Headliner Magazine Issue 43

ISSUE 43 / JULY 2022 SUPPORTING THE CREATIVE COMMUNITY

MAGAZINE / 43

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SEE YOU ON THE OTHER SIDE

INTERPOL GLASTONBURY 2022

A TRIUMPHANT RETURN TO WORTHY FARM

JOAN ARMATRADING

LEGENDARY SONGWRITER TALKS MPG AWARD WIN

ERLAND COOPER

ON BURYING HIS LATEST ALBUM UNDERGROUND

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

— Mick Jagger

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SUP P

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43 What a month it’s been for live music here in the UK. After what has been a desperately difficult couple of years for the international touring community, it has been truly heartening to see not just the return of large scale, blockbusting events to these shores, but a programme of live shows quite unlike anything seen before.

Over the course of just one weekend (June 24-26), the UK hosted the triumphant return of Glastonbury after a two-year absence; Elton John, the Rolling Stones and Eagles taking to the stage at Hyde Park as part of this year’s British Summer Time concert series; Ed Sheeran at Wembley Stadium; and Billie Eilish headlining the O2 in London. Quite an unprecedented weekend of live music, I’m sure you’ll agree.

Plus, in the surrounding days, Guns n’ Roses became the first musical act to headline the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium; Red Hot Chili Peppers took in a host of stadium shows; and the BST series continued to bring some of the world’s biggest names to Hyde Park, including the likes of Adele, Duran Duran, Pearl Jam and Rolling Stones, who returned for a second performance one week later on July 3.

Indeed, Headliner was fortunate enough to be in attendance at the second of those two Rolling Stones

shows, where we also caught up with Martin Audio managing director Dom Harter, who gave us the inside track to the sound production for this year’s BST series, as well as the expansion of this year’s staging.

Elsewhere in this issue, catch up with New York indie rock icons Interpol. In an extensive interview, frontman Paul Banks opens up on the band’s return to UK stages, as well as the release of their long-awaited new album The Other Side Of Make Believe. Representing the biggest sonic and musical leap in their career so far, it’s an album that showcases a new side to Interpol; one which, as Banks explains, came about as a result of being forced out of their comfort zone by Covid.

We also hear from songwriting legend Joan Armatrading about her recent MPG Award recognition, as well as some of the most exciting emerging talent shaping the industry.

Enjoy.

Daniel Gumble Head of Music, Headliner

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14/ SCOTT CHESAK 08 / ROSE BETTS

28 / KARL FRID

20/ INTERPOL

32 / MIKE PELANCONI

42 / COLDPLAY 46 / IMMERSIVE AUDIO

36 / GLASTONBURY 2022

58 / LIVE SOUND

54 / THE ROLLING STONES

50 / MAITA

70 / IMAN OMARI 64 / JOAN ARMATRADING 74 / ROB ‘RAAB’ STEVENSON

92 / ERLAND COOPER

80 / ERIN BARRA 86 / RUSANDA PANFILI

98 / AUDIO PRODUCTION

108 / LIGHTING 104 / JOSEPH TRAPANESE

122 / TYLER SMYTH

112 / SPOTLIGHT REVIEWS

126/ RACHAEL SAGE

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ROSE BETTS

In The Driving Seat

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ASPIRING HEADLINER

IN THE DRIVING SEAT

ROSE BETTS Hailing from London, singer-songwriter Rose Betts has found herself adapting to life in L.A thanks to the viral success of a tongue-in-cheek song she wrote as a joke. She may be on the other side of the road, but with the release of debut full-length album, White Orchids, she’s very much in the driving seat.

Where is the good cheese in L.A? A fair question, considering an immediately endearing and down to earth Betts is from the UK, where allegedly you can score a nice wedge on every corner.

Moving to the land of opportunity in August 2021 to ride the wave of her music career, the singer-songwriter tells Headliner that she is adapting to life in America.

“I don’t feel like I’m here permanently,” she says almost defensively – ever loyal to the UK. “It’s very much, ‘Make hay while the sun shines’ and then I’m gonna come back”. But in the meantime, the important questions must be answered.

“Americans have packets of crisps that are cheese flavoured, but they’ll always say, ‘Made with real cheese’ on it’, which is never something you see on a crisp packet in the UK,” she points out. “Their levels of cheese are weird. They have spray cheese here and stuff that you think should be used as plastic glue rather than something you eat. In Tesco you can wander in and get a nice wedge of Parmesan for four quid, but here you can’t get Parmesan unless you’re at Whole Foods and it’s going to cost you $16. You just can’t get a nice cheese in normal shops here!”

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Cheese-hunting aside, things are going incredibly well for Betts, who toured the UK in 2017 and then selfreleased her first EP, The Stars Look Down, receiving major radio play on BBC 2 and BBC 6. Fast forward a little and her self-produced track, Song to the Siren was included on Zack Snyder’s Justice League (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack).

She’s here today to talk about her new album, White Orchids, which she wrote and co-produced herself.

The internet works in mysterious ways, and one day Betts found herself going viral on Tiktok with her whimsical, folk-flavoured tune, Driving Myself Home – which at the time of writing has clocked up over five million views. Inspired by a real blind date her friends set her HEADLINER MAGAZINE

up on, Betts wrote the song as a joke, including the lyrics, “The best part of the date today was driving myself home / It’s not as if he didn’t try, his shoes were clean, he wore a tie / And paid for my martini with a smile / And the conversation never stopped, I didn’t even check my watch / And a view over L.A is always nice…”

try and catch people out with songs, because it’s not really fair. But it was awkward as arse because I didn’t make anything up in the song, so everything’s very clearly about stuff that we talked about, or the fact that he’s only got IKEA furniture,” she says, quickly clarifying that she’s got no shade for those that shop at the Swedish store.

“I wrote the song really quickly and was just joking and processing this funny date that I’d been on and my feelings around it,” she reflects, bemused at the Tiktok success. “I wrote the song on a guitar without thinking much about it – I don’t normally play guitar, I only play guitar for Tiktok, and now there’s this song I’m gonna play until I die,” she laughs.

“The IKEA line is a joke – obviously.

There’s nothing wrong with shopping in IKEA! It’s a song and it’s a cool rhyme idea. I know for a fact that I’ve got loads of IKEA stuff! It’s funny, because one of the indications that a song has gone viral is that you start getting negative comments. So now when I see that I’m like, ‘Oh I must be doing well because someone’s being a bit of a bitch’...”

“I put the chorus and the verse up and it immediately went nuts. Within a day it was nearing 300,000 views, and then a million. Something about it was immediately appealing to people and I could probably guess why that is, but it was fun. It was immediately evident that it was super suited to the Tiktok world – it’s a funny old world, that one,” she shrugs.

On her debut full-length album, White Orchids, Betts says she has not hidden from the listener this time – the album representing a loss of innocence and a moment of pure youth and fragility where her heart was broken. Being so open and vulnerable in her new music did not come easy for this Brit, however:

Headliner has to ask: does the guy in question know he inspired a viral song?

“I had to tell him because, top tip: never follow anyone that you’ve gone on a first date with on Instagram, or don’t tell them any of your frickin’ handles,” she cringes, “because if you’re a songwriter you’re gonna have to explain stuff if you write about them! I’d written it as a joke, so I didn’t imagine it was going to suddenly get heard by so many people. I never wanted to be the kind of songwriter who would

“When I was younger, I used songs as a way to hide things, and I was terrified at the idea that someone would listen to a song and think it was actually about my feelings. It’s probably because the British are very reserved and it’s not something we grew up with – being completely explicit about yourself. I’m very private about myself, but I gradually realised that if the songs are going to be good, they have to be honest. If you hide inside a song and you hide the truth, you hide the real rawness of the feeling and you’re actually doing a disservice to the song because it won’t feel authentic and it won’t be as powerful.”

ASPIRING HEADLINER

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“IF YOU HIDE INSIDE A SONG AND YOU HIDE THE TRUTH, YOU HIDE THE REAL RAWNESS OF THE FEELING AND YOU’RE ACTUALLY DOING A DISSERVICE TO THE SONG.”

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ROSE BETTS

In The Driving Seat

“I SEE THE POINT OF VULNERABILITY NOW, SO I’M TRYING TO EMBRACE IT.”

When she came to that realisation, the feelings poured out – and then some.

“With this album, some songs are more honest than others, and are more explicit. Recovery is the most vulnerable thing I’ve ever written, and still is. That song was a real shift for me in terms of how deep and personal I would go, and now I feel like I’ve come out the other end of it, and I’m oversharing. So now I’m too honest so I’ll have to rein myself in a bit, because I’m writing songs about people that I’ve just met or…” she trails off, interrupting herself, “with Driving Myself Home, what makes the song good or funny, or whatever it is, are its little weird quirks, like the IKEA line – those little details are what make the song. It’s unique. So unfortunately, those are the details – the true ones – that the person who hears it will go, ‘Hey, wait – that’s totally about me!’

And that’s a bit awkward. But I see the point of vulnerability now, so I’m trying to embrace it.”

Betts says she misses home, but will stay put in L.A for now while her music career gains traction: “My plan is very much to be here to take advantage of it all,” she nods.

HEADLINER MAGAZINE

“My management team are here and I really like them, and it is a good environment. Everyone is here. The annoying thing is that as much as I love London and England – I really do – and I want to return, for some reason this is where I’ve managed to find people that want to work with me in the way that I want to work. I have just signed a publishing deal, so I’m here to establish myself as a songwriter, to find other projects, start working on building stuff and just to make my artistic life a bit more stable.

My plan is to do that and then come back because I want to be near my family. I’m not homesick but I do miss a lot of stuff that is in England, like our sense of humour and all that sort of thing.”

And the cheese.

“Exactly,” she laughs, asking any Headliner readers in L.A to hit her up if they find out where it’s affordable.

“That’s what I want to know. Where is it? Not $16!”

That reminds her: “She’s going to hate me, but I got my sister to send me a British parcel, which had all the obvious things in it like Marmite and chocolate Digestives. But the thing

is, she wrapped it so badly that the Marmite acted as a kind of bludgeon inside the package, so all the biscuits were crumbs. So my source of getting British things isn’t great,” she laughs, shaking her head. “I know! The daily struggles! Seriously though, I cycle really far to places just for a wedge of Parmesan.”

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SCOTT CHESAK

HEADLINER MAGAZINE

Holding the Key

Photo: Jon Danovic

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SCOTT CHESAK Producer, songwriter and musician Scott Chesak, best known for his work with The All-American Rejects, Panic! At The Disco and Weezer, talks Headliner through his creative process in the studio and the numerous musical projects that have been keeping him on his toes…

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SCOTT CHESAK

Holding the Key

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Tell us about your formative years in music and your first big break.

I started playing drums when I was 13 and absolutely fell in love. It only took a year after getting a drum kit for me to realise this is the thing that I want to do with my life. I started playing in a bunch of different rock bands, and my dad had a Fender Strat in the house, so I ended up playing a little bit of everything. I got into hand percussion and world music – I played in an AfroCuban funk band and we did street shows. I was on congas for that, and I also played tablas in a classical Indian group who did Indian weddings and stuff. Then I got my first recording rig, with a crappy little Dell laptop and Cakewalk, and was just recording myself all the time.

When I was 19, I injured my back helping a buddy to move heavy studio gear without proper posture. Now my back is toast if I sit at a drum kit for more than 30 minutes. So I went back to keys, and the idea was to get a keyboard teacher and get better at producing. About a year down the line, my teacher told me about an opportunity to go on tour as a session keyboard player. I guess that was my first real job in the music industry; HEADLINER MAGAZINE

before that, I was just working at a video rental store in Santa Monica!

That tour was with Christina Perri, and then six months after that there was another random audition that ended up being for The All-American Rejects.

I’ve been playing keyboard with them for over a decade now, and that led to other things like playing for Adam Lambert, Gerard Way, Lea Michele.

After many years of touring, I started focusing more on production and songwriting, and ended up getting my first pub deal, which led to my first big cut with Weezer. They had the same management as Panic! At The Disco, so I did two songs on their last album Pray For The Wicked, and have been working with a bunch of people ever since.

What’s been your most memorable project in recent years?

Probably the most important song that I’ve been a part of recently came out with this artist called Bishop Briggs – it’s called High Water. During the pandemic, we were in each other’s ‘bubble’ and I wasn’t really working with anybody else. We had a really intense shared experience together – we both lost our sisters within six

or seven months of each other, and it was nice to have somebody that understood that. High Water is mostly Bishop’s story, but it’s dedicated to both of our sisters. 90% of my energy was going towards that during lockdown. In fact we got a big batch of songs done, and the first ones are just coming out now.

Could you talk us through your creative process and studio setup?

I’m mainly a producer and songwriter.

With some artists, I’ll prepare a bunch of instrumentals and play it for them to see what they vibe with; then we’ll start writing lyrics and melody to it. Then I’ll take it back to my room in Austin, fill out all the instrumentation and then email back and forth collaborating on the placement of strings, horns etc.

With others there’ll be a subject matter, and we just figure out the best way to tell that story. My real goal is to make artists feel comfortable enough to expose themselves and tell their truth, because subconsciously or not, that’s what draws people in.

When it comes to my setup, there’s a lot of in-the-box stuff but also a lot of hardware and instrumentation. In the L.A studio I use a vintage Neumann

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Photo: Alyson Rennick

“MY REAL GOAL IS TO MAKE ARTISTS FEEL COMFORTABLE ENOUGH TO EXPOSE THEMSELVES AND TELL THEIR TRUTH.”

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SCOTT CHESAK

Holding the Key

Photo: Jon Danovic

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mic for vocals which I love, and then there’s an acoustic piano I can record on, and some synths. And being a keyboard player, I have collected a shit tonne of synths over the years!

In the digital realm, I’ve been using oeksound soothe for quite a while now, and these days I put it on pretty much every single song – usually on vocals. It’s especially helpful with Zoom co-writes, because a lot of times the artist will have a cheap condenser mic that sounds super harsh and brittle. Just yesterday, I was getting a demo together of an artist that had a really bad microphone, and soothe just totally cleaned up all of that harshness; especially useful when there’s five stacks on top of each other in a big chorus, with all that harshness building up and building up. So a lot of times, I’ll just have all the vocals and all the synths going to this one bus, with soothe in the background taming everything. I can even put it across my entire mix bus. And when recording acoustic piano, there’s always some note or some weird harmonic that is just poking way out that you can’t find, so soothe helps with that as well.

HEADLINER MAGAZINE

What have you got in the pipeline for the rest of 2022?

I’ve got more songs coming out with Bishop Briggs, and I’m not sure if I can talk about it, but there’s a song that I’m doing with a legend of the music business – more on the pop side – which I’m super excited about. I’ll be doing some live shows with The All-American Rejects, because things are looking like they’re properly opening up again this year. So that will be a bunch of festivals and random gigs, and then me and Tyson – the singer from The All-American Rejects – actually have a side project coming out. It’s called Now More Than Ever. The album is done, we’re mixing it right now, and we’re shooting a video for it next month. I also have a little soul funk project that I like to do with my buddy, Greg, and we have the Ozomatli horn section playing on a new release that we’re gonna do later this year. So a bunch of different things in the works!

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INTERPOL

See You On The Other Side

Photographer: Ebru Yildiz

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COVER STORY

SEE YOU ON THE OTHER SIDE On July 15, Interpol released The Other Side Of Make Believe, the New York band’s seventh release to date and one which has forced them outside of their comfort zone like never before. Frontman Paul Banks sits down for a chat with Headliner about being forced to try new things two decades into their career, and how they survived the East Coast’s early ‘00s indie rock boom…

On Wednesday, June 16, the lights go down on the Camden Roundhouse as the icy, reverb soaked opening bars of Untitled, the opening salvo of Interpol’s debut album Turn On The Bright Lights ring out across the venue. The band, dressed as standard in sharply tailored black suits and bathed in a twilight blue glow, cut as mysterious and intriguing a form as they did when they broke out of the New York indie rock scene that exploded at the turn of the millennium. With little more than a brief hello and an occasional ‘thank you’ to the rapturous crowd, the band powers through a setlist

that draws heavily from said debut and its 2004 follow-up Antics. A smattering of fan favourites from their subsequent four records are also thrown into the mix, with just a couple taken from their new album The Other Side Of Make Believe, which is released on July 15. It almost feels like a homecoming show, and by the time they bring proceedings to a close with a storming Slow Hands, there’s a collective sense amongst the crowd as they filter out of the venue into a balmy Camden high street, that the performance they’ve just witnessed will live long in the memory.

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See You On The Other Side

Fast forward a fortnight and Interpol frontman Paul Banks is chatting to Headliner via Zoom about that night in the capital.

“That show was a lot of fun, a lot of great energy,” he recalls, relaxed, eloquent, and generous with his time, albeit with detectable traces of the intensity that make him such a beguiling creative force. “In fact, it was a super awesome audience, so that was a great show among many. It’s been a lot of fun being back on the road. It’s more fun than it’s been in a long time. I think we’re playing very well. [The time off] was almost a good reset for the live thing.

Also, the spectre of the possibility of live not coming back, having been in the back of the mind for a while, means that being back on the road has this second level of paying off, like, ‘Shit, we’re here, period’, and the shows have been a lot of fun”.

Despite being one of the leading lights of the early ‘00s NYC indie

boom, Interpol often found critics of the time drawing parallels between them and British bands such as Joy Division and The Smiths, as opposed to any of their East Coast contemporaries. This, Banks explains, has played no small part in the welcome they so warmly receive from UK audiences to this day.

“There is a great relationship with the UK and there are some elements as to why that would make sense,” he explains. “There is a certain Britishness to our sound, plus, I was born in England, Daniel was born in England, so there is a connection there. But we were really introduced to the UK as part of the New York wave in the early 2000s, so we are quintessentially a New York band.

But there has been a connection with the UK. The UK broke The Strokes, and the NME was involved in this New York rock scene hype that was more exaggerated than what was happening in New York at the time.

So, we really started out over here with our best foot forward.”

That 2000s wave is a topic that comes to the fore again during the course of our conversation, but our attention turns quickly to the upcoming release of The Other Side Of Make Believe, Interpol’s seventh album to date and the follow-up to 2018’s Marauder. It represents the band’s biggest sonic and musical leap to date, with Covid forcing Banks, guitarist Daniel Kessler and drummer Sam Fogarino to collaborate remotely for the very first time.

The result is a record that is at times gentler and looser than anything they have released to date, with bass and piano pulling focus at times from Kessler’s trademark sparkling guitar lines. Make no mistake, it is still every inch an Interpol record, but the unfamiliar process from which it was created has unquestionably left an imprint, as Banks elaborates.

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“IT’S BEEN A LOT OF FUN BEING BACK ON THE ROAD. IT’S MORE FUN THAN IT’S BEEN IN A LONG TIME.”

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Photographer: Atiba Jefferson

COVER STORY

“We found ourselves in late Spring, early summer 2020, all in different countries, being like, ‘Why not start jamming on some material’? Daniel had a batch of songs that he emailed to me. I bought a bass as I was living in Edinburgh at the time, so that was one of my pastimes during lockdown, day and night. So, I’d be writing basslines to these jams and then trying to do some vocal parts, which I would send to Sam so that he could create a groove. We would make do passing the baton around in a circle between the three of us and we just hashed it out that way.

“Historically, Daniel will bring songs into a rehearsal and we’ll just jam them and build up our parts live together, including the vocal,” he continues. “Not having that live room experience in the beginning with these songs made it a unique process for us, because I wasn’t competing with the drum volume when I was creating the vocal melody, or I wasn’t worried that I’ll keep fucking up the bassline I’m trying to write as no one is here having to hear it. Instead, I could master it and send it once it was exactly how I wanted it to be.

There were some interesting benefits

that came from working in isolation, but then we were able to get together in the Catskills last year to try out the material in a room together. In the end I think it sounds like us, but there are some new dimensions to the sound because of that remote writing process.

“My vocal and bass approach would have been different. Some of the songs are quite stretched out and relaxed, even the tempos, and that’s refreshing for us but probably wouldn’t have been the outcome if we were writing together in a room.

Seven albums in, it’s not a bad thing to be forced to try new things in the writing process. Songs like Something Changed and Greenwich have a nice pacing because we were just enjoying them leisurely at home.”

Another key factor in this sonic shift was the involvement of production icons Flood and Alan Moulder.

According to Banks, they opened the band up to outside influence in a way they have seldom explored.

“We’ve worked with Moulder before, he mixed a couple of records for us, but we’d never worked with Flood,”

Banks notes. “He’s a really interesting dude, a really talented producer, and has an incredible sensibility towards musicians and sound in general. He brought some real good mojo to the process and coaxed the best performances from each band member. He got an idea from the demos of what the songs should be and he helped to carry us over that line.

“An element of our sound is that we have rehearsed shitloads before we record, that’s why our sound has always been pretty meticulous, because we have played the songs hundreds of times in a room while we’re mapping out our parts. That makes the band really tight and has become one of the signatures of our sound. But with the last two records we’ve really invited Dave Fridmann and Flood in to deconstruct what we’re doing. Typically, it’s pretty well fleshed out, we’ve done a pretty good job of leaving enough open for a talented person to contribute something to how the record winds up, which is cool. The last two albums have really opened up that door.”

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INTERPOL

See You On The Other Side

Photographer: Atiba Jefferson

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After touching on some of the other producers Banks particularly admires – special mentions go to RZA, Madlib, J Dilla and El-P – our conversation returns to the subject of NYC in the early 2000s. Alongside Interpol, local luminaries such as The Strokes, Yeah, Yeah Yeahs, and TV On The Radio made up just a few of the bands spearheading a scene of rock’n’roll decadence and excess that would define guitar music on both sides of the pond for several years to come. Predictably, few of those acts – not those aforementioned – were still together or making music in a meaningful way by the end of that decade. So how have Banks and co endured where others crashed and burned?

“There’s a level of professionalism that goes into not derailing the gig,” he says carefully after a pause to consider his answer. “And the most important thing is that we still have chemistry together. That’s at the base of why HEADLINER MAGAZINE

we are still around. We still have musical ideas to express together; when we are writing it still feels as interesting and fresh as ever. We still inspire each other and are not all out of ideas. On the contrary, we still feel excited about the collaboration. And then there’s the professionalism of just not letting things go off the rails, whether it’s professionally or personally. We’ve always been serious about the fact we are a band, we make music, and we are really privileged to be in this situation. We just keep riding the wave of inspiration and trying not to fuck it all up!”

As for his recollections of the local scene at the time of Interpol’s emergence, he insists there was a degree of hype in the music press’s portrayal of the era.

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Photographer: Atiba Jefferson

“WE STILL HAVE CHEMISTRY TOGETHER. THAT’S AT THE BASE OF WHY WE ARE STILL AROUND.”

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See You On The Other Side

Photographer: Atiba Jefferson

“There was hype in the depiction of how the scene was,” he recalls, “but I don’t think it is just hype to say a lot of really great music came out of the same city at the same time.

If I look at TV On The Radio, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Blonde Redhead, The Strokes, Liars, The Walkmen, they all have total longevity to me, and will continue to be appreciated and discovered for a long time.

The greatness of those bands, I don’t think, was a hype job. But the illusion of us all chilling at the same bar on the same night saying, ‘Hey, check out my new demo’ to The Strokes [he laughs].”

He also pays tribute to the UK’s Sea Power (formerly British Sea Power), who the band spent time on the road with during their early years.

“They’re the best,” he states. “We loved touring with them and their shows were absolutely incredible. I HEADLINER MAGAZINE

loved the lyrics, all the musicians, all of their personalities were fantastic.

A really, really great band. That first record Apologies To Insect Life is amazing. I haven’t stayed super up to speed with them but I’m not at all surprised they have been consistently releasing great music because they are the real, bona fide item.”

Despite being just weeks away from the release of The Other Side Of Make Believe, Banks, as has been the case for the past two decades, also has a number of extracurricular activities on the boil. In the past he has released solo records under the moniker Julian Plenti, as well as his own name, while his collaborations with Wu-Tang Clan’s RZA (Banks & Steelz) and his latest outfit Muzz, have revealed musical sensibilities far removed from what Interpol fans may be familiar with.

“I’m always working on something, always writing something and different outlets come along or I’ll just choose to do a solo thing,” he says contemplatively. “Muzz is a record I put out at the beginning of the pandemic and that’s something I’m really proud of. We’re great collaborators and will definitely do something else. I’ve heard RZA is saying he’s down to do some more Banks & Steelz, which I’m always down for. And I’m working on some solo stuff now. There is always music to be written.”

For fans of Banks and Interpol, they wouldn’t have it any other way.

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KARL FRID

The Pain and Pleasure of Film Scoring

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THE PAIN AND PLEASURE OF FILM SCORING

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KARL FRID Studio-owner, multi-disciplinary artist and film composer Karl Frid is releasing his original music for Pleasure, the startling new film in which a young Swedish girl moves to Los Angeles and comes up against the grim realities of the pornography industry. Frid talks about his traditional classical music experiences and suddenly wanting to learn Afro-Cuban music and keep his jazz spirit alive. His sense of adventure is heard brilliantly in the music for Pleasure, which somehow blends opera and hip-hop.

It’s fairly undeniable that the most rounded musicians often make the best film composers, able to adapt and compose for all kinds of characters, storylines and settings.

Frid is a pretty bulletproof example of this; growing up in Sweden, he attended London’s prestigious Royal College of Music set in the opulence of West London, overlooking The Royal Albert Hall. But, not quite

gelling with his stringent classical trombone studies there, he abruptly moved to Havana, Cuba to learn Afro-Cuban music.

“I was planning on being at The Royal College of Music for four years,” Frid says from his Stockholm studio, Frid and Frid, which he owns with his brother and co-composer, Pär. “I was there as a classical

trombone player and I had the most fun year – it was one of the most fun years of my life. I met tons of beautiful people and really talented musicians. But, for me, it was a bit too conservative. I’ve always had a really broad taste in music and I’ve always been curious about different genres. I never want to limit myself to only doing one thing.”

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And so ensued a quite abrupt U-turn from his rigid trombone studies in affluent West London: “I started dreaming of some alternative and I was really set on this romantic idea of going to Brazil and studying bossa nova and samba stuff.

Then some friends of mine had just been to Cuba for a year in Havana.

They were really thrilled about it. I didn’t know anything about Cuban music, but I wanted that adventure of just letting go of everything that was familiar and trying something new.

That was probably the most fun year of my life. I learned so much there as well. Not just about music, but about life in general.”

Aside from his film composing output, these Latin American years still yield fruit for Frid: he is a longtime member of the Swedish salsa group Calle Real, considered as one of the best Latin groups in Europe. And that’s before mentioning Platina Jazz, a jazz group performing original arrangements of Japanese anime music.

In terms of getting a break in the big wide world of film and television, Frid and his brother started working on educational films for Swedish television. “Then we got this TV series that was on primetime Swedish television. I often get that question: ‘how did you get to do it? Who should you talk to?’ And it’s always about getting that foot in the door. Every time you do it, you do the best you can, and try to have good relations with the creators.”

Solid advice considering Frid recently completed writing music for Pleasure, selected by the Cannes Film Festival and also for a premiere at the Sundance Film Festival. Written and directed by fellow swede Ninja Thyberg, it follows Bella Cherry who moves from a small town in Sweden to Los Angeles with dreams of HEADLINER MAGAZINE

“NINJA WANTED THE MUSIC TO BE A CHARACTER OF ITS OWN. IT WAS REALLY IMPORTANT THAT IT WASN’T GENERIC OR THAT WE PUSHED EMOTIONS OR JUDGEMENT ONTO THE CHARACTERS OR THE AUDIENCE.”

working in the adult film industry. It’s a far cry from Downton Abbey, to put it mildly.

“It’s very controversial in a sense,” Frid agrees. “It’s about a young Swedish girl who goes to L.A to become the number one in the porn industry. We follow her on that journey. She’s a bit naive, she makes some mistakes, and gets herself into situations that are very painful for her, and that are painful to watch. She has to make a lot of sacrifices, her loyalty to her friends is tested and she really has to figure out what her moral limits are.”

It’s undoubtedly one of the most unique film scores you’re likely to hear this year, or any year for that matter.

Frid had the slightly unconventional idea to pursue a concoction of opera and hip-hop for the film. “First we talked about the cello as the voice for

Bella, but then Ninja wanted this epic score in a sense, and she wanted the music to be a character of its own.

It was really important that it wasn’t generic or that we pushed emotions or judgement onto the characters or the audience.

“Ninja was playing with the sounds of the female body; breathing and moaning to find that voice of Bella and we came to talk about opera.

Something we talked about a lot was the idea of the harlot versus the Madonna. So, I called an opera vocalist, Caroline Gentele, who I’ve worked with before, and we tried out a bunch of different stuff. Then I had the thought: what would happen if I put this together with a trap beat.

Something really special happened with that clash of sounds.”

COMPOSER

Something that gives Frid great pleasure is working with his Genelec speakers in his Stockholm studio.

“We’ve been working with Genelec at our studio for the past 11 years,” he says, “and we’re really happy. We use the 8050s, so we haven’t upgraded to the newest models yet. We tried different models as well over the years from other brands, but these suit us very well. They’re very direct and they have a clarity that I really appreciate when working with film music, because you need to be able to hear all the nuances when you’re working.

“If you’re playing loud or if it’s really subtle – they’re great in every situation. We recently had a

renovation in the studio so we had to borrow another studio, and I was working with a different pair of monitors. It was really hard working like that because you get used to that reference of how things sound. We have two studios and we have the same speakers in both rooms, but the room acoustics are slightly different so we tend to go in and listen in the other rooms for reference. We did a score three years ago with a big symphony orchestra and choir with electronics. After that we did a TV series with only ‘80s music with a lot of synthesisers, and to be able to rely on the speakers for all these different kinds of sounds, I feel really safe with Genelec.”

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Frid’s brilliantly varied career is set to continue with the upcoming music for Amina, a film about a Swedish single mother who is trying to make it as an MMA fighter, and several other projects that he remains tight-lipped about. But if you want a big dose of pleasure right now, Frid’s incredible opera-meets-modern production score for Pleasure is available to stream.

GENELEC.COM @KARLFRID

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MIKE PELANCONI

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MIKE PELANCONI Sound engineer and record producer Mike Pelanconi (better known under his record name, Prince Fatty) got his start in the studio in Brighton, going on to work alongside Snoop Dogg and Rick Rubin in L.A and produce and engineer for reggae legends in the UK. He explains that although moving to London decades ago, he now finds himself back in the south coast where it all began, where he’s been installing an extremely rare Neve 8068 desk into the soon-to-be-opened Seaside Studios. He explains why it’s all AC/DC’s fault…

Your group, Prince Fatty, was inspired by the optimistic, laid-back vibes of Jamaica in the early ‘70s. Where did your interest in reggae begin?

Growing up in the mid-to-late ‘80s, all the people that had vinyl suddenly had CDs, so because I expressed an interest in vinyl and I’d start flicking through the records, family or friends would say I could take the vinyls. By the time I was 13 or 14 I had a really bizarre record collection from all the hand-me-downs from relatives and friends. It varied from all the classics like Bob Marley, Jimi Hendrix and Led Zeppelin to some crazy jazz music and really weird stuff. I got

lucky because my friend’s mum had a Rasta boyfriend and he took her to a record shop and bought her the best 10 reggae albums – even now, they are still the best. Fast forward X amount of years later and I’m in her living room and she’s like, ‘Oh, you can have my records’, so I got these 10 albums. It was stuff like Israel Vibration, Burning Spear – really serious reggae music. I would try to copy and learn the basslines. What fascinated me was the fact that it was the first time I’d heard records with no singing on them – just drums, bass and atmosphere.

How did this love of reggae go on to influence your work as an engineer and producer, as well the Prince Fatty sound?

When I moved to London, I started working with Rebel MC, and the guys there were already sampling Burning Spear and all that stuff. So I knew the records they were sampling. Then I started working in a studio in Brixton and all the local reggae artists used to work out of there – really special guys from the ‘60s. For example, Roy Shirley is one of the most special reggae singer songwriters from the ‘60s. Anybody that knows reggae music knows the importance of HEADLINERMAGAZINE.NET

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“LATER WHEN I STARTED DOING MY THING AS PRINCE FATTY, IT WAS NATURAL FOR ME. I JUST CALLED MY OLD FRIENDS TO MAKE MUSIC. I LOVE IT – IT’S MY HOBBY THAT TURNED INTO A FULL TIME JOB.”

Roy Shirley, and as a 16 or 17 year old I had no idea that this old, lovely, supertalented black gentleman was who he was. He used to come in and book little sessions here and there. It was so nice to work with him and I always loved it, but I just had no idea of his history. No one ever told me, “Hey, that’s the great Roy Shirley who was one of the co-founders of rocksteady”.

I was very lucky to work with all those guys in a very natural, organic way, so I was comfortable working with Jamaican artists – I didn’t have a problem understanding them or their vibes. Later when I started doing my thing as Prince Fatty, it was natural for me. I just called my old friends to make music. I love it – it’s my hobby that turned into a full time job.

You’ve recently been involved in setting up a brand new, dedicated recording studio in Brighton called Seaside Studios (formerly a 1910 Salvation Army hall), which will open in late August 2022. No expense has been spared when it comes to equipment including an extremely rare Neve 8068 desk. Why did the owner, Russell Church opt for this particular console?

Russell loves AC/DC’s Back in Black – he thinks it is one of the bestsounding records ever made. He was like, “Wow, whatever that was recorded on, I want one of those too!”

He managed to track one down. He’s got a very special one. The history of this particular desk is quite fun HEADLINER MAGAZINE

too – it comes from Ibiza and it’s had a lot of funk made on it. We’ve been told that Nile Rodgers and people like George Clinton and Daft Punk used it. I helped him install the desk.

The 8068 was basically the Ferrari or the Rolls Royce of the Neve era of mixing consoles. It was made in 1976, and the mid ‘70s was the peak for real analogue audio equipment where money was no object when it came to creating the most fantastic equipment possible. The 8068 is

a beautiful, handmade mixing desk. It’s unbelievable-sounding.

There’s a reason why almost 50 years after they made them, they’re still one of the most sought after mixing desks in the world. So many famous recordings were done on 8068s. When I was growing up, as a sound engineer, everyone always referenced Steely Dan albums as being the sonic masterpieces of the late ‘70s – and they were all done on Neve 8068s.

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The 8068 is considered to be one of, if not the best, vintage Neve console for tracking and mixing; have you found that to be the case?

Yeah, of course. It’s one of the best mixing and recording desks. You have to record on it and mix on it to get the full effect. As a recording console is where it comes through the best, because the microphone amplifiers on it are very special, so when you record on it and then mix down on it, it is beautiful. To give you an idea, many times I would record something on a 8068 console and then for whatever reason, the record company would decide to then go and do the mix elsewhere. Then we would spend most of our time trying to catch our tails again, and we’d be constantly referencing the mix of the 8068 console to even come close to it.

It was a struggle even though it was the same recorded source material.

They really do have a sonic quality to them. Some people prefer the earlier designs that Neve produced, but I disagree. I think they’re inferior. The 8068 era of Neves, in my opinion, is the best yet – hands down.

Anyone that knows their vintage Neve consoles knows this must have been one hell of an investment…

It’s a multimillion pound facility, no doubt. Like I said, Russell is nuts!

That’s why I love him. I think he’s a genius and very brave. But also at the same time, fortune favours the brave, and to put a world class recording facility together right now is a great achievement, especially as he’s been building it through the pandemic as well. He’s managed to do it with all the possible delays and hassles you can imagine. I look forward to Seaside Studios opening.

The reality is, you can have the best mixing console in the world, but if the acoustics and the environment aren’t great, then you can only achieve so much. Russell has gone to great lengths to produce and design a world class mixing room with first class acoustics, and also a beautiful, very large live room that can accommodate a really big band without any cramping or acoustic defects. So you can go there and make something special.

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Seaside Studios is also home to 12 AMS Neve 1081R mic preamps; how will those be essential for engineers making music at the studio?

It depends on the level of production and what people are recording. I tend to work quite sparsely so I rarely need more than 20 or 24 mic amps in a session, but occasionally you’re gonna get a much bigger production where you need 40 mic amps. That’s why Russell got the 1081s, because they’re brilliant and are from the same era – even though they’ve got slightly different numbers – but they’re all Class AB Neve designs.

They’re the crème de la crème and are exactly the right thing to compliment the studio with.

AMS-NEVE.COM PRINCEFATTY.CO.UK SEASIDESTUDIOS.CO.UK

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GLASTONBURY 2022

A Triumphant Return

A TRIUMPHANT RETURN

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Celebrating its 50th anniversary and returning after a two-year Covid-induced absence, Glastonbury 2022 served up one of the most memorable outings in the festival’s storied history, with headliners Billie Eilish, Sir Paul McCartney and Kendrick Lamar each delivering showstopping performances that will live long in the memory.

With Glastonbury-goers deprived of the wonders of Worthy Farm for the past two years, the excitement at being back virtually guaranteed that – barring a ’97 style washout – this year would be something of a standout edition. However, irrespective of the anniversary festivities and the unbridled jubilation felt on account of its return, 2022 truly felt like a special year for Glastonbury.

Of course, the vast Worthy Farm site offers treasures far beyond the line-ups gracing its main stages, but this year’s Pyramid Stage headliners poignantly encompassed everything that makes Glastonbury a festival unlike any other.

Setting the record for youngest ever Glastonbury headliner, 20-yearold US pop icon Billie Eilish brought Friday night to a close with a set brimming with youthful exuberance, pyrotechnics and a fearlessness that was something to behold. There’s an effortlessness to Eilish’s performance, as she bounces around the stage looking like she’s having the time of her life, while never once appearing anything other than entirely at home on one of the world’s biggest and most iconic platforms.

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Her confidence and enthusiasm are utterly infectious. From minute-one she holds the crowd comfortably in the palm of her hand and doesn’t let go until the lights go down. At no point is there a sense that she is overawed or overcome by the occasion, and if her career continues on its current trajectory, one feels that this may not be the last time we see her name gracing the Pyramid Stage’s top spot.

in another 80 years of Glastonbury.

From The Beatles catalogue we get, to name a few, Got To Get You Into My Life, Getting Better, Love Me Do, Lady Madonna, Helter Skelter, Being For The Benefit Of Mr Kite, Something (played on a ukulele given to him by the late George Harrison), and the predictable yet ever-rousing airings of Let It Be and Hey Jude, cueing the singalong to end all singalongs.

How better then, to follow-up one of pop’s brightest young stars with one of its longest-reigning legends. Topping the bill on Saturday night was Paul McCartney, who in turn becomes Glastonbury’s oldest ever headliner at the age of 80. Indeed, it’s hard to imagine another octogenarian being able to hold the stage with McCartney’s boyish enthusiasm, rattling off an almost three-hour long set as if it were the easiest thing in the world. Only in his voice does his vintage occasionally reveal itself, such as on The Beatles classic Blackbird, where his weathered vocals almost add to what is already one of the set’s most moving moments.

It’s not all about The Beatles though, with Wings classics like Junior’s Farm, Letting Go, Let ‘Em In, Nineteen Hundred and Eighty-Five and a firework-filled Live And Let Die all received rapturously by the enormous crowd.

Over the course of 36 songs he offers up a fairly eclectic mix of Beatles, Wings and solo material, roaring straight out of the blocks with a blistering rendition of Can’t Buy Me Love. What follows is a set that is unlikely to be matched

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Over two hours into the set, McCartney still has a few surprises up his sleeve that render even the most seasoned Glastonbury attendees lost for words.

First up, is the introduction of none other than Dave Grohl, the Foo Fighters and Nirvana legend making his first major public appearance since the death of his bandmate Taylor Hawkins earlier this year, who breaks straight into thundering versions of I Saw Her Standing There and Band On The Run. Though beaming with excitement at the occasion, there is a detectable air of emotion in Grohl’s demeanour that makes his guest spot all the more powerful.

Before the crowd have had a chance to catch their breath, he then welcomes to the stage his “friend from the East Coast”, Bruce Springsteen. The response at seeing such an array of legends – all Glastonbury headliners – sharing the stage together is a mixture of shock and euphoria. After a quick exchange between Macca and The Boss, they launch into a raucous version of Springsteen’s classic Glory Days and then straight into The Beatles’ I Wanna Be Your Man. If that wasn’t enough, Worthy Farm is treated to a performance of I’ve Got A Feeling, complete with video footage of John Lennon singing his parts in duet with McCartney, before a spectacular medley of The Beatles Abbey Road album closing tracks (Golden Slumbers, Carry That Weight, The End).

By the time McCartney, his band, Grohl and Springsteen embrace and give their final bow to the crowd, there are more than a few tears amongst the audience and a sense that what has been witnessed is something that will go down in not just Glastonbury history, but music history in general as a truly iconic moment.

Needless to say, it’s an impossible act to follow. But what does ensue at the same time on Sunday night is another performance that is likely to be looked back on as one of the most original and visionary sets in recent times. Revered as one of the most celebrated and talented rappers of his generation, Kenrick Lamar’s Sunday night Pyramid Stage show sees him perform a career-spanning set that is jaw-dropping not only in its intensity but also the elements of musical theatre that frame it. A troupe of tightly choreographed dancers perform elaborate routines around him, while white lights flood the stage and lyrics and video footage sporadically appear behind him. It is performance art of the highest order.

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Donning a bejewelled crown of thorns, Lamar’s presence is magnetic throughout, even when simply looking out into the ocean of people before him, the audience is never anything less than transfixed. During his finale, a rendition of Saviour from his latest album Mr Morale And The Big Steppers, the crown of thorns drips blood down his face and onto the white shirt he is wearing, making for a fittingly stark closing image, before repeating the line over and with escalating aggression, “They judge you, they judge Christ, godspeed for women’s rights”. It brings both a staggering set and an iconic Glastonbury 2022 to a profound and spine tingling close.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the BBC’s expansive live and on demand Glastonbury coverage set a new record this year, with content streamed a record 34.1m times on BBC iPlayer and played 2.3m times on BBC Sounds. On BBC iPlayer, some 23 million streams were live, which is the highest on record for a BBC programme brand.

Among the most popular sets on the BBC over the weekend were McCartney and Eilish, as well as Crowded House, Diana Ross, Little Simz, Megan Thee Stallion, Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds and Sam Fender.

Streams increased by 116% on BBC iPlayer and 205% on BBC Sounds from 2019 when the festival was last held - up from 15.8m and 765,000, respectively.

In addition to record audiences on BBC iPlayer and BBC Sounds, millions also watched coverage across each of its TV channels. McCartney’s Glastonbury performance on BBC One had a peak audience of 3.9 million and an average audience of 2.7 million and Diana Ross’ Legends slot performance on BBC One had a peak audience of 3.8 million and an average audience of 3.1 million.

Lorna Clarke, BBC director of music, HEADLINER MAGAZINE

“THERE IS A LOT TO BE CYNICAL ABOUT IN THE MUSIC INDUSTRY, BUT IT’S DIFFICULT TO BE CYNICAL ABOUT GLASTONBURY.” - MATT EVERITT

commented: “The BBC provided the ultimate armchair experience of the world’s best-loved festival this weekend with a dedicated Glastonbury channel on BBC iPlayer, 6 Music’s All Day Glastonbury coverage, performances from the biggest artists on demand on BBC Sounds and over 35 hours of coverage across our TV channels.

“The party isn’t over yet, with over 90 sets and key tracks from the five filmed stages available to watch on BBC iPlayer – including Pyramid Stage performances in Ultra High Definition.”

Headliner also spoke to some of BBC Radio’s top broadcasters about this year’s Glastonbury return to find out why they believe the Worthy Farm event remains an outlier in the festival field.

“There is a lot to be cynical about in the music industry but coming off the back of everything the industry has been through, it’s very difficult to be cynical about Glastonbury,” said 6 Music’s Matt Everitt. “It gives £3 million a year to charity, it’s non-corporate sponsored – it’s Water Aid, Greenpeace and Oxfam – they give so much. It’s the very best of us, the atmosphere, the spirit and the way people look after each other. Is it

the only thing I’m not cynical about in the music industry? It might be!”

6 Music and Radio 2 presenter Craig Charles says he believes that Glastonbury has remained unique on account of its refusal to tame its wilder extremities.

“It’s maintained its naughty side,” he tells Headliner. “And it hasn’t gone too corporate. Yes, it’s gone corporate in places, but it needs that because it costs an awful lot of money to put Glastonbury on. They’ve left places like Block 9 and Shangri La alone.

One of my greatest memories was playing Arcadia in the mouth of that massive spider and the fire from the flamethrowers. I thought the records were going to melt. But there was so much creativity, from the set design to the huge machines, it has kept that wild side. It still has the carefree hippy side, and that for me is the essence.”

As for the appeal of Glastonbury’s outermost reaches, 6 Music DJ and Catatonia star Cerys Matthews shared with us a memory of her first experience broadcasting live from the festival and the impression it left on her:

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“During my first broadcast, I’d put on a mobile pack and had a microphone and stand on a green hill overlooking Glastonbury Tor. I’d spent much of the show sharing the ancient history of the area.

While looking over these auspicious fields, I did a closing link where I imagined we, the Glastonbury festival-goers would, at the end - just like the mythical characters of these local legends who’d slunk away to the underworld - ebb back to our homes, and there wait for the next year’s date to come around, before reappearing again to worship together on these lands. That felt special. Ageless.

“And this rich and auspicious history of the surrounding area, in addition to the farm element, and Michael Eavis’ eccentricity and the welcome he has always shown to leftfield thinking. All these start to mark it out as different. Also Vince Power, aka the Mean Fiddler, also needs some credit here for turning it around - making it one of the earliest festivals to move from being a more casual affair to becoming the user-friendly, charity earning colossus that we know and love the world over.”

Roll on Glastonbury 2023.

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COLDPLAY

Music Of The Spheres

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COLDPLAY Coldplay’s recent Music of the Spheres US tour saw all of its operations adapted to minimise CO2 emissions in line with the best science and practices, from set build and travel to freight, power, and sound.

For every ticket sold a tree will also be planted, with a portion of the proceeds going to a variety of global green initiatives.

The Coldplay camp requested that the sound system be 50% more energy efficient than on their previous tour in 2016-17. In turn, Firehouse Productions deployed d&b audiotechnik GSL and KSL loudspeakers for their efficiency, paired with D80 amplifiers that demand less input power and enhanced energy saving features.

“Firehouse supports the European Coldplay dates alongside Wigwam.

While Firehouse is handling the PA in the states, Wigwam will be providing production later this year when the

tour heads to Europe,” said Nick Bechard, account manager, Firehouse Productions. “It is a joint effort that has worked very well.”

The d&b SL-Series was developed with efficiency in mind, reducing power requirements by up to 50% for equivalent sound pressure output levels compared to former systems.

“99% of the venues will be outdoor, as in stadiums with no roofs,” states Tony Smith, head of audio and sound designer for Coldplay. “As the sound

limits within and outside the stadiums in Latin and North America are not monitored, use of NoizCalc has not been implemented yet. Once we get into Europe, sound emissions will be an issue and NoizCalc will be a useful tool, but with ArrayProcessing more so – I can predict what will stay in the stadium and at what level. Also, with SL-Series and its full-bandwidth cardioid pattern, the lack of sound from the back of the array will also help for any upstage level monitoring where the sensitive areas usually are.”

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“THE SL-SERIES, EVEN IN THE SMALLER FORMAT, GIVES A GREAT PUNCH AT HALF THE SIZE AND POWER CONSUMPTION.”

d&b NoizCalc was developed in direct collaboration with SoundPlan for predicting environmental noise pollution into the surrounding areas of an outdoor performance. It can account for topography, buildings, wind speed, air temperature and humidity.

Smith added that ArrayProcessing has become a vital tool “for regulating sound emissions, but also sound levels within the stadiums.

There are some sites where the loudest area of the audience is monitored for audience protection against hearing damage. With J-Series the local authority was surprised with the uniform sound level across the audience area, and now with SL-Series I am happy to continue this consistency.”

Smith noted that they are also sending data to d&b audiotechnik R&D so they can monitor the power usage.

The first leg of the tour was in Latin America, with Firehouse helping arrange local suppliers and as much local equipment as possible, using predominantly J-Series with SL-SUB. “Many venues are already adopting sustainability strategies and artists HEADLINER MAGAZINE

have an increasingly strong desire to tour in an environmentally friendly way,” said Marc Lopez, VP of marketing, d&b audiotechnik Americas. “d&b received a Green Guardian Award in recognition of the work being done to reduce the carbon footprint of the live entertainment business. We are privileged to aid Coldplay in their sustainability initiative.”

The Coldplay d&b system configuration consists of 16 GSL8 per side for main hangs, 16 GSL8 per side for side hangs, six SL-SUBs flown per side, 18 KSL8 per side for 270 hangs, four delay towers with 16 KSL8 per hang, 18 SL-SUBs for ground subs, six Y7Ps, and eight Y10Ps for front fills.

There are 116 D80 amplifiers total: 40 per side of stage, nine per delay tower. A Luminex Network backbone is used for amplifier control with an Optocore backbone for AES distribution of signal with an analogue backup.

Firehouse also provided a support control package including two DiGiCo SD10s, while Wigwam is providing the Coldplay control system package. Coldplay control is based around DiGiCo SD7Q, SD10RE, SD Racks, Nanos, Minis

all with 32Bit Cards, utilising two loops. Optocore festival boxes, M12 with DD2s are used to transport backline MADI lines onto the loop.

DirectOut Prodigys, both .MC and .MP, are used for analogue I/O to MADI and system EQ and control.

Other systems provided by Wigwam include Wisycom IEMs, two M2 stage monitors and one J-SUB for bass player Guy Berryman. XSL tops will be used in Europe paired with KSL-SUBs for side fill.

“Now we have no sound on stage,” said Smith. “We felt the need to fill the void a little or at least have that ability to give some clean audio rather than the mush given off by other PA systems. Again, the SLSeries, even in the smaller format, gives a great punch at half the size and power consumption.”

DBAUDIO.COM

JOSHUA FAULKNER ON USING THE MUSIC MISSION “One day you could be recording a string section, the next you could be recording a Skepta vocal or a soprano. So having something as solid and easily portable as the Anubis interface, which sounds amazing every time, is priceless.”

merging.com/anubis

Merging Technologies SA, Le Verney 4, CH-1070, Puidoux, Switzerland

T +41 21 946 0444

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ROBOT KOCH

Immersive Creations

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Headliner takes a trip down to the London home of L-Acoustics to check out L-Acoustics Creations, where a small audience are given the chance to entirely unplug and hear the UK premiere playback of The Next Billion Years by Robot Koch, reworked by his own mind-massaging ambient project, Foam and Sand.

If you’re not familiar with Robot Koch, he’s a Berlin-originating artist who now resides in Los Angeles, and a man Headliner has dubbed a “transcendent trailblazer” in the past. In fact, the BBC’s Bobby Friction commented that his music “sounds like artificial intelligence discovering religion”. If an audience listening to his album with their eyes closed and the lights turned down in the quaintest part of London sounds niche, try some of his other projects on for size: he has even toured planetariums to perform

an immersive Full Dome Live Show with 3D surround sound and 360 visuals.

Julie Blore Bizot, director of brand and communications at L-Acoustics Creations, was kind enough to give the full technical rundown of the event – after which Headliner was, of course, fully sold and salivating at the prospect of hearing this new music through such stunning speakers.

“L-Acoustics Creations has been hosting intimate listening events since pre-pandemic, and resumed since restrictions were lifted,” she explains. “We connected with Robot Koch around the Pitchblack Playback premiere of Jon Hopkins’ Music for Psychedelic Therapy in our immersive sound space in Los Angeles, which mirrors our London environment. That conversation led to mutual discovery and then collaboration around the

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global premiere of The Next Billion Years. We are moved by both the simplicity and depth of this sonically enveloping album which we are fond of describing as ‘a soothing blanket for the soul’.”

How L-Acoustics took this recorded music and rendered it for these outrageously high-quality speakers is particularly fascinating. “Working from the artistic choices that had been made in the Dolby Atmos mix, the artist opted to take full advantage of the higher spatial resolution of L-Acoustics Creations’ 18.1.12 immersive spaces, which we call ‘Ocean’ in London and Los Angeles,” Bizot says.

“L-Acoustics’ L-ISA Studio software was used to place sound objects in this 3D environment to create this special L-ISA mix. The artist worked with one of our application engineers in Los Angeles to create this ‘upmix’.

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ROBOT KOCH

Immersive Creations

“WHO KNEW THAT SIMPLY LISTENING TO AN ALBUM COULD BE AS INCREDIBLE AS A LIVE CONCERT?”

“The level of detail and immersion was astonishing,” she enthuses. “When our London engineer received the files, displayed the circular graphic interface of the L-ISA Studio software and did a sound check, he was fascinated that there was no true frontal sound stage to the mix. Often we encounter spatial audio mixes that still have a clear, ‘this is the front’ orientation. In The Next Billion Years, the choice was to truly envelop listeners in a hemisphere of music. It’s as if spatial audio becomes a kind of instrument in itself.

Considering the artist’s past forward-thinking projects creating immersive experiences for planetariums, he is ahead of the game in considering how to present music spatially.”

With that said, the audience slowly filters into this sonic headquarters, are presented with olives, Booja Booja chocolates and beer or wine to whet the appetite before this most transportive of listening experiences. Music journalists, musicians and people from the world of music tech are all excited for what awaits, and it’s perhaps unsurprising that musician and tech wizard Imogen Heap turns up to take a listen too.

As everyone settles into their seat/bean bag, a prerecorded message from Koch is played. As well as thanking everyone for being there and his apologies for not being able to get there from California, he affirms the idea of ‘immersive listening’ — the lights will be dimmed, phones placed firmly in bags/pockets, and shutting eyes is recommended so that it really is just us, the music, and nothing else.

The room darkens, conversations end and drinks and phones are set aside. And, goodness gracious, this music floats the audience up to some astral plane that happens to be incredibly calming. It doesn’t matter how stuffy and HEADLINER MAGAZINE

busy the tube to get here was – the opening track Liquid perfectly blends ambient synths and clarinets in a way that makes all those things melt away.

We sink even deeper as Stars As Eyes plays next, although this is very much the kind of album where time seems to cease, and as a result, all the songs seem to intersperse in a non-linear fashion. This song features violins played with the faintest of delicacy, over an ethereal bass line and vinyl crackle. Such artistic choices are so much more delightful in the Ocean Immersive Space.

One could go so far as to call it a mind-expanding experience, especially as the spacious piano chords and cellos of Post String Theory appear as and when they please. Said mind-expansion is taken so much further and made more immersive by the surrounding, wall-mounted L-Acoustics speakers — no acoustic detail is missed, and you almost feel as if the music is a cloud carrying you along. It’s a gorgeous album rendered even more beautiful by these world-leading bits of kit.

It’s a 28-minute album that feels somewhere between mere minutes and hours — it feels very hard to say when you’re dropped in this immersive listening experience.

Everyone gradually opens their eyes, has a stretch and reluctantly leaves their comfy seat or bean bag. Some stay to chat, albeit in a very spaced-out kind of way. Koch delights everyone by appearing on Facetime to quickly say hello and ask what everyone thought. Who knew that simply listening to an album could be as incredible as a live concert, by simply being fully present to the experience?

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MAITA

Call of the Wild

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Portland, Oregon-based band MAITA recently released their second album I Just Want To Be Wild For You, a finely balanced concoction of intimate vignettes, alt-rock and power pop that builds on the foundations laid by its predecessor, 2020’s Best Wishes. Here, chief songwriter and vocalist Maria Maita-Keppeler and bandmate and recording engineer Matthew Zeltzer open up on the challenges of releasing two records during Covid, the sonic evolution that exists between the two records and the influences that have shaped their creative process…

Tell us about the formation of MAITA? Maria: We met a while ago and didn’t start playing music together at first. We were both independent songwriters so we did a lot of touring together as independent artists who would back each other up a little bit. Then over the last five years we started to put our energy into working on a band, and we’ve always worked on the records together; we co-produced the records and Matthew engineered them.

Your first record came out just after the pandemic hit, which must have been incredibly difficult and frustrating for an artist putting out their debut. How did you handle those challenges?

Matthew: That record was due to come out on March 15, 2020, and we were supposed to fly to Europe a week later, then the travel ban happened.

Once we knew the pandemic was going to be a big thing our team got together and said we shouldn’t

release the album right now. I didn’t really want to do that because we’d been gearing up to release it for so long, but it was the right idea, so we pushed it back two months. And there was that initial period where everyone was panicking and buying too much toilet paper and there wasn’t much time for listening to music. So, moving it to May was a good idea.

Maria: We found ways to make the release feel special still, but it was a HEADLINERMAGAZINE.NET

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MAITA

Call of the Wild

challenge to keep momentum going, and without touring it’s hard to prolong the life of a record. I ended up doing an illustrated album towards the end of that year. I wanted to give the record a bit more life, so I ended up making a piece of art for every song and releasing those one by one throughout the year. It was a really cool project for me, because I was able to show a more whimsical side of the record and it allowed people to interact with the songs in a different way.

You released your second record earlier this year, which you have been able to tour to some degree at least. How has it felt to play some shows at last?

Matthew: It’s been great. When the pandemic hit, Maria and I had been touring for about four years straight, and whether we liked the circumstances or not, it was probably good for us to take a little break from the road. I think a lot of touring musicians felt the same. It made them reassess their relationship with touring.

We really love playing shows and enjoy being on the road, but there are things about being on tour that are unhealthy. Being able to step away means we can reassess what our priorities are – like how we spend our off days and spending more time with family when we aren’t touring.

How did you approach the making of each album – how different were the processes?

Maria: They were recorded pretty differently. Best Wishes was tracked in Oregon at a 100-year-old theatre and our friend Bart Budwig, who is an engineer and musician, tracked the basics for us all together on stage in one room. Then we took the over dubs to Portland where Matthew tracked them.

Matthew: Bart likes to work with all the musicians in the same room, so we had a bass amp onstage, and what that ended up doing was gelling the rhythm section, so there was really no picking and choosing. Fortunately, our rhythm section are great session musicians. The challenge was that, because the vocals are in the same room as the drums, the drums bleed into the vocal and acoustic guitar mics.

Japanese Waitress has no overdubs and is just a live take, and some of the other songs we would keep my guitar.

We mostly pulled Maria’s stuff and re-recorded that, then added layers to everything we have. A lot of times the songs are as they were live, but we’ll add harmonies or keys.

Maria: We knew it wasn’t going to be completely polished, but we kind of fell in love with that aspect of the record and it came out in a really unique way.

But going into the second record, we knew we wanted to have a little bit more control over the performance and the recording process.

Matthew: For the second record we did all the over dubs in Portland in the basement of a church – it’s not religiously affiliated – and what is great about that studio is we wired up a snake into the sanctuary that had a beautiful grand piano, so we could record piano in this big, beautiful room with tall, vaulted wood ceilings, and you can hear the sound of the rain.

For this record we also had a lot more isolation - the amps were in different rooms. We also just knew who we were as a band more, whereas I think Best Wishes felt more like a solo record with a band. The song Wild For You was supposed to be on Best Wishes but we just couldn’t get it sounding how we wanted it, so we re-recorded that and it ended up being the title track for the new album.

There’s a real ebb and flow to the new record, with a great mixture of quiet and louder moments. Was there a deliberate move to explore the extremities of the band’s sound with this album?

Maria: We really do try our best to serve the song rather than a particular

“WE WANTED TO HAVE A LITTLE BIT MORE CONTROL OVER THE PERFORMANCE AND THE RECORDING PROCESS.”

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EMERGING HEADLINER

sound. I would like every song to feel like its own entity, where the music and the sonic qualities really serve the mood. We want each song to honour itself. At the same time, one of my favourite things about music from when I started listening to it, was when it takes the listener on an emotional journey. I love high highs and low lows and being able to do that as a band, there was this great moment of realising our loud moments can be even louder and our quieter moments can be even more stark. To be able to take people on that kind of journey is a great tool to have at your disposal.

What influenced that love of musical dynamics?

Maria: I grew up listening to a lot of Bright Eyes when I was a kid, and I loved that you could listen to one record and the genres and the tones of the songs jumped around so much but still felt cohesive and emotionally alive. That was a big inspiration and a bit of a security blanket for us – it’d be like, ‘is this OK?’ and then I’d go back and listen to Bright Eyes and be like, this is OK and it feels right!

Matthew: I grew up listening to The Beatles and we just watched the Get Back documentary; I just love

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how every track on every album is so different, especially the later ones.

Some stuff is really heavy and dark, and some is really whimsical.

What do you have coming up next?

Maria: We have some summer dates coming up, which should be great, and I’ve been writing this whole time for the next record. It’s just a matter of working out what is going to crystallise into what I think the next record should be like, and I want to take my time with that… It’s been a gnarly last two years!

MAITAMUSIC.COM JBLPRO.COM

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ROLLING STONES

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ROLLING STONES A cheer ripples through a heaving Hyde Park as video footage of the late Charlie Watts plays out on the vast video screen – expanded this year – that serves as the backdrop for the Rolling Stones’ second London show in seven days. As the video, showing clips of Watts from his six decades as the rocksteady backbone to the world’s greatest rock’n’roll band, fades to black and the impossibly sprightly figure of Mick Jagger skips from side stage to the customary catwalk, the crowd are in full, roaring voice. A quick hello and they launch straight into a barnstorming Get Off Of My Cloud, inspiring the first of a great many singalongs over the next two hours, as they rip through Stones staples such as Gimme Shelter, Miss You, Start Me Up, Sympathy For The Devil, Paint It Black and more, as well as an unexpected cover of Bob Dylan’s Like A Rolling Stone and the first outing of Angie on this current tour. By the time the set closer (I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction rings out over the capital, the chanting crowd can still be heard outside of Hyde Park long after Jagger, ‘Keef’, Ronnie and co have vacated the stage.

One week previous (June 25), the band made their first appearance as part of this year’s American Express presents British Summer Time concert series, which in addition to the two Stones shows, sees a typically stellar line-up of headliners perform throughout June and July, including Elton John, Eagles, Adele, Pearl Jam and Duran Duran.

While the calibre of performers this year was in keeping with previous editions of the series, there were, however, some notable changes on the production front, with an expanded stage setting and a larger PA than seen in previous years.

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Anyone who has attended BST Hyde Park shows in the past will have noticed that stage dressing, notably the two oak trees that frame the stage, has been altered to make for a larger spectacle. Now, just one tree remains, with the removal of the other enabling the production crew to incorporate even larger screens. In turn, an even larger audio component has been integrated.

As ever, the PA was a Martin Audio system supplied by Capital Sound, which is now owned by Solotech. To meet the new demands, a higher box count was deployed to both the front system and outfills. This provides more energy and SPL level at the HEADLINER MAGAZINE

front end, while offsite noise can still be controlled. As such, Martin Audio says that the feedback received this year is that this is the best the BST concert series has ever sounded.

Meanwhile, this year also saw Capital Sound invest in both Martin Audio WPC and WPL Wavefront Precision systems to add to their overall inventory, along with companion SXH218 subwoofers, which are used on some of the delay towers.

“There is a load more PA this year, partly because production has spent a lot of money making the stage a lot taller, which looks fantastic,” Martin Audio managing director Dom Harter

tells Headliner as we find him out in the field prior to the Stones’ stage time. “The main arrays have got longer and our hangs have got a little bit longer as well. This is to try to get better coverage and also to make sure that it looks right.

“The other change is that the first and second run of delays are the same but they have moved a bit. It’s all MLA on the front three rows as usual, and then as you go back it all changes this year. Capital Sound Solotech have invested in a load of Wavefront Precision so the next run of delays is all WPL, then the final two towers are WPC.”

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“THE RESPONSE HAS BEEN PRETTY DAMN GOOD. IT’S ALWAYS BEEN A GREAT SOUNDING RIG.”

The full system for the Great Oak Stage this year is made up of 19 MLA and one MLD (downfill) for each main hang; 15 MLA and one MLD for each side hang; and 32 MLX (subs) in broadside/ cardioid arrangement; and six sets of two MLA-Compact front fills.

Delay towers one, two, four, five and six feature seven MLA and one MLD on each, while delays three, seven, eight and nine feature 10 WPL and three SXH218 (subs) in a cardioid stack on each. Delays 10 and 11 are made up of eight WPC on each. All Wavefront Precision arrays are in one box resolution for maximum control.

control the low-mid a little bit better than we normally would. It’s always been a great PA here and it still is.”

For each of the shows that have taken place at the time of Headliner’s conversation with Harter, feedback across the board has been overwhelmingly positive, he tells us.

“The response has been pretty damn good,” he states. “Since AEG took the site on with Capital Sound, it’s always been a great sounding rig, and they’ve always been able to get a decent level here. And that has remained true this year. We’ve had great reports from engineers at the part through Capital Sound, and similarly with the other gigs on at the moment. It keeps getting a little bit better every year and we’re really chuffed with what’s been achieved. And it’s just great to be out in a big park with a great sounding system.”

And who could argue with that?

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According to Harter, the new look staging has had a positive impact on the sound at the shows this year.

“If anything the new setup means the sound has probably got a little bit better, because we have a few more modules in the array and a little bit of extra length, which means we can HEADLINERMAGAZINE.NET

LES 2000 CHORISTES

CODA at Galaxie Amnéville

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LES2000 CHORISTES Headliner discovers how CODA Audio systems helped solve the sonic puzzle of one of the world’s most ambitious shows…

Philippe Barguirdjian, sound engineer for Les 2000 Choristes events for 20 years now, was showing me the venue, Galaxie Amnéville. The stage has been graced by household names from Elton John to David Bowie, and even Snoop Dogg, and for three nights in May it would host an incredible spectacle, Les 2000 Choristes.

Conducted by Jacky Locks, Les 2000 Choristes is a fascinating mix of hobbyist and professional musicians, plus vocalists including Jean Baptiste Guegan and Anne Sila, celebrating the work of treasured French composer Jean-Jacques Goldman. Oh, and there’s the small matter of a 2,000 person choir.

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The project started around 25 years ago, and has performed in varying sizes and with ever-evolving lineups (naturally). Jacky Locks has been the mainstay, and it is instantly clear from events on the stage just how passionate he is about the project.

While the audience is able to focus on the spectacle on stage, for me – a former sound engineer – a quick glance at the stage configuration brought me out in cold sweats.

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I needn’t have worried. What could easily spiral into a mess of feedback and disappearing instruments was kept under control masterfully using the exceptional DiGiCo Quantum Console and a compact yet powerful CODA sound system.

Barguirdjian goes on to explain: “The system is plug and play. It is really a no EQ system except for a low cut.”

The difficulties of the unique aspect of the show would inevitably mean huge demands of the system. “The main challenge here is intelligibility,” he continues. “On the tutti’s (no lead singer) the choir act as the main singer but each voice section has different lyrics that should all be perfectly heard in the audience. To achieve this, the PA should deliver high quality on all of the audio spectrum and precise, beautiful mids and highs with no distortion.”

Barguirdjian was beaming as he explained how CODA’s ViRAY and N-RAY speakers facilitate this, “I have the chance to work with all the very top class pro audio systems that exist on earth, and ViRAY and N-RAY are the best.”

It didn’t take long for me to hear why Barguirdjian, a sound engineer with 40 years of experience, had such a glowing report on the CODA audio system.

The expert live mixing of over 150 sound sources (the choir alone required 120 microphones) should not be understated. I was fortunate that one of my first times hearing a CODA system was showcased in such an impressive way. In fact, without the CODA system, with its incredible Gain Before Feedback rating, the show simply couldn’t have worked in its current form.

The mid and high frequencies played such a key role in providing HEADLINER MAGAZINE

intelligibility in choral music, and the crystal clarity of CODA’s system meant that the vocals came sharply into focus whether the lead was taken

by Jean Baptiste or by a 200 person section of the choir.

When you hear sound engineers discuss CODA systems, they inevitably mention the phase response, the DDP driver technology, and the sensorcontrolled subs.

You can hear with crystalline quality whether in the front row, or right at the back. The DDP (Dual Diaphragm Planar) wave driver means a louder, clearer sound, thanks to increased power handling and extremely low distortion across the board, delivering clarity to every seat in the house.

The sensor-controlled subs provide a controlled low end. This doesn’t just

mean a strong and controlled low end – the bass frequencies also provide a strong and stable foundation for the mix. With the CODA system, there was no unwanted “booming” and mud after the drummer had hit the kick drum. So, in the low end, the rhythms stayed crisp and clear, leaving room for the full spectrum of sounds from the huge setup to be built up on top of a tight bass. Low frequencies don’t interfere with the beautiful orchestra and choral sound in the mid and high frequencies.

The phase response and linearity also helps with the control of the sound and means that as you walk around the venue, the sound remains incredibly consistent. The signature CODA features proved to be key weapons in combating one of the biggest issues in this unique show: feedback.

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“WITHOUT THE CODA SYSTEM, WITH ITS INCREDIBLE GAIN BEFORE FEEDBACK RATING, THE SHOW SIMPLY COULDN’T HAVE WORKED IN ITS CURRENT FORM.”

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Any audio pollution and bleed is going to be punished in a venue with over 120 microphones set up.

The CODA speakers offer perfect directivity and therefore amazing rejection of unwanted sounds.

Barguirdjian explained that the Gain Before Feedback levels were unrivalled compared to any other system, freeing him to mix uninhibitedly.

The speaker configuration included CODA Audio’s SC2-F Sensor Controlled Subwoofers, ViRAY and N-RAY speakers in the centre, and N-RAY outfills, completing the blanket dispersion and ensuring the same exceptional listening experience whether you’re in the front centre, or in any of the far corners of this goliath venue, which had been trimmed to a 4,500 capacity to accommodate such a massive stage setup and over 2,000 performers.

The setup included 24 ViRAY and 38 N-RAY speakers, doing the bulk of the heavy lifting with high end and mids at a canter. The sound engineers explained that this wasn’t a system they needed to push, even in such a big space.

12 SC2 subwoofers filled the room with rich, responsive bass frequencies, perfectly pairing with the ViRAY and N-RAY speakers, facilitating a balanced mix and allowing room in the mids and highs for the huge ensemble of sound sources.

Five T-RACK and eight M-RACK amps provided the power, and retained an elegantly simple solution, even for such an ambitious, large-scale show.

of experience as sound production manager at Arpege Son Lumiere, and has experience working in challenging environments. Working with Jean-Michel Jarre, he created some stunning and virtually unimaginable shows including a gig in the Sahara Desert, a 5.1 show for 18,000 people in Beijing, and a 140,000 capacity show in the shipyard of Gdansk.

There were also 18 HOPS5 speakers, and 10 CUE Twos which served as stage monitors for the army of performers.

His relationship with Jacky Locks, ‘The Chef’, was a joy to behold.

A connection between conductor and engineer that takes decades to cultivate, helping to create a mesmeric three-and-a-half hour performance and a stunning audio spectacle.

Philippe Barguirdjian is no stranger to bold projects. He has decades

With so many different elements to this show, the production has to be

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spot on, and so does the equipment.

Hearing Barguirdjian speak in such depth about the differences in technology now compared to 20 years ago underlined the fact that the brands such as CODA and DiGiCo, at the forefront of audio technology, aren’t just making life easier by giving more control, they are facilitating shows that may not otherwise be possible.

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USA 1-800-821-1121 In Canada, call 877-753-2876 In Europe, call +33 (0) 78558 3735 In South America, call +57 310799 4564

JOAN ARMATRADING

Born to Write

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Last month, Joan Armatrading received the 2022 MPG Award for Outstanding Contribution to UK Music, as the industry came together to recognise her influence upon songwriters the world over.

Headliner caught up with her to reflect on how she came to be one of the most revered songwriters of the past 50 years and how it feels to be gaining such accolades half a century on from when she first got started…

In virtually any creative, artistic or athletic endeavour, there are certain individuals who appear simply to have been born with a natural gift for their chosen discipline. In comedy, there are those with ‘funny bones’, who can seemingly conjure laughs out of thin air. In sport, whether it’s Lionel Messi, Tiger Woods or Serena Williams, there are figures with an innate style and skill that transcends anything that can be taught by even the most talented coaches. In music, Joan Armatrading is one such exponent.

For more than half a century, her extraordinary, ever-expanding

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catalogue has influenced and inspired artists all over the world.

Like all great songwriters, her finest work feels at once entirely unique and instantly familiar, blending the personal and the universal with deceptive simplicity. It can feel deceptively effortless, which perhaps isn’t surprising, given how naturally music came to Armatrading as a child.

done nothing for it, I was just born with it.”

“Before I even started writing songs I used to make up jokes and write funny little stories and limericks,” Armatrading says as Headliner joins her over Zoom. “But when my mum bought a piano – just because she thought it was a nice piece of furniture – I started making up tunes as soon as it arrived. It was obviously in me. Nobody showed me how to play it; it arrived, I opened the lid and I just started making up songs. I was born to write. I’ve never struggled to write, I’ve never had writers’ block. I can always write a song, whether it’s always a great song is something else [she laughs] but I can always write one. I almost can’t take any credit for what I do because I’ve

“I never played other people’s things, I just started with my own stuff,” she explains. “I wasn’t into being a fan of people when I was younger, and I wasn’t buying records. It was just me expressing myself. That’s not to say I don’t appreciate other people’s talents or that I think I’m ‘it’. You look at guitar players like Muddy Waters, Jimmy Page or Stevie Ray Vaughan, and people like Amy Winehouse… I love The Killers, Post Malone, and Justin Bieber. I thought Whitney Houston was ‘the voice’. There are so many people I think are seriously good, and I just want to be seriously good at what I do.”

“I WAS BORN TO WRITE. I’VE NEVER STRUGGLED TO WRITE, I’VE NEVER HAD WRITERS’ BLOCK. I CAN ALWAYS WRITE A SONG.”

Crucial to the development of Armatrading’s distinct songwriting style was the fact that there was rarely other people’s music playing in the house. As such, she was working from a blank canvas, largely untouched by outside influence.

Which begs the question, when did she first discover she might be ‘seriously good’?

“This isn’t supposed to sound bigheaded, but as soon as I started writing I knew I was good at it,” she states. “I don’t care if anybody else thinks I’m good at it, but I thought I was good at it, and it was something I wanted to get better at.

When I started, I was incredibly shy.

I was probably the shyest person I knew, but if I was to demonstrate a song or talk about my music, then I’d be the most confident person.

Thinking you’re good at something is what helps you to be good.”

This inherent belief in herself as a songwriter paid dividends not only in the doors it opened for her in the music business, but also with the producers and collaborators it would introduce her to.

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“ANYBODY WHO SAYS THEY AREN’T INTERESTED IN AWARDS SHOULD BE GIVEN A LIE DETECTOR TEST.”

“I know it’s not like this for everyone, but everywhere I went I was offered a contract,” she explains. “And then I chose where I wanted to go. I can’t believe how lucky I was that my first producer was Gus Dudgeon, because he was Elton John’s producer and Elton at that time was the biggest artist. And Gus was the kindest, most fantastic person. He was a great producer.

One of the things I loved was that he recognised that I knew what I wanted.

It wasn’t a case of him saying, ‘I’m the big producer, you do what I say’. I was very involved in the productions and arrangements of that album. Gus was so generous, and he was great at getting sounds.

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“The next producer I worked with in ’76 was Glyn Johns. Again, how lucky am I! He, like Gus, is one of the best in the business. They know what they’re doing. They know sounds, they know people, and they know how to get the best out of a studio situation. Glyn, like Gus, knew that I knew what I wanted. I can’t praise them enough.”

Armatrading’s work with Dudgeon and Johns resulted in significant acclaim, laying the foundations for a stellar career that would ensue over the subsequent five decades.

Her Dudgeon-produced debut Whatever’s For Us was well received by critics upon release in 1972, while 1976’s self-titled album, on which she

collaborated with Johns, produced one of her most successful and best loved songs in the form of Love And Affection, with Johns later reported as saying it was one of the best records he was ever associated with.

Since then, Armatrading has released an array of records that have brought Grammy and BRIT Awards nominations, as well as an Ivor Novello Award for Outstanding Contemporary Song Collection in 1996, and an array of awards marking the indelible print she is still impressing on the music industry. Most recently, she took to the stage at London’s Grosvenor House to collect the MPG Award for Outstanding Contribution to UK Music.

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“Anybody who says they aren’t interested in awards should be given a lie detector test,” she laughs when asked how it feels to be receiving such honours half a century into her career. “Because any recognition, especially from the business you are in, is great. It’s very complimentary and flattering. There is no other way of taking it. And I love this award because it’s for producing, and I’ve kind of been producing myself from day one, although on paper I have been producing myself since 1986. So it’s great that the MPG wants to recognise that.”

As a largely self-producing artist for so much of her career, how has her approach to work in the studio changed over the course of 50 years?

“Technically, most of us have had to change, but I was always interested in the technical aspect of recording anyway,” she elaborates. “I started off with my little cassette, then I got a two-track, a four-track, an eight track, all the way up to 24-track. Then I immediately went with computers, so that aspect is vastly different. Where you’d previously have a room with a great big mixing desk and lots of outboard stuff, it felt like a big spaceship. But now everything is on a computer. All the outboard stuff you used to have is just plugins now.

“But in terms of writing a song, I do it the way I always have. I write on the guitar or piano and then do the HEADLINER MAGAZINE

arrangements. I always want to know that I can play that song without anything else.”

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the pop world’s contemporary penchant for incorporating ‘teams’ of songwriters and collaborators is not one that Armatrading would entertain.

“The way I look at it, you have to do what you feel you have to do,” she says. “So, if someone feels that the only way to get to where they want to be is to write with another 10 people, then that’s what they’ve got to do. It’s not what I want to do, but you have to do what you feel comfortable doing. If they don’t feel comfortable, I’d say don’t do it. I want to be happy and enjoy what I’m doing. But if someone said to me, ‘Joan you have to write with six other people’, then I’d say I’m busy that day! But I’m not going to knock it, as I’m not in that person’s shoes.”

And as for what’s next, there’s still plenty of music to be released into the world.

“There is stuff on the horizon,” she concludes. “I always want to write, so there will be stuff coming out next year and every year until I die! That’s how that’ll go!”

MPG.ORG.UK JOANARMATRADING.COM

Photos: Thomas Peham (background), Alexander Popov, Benjamin Child, Donny Jiang, Hulki Okan Tabak, Marcos Luiz, Pablo Merchan-Montes, Rodan Can, William White (all unsplash)

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The art of creative engineering.

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IMAN OMARI

Compton Contemplator

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IMAN OMARI Growing up in ‘90s Compton, L.A, the absolute epicentre of hip-hop, to becoming one of the best-known producer-artists in the City of Angels who shares credits with Mac Miller and Kendrick Lamar…this could only refer to Iman Omari. Headliner finds time in Omari’s schedule to talk about being part of that hip-hop lineage, why his music touches on the metaphysical, and how using Waves plugins in his studio has helped shape him so much as an artist and producer.

“With gangsta rap and all of those things that came from Los Angeles, I would have to be affected by it, because I was there living it,” Omari says of being in Compton at this pivotal time in music. “I was born in 1990; I’m 31. So I grew up with that whole era of music. It’s a part of me no matter how you fold the piece of paper.”

“The breakthrough moment for me would be when I dropped my first project, Energy,” he reflects. “Before that, I had no interest in being an artist. I wanted to be in music, but I didn’t necessarily know how; maybe I just wanted to be an engineer? Once I made that project, and it did so well — that was just the sign for me to say, ‘Okay, let’s do this’.”

Expertly wearing the dual hats of a producer and artist, Omari feels the big moment that changed everything was the release of best-loved album, Energy in 2014.

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“I NEVER STOPPED USING WAVES. IT’S DEFINITELY THE GOLD STANDARD FOR ANYBODY THAT’S PRODUCING.”

On top of this album cementing his success as an artist, Omari really has worked with some of the most glittering names in rap music. “I was very good friends with Mac Miller,” he says.

“There’s a song that we have called Fight The Feeling that Mac and I did together. When he was finalising the project, he ended up throwing Kendrick Lamar on there, which I thought was monumental. Then I get a call saying, ‘Kendrick wants to walk out at the Grammys to one of your loops’, and I thought, ‘Wow, that’s major’. So he ends up walking out to this beat I have called Calamari. I think we just had a mutual respect for each other and I really appreciate it.”

Waves plugins have formed an important part of Omari’s fascinating career, and he explains how he first came to use them many moons ago.

“My uncle Joseph Lindberg has a studio in Eagle Rock that a lot of people go to called Iron Works,” he shares. “I started off just using stock Logic plugins and my uncle would come in and tease me, ‘How come you’re not using the HEADLINER MAGAZINE

H-Comp and the C1 and all the other Waves products?’ At the time I was thinking, ‘What’s the difference?’ But he was showing me his mixes and they would just sound a lot bigger and better.

“So I would always go to his studio only to use his computer, because at the time he had Waves and I didn’t. I got a lot of my bars by working on his machine! [laughs] From there, I never stopped using Waves. It’s definitely the gold standard for anybody that’s producing out here.”

Many producers seem to have their own set of go-to plugins, particularly with the huge variety on offer from Waves, and Omari is no exception to this rule. “I use the H-Delay religiously.

The PuigTec EQP-1A I use a lot, I like to use it for kicks. And it works really well in my mixes. I use the H-Comp a lot and the SSL Comp a lot – pretty religiously, actually.

“I basically used the H-Comp to learn how to compress. Because before, I didn’t really know how to look at the

VU metre. I had no real information on how to understand gain reduction and the rest. So when I was using H-Comp, it put things into perspective. I would implore anybody who’s starting out to try its presets. A lot of engineers don’t use the presets. But if you’re starting off, why not? Because that’s the only way you’ll be able to hear what this thing does if you don’t know what you’re doing.”

It’s very exciting to learn that Omari has his artist hat firmly back on, with a new album that he believes can rival the success of Energy. On the evidence of initial singles Get A Job and All They Wanna Do, it’s an LP which rap and music fans alike should be very excited about and put their energy behind.

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ROBERT ‘RAAB’ STEVENSON

Coaching the Stars

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ROBERT ‘RAAB’ STEVENSON Vocal coach, singer, songwriter, vocal producer and artist developer Robert ‘RAab’ Stevenson was simply born for a life in music. Having worked with some of the most famous voices and producers heard on the radio, RAab spoke to Headliner about his musical origins, his approach to cultivating the brightest talent in the business, and his extensive use of JH Audio IEMs on tour.

Justin Timberlake, Pharell Williams, Rihanna, Kelly Clarkson, Dave Matthews Band, Ne-Yo, Kelly Rowland, SZA, Lizzo, Doja Cat; the list of names that RAab has collaborated with really goes on and on. He’s palpably humble and eager to chat as he joins Headliner on a Zoom call from his home studio in Atlanta, and he’s been bouncing around everywhere, having recently got back from L.A with singer-songwriter Brandi Carlile who just performed two nights at the iconic Greek Theater. Just a normal day in the life of RAab, mind you.

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A particularly inquisitive child from a family of strict churchgoers, during department store visits RAab would sneak off to the TV section to watch the music videos of what were deemed ‘secular artists’ – the likes of Michael Jackson, Beastie Boys, Run DMC and LL Cool J. “I would listen to everything,” he recalls. “And then if I got caught, I’d be in trouble…”

Of all the singers in his family, RAab’s mother Mary would often be called up to perform whenever the family attended church, while his older sister was one of the first female drummers to play in the famous Florida Mass Choir. So with music in his blood, RAab followed suit, joining the school choirs and quickly falling in love with singing.

In his professional career, one of RAab’s biggest clients has been Justin Timberlake, who he has worked with for two decades and continues to vocal coach to this day. It was back in 2002 on Timberlake’s Justified tour when he first got the call, and the rest is history.

“I got a phone call from a friend of mine, Darrell ‘Dzo’ Adams; he’d got the call to work for Justin first, and then Justin asked him to find another guy, so I got contacted for the job,” RAab remembers fondly. “At that time I was in college; I did a partial scholarship singing in the choir and when I got the call, I went straight out to work with Justin on this promo run with no audition, which is where I met his vocal coach, the late Robin Wiley.

“I would ask her all of these questions, and she had answers that made sense.

It made an instant change with my voice just like that [snaps fingers]. I was blown away. But I wasn’t trying to be a voice coach at that point – I just wanted to be a better singer.”

It’s safe to say RAab learned the fundamentals of vocal training from Wiley, who sadly fell ill and passed HEADLINER MAGAZINE

Coaching the Stars

away in 2006 during a promo run of Timberlake’s FutureSex/LoveShow. It was at this point when he was asked to take up the mantle: “When Robin became ill she gave me a CD of vocal exercises, and to this day, I travel with it everywhere I go in honour of her, and use it to warm up Justin before any of his performances,” he says.

Although born out of unfortunate circumstances, RAab counts himself lucky to have been in the right place at the right time, which has been somewhat of a recurring theme throughout his storied career.

“During my first time working with Dave Matthews Band, I just went in to consult; Sting was on the same show and within that same session, he came in to say hi,” he laments. “I ended up warming both of them up at the same time before Sting went out on stage. I left not knowing that I would ever get called back – I was simply there to help. Dave ended up calling me back to get him ready for his tour, and nine years later, I’m still working with him.”

For over a decade now, RAab has also worked with the upper echelons of pop royalty, and arguably one of the most powerful voices in modern music – the seemingly untouchable Rihanna.

“Working with her is incredible,” he comments. “But when you work with artists of that level, they’re getting pulled left and right, and it’s not just about the music. She’s got fashion and makeup and shoes and many other parts of her brand that are constantly firing on all cylinders. My time with her is therefore very special for me, because with all the chaos going on around her, I have to bring not only her, but any artist back to the centre – to their art – in order for them to pull off these performances.”

RAab provides some context with an anecdote: “Rihanna had to record a video for a live DVD of her Wembley Stadium performance, and I couldn’t be there with her because my wife Chantal Stevenson was giving birth; she had agreed to let me bring a keyboard into the delivery room, and I warmed Rihanna up from there!” Now if that isn’t dedication to the craft, then Headliner doesn’t know what is…

“WITH ALL THE CHAOS GOING ON AROUND THEM, I HAVE TO BRING ARTISTS BACK TO THE CENTRE – TO THEIR ART – FOR THEM TO PULL OFF THESE PERFORMANCES.”

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So in the knowledge that his time with said musical superstars is increasingly more precious, RAab has to be quick and efficient when it comes to preparing these instantly recognisable voices before they hit the stage: “Even in my sessions now, I’ll record the whole thing so I can go back and analyse if there’s something I need to fix, not necessarily with the singer, because I can train that, but with my actual method,” he explains. “I’ll also put up a timer to see how fast I can balance out the voice. Sometimes I don’t get that much time, but the more time I get, the more I can take my time with the voice and really get it to where it needs to be. My goal is for them to come flying right out the gate.”

Our conversation shifts to technology, and the pro audio gear that RAab finds himself using on a regular basis to get the job done. It’s at this point he holds up his trusty box of in-ear monitors from JH Audio, smiling from ear to ear.

RAab explains that he first started using JH16s on that first Timberlake tour, back when he was an unassuming backup vocalist. These days, he’s a big fan of the company’s tech-loaded crowd-pleaser – Roxanne.

“I absolutely love them,” he remarks.

“I’m often on stage singing, so I know what feels good and what I need to hear in my monitors. With the Roxannes, I can go from rock, to pop, to R&B, to gospel. I just dial that little knob where I can turn up the bass, turn it down on in-ears, and I’m gonna get the same sound consistently.

“What I’ve found across the board with my Roxannes is that they sound amazing, regardless of what tour I’m on. I rarely have to ask the monitor engineer to make adjustments.

If something goes wrong in the HEADLINER MAGAZINE

artist’s mix, I’m gonna hear it go wrong in mine. So if something clashes, like if the guitar gets super loud for whatever reason, it might mute out the A-flat in their mix, or they might not even hear their own voice at that point. There can be lots of challenges. I’ll have those conversations with the artists but it’s usually just trial and error, and if it works, it works!

“We’re really excited about music being back, and the people that are coming to shows that missed out during the 2020 lockdown are so excited to be back at concerts again!”

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UNITING YOUR AUDIENCE FOR 50 YEARS

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ERIN BARRA

Beats By Girlz

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ERIN BARRA When Gwen Stefani dropped the F-bomb on stage, a young Erin Barra knew that she wanted to work in music. Fast forward to today, and she’s the director of popular music at Arizona State University, executive director of Beats By Girlz, course developer for Berklee Online and former associate professor at the Berklee College of Music in Boston.

The self confessed “weird band kid” reflects on her journey through the music industry and explains what led her to start Beats By Girlz.

Who did you look up to in the music industry when you were growing up?

By the time I was about 14, I knew I was at least going to go to a music school.

I didn’t know what would happen after that, or have any particular target or career in mind, but I knew it was going to be music. I was that weird band kid who was in the jazz band and orchestra! I had my Stevie Wonder phase, my Michael Jackson phase and my Bob Marley phase. It dovetailed from there, but the whole foundation of it is ‘60s and ‘70s songwriters. I remember buying two CDs in the ‘90s:

Ace of Base and No Doubt’s Tragic Kingdom album. I grew up in Salt Lake City, and my parents are not Mormon, but I grew up in a Mormon community.

I went to see No Doubt with two of my Mormon friends, and it was the first concert that I had been allowed to go to without my parents. We were rocking out and Gwen Stefani said “fuck”, and that was the first time I’d ever heard somebody say it out loud! It was in the context of female empowerment, and I remember my friends being so shocked by this, and my reaction was like, ‘I want to do that!’

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You’ve written and produced numerous records and have worked with Grammy-winning artists, engineers and producers. When did your interest in production begin and how did you learn your craft?

After Berklee in 2006, I moved to New York City, and this was right around the time when home studios were becoming a thing that many people had. It wasn’t extremely common like it is today where everybody’s making music in their bedrooms. So there wasn’t a tonne of access to technology.

While I was at Berklee, nobody had bothered to teach me any technology that was useful or applicable to what I was doing, and the industry was changing. This was when Napster was a thing and personal computing devices were becoming accessible.

I was writing and I had ideas that I wanted to articulate in my mind and in my ears, but I was unable to do that because I didn’t know how to press record. So one day I decided that I was going to figure it out. It became very clear to me that the people behind the computers were the ones that were powerful and making money, period. I Googled and YouTubed my way out of it, which when you say something like that now you’re like, ‘Okay, that’s not that big of a deal’, but in 2006, there was not the same amount of tutorial content on the internet. And it definitely was not quality – education was not online at that time. So I was learning by watching weird videos of weird men in their basements, recording video tutorials of information that wasn’t even necessarily correct. I didn’t even know the words to Google! So it was very difficult and I learned it the absolute hardest way possible, which I think actually served me really well in the long run, and is why I feel I bring a different perspective when it comes to education.

You’re the executive director of Beats By Girlz, which encourages traditionally marginalised gender identities to realise their full potential in the music production industry.

What made you start this initiative?

I was seven years into my artist career and was feeling like it wasn’t serving HEADLINER MAGAZINE

me or giving me the happiness that I had anticipated.

But secondarily, it was quite obvious to me that people were more interested in knowing about how I was making music as opposed to listening to my music. That was a very hard pill for me to swallow at first, but then I decided that if I want to be successful in this world, I have to treat myself like a business, and the business is clearly pointing me in this direction. Beats By Girlz is a nonprofit organisation in the United States, and our mission is to empower the next generation of women and gender minorities through music and technology.

Of course, we want more women to be in the music industry and in tech fields, or whatever capacity they want, but more broadly, we understand that jobs of the future require people who can be creative and technical, and we want women and other marginalised genders to be a part of that, which historically they have not been. We’ve been around since 2013 and we have over 40 chapters worldwide. This year we’ll be on six continents, which is all of them except Antarctica!

You’ve been using Focusrite equipment for 15 years, and the company sponsors Beats By Girlz. By supporting the organisation, how are they helping to change the industry?

Focusrite and the extended group of companies that Focusrite are a part of have been such a meaningful partner for us for years now. It’s the little red box that makes everything possible – it’s so ubiquitous now.

We have interfaces in almost every single one of our classrooms. Access to technology is one of the first barriers that everybody has to hurdle when they want to do this community work. Focusrite has been extremely generous and forthcoming with those resources and helping our different communities all over the world have what they need in order to do the work that they do. We’re profoundly grateful for that. It also sends a signal to the rest of the world and has been instrumental in getting the word out about what we’re doing. It goes beyond just technology. It’s about showing up together.

How long have you been using Focusrite kit, and how does it help your teaching at Arizona State University, Beats By Girlz and Berklee?

I’ve used the Focusrite tech for a very long time. It started with my live rig. I had an 18i20 in 2006, and this was how I was running my live shows – I did a lot of routings from what was happening inside of my computer out to different sources, so I would have my bass synth running into the Focusrite and then would route that out to a bass amp. Everything was running through Ableton, and it was the same thing with my keyboards. The 18i20 was the brains of my live show, and now I have the most updated version that I still use for my live shows. I’ve always used Focusrite live on stage.

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When I’m teaching production or live performance with electronics, I always suggest the Focusrite 2i4 or 6i6 interfaces. I’m working with them in the classroom all the time. There’s two main reasons why I choose that for my students: partly it’s price.

These are pieces of technology that are within the realms of possibility for students to purchase. The other is the class-compliant qualities of the technology – none of it is proprietary, which makes it play nicely with all other pieces of technology, which is really important. I’m very keenly aware of the fact that Focusrite just works with everything.

You’re very involved with recording services provider The Record Co, which is dedicated to offering an affordable music workspace to music makers. The new 12,500-square-foot studio complex is home to a Focusrite Red 16Line audio interface, ISA 428 MkII and ISA 828 MkII devices, a RedNet A16R 16-channel analogue I/O interface HEADLINER MAGAZINE

and a number of interfaces from the Scarlett Range which are deployed in some of the 15 rehearsal studios in the facility. How does this technology allow musicians to flexibly record their sessions at the new studio complex in Boston’s Newmarket Industrial District?

I’ve been doing a lot of consultations for studios about deciding what pieces of technology should go in there. In the studio scene, people are really rethinking how they are creating spaces where people feel welcome.

That’s everything from the vibe, to the I/O, believe it or not. There’s been two studios that I’ve consulted on recently where Dante has become a part of the conversation about us needing to be able to access the network. And then the next question is, ‘How are we doing that?’ So much technology is very Pro Tools HD-focused with the Dante network, but I don’t believe that that’s going to be true forever, so we have opted to go for the RedNet technology in a lot of studios because of the Thunderbolt connectivity that’s

not married to a Pro Tools HD rig.

Again, it’s that non class-compliant quality that’s so important – I know that the technology is going to interface with a wide variety of users so that they can live within whatever their tech ecosystem is. I really appreciate that, so we’ve been exploring and working with RedNet in everything from pro level studios down to somebody just getting started in learning how to produce music in their dorm rooms.

PRO.FOCUSRITE.COM BEATSBYGIRLZ.ORG

RUSANDA PANFILI

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RUSANDA PANFILI A highly-skilled violinist from the age of just 10 years old, Rusanda Panfili is one of the most exciting talents in the world of classical music. To date, she has collaborated with the likes of Markus Schirmer, Aleksey Igudesman and Hans Zimmer, and is a soloist with the Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra, the Symphonic Orchestra of the State of Mexico and the Moldovan and Romanian Symphonic Orchestras, among others. However, beyond the classical world, she is preparing to release her first album of original compositions later this year, an experimental body of work that splices all manner of instruments and genres. Here, she talks to Headliner about her illustrious career to date, her creative process and the Merging Technologies kit that is so essential to her workflow…

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When did you develop your passion for music?

My parents told me I showed signs of musicality even as a baby, dancing perfectly in time to songs at eight months! Then I started singing and dancing, so it feels like music was always my passion, even before I was aware of it! My route started at the music school ‘George Enescu’ in Bucharest. Then I moved to Vienna to study, which is where I also finished my Masters. Important events such as winning competitions and scholarships internationally motivated me to grow more and more.

What were your early musical influences?

Being a classically trained violinist, I listened to so many old records by Oistrach, Heifetz, Milstein, so I think they shaped my interpretations.

When I was a teenager, I was mainly listening to Latin and electronic music and loved how versatile those styles were in terms of rhythms and sound effects. That made me curious about other styles of music. Film composers, such as Vangelis, Ennio Morricone, John Williams and Hans Zimmer also became a big source of inspiration and fascination.

Tell us about your work with Hans Zimmer.

When I first started working with Hans, I was amazed by how much freedom he was giving us. It felt like he lets us be part of the music in a much deeper way than just playing the notes. He has a magical excitement for details and sounds, and he is a generous and kind person who has shown me so much appreciation. I am beyond honoured to be his violin soloist. I always learn something new and the journey both on and off tour working with him is truly rewarding.

How did you discover Merging Technologies products?

I was sharing a studio with my fiancé who is a sound engineer and a HEADLINER MAGAZINE

composer, and the studio had a Hapi.

I was so impressed by its quality, and I knew at some point we would need separate studio spaces. I was starting to do more session work and composition jobs, and I wanted that same quality in my own space. I did some research and the new Anubis came out; I thought it was perfect, not just for my studio, but for taking on the road due to its size. I’m on the road about 240 days of the year, and I have a lot of session work that I need to be able to do on the go. Now, both my fiancé and I have studios in the same building, which is great, as we have an incredible combined arsenal of gear.

I never compromise on quality, so the moment I used the Hapi I was hooked. The low latency is absolutely vital. When working on things like film music, where you are working to a click track and have to be super tight, it’s extremely important to have that low latency. It makes you deliver higher quality results for your clients. I also noticed that my own violin sound was so much better; the preamps of the device are next level. It’s so vital when playing an instrument like the violin, which is so subtle and has so many colours.

How has the Anubis enhanced your music production?

It’s noticeable that the complete chain of audio conversion and signal path is built without compromise and optimised for excellent sound, which you can hear instantly. The latencies are very small, and the mic preamps are outstanding. All these aspects influence the quality of my recordings, so I can easily compete with the big professional studios in terms of sound, signal path and conversion quality. So, having the Anubis in my home studio has enhanced my productivity and the quality of my work. I never have to worry about technical aspects and can rely fully on the device, which always works perfectly. I mainly use it as an interface in my home studio, but also as an analogue mixer for features such as EQ, reverb and no-latency listening while recording.

When using the Anubis, which Mission are you running?

I use Music Mission and what I immediately loved and still appreciate is the touch screen and user-friendly mixer. Features such as mic gain, reverb, headphone or speaker volume are easily accessible and easy to adjust.

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String Theory

Tell us about the new record you are currently working on. We understand it’s quite a departure from your classical roots?

I started releasing my own compositions about 18 months ago.

I had to compose an anthem for a soccer team in Spain (CF Intercity).

It had to be epic and impressive, so I ended up composing a track with about 100 layers, and all of the instruments were played and recorded by me with the Anubis.

I played many types of drums, keys, violins, I programmed a lot of instruments, I recorded voices, and also many different effects like claps and percussive layers. I was always thinking about releasing more original compositions, so I started my journey with that. It has developed into me working on an album, which is very futuristic and combines a lot of electronic elements.

I come from the classical world, but for me, just working in a studio at home and having access to a lot of possibilities in my own space is great. I have a lot of synths, I recently bought a bass, and I have lots of different types of violins that sound very different. I started experimenting a lot with those sounds and it turned into an album that will come out later this year.

There is a big story behind it. I don’t want to give away too much, but it’s a little tribute to Vangelis and the Blade Runner soundtrack, which was a revelation for me as a musician when I first heard it. I was so hooked on those ‘80s synth sounds.

There are a lot of violins of course, as that is my main instrument, and I feel like my voice is connected to the violin. Everything I want to say comes first through violin. It’s a really exciting production and I can’t wait to release it. I have also released two singles called Organismic Experience No.1 and No.2.

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How much do you enjoy experimenting with genres?

It’s incredible. It’s like swimming in the Caribbean sea. Everything is so open and wonderful. I was classically trained, but I always felt that the classical world can’t be the only thing for me. I loved folk music early on and when I first started playing with synths my mind expanded. A limitless path opened.

What have been some of your career highlights?

To name a few: being accepted at the Conservatory of Music in Vienna, winning the Karajan Scholarship, winning my first international competition in Italy, my orchestral debut, receiving my Masters diploma, performing in front of 20,000 people for the first time, sharing the stage with Brian May and releasing my first album!

What’s next for you?

I’m going back out on two of the Hans Zimmer tours where I am a soloist. In Autumn I’ll be touring with The World Of Hans Zimmer in Europe and next year I am doing Hans Zimmer Live, which is the big tour with Hans Zimmer live onstage, that will be a three month tour through Europe.

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ERLAND COOPER

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Planting Seeds

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COMPOSER

PLANTING SEEDS

ERLAND COOPER Working on a royal commission to provide ambient music to accompany the growing of 20 million flowers, recently completing a new album, only to plant the only copy in the earth and delete all the digital files — it’s safe to say Erland Cooper doesn’t choose to release music in the most traditional way. Headliner chats to the Orkney Islands-born, London-based composer about depicting the nature of his Scottish island home from his studio in London, his royal commission, the times his music has made burly Glaswegian men cry, and trusting his friend Paul Weller with the manuscript of his latest album, that is quite literally, under the ground.

While Cooper is based amongst the mad rush of London now, his upbringing couldn’t have been much more remote — he spent his formative years growing up in the archipelago of Orkney, a cluster of islands off the northeastern coast of Scotland. His home, and in particular its natural landscape and wildlife, is a significant reference point in his music, which is mostly piano, strings and analogue synthesiser-based.

The last time Headliner spoke with Cooper, he was sat in the foyer of London’s Royal Festival Hall, about to go on stage with friend, frequent collaborator, and all-round rock royalty Paul Weller. Cooper spoke of pinching the key to the music building of his school in Stromness, so that he could spend as much time there as possible.

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Planting Seeds

“Even though I don’t live there, my parents’ home is there,” Cooper says in his measured and soothing Scottish accent. “I still call it home. I’m like a ferry looper [an inhabitant of Orkney who is not a native but has come from the mainland, i.e. across the Pentland Ferry] – I come and go. So I get to go there every couple of months, which is great. I write about my relationship with the natural world. I think there’s a misconception that you have to be in that natural world all the time to write about it, but I enjoy the critical distance that my studio gives.”

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Without the mention of his working with Weller, you’d be forgiven for thinking Cooper’s seeming preoccupation with classical instruments and remote expanses of countryside would make him a total stranger to the world of alternative indie music. Not so — before this stunning solo project took off, he was busy with Erland and the Carnival, which he formed with former Blur and The Verve member, Simon Tong; and The Magnetic North, which also includes Tong, and fellow composer, Hannah Peel.

“Glaswegians, you can never quite tell if they’re angry or happy with you!” he laughs, adding that the man said, ‘I just wanted to say one thing: my father passed away recently and I was unable to grieve. I put your records on and I cried my effing eyes out’.

He thanked me and punched me on the arm and walked off. That really struck me. I thought that was really moving and powerful. It’s a remarkable reminder of the strength of certain art forms and how far and wide they can fly and land.”

But the solo endeavours are now going so well that he recently put pen to paper with Mercury KX, the neoclassical home of such prestigious peers as Ólafur Arnalds, Lambert, Luke Howard and Isobel Waller-Bridge.

Among his great array of talents, Cooper’s ability to reduce faintly intimidating men to tears is perhaps one of the skills that put him in such great stead for his royal commission to write music for The Tower of London.

The project is titled Superbloom, part of the UK’s Platinum Jubilee celebrations.

It’s named after a rare and incredible natural phenomenon, where whole landscapes are miraculously transformed into sheets of vibrant flowers. A superbloom occurs only once every few decades, when favourable weather patterns coincide and activate dormant seeds. The forthcoming ‘designed’ Superbloom event will celebrate nature by turning one of London’s most built-up areas into a blossoming, living flower field.

“I never intended to be a solo artist,” Cooper says. “It wasn’t my plan. And it’s remarkable where Solan Goose (his debut solo record) has flown me. I think that’s the remarkable thing about music. Continuing the bird analogy, this idea that you never plan where or how music can land in someone else’s ears. Just recently, I came off stage, and it wasn’t the best performance.

We’re all incredibly self-critical. This big, burly bloke came up to me and he said, [Cooper puts on a thick Glasgow accent] ‘Are you Erland Cooper? I really enjoyed that performance’.

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“Funnily enough, again, it was after a show,” Cooper says of landing this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. “A producer came up and said, ‘Can I talk to you about a top-secret project? Only, you’d have to sign a non-disclosure agreement’. I looked at her and said, ‘Well, I neither have a pen, nor a printer, but why don’t you lift up your hand and I’ll sign on that with an imaginary pencil?’ She then told me what the project was and I’ve known about it for a while. It’s just been released into the wild as we speak.”

and retain that landscape that they’ve nurtured.

Indeed, said release is out now — the looped ambient music can not only be heard at the Tower itself, but also on your favourite streaming platform. Music For Growing Flowers also makes for a gorgeous at-home listening experience, with recurring musical motifs played across cello, violin, piano and synths that will cause a superbloom in your heart, if you’ll pardon the cheese.

Cooper recently completed the recording of his new album. However, ‘new album’ is a curious choice of words, considering how he’s going about releasing it, or, one should say, if he releases it. The only copy of the album is currently underground, dug into the earth. This isn’t some mad, drunken typo, so perhaps let’s let the composer himself explain this wonderfully bonkers idea:

Another thing that drew Cooper so strongly to the project was the uncertainty of it, the will they or won’t they factor with the 20 million flowers.

For a while, the bloom appeared to be on the rocks, with no signs of life. But if you go on Twitter, you will now see lots of people completely floored by the natural beauty that has sprung up. Not to mention the wonderful contrast with it being in a moat that was of course originally dug for the slightly more sinister reason of keeping undesirables both in and out of the mediaeval tower.

“The clue is in the title: Carve The Runes Then Be Content With Silence. We recorded it at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland and then mixed it in London. But the twist was I deleted all the digital files and there is only one physical copy of the album! It reminds me of when you’d make a mixtape and you’d be the only person with that copy.

It asks the question of what’s precious, a little meditation on value amongst other things. I took that tape from London to Orkney. I even put it in the front seat with the seat belt, I crossed on the ferry and then dug a hole at a place that’s important to me, and I planted it with a biscuit box.

“I do recall they filled the Tower of London with poppies,” he says. “And it was this red sea. It was really quite potent and quite a powerful landmark moment several years ago. Well, they’ve approached The Tower of London again with this commission to fill the moat with 20 million wildflower seeds, and to have them grow and evolve. Of course, it celebrates a certain Jubilee, but it’s also an act of kind of old rewilding, which is something that I’m really interested in. And after the Jubilee this summer, they hope to continue HEADLINER MAGAZINE

“For the audio side I was asked to score the exhibition to bring the audience through the moat and out the other end with an accompanying score.

So we’ve planted 26 speakers, a truly spatial audio sound system, and I wrote a 20-minute ambient score for harp, electronics, piano, violin, cello and voice. It will loop throughout the day, and slightly evolve from morning to evening.”

“Inside the biscuit box is a score and some other trinkets and a letter on how to get it back to me if you find it. And on top of the biscuit box is a violin. At the very top is a stone carved with my very one rune, which is Viking writing.

It’s kind of a collaboration with the natural world — to compose it, then let it decompose and recompose. When it comes out of the earth, we’ll do a performance with the string orchestra

in 2024, which is already booked at the Barbican Hall, which is just a remarkably bold leap of faith. Because what comes out of the earth might be complete silence, it might just be white noise.”

Perhaps the most staggering thing is that Cooper’s label, Mercury KX, a subsidiary of classical behemoths Decca Classics, wanted anything to do with this project at all — it goes without saying that it’s a huge gamble, commercially speaking. Although an absolute dream for whoever got to write the press release.

“Can you imagine their faces when they’re just about to sign me? I mentioned I’ve got this classical record, and they said, ‘That’s brilliant’.

I’ve put it on tape – ‘oh we really like tape!’ I’ve deleted all the digital files.

‘Sorry, what?’ But instead of running a mile, it just caught their imagination of curiosity — we even did a billboard saying ‘out in 2024’ – which I thought was hilarious.”

Aside from the recording which is currently lapping up the soil and minerals of the Orkney isles, Cooper entrusted three copies of the album’s written score to Radio 3 broadcaster Elizabeth Alker, Scottish novelist Ian Rankin, and Weller, who apparently got down on one knee to be knighted by the manuscript as Cooper handed it over — “he’s probably lost it”, Cooper jokes.

It’s not often an article will conclude with ‘roll on 2024’, but hopefully you can share in the huge fascination and anticipation of how this project will eventually sound, or not sound, as it were. In the meantime, get yourself over to The Tower of London for the rarest of opportunities to be lulled by nature and Cooper’s beautiful soundtrack in deepest central London.

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SELLING SUNSET

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HOT PROPERTY

SELLING SUNSET Selling real estate in the Los Angeles market can be glorious, given the area’s sunny location and an abundance of the rich and famous living there. Popular Netflix series, Selling Sunset shows that it can also be cutthroat – as airbrushed-looking agents fight over wealthy clients and enormous beach-front properties. Audio supervisor Marcos Contreras explains how he’s always ready for every unscripted moment on the reality TV show…

Season five of Selling Sunset premiered on Netflix this year, and such is its popularity, it has already been renewed for a sixth and seventh. The reality TV show revolves around The Oppenheim Group, where glossy, elite real estate brokers sell luxurious properties to their affluent buyers, all while navigating the drama in their personal lives.

Contreras captures sound for the reality show with the help of his arsenal of Lectrosonics wireless systems, including

SMWB and SMDWB miniature wideband bodypack, SMQV belt-pack and Hma plug-on transmitters, as well as SRc portable and DSQD digital receivers.

“Selling Sunset is one of the most popular shows on Netflix and it demands a lot,” he notes. “The wireless must be reliable every time.

Lectrosonics is up to the task, with no dropouts or interference even over big, open spaces.”

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“The trickiest parts of this show are the massive concrete and glass houses we shoot in,” he explains. “We also always shoot three-to-four cameras, usually one super-duper wide to get a sense of the space, and on some occasions with very little space or time to relocate myself to be in an optimal place for good reception. Lectro comes through every time. It holds up well – even when I think it’s gonna be a tough one, I’m always happy at the end of the scene.”

A native of San Lorenzo, Puerto Rico, Contreras has been working in audio production for 15 years, ever since he moved directly to L.A right after graduation. He gained familiarity with Lectrosonics products like the venerable UM400 while pursuing a BFA in Film and Television at the Savannah School of Art and Design, so there was no question that he would buy Lectrosonics when he set up shop in L.A. “Gotta buy stuff that’s reliable,” he grins.

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This has come in handy on several occasions – one time a particularly “rowdy” cast member tried to light some pieces of his gear on fire.

Selling Sunset has a cast of 10, and Contreras has had to work around the occasional runaway cast member.

Still, he can often pick up a signal from the SMWB or SMDWB transmitters and by listening, get a sense of where the talent has flounced off to in order to regather the group and continue the shoot, adding that being able to get a signal and PFL a channel has “saved his butt” on numerous occasions.

Being ‘technically’ an unscripted show, Contreras has to be ready to capture the drama as and when it happens: “We can’t repeat the big dramatic moments,” he clarifies. “It’s one thing to ask a cast member to repeat a line about a price or something – that’s easily correctable – but when they are in the drama, whether screaming, crying or laughing, the gear has to

work. It always has with Lectrosonics.

These people can also go from telling secrets in whispers to screaming at each other in the blink of an eye!

I need the gear to hold well, and Lectrosonics always has.

“I’m very lucky to work with one of the best directors in the biz: Pyongson ‘Sunny’ Yim and Sundee Manusakis, who is our EP, who are out there in the trenches with us every day,” he adds.

“Together we come up with a plan that allows for flexibility and readiness for most situations. Of course things will happen and we always adjust, but because everyone is well informed, we adjust swiftly and successfully. With Lectro by my side – gear that I know front to back – I can make changes on the fly if needed, with little to no interruption – the quality of sound is always there.”

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‘WE CAN’T REPEAT THE BIG DRAMATIC MOMENTS.”

A big (or in this case, small) issue when filming the show is that the casts’ clothes leave little to the imagination – it can be tricky to attempt to conceal a wireless transmitter within a bodycon dress.

However the miniature size of the Lectrosonics pieces skirt around the issue as they can be belted to a leg or hidden in the small of the back.

Contreras’ main go-to units are the SMDWB, which are basically double-battery versions of the SMWB. He typically pairs them with a Sanken COS-11D omni lavalier mic, but sometimes with a DPA 6060 or 6061. In the L.A/OC area he uses the Block 22 frequencies.

A perhaps underappreciated feature of the SMWB and SMDWB transmitters is their high-quality built-in digital recorder, which produces a .wav file – compatible with practically any editing software – stored on an internal microSDHC card. This came in handy for Contreras for a scene that involved a shot with an actor at a difficult long range, where recording the talent right on his SMDWB transmitter saved both setup time and the shot itself.

Selling Sunset has also been confirmed as having an upcoming spin-off, Selling the OC, which is set to premiere on Netflix this summer. Contreras has 18 SRc portable ENG receivers, and for a typical Selling Sunset or Selling the OC shoot he uses six of them in a bag feeding a Sound Devices Scorpio portable mixer-recorder. He describes the setup as “really quick” on the transmitters and receivers. In fact, such ease of use is a highly desirable feature when he hires an assistant or when he rents out his equipment to other productions.

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Hot Property

“LECTRO TRANSMITTERS ARE MY GO-TO SINCE THEY HAVE SURVIVED GETTING SPIKED ONTO THE GROUND LIKE A FOOTBALL AFTER A TOUCHDOWN, TO BEING SET ON FIRE!”

“My main everyday kit consists of six Lectro SRC receivers on the A1 group of frequencies,” he explains.

“These are paired with 12 SMDWB transmitters. It allows me to go from a simple, three-person scene, to a house showing, and then to an office scene. The office scenes are usually six to 12 cast members, so I will need every channel – all of this is recorded into a Sound Devices Scorpio and/ or a 688. On what we call bigger ‘tent pole’ events, I bring my cart with three DSQDs and maybe add an A10 rack with four more SRCs – all over HEADLINER MAGAZINE

Dante into the Scorpio. It’s a very flexible system.”

His rolling equipment rack houses three DSQD digital receivers, more SRc receivers, a mixer and recorder and a diversity antenna system, which he says is especially useful for location work.

“Everybody knows how to use Lectrosonics,” he points out, “and their slogan of ‘Not Fragile’ is one of the reasons why I’m such a huge fan.

Luckily enough our team and our

cast on Selling Sunset and Selling the OC are all very respectful of the equipment and have been very good at letting me know if they need the mic taken off or adjusted.

Other shows, not so much. Lectro transmitters are my go-to since they have survived getting spiked onto the ground like a football after a touchdown, to being set on fire!”

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Scoring The Witcher

Photographer: Tim Navis

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COMPOSER

Magic, monsters and witchers, oh my! Such is the scenery of one of Netflix’s biggest hit series to date, with Superman himself, Henry Cavill, in the titular role of ‘the witcher’. No pressure then for composer Joseph Trapanese to step into the role of lead composer for its second season. He’s already enjoyed an exalted career, having scored such blockbuster hits as The Greatest Showman, Tron: Legacy and Oblivion. He speaks to Headliner about taking over the reins of The Witcher, his mission to get a real orchestra on its score despite the challenges of covid, and how his beloved JBL speakers played their part.

with a hearty laugh. “Honestly, I do not do this for the awards. How sad and depressing would that life be? I think it’s so wonderful when making music and making art lines up with a chance to celebrate it in a way like at the Emmys, and I have zero expectations. I just think we made something awesome [on The Witcher]. I’m honoured to share it with the world. Music is something I would do anyway, even if I didn’t get paid and nobody listened. So it’s the icing on the cake that so many people are getting so much out of it.”

As Headliner is speaking to Trapanese with the Emmy award show buzz beginning to sizzle, he’s asked how he feels about TV and film awards after a career that spans more than 12 years since he collaborated with Daft Punk to deliver the music for Tron: Legacy. Does he do all this just for the gongs?

Trapanese was born in New Jersey in 1984 and refined his pre-career composing chops at The Manhattan School of Music. As well as Daft Punk, he has collaborated on scores with other brilliant artists — both The Raid: Redemption with Linkin Park’s Mike Shinoda and the Tom Cruise-starring Oblivion with French electronic duo M84, which are very much worth a listen on their own terms as soundtracks.

“As a friend of mine said, ‘Awards mean nothing, and you should win as many of them as you can’,” Trapanese says

The conversation turns to the inspiring yet difficult challenge of recording a real orchestra for The Witcher

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soundtrack, despite all the hefty roadblocks placed in the way by the pandemic.

“It’s very easy to create a convincing mock-up if you write for the strength of the samples from, say, Spitfire Audio.

There’s a reason why modern film music so often sounds like strings going, ‘chugga-chugga-chugga’ and brass going, ‘bwaaaah!’ Because that sounds great with Spitfire or Orchestral Tools.

But when you need a certain human element where the notes connect in a way that cannot be replicated, that’s when you need real players and an orchestra. So we worked with an orchestra that was put together in Sofia, Bulgaria, and we had a real blast with them, even though it was remote.”

In case you are somehow reading this while living completely off-grid and don’t know what The Witcher is, it’s a series that follows Geralt of Rivia (Henry Cavill), a mutant monsterhunter for hire, who seems to love the ‘f’ word and conversations with his horse, Roach. The series poses the question: who is worse, the monsters and beasts he slays to earn a living, or the humans he has to deal with? Trapanese lays down the musical landscape with menacing brass, ominous strings, and a very clever use of electronics that don’t betray the fantasy setting, but supplement it wonderfully.

Working on such a behemoth show that calls for a big score to do it justice obviously would be an uphill battle if Trapanese was working with a pair of shoddy speakers. He doesn’t, of course, and he’s proud to call on JBL to help bring his music to life.

“I have these discontinued speakers, JBL’s 6332 model,” he says. “They are my main ones with Bryston amplification.

“Years ago, when I worked with Daft Punk on Tron: Legacy, I had a very humble home setup at the time. But once I got the technical aspect, I HEADLINERMAGAZINE.NET

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“WHAT I DO ON THE JBLS TRANSLATES FLAWLESSLY TO A DUB STAGE, THEATRE, SMALL HOME SETUP, OR MY CAR!”

realised in film music you operate at these very high calibrations where your speakers are set to 75 to 80 dB. If you listen to a mastered pop track in that environment, your head’s going to explode.

“But we need the dynamic range and we need to be able to operate much more quietly and also allow us to feel more bass, because it’s also how the cinema operates. I say to a lot of young composers, ‘Take what you are doing, and put it an octave lower’.

And that’s where cinema music exists.

The pop music and classical music that we’re trained in listening to exists in the vocal range. But in film music, we have to exist with vocals, which is the dialogue.”

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Trapanese feels his JBL speakers absolutely allow him to hear all these nuances: “Many engineers out here are working on speakers that are 10 times more expensive,” he says, “but they have no comparative equivalent in the modern world. Whereas I hear what I do on the JBLs and I go to a dub stage, I go to a theatre, I go to a small home setup, I go to my car, and it translates flawlessly because the technology in those speakers is based on the technology in the real world.

I’m trying to create something that is going to connect with the 99% of people who are out there consuming it.”

The Witcher season 2 is of course available to watch now, and another recent Netflix project of Trapanese’s, Spiderhead, starring Chris Hemsworth, is also out now to watch as a standalone film. At this rate, it’s not hyperbole to say that Trapanese is headed for being one of film music’s very biggest names, whether he does it for the plaudits or not.

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108 ON TOUR WITH ALT-J

Living the Dream

British indie rockers alt-J recently unveiled their new tour in support of their latest studio album, The Dream. Creative collective FragmentNine, which has been designing their shows since 2014, HEADLINER MAGAZINE

was again tasked with the show’s scenography – abandoning the ‘volumetric video’ ingenuity of 2017’s Relaxer, which won them a Knight of Illumination award.

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“WE ENDEAVOURED TO CREATE LITTLE VIGNETTES THROUGH LIGHT AND VIDEO TO SUPPORT THE SUBJECT MATTER WITHOUT BEING TOO ‘ON THE NOSE’.”

This time they adopted a completely different direction, in cooperation with the band’s long-time manager Stephen Taverner, according to FragmentNine (F9) co-founder Jackson Gallagher.

What both tours have in common is heavy use of GLP’s X4 Bar 20s – this time accompanied by quantities of JDC1 hybrid strobes – but this time in an entirely different application. “X4 Bars are real workhorses – these and the JDCs are regular go-tos for us,” confirms Gallagher.

However, Taverner had imagined a more delicate and airy performance

than the 2017 confection. And so wrapped in over 1,500 square feet of holographic projection fabric, the band performs inside a box that transports them through many different worlds throughout the evening.

This has been implemented by F9’s Gallagher and co-founder Jeremy Lechterman, along with F9 viceprincipal Michael Hankowsky, in response to Stephen Taverner’s brief.

From a video perspective, once they had sourced the most suitable fabric – Hologauze-50 – they opted for front and rear projection in preference to

LED to create the holograms proposed

by Taverner.

Instead, the role of LED was relegated to a conventional videowall behind the cube, following projection tests at Upstaging, the lighting and video vendors for the tour. Gallagher notes that since the band is fairly static on stage, containing them within a box creates a slightly edgy sensation. “We endeavoured to create little vignettes through light and video to support the subject matter without being too ‘on the nose’.”

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ON TOUR WITH ALT-J

Living the Dream

Although there are little over 100 GLP X4 Bar 20 and JDC1 taking on most of the workload, their importance cannot be overstated. Other than a few effects contained within the box, the GLP pieces are entrusted with holding their own to complement the main holographic box. “Although there is a lot less lighting than on the previous tour, the show still has a sizable package capable of high impact,” says Gallagher.

In terms of structures, there are two horseshoe-shaped goalposts – one upstage, one downstage – all lined

Image: Matt Bishop

HEADLINER MAGAZINE

with X4 Bar 20s, run in single-pixel (88-channel) mode – with JDCs on the sides of both goalposts. There is a further grid of JDC1 situated behind the LED wall. “And these really punch through,” says Gallagher.

Hankowsky adds that everything is run in single-pixel mode and notes the versatility and additional functionality offered by activating the different plate sections of the JDC1.

These are also used as eye candy and as a twinkly effect from the LED wall at the rear.

As for the X4 battens, in addition to simply edging the cube, they are being put to more creative use: “In a couple of songs, we take a section and put them into diagonals and use them as FX, whereas for the song Matilda, we use the Bars for backlight instead of eye candy,” he concludes.

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“WITH MAVIS, USERS OF ANY SKILL LEVEL CAN QUICKLY BUILD THEIR ANALOGUE SYNTHESIZER WITH MINIMAL TOOLS AND EXPERIENCE.”

Moog Music has announced Mavis; what the company describes as a powerful, low-cost, build-it-yourself semi-modular analogue synthesizer – inviting creatives to begin their journey into the Moog ecosystem or expand their existing synth setup.

On its own, Mavis is an analogue synthesizer with patchable modular utilities and unmistakable Moog sound and quality. When removed from its enclosure, the instrument becomes a 24-point CV-controllable module (44HP) ready to be installed into any Eurorack setup or Moog semi-modular system. In 44HP, the synthesizer offers two oscillators, full ADSR, ladder filter, sample and hold, wavefolding, attenuators, mixer, mults, and much more for more complex musical arrangements.

Mavis’s semi-modular design and one-octave keyboard also allow for immediate musical exploration

without the need for additional equipment (except for a speaker or headphones).

Mavis features Moog’s oscillator and filter circuits alongside a diode wavefolder — the first analogue wavefolder to appear on a Moog instrument. Moog says Mavis’s clever presentation of synthesis modules and utilities makes for intuitive, creative experimentation and musical connection.

With Mavis, users of any skill level can quickly build their analogue synthesizer with minimal tools and experience (no soldering required) by using all the components included in the instrument’s carefully curated packaging. Once the instrument is built, the owner is guided on their journey with Mavis through a selection of patch books and educational materials that encourage creative patching and sound design.

With its 24-point patch bay, Mavis is eager to play along with other voltage-controlled devices (especially with Moog’s other semi-modular instruments: Mother-32, DFAM, Subharmonicon, Grandmother, Matriarch). Its useful collection of utilities and flexible control voltage routing allows for intricate dialogue between them.

Meanwhile, Mavis’s Voltage Controlled Oscillator (VCO) with pulse-width modulation (PWM), waveform mixing, and mod source mixing has been designed to deliver rich harmonic character and motion.

With a voltage controlled filter, users can sculpt their sound with the -24dB Moog Low Pass Ladder Filter, delivering the sonic power behind the distinct sounds of Moog basslines and leads.

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Mavis uses crossfaders in its modulation routing instead of switches, allowing users to blend between a variable shape LFO and four-stage envelope generator for interesting and unusual modulation contours. Mavis features Moog’s first-ever wavefolding circuit, allowing for additive synthesis to sit alongside traditional subtractive synthesis, unlocking sounds not heard from a Moog before. Mavis also features a broad modular utility section complete with HEADLINER MAGAZINE

attenuators, offsets, mults, and a flexible DC-coupled mixer providing the tools needed for creative patching and sound design.

A patchable Sample and Hold (S+H) circuit generates a random CV pattern that can be patched to modulate other parameters, including setting Mavis into a “random sequencing” mode of performance. Finally, Mavis includes a protective cover for taking it on the go.

Ultimately, Mavis is designed to make learning synthesis or expanding an already-advanced studio setup more approachable for anyone looking to explore the classic Moog sound in a new way.

The instrument is now shipping worldwide for $349 USD / £339.

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SSL X-GATE

Gating Made Easy

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GATING MADE EASY

REVIEW

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SPOTLIGHT

SSL X-GATE Solid State Logic (SSL) has released X-Gate, which the company describes as a comprehensive and highly visual gating plugin inspired by the workflow from its digital broadcast consoles. Headliner’s Spotlight reviews editor investigates…

So a software gate plugin is just another gate plugin, right? A first look at SSL’s rather impressive new graphical interface for the X-Gate would suggest not, so let’s not close this gate after the horse has bolted, but check out this new addition to the SSL stable.

Over the last year or so I’ve had the pleasure of reviewing a number of new SSL plugins, all of which are available as part of the SSL Complete Bundle launched last year. This bundle also contains some old classics and favourites like SSL’s Channel Strip and Buss Compressor.

The X-Gate GUI is comprehensive and rather well laid out. It’s lovely to see the audio you’re about to process and the resulting audio you’re hearing quantified in such an accurate and informative way. It’s not long before the correlation between visual and audio has you zipping around this gate in a matter of seconds. I particularly like the traditional traffic light system for open, hold and close, which is reminiscent of the classic Drawmer hardware.

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SSL X-GATE

Gating Made Easy

GATE CONTROL To the right of the traffic lights is a quick-to-use range graph which can either be adjusted using the LF and HF CUT rotaries on the bottom control bar or more conveniently by dragging the two markers on the graph to highlight the desired frequency range; particularly useful for focusing on the relevant frequencies of each drum in a drum kit for example.

This ability to focus on a small frequency range is incredibly useful for making sure only a specific tom triggers the gate, and is really good at cleaning up bleed from tom to tom and coincidently great for helping to reduce phase issues between mics around a drum kit.

When a further control pot, the SC M/S (side chain mid/side) control is turned hard left, only the centre audio information will trigger the gate. At 12 o’clock, all of the audio triggers the gate, and at hard right, only the side audio information will trigger the gate.

To the left and right of the central display – as is common with many SSL plugins – are the input and output meters aligned above their respective rotaries for accurate gain staging. Between these is a HEADLINER MAGAZINE

really comprehensive set of visuals starting with a rolling graphical waveform representation of incoming audio. A horizontal green line, representing the opening threshold, and red line representing the closing value coincidently mirror the value boxes above. To the right of this graphic is a vertical dB meter and vertical slider for gain reduction, where the threshold for opening, closing and the range of reduction in dB is set. Again, you can either drag values up and down in the box or grab the relevant sliders within the display. Being able to adjust settings on a graphical representation of the incoming audio makes it very simple to set your open and close thresholds.

Another useful control is the ability to switch between PEAK/RMS for detection, especially if you use your gate for other instruments besides drums.

Along the bottom bar are further controls for shaping the gate’s behaviour – these include Attack and Release times once the open and close thresholds have been breached, a Hold for increasing the time the gate is held open once the threshold is reached, and finally a Knee which becomes active when

you engage the EXP button for expansion mode.

The EXP mode is really good if you want to widen the dynamic range without closing the gate altogether, or dramatically changing from one dynamic level to another in an abrupt manner. As mentioned earlier, the Knee control comes into its own and can really smooth the transition from your lowest to your quietest levels, creating a more transparent sound.

The Gate LISTEN button is also useful from a reference viewpoint to hear what it is you’re removing from your audio path, but could also be used as an effect in its own right should the mood take you. Lastly, on the bottom right is a really great GATE M/S, mid/side rotary control.

Turn it hard left and the gating is applied only to the mid audio in your stereo field. Turn it hard right and only the side elements of your audio are affected by the gate. At 12 o’clock, the whole stereo signal is affected by the gate.

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Trigger Happy Side Chain Along the top of the main screen are further buttons for selecting sidechain EXTernal source audio to use as the trigger for your gate. An effect which was used on countless dance and pop productions in the ‘80s and ‘90s, the clever use of external triggers has been used for everything from adding low end resonance to drums and tuning toms with a tone frequency, to pulsing distorted guitars and big synth pads. This ability is a feature that made the hardware gates of old such a creative tool, so I’m really pleased to see these features on SSL’s X-Gate plugin.

In the top right-hand corner there’s a side chain box which gives you access to any of your created audio, instrument, input or bus channels. I have my SSL X-Gate open in Logic at the moment but the same is true for Cubase, Luna, Reaper and Pro Tools.

The EXT source can also be used to trigger the gate in EXP Mode (top right of the main screen), which gives you further control over a specific or group of instruments’ melody hook or key riff so that it sits up in all the right places and the rest stays perfectly tucked in the mix. Expansion creates greater dynamics and in conjunction

with the Knee control can save you going through an entire song creating automation for every track.

Classic examples here are brass stabs and dramatic string sections.

It’s also useful that you can listen to the incoming side chain signal and set your gate or expansion accordingly with the help of the rolling waveform graph. While I’ve always advocated an ears-first approach to mixing audio, some tool’s visual displays can really help you make better informed decisions that are both quicker and easier!

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Gating Made Easy

“X-GATE BEGS TO BE PLAYED WITH, AND IS A VERY MUSICAL AND INSPIRING TOOL.”

CONCLUSION The look of the interface with its left-to-right workflow makes the SSL X-Gate an extremely easy and intuitive plugin to use. Apart from being a really excellent noise gate, I’m also impressed that it features every good and useful idea I’ve ever rated on all those magical hardware gates from yesteryear. It begs to be played with, and is a very musical and inspiring tool. As with all SSL plugins, there’s a really useful set of presets available from the presets menu along with the ability to save and recall your own. There’s also a little ‘?’ button in the bottom right that switches on the onboard help service – just move the mouse over any HEADLINER MAGAZINE

control for a description of the controls function.

Good news also for Apple M1 and Monterey users – SSL’s X-Gate ran without a hitch, as do all SSL’s plugins both in Native Apple and under Rosetta. As you can probably tell from the DAW list mentioned above, it’s available for all the usual AU/AXX/VST and VST3 formats. You can get X-Gate on its own at a special price during July, and it’s also available as part of SSL’s Complete Bundle and to existing subscribers.

SOLIDSTATELOGIC.COM

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TYLER SMYTH

Game On

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by ALICE

TYLER SMYTH HEADLINER MAGAZINE

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PRODUCER

As a married man, Tyler Smyth (songwriter, producer and the frontman of American metalcore band Dangerkids) might be in trouble after revealing that his favourite thing in the world is when Steinberg releases its latest Cubase update. Headliner doesn’t take that quite literally, but hear him out and you’ll understand why he’s also married to the music…

Smyth distinctly recalls getting his hands on his first ever Parental Advisory-labelled CD: “I remember getting the first Rage Against the Machine album; it opened up my way of thinking of not just what music can sound like, but what it can accomplish, and most importantly, how it makes you feel and how you internalise that,” Smyth reminisces from his home in L.A. “You kind of stir all that together, and that’s what I bring to the table each day on the songs I work on.”

A number of Parental Advisorylabelled CDs behind him, these days Smyth makes a living by channelling that very same passion and expression into his songwriting and production work (sometimes for his own Dangerkids, sometimes for other

heavy metal bands like I Prevail), although he also lends his musical talents to SEGA’s Sonic the Hedgehog gaming series. His heavy metal production credentials have not gone unnoticed either: in 2020 he became the first rock producer to claim the number one spot on Billboard’s first ever Hard Rock Producers chart.

“I’ve travelled and toured for well over a decade and have played a lot of shows,” he considers, “and I think that gives me a very unique experience now that I find myself writing a lot more and performing a lot less. It’s interesting because I’m joining these bands, so to speak, temporarily and helping them create their art. I’m putting myself in their headspace or writing from their point of view, but I definitely understand that point of view of what it feels like to stand on stage and try to make a room full of people care about what you have to say or what you’re doing. I have this very intimate understanding of what is at stake for each artist when they come to me to make songs. I want to make modern classics within the confines of these bands and their fan bases, and I definitely want to also appease that young rock fan in me that got into bands like Pink Floyd.”

“I DEFINITELY UNDERSTAND THAT POINT OF VIEW OF WHAT IT FEELS LIKE TO STAND ON STAGE AND TRY TO MAKE A ROOM FULL OF PEOPLE CARE ABOUT WHAT YOU HAVE TO SAY.”

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Dangerkids was formed in 2012 in Ohio, and two albums down (and with a rumoured third in the works), Smyth takes on co-vocalist duties with Andy Bane, completed by guitarist Alex Asch, bassist Jake Bonham and drummer Katie Cole.

“We haven’t released anything in a long, long time,” he nods, not wanting to give too much away. “We actually had intentions of releasing things sooner…we do have music that we’re sitting on. I wouldn’t say it’s a fully finished release; we are trying to wait until we’ve got something we can put our names on and call a body of work and feel proud about. I have very intentionally carved out a space to be able to work on my band and release something.”

What he’s very keen not to do with the next Dangerskids record, is rush their third album: “That’s the surest way to see your own demise or disappearance – it’s so easy to fold things in, and it’s so easy for your fans to detect it. I think something that people detect in the work that I do is the passion, time and care I put into everything. I choose my projects very carefully. I would rather take time and have it come out the right way and have the fans feel respected. For us, it’s nothing less than trying to blow people’s minds or exceed the expectations of our fans.

I always like to say that I want to give our fans what they want, just not how they think they’re gonna get it. And doing that takes a little time.”

Smyth also serves as Dangerkids’ producer these days, which was partially borne out of a thirst to prove himself behind the scenes as well as on stage. He admits he is a bit of a perfectionist when it comes to production (although he’s working on letting go of the reins a little), but is more than happy to collaborate when needed in order to create the best version of a track possible.

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Game On

“I think that that’s the mark of a great producer anyways, right? You put the ego aside. As much as you want to be able to say, ‘I did this whole thing all by myself in my room and no

HEADLINER MAGAZINE

one helped me’, I’d rather just make the best music, and sometimes that means collaborating with people that are better than you at certain things.

I’m always trying to surround myself

with people that blow my mind, so I’ve started to lean back into those things. It has certainly led to me making more meaningful work.”

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“THERE IS NOT A SINGLE THING I LOVE MORE IN THIS WORLD THAN WHEN CUBASE RELEASES UPDATES, BECAUSE MY LIFE JUST GETS A LITTLE BIT EASIER!”

With him every step of the way in the studio is Steinberg’s Cubase, which he’s been using since version SX3 in the early 2000s. He makes no secret of his genuine love of the software: “There is not a single thing I love more in this world than when Cubase releases updates, because my life just gets a little bit easier! The amount of time I spend doing things always goes down just a little bit more. I’m very obsessed with life hacking, especially in my job, so if this export will now take 30 seconds less every single time I do it, then it’s hard for me to ignore that. Anything that can get out of the way of creativity is a huge win – it’s hard to put a price tag on that type of thing. Cubase really does that for me. I know it sounds dorky, but to me, it is extremely exciting,” he laughs, doubling down: “I don’t know any other way to say it – it gets my adrenaline going! Right now I’m on Cubase 12 and it’s a lot like 11 with a lot of under-the-hood improvements. The quicker that I can get back to creating the music instead of fighting with the computer, the better. Cubase has all these great features,

like it’s auto-saving all the time, it’s recording all the time, even when I don’t press record – it’s recording, and it’s these little things that just speed things up. I’m always checking in with other DAWs here and there just because I’m like, ‘Am I missing something?’ But the truth is, I have no interest in changing. Cubase does what I want it to do.”

Most importantly, it facilitates creativity for Smyth: “For instance, I can take a whole song, change the key of it and in a couple of clicks I can hear it. I just look forward to the updates,” he enthuses, grinning. “It always comes out around the winter time, usually around New Year, and I always wait for it because it’s genuinely exciting!

They’re a good company for having their finger on the pulse of what people are doing with it. How do you beat that? It’s a company that listens and is constantly developing and changing.”

STEINBERG.NET TYLERSMYTH.COM

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RACHAEL SAGE

HEADLINER MAGAZINE

Revelation Ground

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RACHAEL SAGE Singer-songwriter Rachael Sage had recently arrived back in her home of New York City when she joined Headliner last month for a chat about new music. Having just completed a sellout tour with Irish folk icon Imelda May, she was buzzing to discuss her latest record Revelation Ground, her artistry and production process, and what’s in store for the rest of the year…

You just finished your last three shows in Dublin with Imelda May. How was it being on tour this time around?

sense that that’s just who and how she is. It’s inspiring, and I try to be that way myself.

It was just amazing. Imelda is the loveliest human being, so warm and generous on top of being an extraordinary multifaceted artist.

From beginning to end it was kind of a dream tour, and the perfect situation to resume touring across the pond after such a long time away.

What kind of approach have you been taking to songwriting recently?

Imelda is one of the strongest, most compelling female artists I’ve ever encountered, and so it’s really been an honour to be part of her tour.

I’ve never encountered a headline artist who is so generous with her words on stage about a support act as she’s been with me, and I get the

I always try to write in a way that has nuance, so that people can also project a different experience on it. That is really what poetry is all about, and it’s what I enjoy about it, that intersection of metaphor with timeliness. One of the things for better or worse that we are able to count on as creators, is that there will always be a situation going on that requires our empathy, and rallies us to better ourselves as human beings. Whether it’s someone who’s specifically been going through what I wrote about, or now obviously the war in Ukraine, I

feel like whenever I perform that song [Revelation Ground], there are people who come up to me afterwards and say that it resonates in a particular way, which is very humbling, and also a privilege in a way to be able to do what I do.

A lot of the songs I play are more fun-loving, upbeat, theatrical folk pop. Then I slip one or two ballads and some other folkier songs like Revelation Ground into a set, when I feel like people are really listening.

Could you tell us a bit about your creative process, and how Revelation Ground came together?

Having produced it on my own, it was an opportunity for me to really hone my chops as an engineer and get HEADLINERMAGAZINE.NET

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RACHAEL SAGE

Revelation Ground

“THERE IS SOMETHING ABOUT BEING HEAVILY INVOLVED IN THE ARRANGEMENT AND PRODUCTION SIDE OF THINGS.”

into the self-recording thing. I would much rather work with an engineer who’s much better at what they do than I am in that realm, but limitations can be motivational, and it did push me to get back into the technical zone. And so now, gratefully, I do have those skills moving into my next project. What I do next will probably be more of a hybrid between those acoustic elements I record myself and bringing in a band of course.

I feel like that’s been my natural progression; I was that kid with a four-track making my own demos.

There is something about being heavily involved in the arrangement and production side of things now that I find to be fascinating and really gratifying, so I hope to do it more and more.

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I’ve found a whole variety of ways to start writing a song. Back in the day, when I was a bit more of a MIDI kid, I had synthesisers and drum machines, and I was much more into electronic music then believe it or not. Then I lived in Ireland briefly, in my teens, and I became much more attuned to acoustic, organic folk music. It’s what I really love, and what really resonates with me.

with a craft where you’re working on it consistently every day, whether practising or performing on tour, as will be the case for the next few weeks.

I’ll be making some headway on my next record, which I have just decided on a title for; it’s going to be called The Other Side. I’m probably going to be finished with it sometime in the fall between all the gigs I have, and hopefully going to be putting it out in early 2023!

For my album Poetica, I recorded it by myself in GarageBand. I had a very nice microphone, but it wasn’t super expensive. It was just me, my laptop, a mic and a Scarlett interface.

RACHAELSAGE.COM

What do you have in the pipeline?

Ultimately, I’m a bit of an introverted extrovert. I love that relationship

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FOCUSRITE PRO IN WAYSTATION STUDIOS GRAMMY®-winning producer/engineer Dave Way's resume runs across all genres, spanning pop, rock, R&B and more, and his credits include such acclaimed artists as Christina Aguilera, Fiona Apple, Ziggy Marley, Macy Gray, Michael Jackson, “Weird Al" Yankovic, Phoebe Bridgers, Ringo Starr and dozens of others, in addition to the acclaimed soundtrack to Echo in the Canyon.

His most recent GRAMMY nomination was for “Best Immersive Audio Album," for his work as immersive audio co-producer on the 2019 album The Savior by A Bad Think.

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Like many working in the world of immersive audio, Way's attention has turned to the Dolby Atmos® format, and in 2020 he took the leap and upgraded his personal facility, Waystation Studio, to be able to mix in Atmos.

Since last year, he has been settling in with the new setup, mixing several projects and even recording an entire album specifically to be mixed in Atmos – helped in no small part by his arsenal of interfaces and a RedNet R1 controller from Focusrite Pro.

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