tastes have changed in the last five years, and from a storytelling perspective, those groups of people – the wise and the wicked – their tastes have evolved too.”

Jauz’s latest project is a two-pronged attack. Rise of the Wise, released in July 2023, sees him channelling his house influences while remaining fresh and futuristic, with part two – Wrath of the Wicked, released in September – curated exclusively for the fans.

“There was a lot of information to digest with the original album,” Jauz HEADLINER MAGAZINE

If you go back and listen through Jauz’s discography however, you’ll find that he has been making music in this vein since the beginning. He counts the likes of Chris Lorenzo, Gorgon City and Hannah Wants amongst his early influences, but even before that, writing house records was his bread and butter. If you think he’s simply hopped on the house bandwagon now that the genre has become so popular in the US, it really could not be further from the truth.

“My influences have always come from the UK,” Jauz elaborates. “At first it was the dubstep influences, whether it was Skream, Benga, Coki, UKF and so on, and then I got more

into the drum and bass and house side of things. In the early days I’d put out some kind of oddball UK bassline deep house combo, then I’d put out a dubstep record, and then I’d put out something that’s completely different from all of them.

“So to transition to this latest album, Wrath of the Wicked, it is very much centred in that ultra aggressive bassline sound. I went so far left with Rise of the Wise, and so I wanted to have a yin to the yang, if that makes sense. Rise of the Wise was for me, whereas Wrath of the Wicked is for the fans. Instead of trying to split the difference and make everybody happy, I just thought about the sounds that make me the most excited right now. The motto of the Jauz project has always been to be able to make everything, keep people on their toes, and always keep them guessing.”

DREAMING, one of the tracks from Wrath of the Wicked, does just that with its high energy drum and bass vibe. According to Jauz, some of these more aggressive DnB tracks have been floating around in the ether for a long, long time, and he’s been playing drum and bass in his show and festival sets since 2016. It all goes back to the fact that he is, as he admits, so enamoured by the UK music scene.

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“I’VE BEEN TRYING TO MAKE THIS DRUM AND BASS THING HAPPEN IN THE STATES FOR AS LONG AS I CAN REMEMBER.”

“I’ve been trying to make this drum and bass thing happen in the States for as long as I can remember,” he says. “And now it’s finally here, and it’s really happening, which is so fucking cool. I almost wish that I had written more drum and bass records for this album, but I was also conscious of trying to keep to a happy medium because it’s only seven songs. There’s so much cool shit happening in drum and bass right now and it just makes me so happy.”

For a producer and DJ who has in previous years smashed the summer festival circuit with an EDM-shaped hammer, summer 2023 was positively mellow in contrast for Jauz, and for good reason.

“I’m a new dad,” he tells Headliner with a smile. “For the first four months of a baby’s life, it’s basically on the mum, and there’s really not that much I can do to help. So I knew that during the first four months, I was going to tour heavily. Then when she started getting to five, six, seven months old, that’s when I could really step in and HEADLINER MAGAZINE

do my part. So I knew before the year even started that I wasn’t going to have the crazy summer that I normally do. I forgot how nice it was to enjoy just being able to go to the beach and enjoy a nice summer day.”

Despite this sentiment, Jauz kicked off his Wise vs. Wicked tour in September.

Like his album projects, these two completely separate shows had different sounds, different venues, and showed off a sharp new edge to Jauz’s artistry. The Wise show focused on the housier, techier, more melodic side of his music, whereas the Wicked show was a straight up pedal-to-themetal bass fest.

“I would like to think that the real diehard Jauz fans are excited to get two different experiences,” he tells Headliner ahead of the tour. “They understand the mission and they’re there for it.

“This is just the genesis of this whole concept. The end goal would be to bring these kinds of curated performances to big summer festivals.

I could technically do three sets at the same festival, at Creamfields for example. I could do a Wise show on the house stage, I could do a Wicked show on the drum and bass stage, and then I could do my normal show – that’s kind of a melting pot of everything – on another stage.

“Don’t get me wrong, being able to play any set at any festival is a blessing, but being able to develop two entirely different worlds that you have these diehard fan bases for, to the point where you can do the same festival in two entirely different ways, is a really exciting concept for me.

Especially now as a parent, if I can be in the same place for a couple of days at a time, instead of bouncing around like crazy, it’s a game changer.”

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AARON HORN

The Origins of Doja Cat’s ‘Woman’

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THE ORIGINS OF DOJA CAT’S ‘WOMAN’

AARON HORN Artist, producer and writer, Aaron Horn talks about co-writing and producing Doja Cat’s hit single, Woman and why giant Genelec monitors had to be wheeled in for David Guetta at Sarm Studios.

Did you get a big break moment in your career?

I guess I still feel like I’m always chasing that a little bit, but I had a track called Bom Bom with Sam and the Womp. I put that band together with Sam – I was meant to be the Womp. We crossed over Balkan music and UK-based jungle, dance and house basslines. I used to play bass and run the backing tracks and Sam would play trumpet and we expanded the band. We had this track called Bom Bom that we used to play for 10 minutes sometimes. It was really housey, and then a great artist called Bloom ended up singing and rapping

over it and we caught some success.

It went to number one in the UK. We did pretty well around the world and in Australia and Ireland. I think we still have that synchronised on some adverts, so it’s still out there. That changed things a little bit – having an experience of that kind of success and being able to play X Factor before Elton John and play some big gigs, and then ultimately have the project fall apart and melt down because of the success and seeing that side of it. I think that’s always part of the story of music where people do well – there are always challenges.

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The Origins of Doja Cat’s ‘Woman’

You are a Grammy-nominated cowriter and co-producer of Doja Cat’s hit single, Woman. What did those early writing sessions look like and how did the song take shape?

In those early sessions at Sarm Studios there were four of us who were in the room before that beat and the hook, and then after it. That was me, Linden Jay, Yeti Beats [David A. Sprecher] and Ainsley Jones, and we were all writing beats for Doja. I met Yeti back in 2012 in L.A. when I was out there and we’d known each other for quite a long time.

I’ve done quite a few sessions with Doja – she wasn’t in that session – that was just the four of us.

Yeti was in town and we were writing a load of beats, and this one kind of formed itself. It was interesting how it came together: the feel of the drums versus the hook, that minimal piano line and the laid back-ness of it. We were kind of singing ‘uma-way’, so before it was ‘woman’, it was almost like this chant that was on the hook. So, ‘uma’

changed into ‘woman’, but if you hear her singing it, you can still kind of hear that ‘uma’ is part of the song going through the auto tune. It was a great night and there was definitely a feeling to the track. I was so happy when she took it because you make a lot of music when you’re a producer and you don’t always have the joy to have someone as talented as Doja Cat turn it into such a fabulous piece, along with another writer. I’m grateful for everyone who worked on that record, remixed, engineered it and mastered it. It’s always a team effort to be part of something like that. Doja Cat really turned that into something else with the verse and what she did with the hook. I’m just very grateful to be part of that.

The song’s lyrical themes are of divine femininity and feminism. Were you involved in writing any lyrics from a woman’s perspective, or was it just the initial lyric idea based around ‘woman’ that you worked on at the start?

The point where we left it was the beat and the backing track. We had the hook that was saying ‘woman’ and that also had the chant under it going ‘uma-way’ on the chorus. Then Doja Cat wrote all of the verse and she wrote all of those pieces, so we literally just had that word ‘woman’. From that, she penned all of this amazing narrative which is such a beautiful journey and has some great ethics behind it and aesthetics to it. I was blown away. She had Pharrell on it as well at one point, but she went with her own verse because it’s very powerful and the story she’s telling is very beautiful and captivating.

Woman is a fusion of Afrobeats, pop and R&B. How did you approach the production?

I don’t think about genres when I make music. I make a lot of different types of music and I try to let stuff come through, if that makes sense. We weren’t really thinking about it from a genre point of view. But it totally

“BEFORE IT WAS ‘WOMAN’, IT WAS THIS ‘UMA-WAY’ CHANT ON THE HOOK.”

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sits on that housey, lo-fi, afrobeat laid back vibe. Part of the aesthetic is that ambience and space. I always try to have something captivating, but present it with space and some mystery. Part of the beat is quite simple, but it lines up in a way that gives space for people, more so than Bom Bom - that backing track was a bit more like, ‘You’re gonna need to dance now!’ I like that it’s quite chilled out, but it still has that infectious movement to it and that hook. A lot of the sounds from that session ended up on it.

Was Doja Cat involved in the production process at all?

Yeah. She’s an amazing producer in her own right, for sure, and she can produce and programme. She definitely put her two cents in on this. And like I was saying with Pharrell being on it and then not being on it and her crafting it the way she wanted to – she’s definitely in control.

Does the novelty ever wear off when you hear the song on the radio or in shops?

I’m always happy to hear it. I had a weird moment where it was playing through a few radios during lockdown – to hear that sound that we were making during it was really entertaining. It was a bit surreal, but it’s always a great thing to hear your music being listened to and being enjoyed. I feel very grateful for that. It is nice to have a song that my son knows! I’m chasing any dad points I can get.

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The Origins of Doja Cat’s ‘Woman’

In terms of essential studio kit, what do you rely on for your songwriting and production work?

I’ve grown up around music equipment, and I really love it. I seem to be always trying to get new bits of gear and am fiddling with my music setup and how I make music. A lot of people have a huge amount of hardware that they use.

I have a relatively simple studio setup and I like to focus on trying to get a clean, high quality signal: Good microphones and then do the processing afterwards usually. I’m always happy to use Genelecs.

We had an absolutely massive set of Genelec monitors at Sarm Studios.

Then at Sarm Music Village we also had a nice Genelec system in studio two, and that was the room HEADLINER MAGAZINE

where we did the work on Woman.

They’re really modern, loud and present speakers and I have enjoyed working on them. Genelecs are super bright – they’re very modernsounding speakers that are present, have got bass, bright tops, but also you can work with. They are industry-grade speakers.

Part of the reason why we got that massive set of them is because in the old Sarm West, studio two was kind of sketchy. The monitoring there was old, and when guys like David Guetta (or people who did really loud, bassy dance records) worked in there, we had this set of Genelecs that we’d wheel in and sometimes we’d use in the live rooms – it was massive. It would give you that sound of a big club feel, but also studio-quality. We

had a set of them that we would use, and we wheeled them into the studio depending on who was working there. If you were recording a band or doing playback at a certain level, you could use the system that was in there, but if you really wanted to crank it and have it loud, they were pretty resilient to blowing… but I think someone did manage to pop one of the cones because people would play things at stupid levels sometimes.

They have that little light on them and if it starts to go red you know to back off, but sometimes there will be clients that would just absolutely destroy equipment no matter how robust it was!

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LIVE

Independent artist Antigoni recently graced the stage of Headliner’s live music venue The Pioneer Club to perform her new single Over acoustically, complete with an LD Systems’ MAUI G3 rig and Mon 15 A G3 Stage Monitors. Here, she joins Headliner for a chat after her performance to discuss her career to date, the impact of her time on Love Island, and what she’s been working on this year…

What have you been up to these past few months?

I’ve just been putting the final touches to my EP, which has just come out and is called Hexagon, and the lead single is called Over. It’s probably one of my favourite songs I’ve written and released. We shot a video for it in

Mykonos. The song sounds to me like a Greek island, so it was only right that we filmed it on one! And all the other songs on the EP are singles I’ve been releasing recently, so I wanted to bring them together in one cohesive space.

That’s been my main focus, as well as getting ready to move to Greece.

Tell us about Over.

Over is a song about one of those situations where something ends prematurely and you are left feeling disappointed by somebody, and like you were onto something really good.

But it’s not a bitter or angry feeling, it’s that you’re hurt and feel like you had a good thing. I find the song quite melancholy because even though it’s sad there is warmth in it. I think a lot of people can understand that situation.

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When did you first get into music?

I don’t remember not being into music.

My earliest memories are of people asking me what I want to do when I grow up and saying I want to be a singer. I’ve always loved music and used to tinker around on the guitar or piano as a kid, and when I was 14 I signed a publishing deal which got me into the writing circuit. It’s been a whole roller-coaster of finding my sound as an artist and going through indie labels, major labels, and now I feel like I’m on my path.

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LD SYSTEMS LIVE SESSIONS

Antigoni

“I WAS ALWAYS AN ARTIST AND LOVE ISLAND CAME ALONG AS AN OPPORTUNITY THAT WOULD BE SILLY TO IGNORE.”

Tell us about Love Island and how it has affected your career as a musician.

For me I was always an artist and Love Island came along as an opportunity that would be silly to ignore. I always knew that if you go on a reality TV show a lot of people are going to know you for being on a reality TV show, but I was secure enough in being a musician HEADLINER MAGAZINE

that if it meant I had to prove to a few people what I can do afterwards, I’d be OK with that.

It gave me the platform to work from and also gave me some financial stability, because being an independent artist, I was at a point where I needed some help, and Love Island allowed me to keep doing what I love.

What are the pros and cons of being an independent artist in today’s music industry?

The advantages are that you get to make all your own decisions. So, if we decide this is the song we want to put out next we can just do it and that’s a massive thing creatively. I love my team - we’re so tight knit, we’re like a family and it’s such a blessing that we’ve been

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able to build that. My manager met me through writing together, my producer is the third musketeer, and we get to do a lot within our team and have complete creative control.

The negative is just the marketing side, because you’re competing with the major labels. With a major label there is an infrastructure that takes over on that side of things, so that’s the one thing you miss out on. I’m not one of these independent artists that hates the labels, I just believe in the right

thing at the right moment. So, whether or not that means a major label in the future, I don’t know. We’ll just take things as they come.

How did you find using the LD Systems MAUI G3 rig and Mon 15 A G3 Stage Monitors today?

It was great. I’m a narcissistic vocalist and like my vocals super loud! But it’s not a narcissistic reason as to why I liked it [laughs]. It’s because I was able to sit back and relax. I push my voice too much when it feels quiet, so it was

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nice to have this loud system. And the mics sounded great on the guitar and bouzouki as it gives them a really warm sound, so we really captured that live feeling. I’d recommend this kit it to all my friends, it’s lit!

LD-SYSTEMS.COM ADAMHALL.COM INSTA: @ANTIGONI

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THE SNUTS

Independence Day

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INDEPENDENCE DAY

THE SNUTS On February 23, UK indie outfit The Snuts release their third album Millennials. Having released their first two albums on major label Parlophone, the band decided to launch their own label Happy Artist Records through which to unleash their latest offering. Frontman Jack Cochrane joins Headliner to explain why…

It’s a month to the day until the release of The Snuts’ third record Millennials when we join the band’s frontman Jack Cohrane from his Glasgow home, and he’s very much in album release mode. “It’s busy, man,” he says with a smile. “We have a lot of shows coming up, promo shows at record stores, which are a lot of fun as you get that one-on-one feel with the fans, and you get some good feedback on how the record will be received. We’re about to set off to the States as soon as the record is released, so a lot of rehearsals. The songs get harder

to play with every album it seems [laughs] but we can’t wait.”

liberating and laden with selfimposed pressure.

He’s in a buoyant mood, and it’s easy to see why. Last year, the band took the dramatic decision to part ways with major label Parlophone – their home for chart-topping debut W.L. and its Top 3 follow-up Burn The Empire – and launch their own independent label Happy Artist Records in conjunction with music distributor The Orchard to release album number three. As such, it’s an album that was simultaneously

“It was around this time last year that we realised we’d been noticing a fundamental breakdown in communication with our previous label,” Cochrane says, explaining how the band arrived at their decision to break out on their own. “There were a lot of blurred lines when it came to the direction and the vision of the band and the direction and the vision of the label. We could feel that breakdown right through the making of that record.

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Independence Day

“THE PRESSURE OF WHAT IT MEANS TO BE AN ARTIST TODAY IS SOMETHING DIFFERENT TO WHAT WE SIGNED UP TO.”

“I think it becomes every band’s dream on a major label to take back some of that freedom,” he continues.

“So we decided to take it on ourselves and put the ball in our court. It was January 2023 that we started making music together again. We camped up in the highlands in Scotland and it felt like a while since we’d just made music as friends with no pressure to go out and make something.”

For Cochrane, the biggest point of difference between band and label arose from the latter’s insistence on pushing the band’s personality over the music.

“The pressure of what it means to be an artist today is something different to what we signed up to,” says Cochrane. “When we first signed to a label it was very musicdriven and now it’s very personalitydriven, which is something we felt very uncomfortable with. There was an intensity about how we were supposed to come across as people and that was affecting us as humans.

There has always been that friction between band and label.

“I’m not of the mindset that major labels are terrible and can’t work for anyone,” he notes. “We were very lucky and grateful to have the HEADLINER MAGAZINE

experiences we had and to work with some incredible producers and learn the landscape of what it means to be a recording artist. And to squash a myth, in our case at least, there was never any pressure for us to be anything we didn’t want to be. The

guy we worked with there always wanted the best for us musically, so we were happy on that front. But the landscape changed a lot, so there is now a lot of pressure on being a front-facing celebrity, which is something we’ve never been

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comfortable with. I wanted to be able to keep my privacy and I don’t think that’s an option at major labels now.

“There is such a focus on personality first, then they’ll find your music. That wasn’t something we would accept.”

Despite the upheaval that came with departing a major for a new independent approach, creatively The Snuts had developed considerable momentum in amassing ideas that would come to form Millennials.

“As soon as the last record finished, we were working on ideas,” he recalls.

“We had about 20 and then went up to Fort William up in the north of Scotland in a really basic studio but a beautiful location that just gave us what we needed to make music.

There was no excess or glamour, just basic rooms, bunk beds, making music as friends. In the back of your mind, you’re hoping it’ll materialise into something, but ultimately, we went up there just to make music. We went with a long-time collaborator of ours, Scott

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Anderson, who is our musical director for live shows and is a producer. We know each other really well so there was no ice to break.”

Did the decision to sequester themselves away in a remote, backto-basics setting inspire a siege mentality of sorts when producing the record?

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Independence Day

“We just had a point to prove to ourselves first,” says Cochrane of their initial sessions. “Can we make something that is exciting and fresh for us? The first song we wrote was Gloria, which is the first single and it’s one of the best we’ve ever written. that really spurred on the momentum. We tried to write 10 of

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those which didn’t work [laughs]. But there was great momentum that came from that, and it showed us we didn’t need all those excess things and opinions. It was a nice suncoming-up point for us.”

As for how life has changed for The Snuts outside of the comfort of the

studio, Cochrane insists that being on their own label has helped them forge a purer vision of what it is to be a band today.

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“ANY PROMO YOU DO COMES FROM YOU; IT’S A PURER SOURCE.”

“Being independent has allowed us to be more focused on the music,” he states. “A lot of it comes down to the way that things are set up at majors, the type of money that is thrown around and wasted on un-useful sessions and things like that. Whereas when you’re in control of the numbers and you’re more comfortable with the numbers there is less pressure and you can prioritise the music, which is cool when you’re making a record [laughs]. Overall, the workload is similar, but when you’re independent you’re even more willing to do that work. Any promo you do comes from you; it’s a purer source than the type of promo or

video or clip that’s pushed by a label. It’s all coming from you. And I think people can connect with things that are a bit more truthful. That is the most important thing for us.”

For The Snuts, Millennials is undeniably a defining moment.

The decision to depart a label that has helped deliver a No.1 debut and a Top 3 follow-up is certainly a courageous one, and one imbued with its own set of pressures. But regardless of how the record performs commercially, all that matters today is how it meets with the band’s own standards and expectations.

“This one really feels like a culmination of all the steps it’s taken to get here, “ says Cochrane thoughtfully. “We’ve taken sonic influence from the first two albums and we’re proud that we’ve been able to stay who we are as people but change how we sound as a band. It’s a summation of how we got to this point, and we’re really proud of it.”

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HANNAH PEEL

Meet the new F-List president

Photographer: Phil Sharp

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MEET THE NEW F-LIST PRESIDENT

HANNAH PEEL Earlier this month, award-winning artist, composer, and producer Hannah Peel was unveiled as the new president of The F-List For Music, an all-encompassing talent directory for women and non-binary musicians that has since snowballed into a vital resource and support network for the community. Peel sat down with Headliner for a chat about her new role and her illustrious career so far.

The F-List for Music was set up by long-time equality campaigner Vick Bain in the midst of the pandemic as a support network for women and nonbinary musicians. Despite repeated research and statistics demonstrating such need, The F-List is the only nation-wide organisation supporting women and gender diverse musicians across all genres of music in the UK. Succeeding classical composer Professor Shirley J Thompson, who was preceded by Brix Smith and Anoushka Shankar in the role, Peel is an acclaimed artist, composer, producer and radio presenter. Her solo record career includes the shortlisted 2021 Mercury Music Prize album Fir Wave; Awake But Always Dreaming; and the space-themed Mary Casio: Journey to Cassiopeia,

scored for synthesisers and a 30 piece colliery brass band.

Following her Emmy-nominated score for Game Of Thrones: The Last Watch, her soundtrack for TV thriller, The Deceived won a 2022 Royal Television Society NI award and the Music Producer’s Guild’s best Original Score Recording of 2021. In 2023 she won the Best Television Soundtrack category at The Ivor Novello Awards for The Midwich Cuckoos. A regular collaborator with Paul Weller, she contributed arrangements to his no.1 albums On Sunset and Fat Pop and last year released The Unfolding with Paraorchestra, the world’s only disabled and non-disabled integrated orchestra which went straight to No.1 in the UK Classical Charts.

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HANNAH PEEL

Meet the new F-List president

“It’s such an honour to follow in the footsteps of such amazing people,” beams Peel, commenting on her appointment as president from her North Yorkshire studio. “I still feel a bit in shock. It’s an ingrained thing that I feel like the underdog, so to be asked to do something like this is amazing.

“I first became a part of The F-List and registered for it during the pandemic when it was set up. Then it was just a database for female musicians with a list of what your skills were in order to promote work. It was a directory, so it was great to go on there and see cellists, people playing the lute, and as a composer it’s a great source. Since then it’s become a support network that does events, and it offers a sense of community.”

She continues: “When I started out self-releasing records as I was unable to get on a label, I had a couple of friends who I started a business breakfast meeting with every two weeks. My brother, who is in the building industry, used to do this.

Once a week they would meet up at 6.30 in the morning and everyone in that industry would scout their skills and people would share business.

I thought, ‘we don’t have anything like that in the music industry’. And the one thing that struck us after a couple of months was that we were all self-releasing and we were all women. So when The F-List started I was really passionate about what they do because it was much bigger than our little coffee morning and it really connected people from across the UK, so to represent that wealth of talent is really amazing.”

As a composer for film and TV but with a traditional pop background, Peel has been able to carve out a niche for herself as one of the industry’s most versatile talents. From childhood, she’s been possessed of a passion for telling stories through music, which continues to serve her well to this day.

Peel also paid tribute to the work Bain has done in not just launching but evolving The F-List at pace.

“There are definitely pinpoint moments,” she recalls, describing how music first entered her life. “The first time I ever heard music that really had an effect on me was when I was about eight years old. My neighbour who was a massive vinyl enthusiast and knew my parents were getting me lessons with things, and he lent me a record and told me I had to listen to it and not break it. It was The Carpenters Greatest Hits and as soon as Karen Carpenter started [sings] why do birds… I got all the shivers down my spine and was instantly transported in this magical way.

“We hadn’t worked together or crossed paths before but what she has set up with The F-List really is incredible,” she says. “She’s forming partnerships and creating opportunities, and that is what is driving the F-List.”

“I moved to Barnsley from Ireland and my parents got me lots of Irish cultural sessions in Barnsley, and I was also part of the brass band community. There are those feelings of when you’re playing together and

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that physicality of everyone breathing together. What changed everything for me was realising I wanted to do music for film. I always had an interest in it as I loved visuals, but I went to see the first performance of the Cinematic Orchestra’s Man With A Movie Camera. It was a live performance to silent film and I had the same sense of all those tingles, and I knew then I wanted to be a film composer.”

According to Peel, there are various strands from her upbringing that may have intertwined to form the multifaceted creative force she is today.

“There are so many paths as to how you get there,” she says of her career to date. “Maybe it’s the Irish side of me or growing up in Yorkshire, but there is this sense of narrative and story that has always been present in the music I’ve made and been involved with. I love researching and finding stories, and making and producing records has allowed me to discover what I can do technically, so that when it comes to doing scoring, I’m quick at gathering the skills you need or musicians that will be suitable for the project.

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HANNAH PEEL

Meet the new F-List president

“THERE IS A DEMAND AT THE MOMENT IN FILM AND TV FOR THINGS THAT SOUND DIFFERENT.”

“There is a real demand at the moment in film and TV for things that sound different – they are getting a lot more artists to compose music instead of traditional film and TV composers.

And film composers are now making more records to complement the work they do, so there is this development of sound that is really interesting and not just orchestral. I’d say that development of skills so that you are fast and quick and not relying on other people is essential.”

when you are collaborating with so many people it’s essential to lose that protectiveness at times.

resource may have impacted her career development during her formative years.

“Like everything, the way it came about has a million twists and turns.

Between 2011 and 2016 was I was in a band called The Magnetic North and we would make records and we came across Jeanie Finlay’s work. She was the director of The Last Watch. She contacted me around 2018 and asked if I’d be up for scoring it. So I said yes!”

One of the biggest projects she has worked on yet is Game Of Thrones: The Last Watch which she created the Emmy-nominated score for. It represented a major milestone in her career, being the first full score she had ever created.

Having never previous composed a full score, how did Peel deal with the pressure of scoring a project connected to one of the biggest pop culture phenomenons of the 21st century?

“I’m pretty sure I would have made some better choices,” she says. “It’s been beneficial that I’ve had this career that has moved between curating, theatre, cinema and session work, and I can draw on them now.

But I did feel really lost for a while.

I was taking every opportunity that came my way because I was afraid of saying no. If I’d had a resource like this, I think I would have felt more supported and there are certain paths that I may have taken that were different. Had I been part of a support network like this I may have found my path a bit easier and started on it a bit earlier.”

“The project felt like it came out of nowhere as I’d not done a full score before Game Of Thrones,” she says.

“I’d done stuff with sync companies and done adverts where you get lots of feedback, and I think that puts some people off, as you write a piece of music and then maybe 10 people give you feedback and say, ‘that’s not working’. So you lose your ego over the music. If it’s not working you think, maybe I’ll keep that in the folder and come back to it at a later date. But HEADLINER MAGAZINE

“It’s funny, because I think my brain has a way of switching thigs off,” she laughs. “Once I got over the excitement, and because the team was so small, it instantly made me feel very comfortable and not like I was part of some huge machine. Making the music became more about Jeanie’s world rather than Game of Thrones.

With many plans still in the pipeline for her role as president of The F-List in 2024, Peel considers how such a

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STEREO SOUND

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Storming the West End

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STORMING THE WEST END

STEREO SOUND Located in London’s West End, the new Stereo Covent Garden complex, complete with fashion, beauty stores and award-winning restaurants and bars, has recently installed a brand new L-Acoustics sound system to bolster its audio offering.

Situated beneath the historic London market, Stereo Covent Garden is the creation of Experimental Group, which is known for its array of luxury hospitality spaces throughout Europe and the US. Boasting a rich blend of music, cocktails and dining inspired by the late-night cultures of New York and London, Stereo Covent Garden describes its offering as a

multi-sensory experience, centred around signature drinks and live music. A vibrant and eclectic music programme is served up each and every night, beginning with a house band providing ‘relaxed vibes’, before the stage is turned over to a rotating series of resident DJs. The interiors of Stereo Covent Garden were designed by London-based studio Afroditi, which has created

a moody atmosphere for Stereo’s interiors, using lighting and mirrors reminiscent of the prohibition era.

Considering the opulent interiors and the wide area to cover, it was crucial to design a compact sound system that could provide crystalclear sound while also fitting within limited available space or diverting customers’ attention.

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STEREO SOUND

Storming the West End

“THIS SOLUTION ENSURES EVERY NOTE RESONATES THROUGHOUT THE SPACE, OFFERING A TRULY VIBRANT SONIC EXPERIENCE.”

Solotech UK Group, a professional audio integrator and L-Acoustics Certified Provider, was appointed to design and install the lighting and audio solution for Stereo Covent Garden. Solotech decided upon a combination of L-Acoustics A Series and X Series for the project.

One of the key drivers behind this combination was its ability to provide a versatile soundscape with optimal sound coverage for the various areas, which included a main stage, bar, DJ booth, and restroom, while remaining discrete and melting into the décor.

“We wanted a clean, clear and precise soundscape,” comments Mikey Sorbello, music coordinator at Stereo Covent Garden. “We knew that L-Acoustics is renowned for its impeccable clarity, depth, and richness, and were confident this would give Stereo Covent Garden innovative sound.”

The main stage sound system consists of two clusters of six L-Acoustics A15 Wide with two KS21 subwoofers on either side of the stage. On the elevated bar, 10 compact 5XT coaxial speakers are evenly distributed. Meanwhile, 11 X8 coaxial speakers have been selected to serve as delay, bolstered by four SB10i subwoofers.

The back room is equipped with five L-Acoustics X8 and two SB10i HEADLINER MAGAZINE

subwoofers, while the restrooms are fitted with 10 5XT. The DJ booth boasts two L-Acoustics X8 while performers on stage benefit from two X12 stage monitors. The entire system is managed by eight L-Acoustics LA4X and one LA12X amplified controller.

“This solution ensures that every note resonates throughout the space, enveloping audiences in a truly vibrant sonic experience,” says Sorbello. “The clarity and precision of our sound system truly embodies the values we uphold at Stereo Covent Garden. In short, we couldn’t be more satisfied and every

performance promises to be an unforgettable sonic journey.”

“The design brief from Stereo was challenging; they wanted a system that was as close to a studio sound as possible – and as a session drummer, Mikey knows exactly what that sounds like,” said Solotech’s Gareth Busson. “Not only that, they wanted every one of their customers to have that same studio-like experience, no matter where they were standing in the venue. The message was clear: ‘It needs to sound as good at the back of the room, as it does at the front of the stage!’

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“Delivering a uniform experience is theoretically simple. However, Stereo posed to two distinct challenges.

Firstly, space was very much at a premium, but the 21” subs that were installed under the stage apron were just the first part of what makes the L-Acoustics solution so perfect. The 10” subs positioned above are so well hidden that they are almost impossible to see when the night is in full swing. That was something Stereo demanded. They wanted to make the speakers so inconspicuous, that people couldn’t help noticing how good the sound was. In Mikey’s words, ‘If they don’t see the music, they will just feel it.”

“The other challenge was aesthetic,” he continued. “Stereo is a very – and I mean very – cool bar. It has a definite ‘speak easy’ feel about it and so any speaker that was visible, needed to look the part. In order to deliver the

consistent sound that was needed, zones were created, and a ring of 5” drivers were positioned around the bar. Again, using L-Acoustics we knew that any speakers that we used would not only sound great, but look the part too.

“L-Acoustics delivered everything that we needed to make the job a success.”

Experimental group director, Xavier Padovani, says of the Stereo Covent Garden project: “We’re bringing together the very best in the industry to create a timeless venue filled with positive energy. We want Stereo to be a place for everyone - whether you’re meeting for a drink after work, need a spot for dinner for a group celebration or want to dance the night away, the venue will cater to Londoners and visitors looking for a great night out in the city.”

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The Experimental Group was founded in the mid-2000s by three childhood friends - Olivier Bon, Pierre-Charles Cros and Romée De Goriainoff. The trio, describing themselves as sharing a taste for innovation, were passionate fans of the craft cocktail culture that was growing in New York and London, and were ‘confident that Paris could rediscover its own lost heritage of mixed drinks’. As such, they opened the Experimental Cocktail Club in 2007 on a small side street in Paris. Expanding the team in 2010, Padovani came on board as the group’s fourth partner, adding to the group’s shared vision.

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HERDIS STEFÁNSDÓTTIR

HEADLINER MAGAZINE

From Kónguló to Knock At The Cabin

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FROM KÓNGULÓ TO KNOCK AT THE CABIN After a highly successful film and television scoring career that has seen her scoring the Claire Danes and Tom Hiddleston-starring The Essex Serpent, and recently, M. Night Shyamalan flick Knock At The Cabin, Herdís Stefánsdóttir needed a new creative outlet. She chats to Headliner about her incredible new avant-garde pop singles under the name Kónguló, as she gears up for her next scoring projects.

Besides her solo project and music for film, Stefánsdóttir has composed for installations in museums, dance, and theatre — not bad for a law school dropout. She began composing relatively late, in her early twenties and formed synth-pop duo East Of My Youth in 2015. As her interest in

film and music grew, she left Iceland to study film scoring at New York University, and upon graduating interned for the late, great Jóhann Jóhannsson in Berlin while he was writing the music for 2016’s Arrival, which was nominated for eight Academy Awards.

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HERDIS STEFÁNSDÓTTIR

From Kónguló to Knock At The Cabin

Now based back in Iceland with her partner, fellow composer Dustin O’Halloran, Stefánsdóttir recalls this early period of her life as she transitioned into becoming a professional musician. “I’m not one of those musicians that was always in music,” she says. “I’d always played the piano and was very interested in that as a kid. And I remember it very well: one day I sat at the piano and started improvising. And I was like, ‘Whoa, okay, this is cool.’

really interested in electronic music, and I was watching YouTube tutorials about compression and EQ instead of going out on a Friday night. I formed an electro-pop duet.”

“I was studying law at the time and really wasn’t enjoying myself.

I started studying music theory by myself, and one thing led to another and I ended up studying the classical composition programme at the university here in Iceland. I was also

“Me and a bunch of my school friends went to the screening,” Stefánsdóttir says. “My teacher said I should go and talk to him, seeing as we were both Icelandic. I was very shy about it, but I’m a huge fan of his music — I think he was a very, very important composer.

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A hugely formative moment in her artistic life came when Jóhann Jóhannsson visited New York for a screening of The Theory Of Everything, the 2014 Stephen Hawking film which earned Jóhannsson a Golden Globe award and an Oscar nomination.

So I did say hi to him, and it’s such a small world because his niece was my roommate. I told her I met him, and she said I should send him an email to see if he ever needed help with anything. A few months later I was visiting Berlin and asked if he’d like to meet for a coffee, and he replied asking if I could start on Monday! So I moved to Berlin and never went back to school.”

It wasn’t only a formative moment as she began her film music career while getting the opportunity to work with Jóhannsson, but it was a very special studio setting in Berlin, as Oscar-winning composer Hildur Guðnadóttir was based there at the same time, as was her now-partner Dustin O’Halloran.

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“I WAS WATCHING YOUTUBE TUTORIALS ABOUT COMPRESSION AND EQ INSTEAD OF GOING OUT ON A FRIDAY NIGHT.”

“He is the one that ended up giving me really valuable advice, which I treasure. He asked me, ‘What do you really want to do?’ I replied that I didn’t know, I just wanted to make music. He said, ‘You can work for me or some other composer and go up the ladder for 10 years, or you sit down and you just surround yourself with people that inspire you and make art and music’. I thought about it for one day and then decided to quit working for Jóhann and make a record. He was a very beautiful soul and you can really feel it and hear it in his compositions.”

It’s advice that certainly paid off for her, and continues to benefit her as she releases two incredible singles from her new solo project, Kónguló. The first single that announced the arrival of Kónguló was Be Human, a deeply electronic pop track that is both dystopian and avant-garde. It is the first of two singles that see Stefánsdóttir collaborating with vocalist and producer neonme.

“Be Human was a complicated song,” she says. “I started writing the verse and the melodic part, and then put it on the shelf and months went by. I didn’t know what it was, it was kind of electronic and a little bit hip-hop. I worked on it a little more in L.A. with a friend who was visiting. We were working on the track in this basement apartment. Then when I was back in Iceland, I went to a show, and I saw this girl performing with her band, and it was Salka (Valsdóttir), who is neonme.

Seeing her performing and hearing her production, I just felt this connection. So I wrote to her, feeling shy, and we became these pen pals who loved each other’s music. She ended up singing and rapping on Be Human. The song was almost three years in the making.”

The second single with neonme on vocal duties once again, The Water In Me, is even harder to define. A five-minute sprawling odyssey, it morphs from atmospheric pop into a dance breakdown. But, as you may have gathered from the near-sacred way in which Stefánsdóttir talks about making music, it’s unsurprising that she followed her instincts and made this hotchpotch of sounds and genres work together brilliantly.

“The Water In Me was a very long process. I always try to be a minimalist producer, but I ended up with almost 300 tracks of audio, and I was always changing the structure. I brought in neonme and in the end figured out some kind of a song, even though it’s not structured as a traditional pop song.”

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HERDIS STEFÁNSDÓTTIR

From Kónguló to Knock At The Cabin

There is plenty more to come from Kónguló, as Stefánsdóttir finishes the project’s debut album, and 2024 will see her perform this music live at the world-renowned Iceland Airwaves festival. Before getting stuck into all this, she has just completed work on one of the biggest films of her career, Knock At The Cabin, the Dave Bautista and Rupert Grint-starring psychological horror film from the legendary M. Night Shyamalan.

“That was another cosmic event,” Stefánsdóttir says. “My agent called me and asked if I knew who M Night Shyamalan was. I said, ‘Yes, of course I do!’ He is the man who made me not sleep for years when I somehow saw The Sixth Sense when I was a kid, which deeply affected my life and made me terrified of ghosts. He had found some of my music and was listening to it, while he was writing the storyboard for this film, and we just had a Zoom call and he hired me, which was amazing.”

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Writing a deeply raw and primal score for its subject matter, history somewhat repeated itself: “I have a daughter and I had to bring her along to a few of the mixing sessions, and she would say, ‘Mummy writes scary music’. I really hope I haven’t traumatised her! We worked with all these sounds like contrabass clarinet which I did loads of sound editing on, there’s some classic Moog bass in there, and I worked with some other solo players also and then some orchestra.”

Further good news is that Shyamalan was a dream to work with. “He didn’t use any temp music and didn’t really tell me what to write at all. He instead asked me to write some music after I read the script — he wants you to figure it out for yourself. So I spent a few weeks digging into what I thought the sound of the film would be. And when I saw some early bits of footage, I could see these references to the golden age of horror and Hitchcock.

So when I presented my ideas, I said, ‘I will do a contemporary score, but let’s have these little nods to Hitchcock and Bernard Herrmann’. And somehow that was his intention all along also.”

With the actor and writers’ strikes at an end, Stefánsdóttir does have films she is commencing work upon, though she is legally obliged to remain tight-lipped about those. In the meantime, the two singles from Kónguló are available everywhere to listen now, giving you a beautiful opportunity to say you had already listened before the pop-project debuts at Iceland Airwaves in 2024. And if you’re in the mood for something a bit more unsettling, the Knock At The Cabin soundtrack is streaming now also, although you may jump out of your skin if someone then rings your doorbell.

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PINAR TOPRAK

Into The Blue

Photographer: Christina Gandolfo

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PINAR TOPRAK If you can be sure about anything about Turkish-American Emmynominated composer, conductor and performer Pinar Toprak, it’s that she’s gonna shoot her shot. Moving to L.A. aged 17 after being told a Turkish woman would never make it as a film composer, (and speaking very limited English at the time), she soon manoeuvred herself into a job at Hans Zimmer’s offices with the sole aim of working with him, quickly becoming his protégé.

Fast forward to present day and Toprak is known for her work on everything from writing and producing music for Christina Aguilera’s 2019 Xperience Live Show in Las Vegas, conducting Billie Eilish’s performance of No Time To Die at the 2022 Oscars ceremony, to scoring Captain Marvel to Fortnite – the latter two projects which incidentally make her the first female composer to score both a film and video game with gross revenues of over $1 billion and $5 billion, respectively. Her most recent projects are no less diverse: new Netflix body-swap film Family

Switch and the open world game Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora.

In terms of her approach to the family comedy film, Family Switch, Toprak explains that the initial idea for the music stemmed from a collaboration of ideas between herself and the director, who had a specific Tim Burton classic in mind: “He did have an idea about an almost Edward Scissorhands-ish opening mystery, with the choir and that kind of vibe,” she reveals from her home in L.A. “He was pretty clear on it and he wanted it to be a timeless story:

orchestral and what we would hope to hear from these sorts of films. But within it, there are so many other different cues that we’ve done. For me, comedy is always the trickiest to write because timing is everything.

You have to decide where you have music, or where to take it out – you don’t want to step on any jokes – so it’s always tricky to find that right balance, which I enjoy a lot. I’m a huge comedy fan in general. I love laughing and trying to figure out, ‘Okay, if I move this a little bit this way, that’s when you get the laugh’, so it’s fun to play around with.”

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PINAR TOPRAK

Into The Blue

Image credit: via igdb

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“WHAT AVATAR CREATED IS MORE THAN A FILM; IT’S AN EXPERIENCE.”

On the gaming front, Toprak had scored the wildly popular Fortnite before, but admits that Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora was a different beast. It is a first-person, actionadventure game set in the open world of the never-before-seen Western Frontier of Pandora in which the player is taken to Frontier, joining other Na’vi clans to protect Pandora from the formidable forces of the RDA. “It’s very different to Fortnite,” she nods, “because when I scored it, nobody knew the games! That was in the beginning. We genuinely had no idea how big Fortnite was going to become. Because of that, we had a lot of fun with it. But with Avatar, there’s an established IP and we had to respect certain things within it. Then we were fortunate enough to be able to expand beyond it. Knowing that there’s already a fan base associated with Avatar and that we had to do it justice was important.”

Toprak was already a fan of the Avatar films, so there was no need for an epic binge watch to refresh her memory on all things Pandora before she got started.

“I’ve been a huge Avatar fan,” she enthuses. “I’ve watched the first Avatar film way too many times, so I didn’t really need a refresher.

I was a very devout fan of Avatar to the point where when James HEADLINER MAGAZINE

Horner passed away, (the original composer of the first Avatar film) I was really heartbroken because I was a huge James Horner fan, and it was a huge loss to the film-scoring community. Then my thought was about who’s going to score the next Avatars; I would be lying if I didn’t mention that I wanted to score an Avatar film,” she admits. “Lo and behold, I got a call for the video games, and I was like, ‘Okay, this is how I get to be a part of this franchise’. It was a dream come true because what Avatar created is more than a film; it’s an experience. With this game, how we’re able to be really immersed in it and how we’re able to experience everything sonically, individually, is really special.”

In the score, you will not only be able to hear some homages to the late Horner’s original Avatar score, but also experience the new regions and their respective sonic world which expands the score beyond what fans are accustomed to hearing from the Avatar world. A monumental undertaking, the score was recorded over two years using more than 200 musicians from all around the world. The game publishers were in good hands though, as Toprak once famously hired, financed and conducted a 70-piece orchestra for an audition she had no guarantee of securing a job from. Spoiler alert: she got the job, landing Captain Marvel and becoming the first woman to score a major superhero film while she was at it.

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Image credit: via igdb

COMPOSER

“We did it in sections and there was a lot of planning involved,” she says of Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora. “Also, because they’re designing the game and implementing the music as I was writing, it was always like, ‘We’re going to do this batch first because they have to get that implemented into the game’, so it was a bit like an assembly factory line situation going on. It’s a bit of a Lego situation – musical Lego. As far as the different orchestras, we recorded in Scotland, Budapest, we had a Bulgarian full choir – we had so many solos from different parts of the world. It was an absolute blast.”

Essential to Toprak’s workflow is Steinberg’s Cubase, which she has used on every project she has done in over 10 years. “I switched over to Cubase around 15 years ago and I’ve never looked back,” she shares.

“As composers, we look at our DAW software more than we look at our partners! That’s what we’re looking at all day long, so you might as well like what you’re looking at! I

like how the software is designed; it needs to get along with the way your brain is thinking because I always say the best software is the one that you know the best. They all ultimately do a very similar thing, but with Cubase, it works really well with large templates, and I work with quite a large template. I find Cubase very stable and their support is very good. Those things are really important because they’re constantly evolving and they’re constantly hearing from us. If I have a bug of any kind, they get back to me immediately and they resolve it immediately, so I really feel that personal connection to the team.”

Toprak is using the most recent iteration of the software, Cubase 13, and reveals a few features she couldn’t do without: “I have two touch surfaces that all the macros are designed for and I love the fact that you can customise and streamline your workflow.

If there are eight steps that I would normally do to accomplish something, you can create a macro for it, and it’s on my surface and

it’s immediately executed. And the MIDI editing features, for me, don’t compare to anything else.

They’re a very exciting company and like I said, I look at it for many, many, many, many hours a day, so there are tons of features that I love, including the improvements to Cubase 13.”

Toprak’s next project is sure to be another huge addition to her already impressive IMDb page, but for now, she can’t reveal any details for risk of breaking an NDA. “Currently, there isn’t much I can say, unfortunately. It’s funny how in our world we can’t mention anything for the longest time and then we do all these press things and we are non-stop talking about it. It’s two extremes,” she shrugs with a knowing smile.

STEINBERG.NET PINARTOPRAK.COM

HEADLINERMAGAZINE.NET

UMI

The Pursuit of Happiness

BY ALIC E DS

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UMI

In this Emerging Headliner interview powered by JBL, Seattle-born, L.A-based R&B singer-songwriter UMI opens up on how her AfricanAmerican and Japanese heritage is reflected in her music and how her experiences as a queer woman have become a beacon of acceptance for others in her artistry. And when it comes to overthinking? She turns to the wind. UMI gives Headliner the tea…

UMI’s voice is putting Headliner into a trace, and she hasn’t sung one note. After making herself a homemade tea (more on that later), the Seattle-born singer-songwriter settles down to speak about her music from her now-home in L.A. Her voice is so soothing it feels like being lulled into a guided sleep meditation. “That’s lovely,” she responds, genuinely delighted. “That’s an amazing compliment. I actually have this series called Full Moon with UMI on YouTube where I talk about mindfulness topics, and a lot of my fans will put it on as a sleep playlist. That is so lovely that I can help people fall asleep. That’s an honour!”

Away from helping people sleep, the singer-songwriter has been steadily making waves in the world of R&B and neosoul with her profound, ethereal sound and heartfelt lyrics.

Raised by an African-American father and a Japanese mother, a young UMI (real name Tierra Umi Wilson) absorbed the music loved by both of her parents, both of whom are musicians: UMI’s mother plays the piano and HEADLINER MAGAZINE

her father plays the drums. UMI reflects on how her unique African-American and Japanese heritage has fed into her musical identity as an artist: “I’ve been noticing it more and more,” she muses.

“Japanese culture is very tied to a Zen way of living; a very calm, peaceful, holistic way of living. When you go to Japan, the traditional food is very subtle and there’s depth in the subtlety – there’s no extra fluff added to things. That’s really how I create my music. Then on my dad’s side, I grew up listening to gospel music, with music playing all the time, versus my Japanese family where there’s literally barely any music playing in the house. It’s very peaceful, quiet. It’s like, ‘Let’s enjoy the sound of the wind’. Then my dad’s side of the family is cookouts, music playing, R&B, gospel music – all lively. Both parts show up in my artistry. That side of my family makes me very bold, so I don’t hold back much of the way I feel when I write and express myself. I feel very uniquely created.’

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UMI

The Pursuit of Happiness

UMI’s mother taught her how to read, write and speak Japanese, which is where the name UMI stems from.

It means ocean in Japanese, which when linked to her music, makes perfect sense – the Zen and hypnotic sounds of the sea feeding into her melodies, soothing like a day spent in nature. In 2017, UMI started releasing original singles, followed by her fourtrack debut EP, Interlude in 2018. UMI soon found herself on Spotify’s Fresh Finds Best of 2017 playlist, before things really took off with her single, Remember Me, which currently has over 33 million views on YouTube and 146 million plays on Spotify. The song taps into the fact that we’re all the same, no matter who we love, and the accompanying music video features couples of different races, class and sexual orientation. UMI reflects on how her experiences as a queer woman become a beacon of light and acceptance for others in her music and videos.

“I love that song,” she says. “My artistry is very unique to me. It’s almost like my acceptance, love and peace within myself reflects in the growth of my career and the relationship with my fans and my comfortability on stage. There’s a very authentic expression: I’m not playing any kind of character; I’m not pretending to be anything. It’s just me being myself. As I’ve learned to find acceptance for myself and an awareness that I have these feelings, or that I am a queer person and that I do have this unique way of loving, I noticed more of those types of people are attracted into my universe – people that are also in the queer community and fans who have reached a place of acceptance and are very free spirited. It’s a really cool reflection that’s happening.”

UMI shares that she will be releasing a new EP this year called talking to the wind: “I’m very excited for this EP,” she smiles. “The whole EP is the idea of being more present. I think that comes HEADLINER MAGAZINE

with making peace with being lost. I realise that when it comes to humanity or just myself, we expect life to give us answers, like ‘How can I be happier?

How can I accept myself more?’ For me, it’s like, ‘How do I know what I want to do with my music? What’s the next step?’ They’re all songs made at a time where I didn’t really have a specific direction I was going in or a specific goal, but I just felt a pull towards creating. I think that’s how life can be. When I feel that sense of loss, I tend to go outside and sit with the wind and let the wind talk to me.

The wind is very simple. The wind is just like, ‘It’ll be okay’. I think that life answers questions more naturally in that way; very simply, impatiently, and it all unfolds over time. By being okay with that and enjoying things, right here right now, makes the answers come more clearly and smoothly. All the songs on the project give you the essence of the wind; it gives you that sense of peace, a next step or sense of acceptance. By the time you finish listening to it, you’ll feel a bit more connected, inspired and present.”

The first single from the EP is why don’t we go, which is partly inspired by not putting things off. “It was inspired by me going, ‘You know what? I’m going to stop being like, ‘Next week’ or, ‘Let’s go on this road trip next year. Let’s wait until my birthday’” she explains.

“If I want to do something, I want to do

it now. It’s a song that invites you to be spontaneous with life. That’s the whole visual world I want to paint with it; to invite spontaneity. The melodies are super catchy and it’s a song to dance to. It’s a nice change of pace from the last single, which felt more like a diary entry to me.”

When UMI first started recording, she discovered YouTube beats and started writing to tracks, recording songs with a simple USB mic and uploading them to SoundCloud and YouTube.

These days, she’s got a more sophisticated setup, using an AKG C214 condenser mic to record with, which is a cost-effective alternative to AKG’s high-end C414 family of mics, which are a permanent fixture in the world’s biggest recording studios. “I’m really happy to be using this mic,” she says. “I’m using it right now for this interview! Some of the first records I ever cut were on this mic. The producer I work really closely with is named V-RON, and the first session we ever did was on this mic. The mic creates the session and creates the relationship, because after cutting on that mic, I was like, ‘I really like the way she tracks my vocals!’ The mic played a big part of that relationship being built between me and her, so I have a lot of memories with this mic.

And it’s super easy to travel with,” she points out.

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Photographer: Eddie Mandell

EMERGING HEADLINER

“I’M NOT PLAYING ANY KIND OF CHARACTER; I’M NOT PRETENDING TO BE ANYTHING.”

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UMI

The Pursuit of Happiness

“This is now my travel mic, and it comes in a really nice, cute case. I like to make music on the go – on road trips; I make music pretty much anywhere! I take the mic with me on tour, so this is super handy. This beats my bigger mics that I have which feel more stationary; it feels like a travel buddy. I’m the type of person where if I travel and make a song, I really don’t like recording my vocals because there’s a certain essence to that. But now that I have this mic with me, I don’t feel like I have to recut so much because the quality of it is really nice.

“I have been using it at home, too,” she shares. “I’m definitely going to cut some songs for the next project on this. I’m excited to see what final demos this mic helps to create. The essence of my music is not to create a super polished song, but to have a HEADLINER MAGAZINE

song that feels real and organic. This mic definitely supports me in creating that sonic world. It’s high quality, but still maintains the naturalness of recording. It doesn’t have to be in a perfect, soundproofed studio – I’m recording real life, so it helps capture real life.”

As a parting thought, UMI shares that on top of her upcoming music releases, she will soon begin hosting regular meditation shows, as well as sound bath and breathwork sessions in L.A. Her deepest intention is to use her music as a vessel for healing and human connection.

“L.A is very into the holistic movement,” she nods. “If you come here, there’s probably a sound bath happening almost every single day of the week.

It’s a way of life. I think it comes with

the person I am and the music that I create,” she considers, “because I feel like all the music I create is a sound bath, in essence. But I’m also really passionate about just doing sound baths. So why not do both?” With that, she sips the last of her homemade tea.

“I’m gonna go make myself another one,” she smiles.

POWERED BY

JBLPRO.COM WHOISUMI.COM AKG.COM

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THE BIRTH OF A DREAM

From Conception To Delivery

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THEBIRTH OFADREAM A conversation between Prism Sound managing director Jody Thorne and the technical team at the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire recently led to the idea for the company’s new Dream ADA-128 modular conversion system, offering flexibility, functionality, and cost effectiveness without compromising sound quality. Headliner finds out more…

Those initial conversations took place in 2015 when the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire, a faculty of Birmingham City University, was making plans to move to a new location in the city. With a history that dates back to 1859, The Royal Birmingham Conservatoire is a world-class institution that provides degree-level training to the musicians, music technologists, actors, stage managers and performers of the future. It has a longstanding reputation for producing high calibre graduates and counts many household names among its alumni, including soul singer-songwriter Laura Mvula, baritone Rhydian Roberts, conductor Michael Seal and actors Helen

George, Catherine Tyldesley and Nicol Williamson.

students world-class facilities in which to learn.

Built at a cost of £57 million, the Conservatoire’s new teaching and performance facility features 9,000 sqm of purpose-designed teaching, rehearsal and performance space, along with an audio and video digital infrastructure that is designed to enhance and support live performance and allow students to experiment with new technologies.

The new building was officially opened in 2017 – the same year that the Conservatoire was granted a Royal title by Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II. With five performance venues, seven recording studios and over 100 practice rooms, it offers

“We didn’t want to compromise our recording studios, which needed to be of a certain size to fulfil their function, so we decided to do away with machine rooms,” explains Matthew O’Malley, studios manager for the Conservatoire. “We needed a large channel count – over 100 for some events in the main concert hall – and we also needed very high-quality audio. We already had Prism Sound ADA-8XR multi-channel converters – racks of them – so we asked if they could make something with a smaller footprint, but capable of doing the same high-quality job.

We were also looking for partners HEADLINERMAGAZINE.NET

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From Conception To Delivery

to engage with us and build a relationship that would benefit our students, rather than just being box shifters. Prism Sound fitted that brief perfectly.”

“It was one of those conversations that turned out to be gamechanging,” Thorne says. “The Conservatoire was in the process of building a new facility and was looking for high quality converters with a very small footprint so that they didn’t have to be housed in a separate machine room. Knowing Prism Sound’s reputation in this area, they approached us to see if we could help. Our discussions identified the need for a high channel count system that could be networked across the entire facility.

As this didn’t exist, we set about designing it and that project formed

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the basis of our new modular audio conversion system, the Dream ADA128. Our conversations with the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire gave us the push we needed. We were very interested in getting involved and finding a solution that would allow Matt and his team to send audio round the building over IP.”

broadcast and installation. It is designed as both a conversion system and a high-performance, networkable audio distribution and processing system. Its flexible 2RU mainframe can be fitted with up to 16 analogue and digital IO modules (each of which nominally provides eight input or output ports, or both).

The solution – the Dream ADA-128 modular conversion system – finally came to fruition in 2022 and the first units to roll off the production line were delivered to the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire in June 2023. Offering up to 128 channels of 32-bit A/D and D/A conversion at sample rates of up to 768kHz, the Dream ADA-128 is aimed at audio professionals across many different disciplines, including music recording, post production,

Up to four host modules offering various connection options such as Dante, DigiLink and AES provide bidirectional multi-channel connections to host computers, workstations, networks etc. Users can mix and match these, and even route audio between them for maximum flexibility, and because the ADA-128 houses four internal, independent clocks, these systems can all run at different sample rates at the same time.

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“IT WAS ONE OF THOSE CONVERSATIONS THAT TURNED OUT TO BE GAME-CHANGING.”

Since acquiring the new units, the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire has been putting them through their paces and the response from staff and students is overwhelmingly positive.

“They are incredibly intuitive and user friendly,” O’Malley says. “The touch screen display is great, and the quality of the audio is exceptional – which is, of course, what one would expect from Prism Sound. We also don’t have the heat issues we had with all those ADA-8s, plus they are more energy efficient as well as taking up a lot less space in our studios.”

O’Malley adds that students are not always easy on equipment and often break things, which is all part of the learning curve. “So far our ADA-128s have been able to withstand that hard use – they are used all day, every day at a variety of different sampling rates, which is quite a rigorous stress test,” he says.

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THE BIRTH OF A DREAM

From Conception To Delivery

The biggest test to date, however, took place in November when BBC Radio Three visited the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire’s main auditorium to record a programme for its New Music series. Entitled Painted Time, the recording featured Polish chamber ensemble Flow Unit 3, which consists of Anna Kwiatkowska on violin, Mikołaj Pałosz on cello and Adam Kośmieja on piano. They gave two concerts of new works by students from Royal Birmingham Conservatoire and the Royal Academy of Music, alongside commissions by Joe Cutler, Philip Cashian, and from three leading Polish composers.

O’Malley (pictured) adds that bringing students on board to help with set up and observe producer interactions with performers during high profile events is a key part of the learning process, but until now they could rarely lay claim to the final output for their course work.

HEADLINER MAGAZINE

“Now, with an active Dante network, they can get involved with the rigging of an event and genuinely work independently in a different studio from where the ‘real recording’ takes place,” he says.

“This will certainly make them feel like they’ve been engaged right through to the final output and be fairly assessed if it forms part of their course work.”

Developing the Dream ADA-128 and getting it to market has been a long road for Prism Sound, but the company – and the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire – never lost faith in the concept. The unit is now being used around the world with other adopters including the Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester, NHK in Japan and Dean Street Studios in London.

“It has been a long time in the making, but we couldn’t be more delighted with the product we have

produced,” Thorne concludes. “Our flagship ADA-8XR multi-channel converter has been a best seller for more than 20 years and that longevity is due to the care and attention to detail Prism Sound put into its original design. The same level of care has gone into the design of the new ADA-128 and we are confident that this revolutionary product will be just as well received for many years to come.

“We have certainly gone beyond the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire’s original specifications and have ended up with a product that is absolutely perfect for many more customers in the installation market.”

PRISMSOUND.COM

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SUMMIT SCALED

A New Era

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SUMMITSCALED HEADLINER MAGAZINE

LIVE

GR Eventtechnik supplied a prestigious Federal Government event with a discreet and compact CODA Audio system, as Headliner recently discovered…

The German Federal Government’s Digital Summit 2023 took place in November last year in the city of Jena. Around 1,000 participants from the worlds of business, science and politics got together to discuss issues surrounding digital transformation in the new era.

Federal Chancellor Olaf Scholz, Vice Chancellor Dr. Robert Habeck and Dr. Volker Wissing (Federal Ministry for Digital and Transport) were just some of the political big-hitters attending the prestigious event, the technical production for which was handled by Quickborn-based GR Eventtechnik.

Eventtechnik placed its faith in CODA Audio to take care of sound reinforcement. Steffan Grimm, comanaging director at GR Eventtechnik outlines the brief: “The event, which took place in the Ernst Abbe Hall in the Volkshaus,

Jena, required maximum speech intelligibility - the presentations of such prominent participants had to be understood with crystal clarity in every part of the hall, so this was very much a task for a precise system,” he says. “Another important factor to be considered was that the visual axes to the stage could not be compromised.

Our client, facts and fiction GmbH had created a fantastic stage design, so the design elements could not be obscured from any line of sight. Also, the stage area was to be as clean as possible - placing speakers on or near the stage was definitely not desirable!”

Taking everything into account, Grimm chose a system based on CODA Audio’s ultra-compact TiRAY line array.

He continues:

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that would deliver complete, precise coverage without any compromise of sight lines.”

Grimm determined a main hang consisting of left and right arrays of six TiRAY each, a centre hang of three TiRAY and a sub-array comprising six G15-SUB in a sub arc configuration (with a distance of 90cm from each other). Four HOPS5 (flown on the projection truss) were used as the delay line, eight D5-CUBE took care of the near field area and four HOPS5 took care of the stage monitoring (“as a shower in the PA truss”).

Amplification was delivered by three LINUS14D (played via the in-house Dante network) and two LINUS14D (behind the stage for subwoofer and near-field speakers).

“The TiRAY impresses with excellent performance in relation to its size.

It generates such a large sound profile for such a small, light system - it really is the optimal product for such applications. We carried out the necessary calculations using CODA Audio’s System Optimiser prediction software and designed a system HEADLINERMAGAZINE.NET

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A New Era

“THE D5-CUBE IS OUR ALL-PURPOSE WEAPON FOR CLOSING GAPS IN THE SOUND FIELD.”

“As a systems engineer, I can attest that the calculation absolutely did what it promised!” reveals Grimm. “The G15-SUB offers balanced and scalable low-frequency reproduction and also a small profile, whilst the HOPS5 point source loudspeakers correspond excellently to the TiRAY in terms of sound and appearance. The D5-CUBE is our all-purpose weapon for closing gaps in the sound field.”

Grimm speaks from experience. Since he founded GR Eventtechnik GmbH together with Lukas Rabing in 2016, the company has consistently relied on CODA Audio.

HEADLINER MAGAZINE

“In addition to the many advantages of the systems, the sound profile is particularly worth mentioning, particularly in the mid to high frequency range,” he concludes. “CODA Audio is the only provider that manages to reproduce an almost three-dimensional image of the signal.”

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CELESTION

The Ten Squared Series

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THE TEN SQUARED SERIES

CELESTION HEADLINER MAGAZINE

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PRO AUDIO

Celestion kicked off 2024 – and the company’s milestone 100th anniversary – by releasing the groundbreaking Ten Squared (Ten2) Series of pro audio drivers at ISE 2024, representing the culmination of a century of loudspeaker engineering, as Headliner discovers…

The Ten2 Series are the result of a specialist development program at Celestion’s UK-based R&D facility.

These cast aluminium frame, neodymium magnet low frequency pro audio drivers are designed to deliver consistently superior levels of performance in the most demanding professional sound reinforcement applications even after hundreds of hours of use.

The Ten Squared Series comprises five exceptional loudspeaker driver models, each meticulously engineered for applications in subwoofers or as bass units in two- or three-way loudspeakers and larger format line arrays. The line includes

the flagship 24-inch TSQ2460, 21-inch TSQ2145, 18-inch TSQ1845, 15-inch TSQ1535 and 12-inch TSQ1230.

Ten Squared Series, assembled on a new state-of-the-art robotic production line at Celestion’s research and manufacturing facility, represent the culmination of 100 years of loudspeaker engineering.

Ten2 sets the new standard in lowfrequency audio performance and driver longevity, through the integration of Celestion’s latest feature innovations combined with a host of small, cumulative improvements.

Constant airflow through Precision Tuned Venting (PTV), provides highly efficient cooling around the magnet assembly and voice coils. The cooling potential is further optimised through custom coil winding that utilises a hybrid multilayer, inside/outside methodology. In the 21-inch TSQ2460 the cooling benefit was as much as -30° C, versus conventional designs.

Ten Squared’s PTV and proprietary

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coil structure synergistically combine for significant reduction of power compression and thermal stress, maximising product lifespan and performance longevity.

The TSQ2460 has a remarkable continuous power rating of 4800W (estimated continuous) thanks to the enhanced cooling offered by the PTV system together with a proprietary voice coil featuring advanced heat resistant adhesives.

Meanwhile, Ten Squared Series Reconfigured Magnet Assembly allows much greater cone excursion and a remarkably high Xprotection level. The driver’s motor strength and mechanical compliance reach their defined Xprotection limit at practically the same point, achieving a low distortion performance, even during high excursion.

“TEN SQUARED SERIES REPRESENT THE CULMINATION OF 100 YEARS OF LOUDSPEAKER ENGINEERING.”

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CELESTION

The Ten Squared Series

This capability is complemented by Ten Squared’s unique, Polysiloxane Laminated Dual Suspension design that enables the driver’s suspension system to work much harder without

HEADLINER HEADLINER MAGAZINE MAGAZINE

losing stiffness, providing better coil control and reduced likelihood of DC shift, while simultaneously increasing speaker longevity.

In ordinary drivers, the high power and long cone excursion would cause eventual fatigue of lead out wires and joints, but Ten2 addresses this concern through laser-cauterised

PRO AUDIO

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“THESE DRIVERS REDEFINE THE STANDARDS OF PERFORMANCE AND DURABILITY, SETTING A NEW BENCHMARK FOR PROFESSIONAL LOW-FREQUENCY AUDIO.”

holes in the suspension to reduce whipping. Ten2 drivers are further built to last, with protections against the elements through solvent application on the loudspeaker cone to protect against water and humidity.

“The Ten Squared Series reflects Celestion’s unwavering commitment to excellence over the last 100 years,” says Ken Weller, Celestion head of marketing. “Not satisfied to rest on our laurels, these drivers redefine the standards of performance and durability, setting a new benchmark for professional low-frequency audio. It’s a testament to our dedication to delivering superior audio solutions for the most demanding sound reinforcement applications, today and for years to come.”

with a world-leading team of R&D engineers, led by experienced head of engineering Paul Cork at the manufacturer’s purpose-built facility in Ipswich, England.

The team is supported by state-of-the-art design, development, analysis and testing tools as well as experienced technical drawing and specialist development technicians with the resources on-site to prototype, test and measure the performance of new designs.

CELESTION.COM

Celestion drivers have earned an enviable global reputation for innovative design, exceptional performance and superior reliability. The pursuit of excellence begins HEADLINERMAGAZINE.NET

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HARMAN’S SABEN SHAWHAN

HEADLINER MAGAZINE

Keeping up with technology & the art of the demo

EVERYTHING AUDIO

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KEEPING UP WITH TECHNOLOGY & THE ART OF THE DEMO

HARMAN’S SABEN SHAWHAN Saben Shawhan, director, partner BD and PAS audio sales at Harman Professional Solutions discusses the art of the demo, why people are trying to do more with less, the importance of learning from your mistakes, and why keeping up with technology and investing in training is essential.

At Harman you started as consultant liaison manager for audio systems east in 2015, then were appointed to senior manager business development for three years, and you’ve spent the past four years as director of partner BD and PAS sales audio. What does your current role at Harman entail?

It is a broad spectrum, and like my career path, my current role is a mix of all of those things that I have done over

the past 20 years. I manage a couple of different slightly unique teams, one of which is our pre sales support team for integration. We call it a PAS team, which is the same kind of support but for our production and touring partners. Along with that, some of the people on my team are what I like to refer to as partner or specialty business development – they’re talking with the very high functioning users that maybe

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Keeping up with technology & the art of the demo

“IN AUDIO, I’VE FOUND THAT NOBODY BUYS A SYSTEM UNHEARD.”

How does demoing the products help build trust with potential customers? have their own design departments, like a lot of themed entertainment or professional sports where the in-house staff are very elevated and very good at their job. I manage a couple of different groups simultaneously, which is really great, because there’s a lot of cross coordination and collaboration where our touring specialists might bring something to the table that an integration person didn’t, and vice versa.

You’ve recently finished a very successful 15 city JBL audio roadshow. How has this helped connect with customers?

It went really well. We’ve done this for two years in a row and it’s a really great way for us to bring some of these products to the customers to let them hear them. In audio, I’ve found that nobody buys a system unheard; part of the experience is listening to that system and deciding what is right for you, your project or your production, and this is a way for us to do that. A lot of these systems are too large to easily demo without setting them up in a proper theatre or house of worship, so setting them up in an appropriately sized space lets the customer get firsthand experience to put their hands on the gear. That really gives them a sense of what it is capable of doing without having to travel to a show.

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I have the luxury of doing a lot of presentations, and some of those presentations are fast and to the point where I have 45 minutes to talk about a new product, and those are great.

But what they lack is that hands-on ability for the customer to go, ‘Oh, I understand how this new rigging system functions now’, or, ‘I want to listen to this in a slightly different application; I want to stand off to the side or behind it’, or they want to do something that’s more relevant to their use case. This tour allows us to do that.

It gives us more time with the customer and gives us a little more flexibility with how they interact with us if they want to do something that’s a bit more unique.

How has the market (specifically, front of house engineers and sound companies) responded to the JBL SRX-900?

This is a huge launch for JBL. This is the first time that we’ve dipped our toe into this segment of the market. In the past JBL has never had a product that competed in this kind of mid format, where it’s a true line array. It’s selfpowered, it’s got lots of built in features and the market has really grabbed it.

This is probably the first system that gets you into that entry level, true line array application with the advanced feature sets that we see on our more complicated and higher priced

systems. It’s been a great product for us. We see lots of positive feedback on social media as well as customers tell us how they use it, like, ‘I used it for the first time in this corporate thing and I was blown away. I couldn’t believe how great it performed!’ We hear that quite frequently.

Technology and design principles have drastically changed over the last few years. How has the audio industry changed with regard to designing large scale projects?

That’s always an upward slope – keeping up with technology. One thing we see the most is that people are trying to do more with less, meaning they want the sound system to be smaller and/or lighter, and still maintain the same level of output as something that maybe they had installed 10 years past, or they’re looking for more advanced features – things that we couldn’t do 10 years ago – or you couldn’t afford to do 10 years ago. They want more in a smaller, lighter, more feature-rich package.

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What are the challenges facing the overall industry when it comes to designing for different types of stadiums and applications?

There’s the challenges that have always been there from the day somebody decided to build a building, like budget constraints and schedules.

In more recent years what we’ve seen is a departure from a more conventional design path, meaning that a lot of projects are trying to do more on the road without pulling in the correct design assistance – they’re trying to do more things without a professional designer or professional engineer, whether that’s through an integration company or through an independent designer.

Those things always bite them later in the project. I would highly recommend HEADLINER MAGAZINE

Keeping up with technology & the art of the demo

to anybody starting some kind of integration project, large or small, to tap the brakes just enough to make sure you have the correct design professionals assisting you. It’s worth that extra time. The end result will be better if you just take that one extra step. I know it adds a little bit of cost to the project and it slows things down – and that’s probably the downside that you can’t move as fast – but the end result does turn out better when you loop those professionals in at the appropriate time of the project.

Do you have any advice for the industry?

I would say don’t overlook the training or expertise of other people, even in a situation where you may feel like you have the experience. If it’s a product you’re not familiar with or a

deployment you’re not familiar with, it’s worth the little bit of extra effort to get properly trained. I’ve seen too many projects go south just because somebody wasn’t familiar with the products. Maybe they’re incredibly smart individuals, but they just weren’t familiar with that particular item. The overarching thing is to keep up with technology. I know it’s hard to keep up with everything that’s coming out, but it’s important to stay relevant in our industry by having people around you that really know what they’re doing and that are trained properly.

JBLPRO.COM

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RALF OEHL & CLAUDE CELLIER

HEADLINER MAGAZINE

View from the top

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VIEW FROM THE TOP

RALF OEHL & CLAUDE CELLIER In 2022, German studio specialist Neumann.Berlin and Swiss company Merging Technologies – one of the world’s leading manufacturers of high-resolution digital audio recording systems – joined forces to work together under the umbrella of the Sennheiser Group. Almost 18 months on, their respective CEOs Ralf Oehl and Claude Cellier join Headliner for a frank and exclusive chat about the challenges and achievements they have navigated so far, as well as a glimpse at what the future holds.

Few stories captured the pro audio market’s imagination like that of Neumann’s acquisition of Merging Technologies in mid-2022. On the surface, it did not appear an obvious alliance. Berlin-based Neumann, already part of industry juggernaut Sennheiser, has long been used to operating at a scale incomparable to that of Merging. The independent Swiss outfit, while not niche, is almost

exclusively active in the professional tier of the industry. What’s more, it is the definition of a brand moulded in the image of its creator. For more than three decades, Cellier has instilled a spirit of independence, ambitious entrepreneurship, and innovative technical thinking. He embodies everything his company has come to represent.

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RALF OEHL & CLAUDE CELLIER

Cellier’s counterpart at Neumann, meanwhile, has spent much of his career not in audio but in private equity. Another point of difference, but one that highlights in many ways why this partnership, unlikely as it may appear on the surface, makes a lot of sense once you peek under the bonnet.

View from the top

Joining Headliner for an exclusive interview via video call, the pair are refreshingly open in their discussion of the partnership. The warmth and respect that exists between them is genuine, while their distinct, sometimes contrasting personalities shine through to highlight why they are such a complementary pairing.

and I had great hopes that we’d be able to make it work but it’s not always a given. Some companies don’t merge well at all. But the first 18 months have been an intense and fruitful collaboration. We have mutual respect for our respective territories, fields of knowledge, and expertise.

There is tremendous expertise at all levels at Neumann, and we share a lot of information. It’s been a great experience so far and I’m amazed at the talents that we can now draw upon in terms of ramping up the product range. We already released a successful product (MT 48 interface) in the first year that we are already ramping up production of.

That is remarkable.”

“With the roadmap we set together, it was not immediately obvious that it was something we’d be able to collaborate well on,” begins Cellier from his office in Switzerland. “Ralf

“We knew it would be an interesting ride,” smiles Oehl, calling from his home in Munich. “I’ve seen these things succeed and I’ve seen them fail. I knew that keeping the

HEADLINER MAGAZINE

entrepreneurial spirit and brain of Claude as the centrepiece was going to be crucial. It’s not just two anonymous brands moving together.

Neumann has a lot of tradition and self-confidence in what we do and on the other side we have a unique owner-driven company. For two companies like this to free resources and grow together and find common ground on basic technicalities takes a lot of time and effort.

“The first moment we felt this could be a great alliance was when we looked at our competencies and saw how amazingly complementary they are,” he continues. “It’s a match made in heaven, because they have exactly what we don’t have and vice versa.

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“THIS WHOLE THING IS A LESSON IN HUMILITY, OTHERWISE IT WON’T WORK.”

“On the other hand, it means creating ties, because when you bring complementary elements together you have to build trust, you have to decide where to hand over and how to fit together. That is going very well but it’s a sensitive issue because both companies are operating at the top level of our technologies, and no one wants to lose anything by combining those forces.”

According to Oehl, building that trust between the two camps was the first and most vital building block. It was, however, something that had to be developed at pace on account of the scheduled release of the first collaborative products – last year’s MT 48 audio interface.

“This is an alliance and there is no ego, so we wanted to discuss everything together before we made any decision,” says Oehl. “We took significant time exploring that.

What sped it up was that we had an ongoing project with the MT 48, which was progressing quickly, and we needed some combined structures to make it a success. And as of this January we have put both our product management teams together. For 18 months they have been collaborating

and now they have become one team.

It’s taking time but we are not done.

We are still in the process of growing together stronger.”

“This whole thing is a lesson in humility, otherwise it won’t work,” Cellier adds. “If both sides aren’t understanding that they have to learn from one another it’s going to fail.

There is a lot we can learn as a small group when you can draw on a larger organisation. We’re an agile team of 20 people and being able to see that agility not completely ignored in a larger group is a sign that things have been done properly and right.”

As the first physical manifestation of the new alliance, the MT 48 appears to have been a roaring success. A Neumann branded product with Merging tech inside, it is based on the Merging Anubis interface and designed at bringing the core of that unit’s sophisticated capabilities to a wider user base. So how did the two brands fare when bringing a new product to market with the partnership still very much in its infancy?

“The great thing about Ralf is his fabulous ability to put a solid but gentle pressure on a timeline,” Cellier

laughs. “We managed to do our best in having a product out of which we could be proud of as it serves our user community well. It showed that we knew from the beginning we could further complement each other. That will be our exercise over the coming year – to bring added value even further down the line.”

“From the start, Claude and I said, if we join forces, what is the benefit for the customer,” Oehl notes. “We thought Merging has amazing technologies, but they mostly reach people on the expert level, whereas Neumann can reach a much broader audience.

That has to be the driving force of our collaboration.”

He continues: “As for the product itself, we’ve not been able to keep up with production. It’s been amazing. We are in the process of doubling production.

There is a significant demand and I’m very happy that it not only raised demand for the MT 48 itself, but also raised awareness of the Anubis, which is tailored for different customers.

It brought a lot of awareness to the Merging portfolio.”

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RALF OEHL & CLAUDE CELLIER

View from the top

NAB. We are working on things that will significantly expand the usability of the Merging and Neumann product range. And we are putting all our efforts into ensuring that when we launch things, they are available immediately. We want the waiting periods to disappear.”

In tandem with ramping up production, Merging is also gearing up for a significant shift in its distribution model. Until now, Merging has employed a distribution model centred around different representatives in each territory. That’s about to change.

“The challenge we have is integrating our sales channels into the Sennheiser organisation,” Cellier reveals. “That’s a huge challenge, but it’s a humbling experience again to see how we can benefit from the larger Sennheiser organisation while keeping all the expertise we have built up with our own sales network over the years.”

“Neumann doesn’t have its own sales business on the outgoing side,” Oehl elaborates. “We collaborate and share the resources with Sennheiser pro audio, and that’s how we’ve distributed the MT 48. The remainder of the portfolio remained with the existing arrangement for the past 18 months, but in the next six months we will be integrating Merging products into the Sennheiser pro audio sales channel. This is a much bigger sales force so we can now take Merging products to the remotest parts of the earth, and provide services.”

So how has this development been received by the existing network?

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“There are conversations to be had,” states Oehl. “There is a great distributor in the US that was around the same size as Merging, and it had exclusive rights in the US. We have our own entity in the US, so there just wasn’t the possibility to continue with that exclusivity. So we had some positive conversations and some tough conversations. In some countries there wasn’t a true Merging rep, so we’ve already started in those places and had a very positive response. There are countries that have been used to their partner for many years who will now have to adapt to a new partner. There will inevitably be some challenging moments, but in the end, it’s going to be positive for our customers.”

While there are many cogs whirring behind the scenes regarding infrastructure and operational matters, the pair are eager to confirm that there will be several major announcements over the next 12 months on the new products and innovation front.

“There will be a few big pieces of news this year,” Oehl confirms. “We are launching our second mission for MT48, tailored to immersive monitoring and mixing at NAMM, and the next big news will be around

For a partnership that is still very much in its infancy, the CEOs certainly appear to be possessed of a shared vision, and have achieved as much as could reasonably be considered possible just 18 months in. This year will no doubt provide greater clarity on what the longer term future of the alliance holds. What is clear, is that both Cellier and Oehl have seen enough in their first year-and-a-half together to know that they are on the right track.

“When we first shook hands the most important part of this was that we made Claude proud, and that his 30plus years of building this company was not for nothing,” Oehl wraps up. “If you take on a company that one single owner has put so much blood, sweat, tears, and money into, there is a huge pressure to keep that legacy alive. And when you go through such a process there is always risk. You lose people, things don’t work out, so I am relieved that Claude has trust that what we’ve started will continue his legacy for many years. That’s super important to me and Claude knows that.”

“It’s a pleasure to be working with brilliant minds,” Cellier beams. “Not that we didn’t have enough at Merging, but having so many more talents alongside us is pure magic for me. When you’ve worked hard for over 30 years it is a fantastic joy to see your legacy in such good hands.”

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When Audio Gets A Glow Up

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100 JEFFORY HADDAD

JEFFORY HADDAD Jeffory Haddad’s résumé as a primary mixer or tech includes many of the hottest TV series of the past 20 years: 24, The O.C., Grey’s Anatomy, Mad Men, This Is Us, Superstore, The Morning Show, Euphoria, GLOW, Pretty Little Liars, Never Have I Ever, Glee, True Blood, The Mentalist, Melrose Place, Gossip Girl, American Horror Story, Orange Is the New Black – it might be quicker to list the shows he hasn’t worked on.

That history of accomplishment draws on Lectrosonics’ legacy of high-performance wireless equipment, such as Haddad’s SMV transmitters, UCR411a and SRc receivers, original Venue modular receiver, and new DSQD digital receiver – all of which he coordinates with Wireless Designer software. In this interview, he details his enviable career, how nice it is to be back to work after the writer’s strike, and why dynamic range is the key to natural sounding dialogue.

When did you first hear about Lectrosonics or use any of the gear?

Sean Rush on JAG was using it. When we started, we didn’t have any. I don’t think the original Venue system had even come out yet. We started off using a little quad box from a different company. Limited reception! As the sound utility, I would run the 100-foot quad cable out, the boom operator would be holding the box up in the air for reception, and HEADLINER MAGAZINE

we would both walk, or run – depending on the scene. I remember literally running next to a moving car, cabling my ass off trying to keep up!

It sounds like whatever your first Lectrosonics piece was, it was an upgrade!

I think it was the predecessor to the UCR411. I remember when the mixer first got that receiver. It was a big deal, and then he continued to buy more [Lectrosonics] products, so I kind of grew up under Lectro. When I moved up to full-time mixing on Pretty Little Liars, we were shooting on the Warner Brothers lot, which has its own sound department. They supplied us with all our gear, and everything was Lectro. I was operating all the equipment myself at that point.

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102 JEFFORY HADDAD

When Audio Gets A Glow Up

We hear you are still using some legacy gear?

If I’m using legacy gear, that’s Lectro’s fault because it lasts so long! Yes, I’m still using two Venue 1 systems and I use Wireless Designer software to do all my coordination. I just started using it a couple of years ago, and it’s been such a time-saver to see all my frequencies on a laptop. I have to say, the old Venues still work so well, but I knew it was time to upgrade, so I bought a single DSQD. I haven’t fully integrated it yet, because I’ve been looking at other things like the DSR4, which is like the DSQD in a slotmount. A huge part of my attraction was that they can pick up the signals of my SM-series transmitters. But then the writers’ strike hit.

“IF I’M USING LEGACY GEAR, THAT’S LECTRO’S FAULT BECAUSE IT LASTS SO LONG!”

Have things picked up a little since the strike was resolved?

Yes, a little. I picked up a couple of commercials in November and December 2023. I completed principal photography for a new Apple TV show called Mere Mortals, which is a spinoff of Mythic Quest. I wasn’t the mixer pre-strike, but after the strike they had to get it done really quickly and the previous mixer was not available. It was a crazy week of work. Day one was multiple earwig feeds, going to six different sets, all with their own mix-minuses.

Each set had to communicate with each other, and we were shooting it all simultaneously. I was bouncing back and forth everywhere like a madman. And it felt great!

What was the most challenging part of all that and how do you handle it?

Honestly, the biggest thing I have to deal with, period, is how much of the RF spectrum in the L.A. area is now gobbled up by 5G and other services. I mostly stay in the block 19 and the 470 range. I don’t have any wireless in the 941 to 960 area yet. Again, here’s where Wireless HEADLINER MAGAZINE

Designer comes in. I get to a new set or location, the first thing I do is get my antennas in the air and boot it up. I also rely on my proximity to the transmitters. I almost always use 100 milliwatts [output power]. I rarely ever need to crank them up to 250.

We’ve heard a lot of mixers, on both the film/TV and concert side, recommend using only as much output power as you absolutely need. Why is that?

In my case, let’s say I’ve got a lot of actors working in a scene, so I may be dealing with 10 or more channels of wireless. With little RF spectrum available, I’ll want to use less output power on the transmitter. I’ll need to position my antennas as close to the set as I can. That way I have a few more choices when selecting the best frequencies while coordinating.

However, it’s also important to consider that you may be pushing too much signal into your receivers.

Can you describe a scene where you felt challenged by distance, obstructions, or other issues?

I mixed pickup scenes for Top Gun: Maverick. What I walked into were big, multicast scenes. One location shoot in downtown L.A. stands out. It was a long walk-and-talk scene with Tom Cruise and Bashir Salahuddin.

The camera was pulling them down a long hallway with a 90-degree turn.

There was no place to hide antennas except near the end marks — not ideal. Sound mixers know the feeling: we roll on take one and hold our breath, waiting for the dropout, the static, the pops. Well, take one was clean. However, that feeling doesn’t go away. It stays with you

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When Audio Gets A Glow Up

take after take. Our Lectrosonics held up — every take was clean! It was a total win because right after that we sang happy birthday to the man himself, Tom Cruise. I wouldn’t have felt so good in that moment if those takes had problems.

Photographer: GLOW: Ali Goldstein/Netflix

104 JEFFORY HADDAD

Our readers like a good nightmare audio story, but with a happy ending.

Got one to share?

Oh, so many. Here’s an example. On GLOW, which is based on female wrestling in the ’90s, we had this large cast of actors. We shot lots of scenes with all of them together. Moving around, ad-libbing at different times, lots of physicality, directors who don’t want to cut, and me juggling what to do with not enough channels. It was a lot. With all that regularly going on, once my frequencies were dialled in, the wireless was the least stressful part of it all, thanks to Lectrosonics. As a sound department we never stop thinking about the connection between our transmitters and receivers, and the many things that can go wrong.

Especially in these large scenes with everyone ad-libbing to some degree.

How has your gear performed in terms of audio quality relating to the naturalness of the human voice?

I love that question because I think of the creative tradeoffs we have to make. I’m a big fan of dynamic range.

I like my gain structure to start by being optimal for the microphone, the source, then work its way to me from there. So, that first gain stage at the transmitter is arguably one of the most critical moments. I like it set as loud or open as possible without going over — basically, crank it for all the dynamic range I can get. I can do that without worry because the SM-series transmitters I use can take a lot of SPL and still sound natural. The built-in compression and limiting are also very good, most of the time undetectable. I do try to avoid going into compression/limiting because I want post to have clean, hot tracks that aren’t ‘pre-squished’. I also depend on the low noise floor of the SM in this first gain stage.

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This all adds up to a natural sound because the human voice is so unique.

Unlike a cello, or most instruments for that matter, an actor can go from a whisper to a scream before I could ever reach for the transmitter’s gain control.

You don’t know it’s going to happen, necessarily, because the actor might have decided just then to try something new, and the director might like that take best, so Lectro’s performance helps me be ready for that. Only once in my career that I can remember off the top of my head, did an actor come to the sound department and clue us in that he was about to do that.

May we ask who?

It was Robin Williams on a movie called Shrink. He was so courteous. He quietly let us know he was about to get loud.

The big irony for sound departments is that if we’re doing our job well, we become somewhat invisible. I’m not saying we should be invisible, not at all.

Often those around us don’t realise that a little more information could help, especially when it comes to dynamics.

There’s a lot more frequency content in the signal when working with music as compared with dialogue, but even a singer at a live show is within a certain dynamic range. Actors? Well, there are so many ways to interpret a script and to tell a story with the right tone.

And then that dynamic can change on the next without anyone knowing.

The sound department is at the front line of that. And in the front line of our equipment are our transmitters and receivers. Lectrosonics performs so well dynamically that whatever else is going on in my day, my wireless is the least of my worries.

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The Witches Debuts New GLP Fixture

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LIGHTING

The National Theatre has extended its long relationship with GLP fixtures by becoming the first theatre in the world to take delivery of the manufacturer’s new impression X5 Bar 1000, as Headliner recently discovered…

White Light has supplied 36 fixtures to be added to the rig in the Olivier Theatre in time for the staging of The Witches – a musical version of the timeless Roald Dahl tale – which runs until 27 January 2024.

The X5 Bar 1000 is a linear LED batten with 18 powerful 40W RGBL LEDs, a wide zoom range and the new GLP iQ.Gamut colour calibration algorithm, which creates perfect white spectrums and colour rendering. The new squared lens

design ensures maximum lumen efficiency and provides a curtain of light at its narrowest angle of just 3.5°, while delivering smooth and homogenous washes all the way out to its widest 60° wash.

These were among the features that caught the eye of Paul Hornsby, lighting resources manager at the National Theatre, which leads the field when it comes to new technology adoption. The venue had also been the first theatre in the world to order GLP’s JDC1 hybrid strobe when it was launched.

Hornsby had first witnessed the IP versions of the impression X5 IP Bar 1000 at the 2023 Prolight + Sound Show in Frankfurt before the non-IP version was released

several months later. A demo was set up at the National Theatre, with the evaluating team impressed by the superior brightness and colour calibration when compared with their existing impression X4 Bar 20s. The order for 36 units was consequently placed with reseller White Light.

“We’ve had a great relationship with GLP since purchasing our first X4 Bar 20 units back in 2017,” Hornsby states of the acquisition.

“Those units have proved everpopular, and we rarely see them back in the workshop due to production demands.

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The Witches Debuts New GLP Fixture

“NOT ONLY WOULD [THE UPGRADE] PUSH US FURTHER INTO DEVELOPING TECHNOLOGIES, IT WOULD ENABLE US TO COMPLETE OUR OLIVIER RIG UPGRADE TO LED.”

“After a conversation with [GLP UK head] Simon Barrett in the latter half of 2021 – when he mentioned the forthcoming impression X5 range and a new impression X5 Bar – we knew this was going to be the solution for us in terms of lighting resource between the three auditoriums at the National Theatre. Not only would it push us further into developing technologies, it would enable us to complete our Olivier rig upgrade to LED. “Two years on, and we are so happy to be the first [customer] in the world to receive the new X5 Bar 1000 units.”

All 36 units are currently making their debut on the production of The Witches, with lighting by Bruno Poet, after which they will continue to be used on every Olivier production as part of the basic rig package.

HEADLINER MAGAZINE

Hornsby thanks the team at GLP UK for demoing the impression X5s, “which immediately won over our lighting department.” He also credits Ally DeCourcy at White Light for supplying the units and working with GLP to ensure the Theatre had them in time for the fitup of The Witches.

GLP worked hard to develop the firmware in time to allow direct control of the Lime channel in the units: “This was in response to a massive request from our LDs and lighting control team here at the NT,” Hornsby concludes.

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