Images: Young Athena, DEJA and Josh Barry performing at SoundOn presents
Earlier this month, Headliner was granted a rare audience with one of the most influential figures in the world of live events promotion. Having honed his craft over the past four-and-a-half decades, KMJ Entertainment Group founder and CEO Stuart Galbraith has not just seen first-hand, but also helped shape the evolution of promotion as we know it today.
From the early days of simple print advertising and poster campaigns, through to increasingly complex and sophisticated digital methods we see today, it’s a craft that is constantly in a state of flux, and a brief glance at Galbraith’s CV is testament to that.
From starting out as a stage manager and lighting and audio engineer at university, through senior positions with the likes of Live Nation, his experience spans the full spectrum of what it takes to both create and promote a great event.
One of the hallmarks of his and KMJ’s success, as he speaks about at length in this month’s cover feature, is diversification. Having started life as purely a music promotion specialist, the company today encompasses a raft of different brands that have enabled the business to work across
Daniel Gumble Head of Contenteverything from comedy shows and west end theatre productions, through to conferences, spoken word events, and more.
Of course, diversification of this kind is a concept that can be applied to the success of all areas of the music and pro audio industries, but to hear such an approach explained and distilled by a force such as Galbraith makes for a fascinating listen, and indeed a lesson, for business leaders in any sector considering how to grow and expand their offering.
Elsewhere in this issue, we hear from similarly pre-eminent leaders in their field, from artists and producers to technicians and executives, all which serve up unique insights into their craft and how they too are pushing the boundaries of possibility. Enjoy.
Believe and sixtyhertz from electronica collective VHS Celebs, an unlikely duo that crossed paths chasing tornadoes across the midwest, join Headliner for a chat to discuss all things music, including their recently released ‘80s tinged debut album, Multiplex…
Despite being a relatively new project, VHS Celebs – made up of talented musicians Believe and sixtyhertz – have been making waves in the synthwave scene with their blend of ‘80s pop culture, futuristic house and electronica. Each immersed in their respective music
worlds from a young age, the pair came together to create a nostalgic, innovative sound that seeks to push the boundaries of contemporary electronic music, and have not looked back since.
Sixty cut his chops in Tony Maserati’s studio in L.A, and soon found himself working with artists directly as a monitor engineer and stage tech. That transpired into working for Live Nation, managing tours out on the road. In contrast, the young Believe would lay vocal chops over hip-hop instrumentals to make tapes for his school friends, eventually finding himself signed to Sugar Hill Records and Sylvia Robinson’s label as a rapper.
“I did a string of hip-hop albums in my mid 20s,” Believe recalls. “I’m a fan of a lot of different types of music, and wanted to experiment, so I bought a guitar and toured all the big festivals with my band. We did everything ourselves, so I’ve been on the DIY side of things for a while.
“It turned out me and Justin [sixty] had a mutual friend named Jeremy Dawson, who’s in a band called Shiny Toy Guns, and we were actually both chasing tornadoes with Jeremy when we met. We figured out that we had a similar taste in music and we started a relationship from there, making songs and finding a groove that became our signature.”
How does one get into chasing tornadoes, Headliner asks…
“You have a crazy friend from Oklahoma that chases tornadoes for his birthday every year,” sixty replies with a chuckle. “And he throws you in the truck and says look at this computer; tell me which way to go!”
As far as VHS Celebs is concerned, sixty produces the music, Believe writes and records the lyrics, and then both mix it master together themselves: “I think we have an idea of how we want to sound more so than
anyone else,” Believe asserts, “and it’s a lot easier to just do it ourselves rather than trying to explain that.
“I feel like the music should almost dictate the lyrics. So sixty will send me a track and it’ll have a name, and I’ll usually just try and go off whatever he named it in the mood of the music and try to come up with lyrics from there. It was really organic how that all started.”
If their name wasn’t half a giveaway, VHS Celebs love movies, especially those they grew up with in the ‘80s. Paying homage to their favourite films, each of their music videos for their new album, Multiplex, parodies an iconic flick from the era – starring themselves of course.
“From a production standpoint, I wanted to make something that sounded cinematic,” explains sixty. “I do have a couple of analogue pieces of gear, but I’m producing most of this stuff in the box. I try to create a real ‘80s sounding synth melody, and then build the drums around that to lay down the tempo and vibe of the track. Then I’ll add a bassline and some elements like vocal samples and snippets, whether they’re chops or layers, just to fill out the sound and add atmosphere to the chorus.
“I WANTED SOMETHING THAT FELT ‘80S BUT STILL FELT FUTURE.”
“One of my favourite plugins that we used a lot on this record was Super VHS by Baby Audio. It’s a distortion plugin where you can apply different settings to the filters to really eighties-fy a MIDI riff or sample. That’s kind of been a secret weapon for me on Multiplex. I also love the U-He Diva; a lot of baselines that I made on this record were made with that soft synth.”
Around the time they met chasing tornadoes, sixty sent Believe a track that would eventually become Don’t Cry, from the duo’s new record. It was a sound that Believe had been seeking for a long time.
“I had talked to several producers about doing a project that was more in the vein of Gary Numan, Two Way Army, Prince; more avant garde, experimental stuff,” he says. “So when he [sixty] sent me the track it was just perfect. It sounds like it could have been made in the ‘80s, or it could have been made yesterday. And that’s what I wanted - something that felt ‘80s but still felt future.”
Deciding they needed to collaborate further and grow their sound, the pair made a few more tracks together and discovered their shared love of film. And so the idea for their
concept album, Multiplex, was born. “Sixty went to film school, and I’ve always been a film buff,” Believe adds. “And so it gave us the opportunity to play around with trying to condense these movies into three minute stories that we could tell, with limited cast and limited resources. But we felt like the result would be hilarious either way. We did all the directing, filming and casting, and our friends helped us out a lot.”
As a musical pairing who clearly have a flair for the dramatic, both Believe and sixty are excited to head out on the road for the entire month of April, playing Multiplex to some iconic venues on both the east and west coasts.
“We’ll also be doing a listening party for our new single that’s in the works - it’s called Hell Of A Guy,” Believe reveals. “We recorded it with the ‘80s group the System and we’ll be releasing that in April while we’re on the road. Then we’ll be ending the tour at Neotropolis, a cyberpunk festival in California which is a totally amazing event.”
“Shout out QSC; they make great speakers and I’m using their PAs all the time on tours that I’m on,” sixty chimes in. “Play Out Loud, to me,
means express yourself, and harness your own creativity. I made music for a long time but kind of kept it a secret, and didn’t share it with anybody. I wasn’t very confident at that time that it was very good. I think the way that I was exposed to audio engineering and music production – I saw it from some of the best in the business – made me develop a harsh perfectionism about some of the stuff that I do.
“I’ve since evolved and grown up from that, so to me Play Out Loud means expressing myself and my own creativity. I’m super proud to have done this project by ourselves completely, working directly with Believe, and I think it’s an important part of the human experience in life.”
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One of the most influential figures in the world of live music and events promotion, KMJ Entertainment Group CEO Stuart Galbraith has been at the forefront of his industry for over four decades. From the days of traditional print promo to today’s increasingly sophisticated methods, his ability to stay ahead of the curve has been central to his success, as has his knack for understanding how and when to diversify and extend his reach into new markets. Headliner paid him a visit to discuss what drove him from being a budding stage manager and techy while at university to become one of the music industry’s pre-eminent promoters, as well as the trends he sees shaping the sector as we know it…
At the time of Headliner’s visit to KMJ Entertainment Group’s London HQ, the company has just released news of a significant rebrand of the company. The day before our arrival, the company, which is currently comprised of some 16 brands spanning the live entertainment industry, was known as Kilimanjaro Live. Founded by CEO Stuart Galbraith in 2008 with a staff of two, Kilimanjaro Live has evolved and expanded from a live music promoter in its earliest iteration to encompass everything from theatre, comedy, conferences, and spoken word events. Selling a combined
total of over four million tickets a year across its portfolio, and with in excess of 160 staff, Galbraith felt a restructuring of sorts was required to provide a degree of clarity, both externally and internally, as to the role Kilimanjaro Live serves alongside its sister brands (Regular Music, Singular, Fane, Flying Music, Gigantic, Myticket, Fane, Belladrum, JAS Theatricals, Arches London Bridge, UK Live, FORM, Tickets. ie, Kontour, How To Academy and Arches London Bridge).
“We felt it was the right time to change the group name because Kili started off as a music company, but it was also the name of our holding company,” Galbraith explains as we join him in a boardroom lined with tour posters for many of the high profile shows and productions he has promoted. From Simply Red and Ed Sheeran to recent West End hits like Hades Town, the décor neatly illustrates the scope of KMJ’s remit in 2024.
“Now, because music represents a piece – still a very important piece – of what we do, it was causing confusion that Kili was the name of the music company as well as the holding company,” Galbraith continues. “So KMJ is really the umbrella organisation that sits over all of our operating companies, and within music we have several companies that work very closely with Kilimanjaro Live.”
The eclectic nature of KMJ’s operations, and Galbraith’s relentless drive for diversification, are
themes that underpin much of our conversation during the morning we spend together. From his formative years through numerous personal and professional milestones, a refusal to stand still and a distinctly proactive approach to business have been instrumental in carving out the road that has taken him from studying Biophysics and Microbiology in 1980 to where he is today.
“It started the day that I went to university in Leeds in 1980,” he remembers, discussing how his aspirations for a career in science was side-lined quite literally from day one. “I joined Ents in freshers’ week as a stage crew member. I started going to gigs on a regular basis and I remember seeing the Thompson Twins at The Warehouse, which was the first club show I’d been to. From there I started unloading trucks, then became a stage manager and it moved on from there.
“As for why I moved away from stage management and production and towards promotion, I was purely and simply surrounded by good mentors at Leeds. The Ents head before me was a guy called Dave Goodman, who is still a friend to this day, and Andy Kershaw the BBC Radio DJ. And at that time, Leeds university was a great venue because it was getting a lot of shows as there wasn’t really another significant sized venue in the Leeds Bradford area. In the few years we were at Leeds we did U2, ZZ Top, The Clash, Simple Minds, and just before I arrived, Bob Marley played there.”
From his earliest experiences through to KMJ’s most recent activities, Galbraith appears to be able to recall and describe in detail moments from the past four and a half decades at the drop of a hat. He speaks quietly but with purpose. Eloquent yet economical with his words, he says a lot with little. Never faltering or repeating himself, he is an adroit communicator.
“It’s interesting looking back and revisiting Leeds university,” he continues, considering the unique learning curve it provided. “We were able to service visiting promoters and bands reasonably well and learn how to deal with agents in that process. I certainly learned how to deal with tour managers and artists as well. It was long hours and that was a good education in terms of understanding it’s not just a case of turning up for the gig.
“As the stage manager at Leeds university I ran a stage crew company, an audio company, a lighting company. It was interesting for me because I was able to learn how to mix sound, how to tech lights etc., and, indeed, some of the people we worked with in those student days are now running fully functioning commercial audio and visual companies.”
Even at this point of his burgeoning career, a determination to equip himself with as diverse a skillset as possible was beginning to manifest itself. But instead of embarking on a more technical path, a role with leading national promoter Midland Concert Promotions (MCP) quickly drew him away from a career as an AV engineer. It proved to be a life altering moment.
“One of the promoters that was bringing visiting shows to us in the year I was booking was MCP,” he says. “I got on well with Tim [Parsons] who was one of the co-CEOs, and they offered me a job to become a promoter. It was a life changing moment for me. I left my degree behind, and I had the conversation with my parents about leaving university without a degree but saying, ‘I can always go back’ [laughs]. In their eyes I literally ran away with a rock ‘n’ roll band never to return.”
After becoming a partner at MCP following successful tours for the likes of Sisters of Mercy, Simply Red, and Def Leppard, the company was sold to consolidation vehicle SFX in 1999, which in turn was sold to Clear Channel. From this, Live Nation was born, and by 2005 was fully established as a promotional powerhouse. As managing director, Galbraith oversaw tours across stadia and arenas for some of the biggest bands on the planet, while also playing a crucial role in the creation of festivals such as Download, Wireless, and Hyde Park (Hard Rock) Calling.
“When SFX started in the UK I was employee number four and we moved into a central office in Grosvenor Street,” Galbraith notes, describing the early days of the company. “I was there
in 1999 and left in 2007, and by the time I left we were 120 staff and selling three million tickets a year. It was a huge growth period both in terms of staff, artists, and acquisitions.”
There was, however, according to Galbraith, a drawback that came with the exponential expansion of the company. As he saw it, the increasing scale of the business meant that the kind of personalised client service he was committed to was no longer possible.
“Around 2006 I started to become a little bit unsettled in my role at Live Nation,” he says. “I felt we were getting too big and losing the ability to have a personalised client service relationship with artists. By chance I had a conversation with Tim Leiweke [AEG CEO] who were just opening the [Millennium] Dome - soon to be renamed the O2 in London – and he didn’t have a great number of shows in there at the time. They had invested a huge amount of money in it and needed a lot of shows to make that business work.
“So, we basically set up Kilimanjaro as a joint venture and the agendas were complimentary. I was taking funding from AEG to establish a brand new company and in turn we were tasked with putting as many shows into the O2 as we possibly could in that first period. In the first four years of Kili’s existence, I think we did 40 shows, and they were everything from a horse show to a New Orleans jazz festival, Ozzfest to Peter Gabriel at six week’s notice. Our function was to fill the place while building a solid foundation for what would become Kilimanjaro.”
It was in 2012 that Kilimanjaro broke out as an independent entity, with Galbraith steering the ship through a highly challenging first 12 months, before stabilising and laying the groundwork for a future that would establish the company as one of the most formidable forces in the industry.
“We were able to stand on our own two feet but 2012 was a challenging year for us,” he elaborates. “Although we had some great shows, we made a mistake in booking a festival called Sonosphere. Within a couple of weeks of tickets going on sale we knew we’d made a mistake, and we took the very difficult decision to cancel it in our first year, which was very tough because it affected our cash flow. It was a tough year to get through.”
For those unaware, or who may have forgotten, the mistake Galbraith refers to is that of booking Queen just as Adam Lambert was unveiled as the band’s new frontman.
“We made the fundamental error of booking Queen just as Adam was announced as lead singer, and to put it bluntly, the Queen audience had not yet warmed to him or adopted him,” he clarifies. “So, we were ahead of our time and I could see Adam was a brilliant singer and that it would work, but we were ahead of the game. Now, Queen do multiple arenas sold out with Adam, but that year we were just too early. But Sonosphere carried on as a touring rock festival through Europe and we did another six or eight that year that were hugely successful.
“The following year was fine for Kili, but in 2014 I felt that we lacked scale and were missing being part of something bigger. So, we then did a deal with DEAG (Deutsche Entertainment AG) where they acquired 51% of the company and it gave us the ability to work on the highest level and not necessarily be so exposed with regards to finances.”
Ten years on, the company certainly cannot be accused of lacking in scale. Over the past decade, Galbraith’s diversification strategy has seen the business enter new verticals and gain significant traction in the ones it already occupied.
“What I’ve done is take my and my team’s knowledge and applied it into different areas,” he says. “Many of them, from marketing and ticketing and administration, are similar, whether you are talking about a theatrical production, an exhibition, a comedy event, a music show or festival. So we’ve applied ourselves in different areas and have successfully seen other companies and partnered with them or acquired them to bring in their expertise.
“Kili started in 2008 with two of us. Then there were four, then eight, and the ambition was that we would get to a head count of 20, maybe 30. As of this week we are 165 and it’s because of that policy of expansion that we’ve grown to that scale.”
The incorporation of new and diverse talent across the KMJ portfolio has also been central in helping the company evolve with ever new promotional methods and approaches. On the matter of whether or not the fundamental skills that underpin his craft have changed much over his 45 years in the market, he is philosophical.
“The answer is yes and no,” he considers. “It’s a lot more digital and more labour intensive. The process of running social media and digital marketing takes a lot more people hours than placing ads in papers or putting up posters. The skillsets have changed, and specialisation is incredibly important.”
Another staple of the group’s success through the years has been the long-term partnerships Galbraith and his team have forged with some of his roster’s biggest stars.
“We are very fortunate,” he notes. “We have a large number of artists who we’ve worked with from the very early stages of their career. Simply Red is the ultimate example. I did my first gig with them on June 15, 1985, and we’ve done every show they have done in the UK ever since. Similarly, artists like Ed Sheeran have been with us from the start, so loyalty is very important.
“I’VE TAKEN MY TEAM’S KNOWLEDGE AND APPLIED IT INTO DIFFERENT AREAS.”
“However, there are certainly some artists along the way that we’ve seen working on global deals with the likes of AEG and Live Nation, so the market has become more competitive. And the margins in music have become a lot tighter, which is another reason for the diversification strategy, whether it’s exhibitions, small outdoor festivals, the market isn’t as crowded, and you are able to get a better return from a finance point of view working in those areas.”
Galbraith also draws attention to the efforts KMJ is making at grassroots level. Both from a business perspective and for the future prosperity of the music business, he insists that it is imperative to support new artists from the ground up.
“It’s hugely important that the grassroots are nurtured,” he says. “We’ve always had shows that play at that level, and that sector is facing challenges in many areas, whether it be significantly increased costs or business rates. Social habits have also changed. Students no longer go out on Thursday, Friday, Saturday and drink eight pints of lager, which is what was funding those venues. So, it is crucial that the sector is supported.
“Having said that, it’s not the only route to market today. We are seeing increasing numbers of artists coming in and being able to play to 2,000, 4,000, 10,000 or more people without having to go through those small venues because of the proliferation of music on social channels. You can become a huge star without having to go and play to 200 people driving around in a van.”
While the challenges facing the grassroots community are among the fiercest that sector has ever faced, Galbraith believes that the entire live events ecosystem is navigating particularly choppy waters.
“Post-pandemic we’ve seen changing buying habits –people are buying tickets later,” he says. “The likes of Ed Sheeran are still selling tickets the day they go on sale, but on our marketing and ticketing side we have had to adapt to the fact that sales are coming later. Furthermore, there has been a huge escalation of costs post pandemic, whether that be in venue charges or fuel charges. Post-Brexit labour has become more expensive, so there are new ways of touring at a lower level where it’s no longer financially viable to tour your entire production, so increasingly we are seeing acts make use of the production facilities already installed at the venue, as opposed to driving four trucks around the country, which is also environmentally damaging.”
With a busy schedule awaiting Galbraith, we wrap up our conversation with a look to the future. Unsurprisingly, he is eyeing further growth and expansion opportunities,
both with regard to the brands already at his behest and potential acquisitions further down the line. And despite the challenges outlined moments ago, he is convinced that the industry as a whole is about to outstrip its pre-pandemic heights.
“The entertainment market generally has exploded,” he closes. “There are huge areas of growth that we can achieve with the components we have and it’s about making sure all those components are working together in the best way possible. We have huge repositories of talent and expertise and it’s about making sure everyone can make sense of those. We are looking to grow organically and through acquisition.
“Last year was our first normal year post-pandemic, and while there were certainly challenges from a sales point of view, the market has become stronger and stronger and today is significantly bigger than it was in 2019. And from where we are now looking at 2025, I think we are going to see a record breaking year.”
Paul Irizari, better known simply as ECHO, is one of the Latin market’s premier producers and engineers, having worked with many of the scene’s biggest names over the past 20 years. Here, he joins Headliner from his Miami facility The Lab Studios to discuss how he almost joined the air force before taking up music, as well as the tech that has shaped his career.
For the past two decades, Paul Irizari, aka ECHO, has resided at the top tier of the Latin music market. His work with the likes of Ricky Martin, Maluma, Pitbull, the London Symphony Orchestra, Tego Calderon, Nicole Scherzinger, Tempo, Don Omar, Ivy Queen, Thalia, Nina Sky, to name a mere few, has earned him multiple Latin Grammy awards and a reputation as one of the industry’s go-to engineers. Hailing from Puerto Rico, he now runs his own studio, The Lab Studios, in Miami. It is from here that he joins us via Zoom for an indepth chat about his upbringing and a far from conventional route into the music business.
“We’re in studio A, which is my newest studio facility, and I’m happy to be here with you guys,” he beams, greeting us with a walk through the studio. “We have three rooms here. Two are SSL rooms, both of them with Augspurger speakers and we have a Dolby Atmos room. And this is my private space, more oriented towards production and mixing and Dolby Atmos, but it’s also a not-so-private commercial space for people that I know, from labels and some artists etc.
“You need places where you can listen to what you’re doing correctly before it goes out,” he continues. “Because we’re
moving at this turbo pace in the music industry where everybody’s looking to put stuff out quickly, and unfortunately there is a sacrifice and a lot of quality is lost in the process. So, I brought together a lot of equipment to create a nice semi-private commercial space here in Coconut Grove, Miami. We’ve been operating for almost a year, and it’s been great.”
Despite his status in the market today, the young Irizari seemed destined for a very different career. As a passionate music fan, he exhibited signs of a budding musical talent during his childhood, but a life in the arts was never on the cards during his formative years.
“Nobody in my family had anything to do with music,” he recalls. “But, when I was five years old, my dad bought me a small Casio keyboard and I played it all the time and became very good, mostly playing by ear. I took some music lessons but didn’t feel them, so I became good at using my ears. But as a child I wasn’t really seeking a music career.
“I went to the Air Force Academy in 1995 after school. I was actually going to be a pilot and an aeronautical engineer, but music pulled again, and I ended up back in Puerto Rico a
few years later, where I’m from, and started messing around with creating music and buying my first pieces of equipment and starting to look at it at from a different angle. And here we are, almost 28 years later! I’ve been blessed to do what I love and be able to feed my family and my kids while doing it, and I’ve also been blessed to help a lot of people take the correct route in their careers.
“I could have probably ended up in the street or in jail or dead. Puerto Rico, at the time, had a very crazy social environment, and I think music has become a great career for many people who were seeking some kind of escape from a not-so-great lifestyle.”
So, did he ever feel at risk of being dragged into such a lifestyle himself?
“Not at all,” he states. “My dad retired from the Air Force after 20 years of service when I was born, and he started building furniture on the actual roof of our house, and he ended up growing that into a humongous furniture factory. He then sold that and was able to retire. I had that example of building something with your bare hands. So, I don’t come from that street ghetto environment, but I had a lot of friends, and I always knew that it was there.”
As for how he made the move from the Air Force to music, ECHO explains how a family emergency would redirect the course of his life.
“I was fully into the Air Force, but life can throw you different situations,” he says. “I ended up leaving the Air Force because my dad needed a triple bypass surgery and I thought he was gonna die. I couldn’t not be with him, and I didn’t have any leave days in the Air Force, so I was forced to do an honourable discharge. When I ended up returning to Puerto Rico, I started getting back into music. Around 1996/97 I just took a leap into it, and here we are.”
ECHO’s first foray into music upon returning to Puerto Rico arose from a dissatisfaction with a lot of the music he was being exposed to at the time. As such, he wound up creating his own beats, which would soon draw the attention of fellow local artists and producers.
“I started trying to discover this whole world of production and started doing my own thing,” he elaborates. “I purchased my first Akai MPC 2000 and a Korg Trinity if I’m not mistaken. I started messing around and understanding the basics of production. I already had music embedded in my brain, so it wasn’t as hard, it was more about understanding the technical parts. Back then we’re talking MIDI, no computers, no Pro Tools, no internet. So, I read a lot, and I started recording myself and some friends.
“We did a jingle for a radio show, and we took that jingle to the radio show. It played urban music which at that moment was growing, but it was more of an underground movement, and the jingle sounded better than most of the music the station was playing! So, we
immediately got calls and the station was like, hey, what was that? It sounded louder, clearer and better than most of the music, and by word-of-mouth people started calling me and coming to my home to record. It was crazy.”
It quickly became clear that having a raft of artists constantly turning up at his house was not a
viable way to continue in his new profession. A dedicated studio space was essential for his career to develop to the next level.
“I built the first Lab studio back in 1997,” he continues. “I was still in college doing civil engineering, and a civil engineer who graduated in Puerto Rico maybe made $38-$40 thousand dollars a year, and all of
“WE HAD TO MAKE SURE WE COULD NOT ONLY COMPETE IN MIAMI, BUT SET A NEW STANDARD.”
a sudden, I was getting paid $10,000 to do an album that might take two weeks. Obviously it wasn’t quite that easy, but in that moment, you’re a kid and you see an opportunity to make money doing what you like. But it’s a lot of work. It’s not parties and drinks like most people think. It is a pretty tight work schedule.”
Having established himself as ‘one to watch’ in the region, ECHO soon began working with local rapper Tempo. As one of the most exciting breaking acts at the time, their work together opened the floodgates, with many of the scene’s top talent heading for The Lab in pursuit of his sound.
“I started getting some low-level artists that were coming up, but when I started working with Tempo is when it all took off and I committed fully to doing music,” he says. “And when other artists heard what Temple did, then other artists were knocking on my door to look for either the music I was making or the sound I was creating as an engineer, or both, because it’s mostly been both.”
One of the most crucial components of his sound through the years has been not only his Augspurger® Monitors units, but also his relationship with its owner, Dave Malekpour. The pair have been close friends for many years, and for ECHO, his speakers have been an invaluable tool.
“Dave has been a great friend for many years before we actually did business,” he says. “I’ve recommended a bunch of friends and customers to him along the years, but in my early years I wasn’t in need of such powerful systems. I didn’t have the space. But when we decided to do this whole project here at The Lab we knew we needed to go big and make sure that we could not only compete here in Miami, but set a new standard. And we’ve done so. Dave helped us not only with the Augspurger speakers; he helped with a bunch of other equipment.
“In this room we have a DUO 8 with DUO 12-inch subs and I cannot think of any better mixing room
with less ear fatigue. It gives a better perspective, image, dimension, everything you need when you’re mixing in any room. We made sure they sounded perfect with this room and its dimensions. They spent a few days out here making sure that they sound good on everything, because obviously we have customers that do jazz music or salsa, it’s not only hip-hop and urban.”
“I’ve been to many studios throughout my career,” he continues. “Most have speakers with high energy levels and you will have to take breaks after 40 or 50 minutes because of ear fatigue from the mid-range These speakers do not do that. I can sit down if I want to for four hours and I won’t get to a point where I don’t know what the hell I’m listening to because the speaker is so comfortable.”
For now, ECHO remains busy as ever. On top of working with a multitude of artists and running The Lab, he is also working on his own artist project, with his first release pencilled in for the summer.
“There is just so much going on at the moment and it’s all very, very positive,” he concludes. “I wouldn’t have it any other way.”
Rising star Celina Sharma joins Headliner for a chat about her fascinating career so far, becoming a social media sensation, and the “unique” power of SoundOn in getting her music to a wider audience…
Since arriving on UK shores from Australia less than five years ago, Celina Sharma has achieved more than most could hope to in twice that time. Bearing in mind that two of those years were blighted by the pandemic, her accomplishments are rendered all the more remarkable.
Equipped with a determination to crack the music industry via her unique brand of pop, Sharma left her homeland for London at the age of just 16. Since arriving in 2019,
she has notched up a dizzying raft of accolades and figures. The BBC Asian Network announced her as the BBC 2019 Future Sound, making her the youngest artist ever to achieve the honour. Her 2019 single Lean On featuring Indian superstar Emiway Bantai has racked up over 100 million streams globally and is now certified Double Platinum in India, while her debut EP CECE streamed over 200 million worldwide and has been playlisted on BBC Radio 1, Triple J and KISS FM.
To date, she has amassed a combined digital audience of over four million, becoming one of the fastest growing UK artists on TikTok with 2.4 million followers and 38 million likes, in excess of 500,000 YouTube subscribers, 420,000 Snapchat subs, and 550,000 Instagram followers.
At the time of joining us, she is readying herself for the release of her as yet untitled next EP.
“I’m super excited about it,” she beams from her London home via Zoom. “It’s definitely taken a bit of time. I’ve been working on that a lot so far this year and have been doing a lot of social media as well, just trying to grow my platforms.”
The distinct sound that has come to define Sharma’s work stems from a childhood that drew influence from Australian pop and Bollywood.
“I grew up listening to Delta Goodrem, Guy Sebastian, Kylie Minogue, and a lot of Australian artists,” she says of her formative years. “And I was into Beyonce, as well as old soul like Etta James and Aretha Franklin. But my love of music definitely came from watching Bollywood films as a kid. My dad’s Indian and he would always put on a lot of Bollywood films, which have a lot of singing, acting, dancing, all that kind of stuff. And I was just always that kind of performing arts kid. Even in preschool I used to sell little tickets pretending I was Gabriela from High School Musical [laughs]. My teachers would say to my mum, ‘your daughter can hold a note’. So, I started singing lessons when I was six years old and then I was doing a lot of competitions.
“When I was in high school, I put some covers up on YouTube and Instagram and quickly got signed to a major label in the UK and that’s when
I moved over. That’s when it really started taking off for me, when I was about 16-17.”
Understandably, Sharma took some time to adjust to life on the other side of the planet, away from her family and friends at such a young age. And within less than a year of her arrival, would find both her professional and personal life blighted by Covid.
“It was very hard moving over because I didn’t know anyone here apart from my managers,” she explains. “And life’s really different here; it’s really fastpaced. But then COVID hit right after I got here. I was 17 and you want to go out and meet new people, but I was now in a place I didn’t know where I had to stay at home.
“And that put me behind a couple years in my career as well. I lost those two years because I couldn’t travel, I couldn’t get into the studio. It was difficult, but it was a blessing in some ways because my TikTok really popped off. I was at home making a lot of social media content, so I was posting musical clips and random stuff on TikTok. I just hopped on every trend I could, and I was dancing and singing acapella. And every video that I was posting was going pretty viral.”
Armed with a significant following across multiple social media platforms, Sharma emerged from the pandemic with a sizable, highly engaged audience with which to share her music. Her ability to create
compelling content suited to each platform continues to serve her well but is something that requires constant work.
“It’s hard to get the balance right sometimes,” she considers “For example, I did a song with Indian rapper Emiway Bantai (Lean On) which blew up and a lot of his fan base came onto my Instagram, and they were like, ‘why don’t you do more of the Indian stuff?’ And when I release English music some of them are not really interested. But I want to represent my heritage, so I’m trying to get the best of both worlds.
“A lot of artists hate social media, but I don’t mind it, and it’s only going to
help me get to where I want to be,” she continues. “There are people who have been following me for such a long time and it’s so nice for them to grow with me through this journey. People can see that through social media - where I started and how I’ve progressed. My music is changing, and people are seeing that.”
A crucial aspect in Sharma’s success so far has been her relationship with TikTok’s music distribution and marketing platform, SoundOn, which allows artists to distribute their music on TikTok and across major streaming services, such as Spotify, Apple Music, and others, while maintaining full ownership and artist-friendly royalties without administrative fees.
“SOUNDON REALLY HELPED ME AND THEY’VE ALWAYS BEEN REALLY SUPPORTIVE.”
“I was very fortunate to be in a writing camp with two amazing producers,” says Sharma, describing how she came to work with SoundOn and the impact it has had on her career. “It was like a TikTok writing camp and because they’d seen some of my videos blow up they wanted to get me in. We wrote a song called Killer and that went really well. It was Top 5 in the UK on TikTok for around two months. They really helped me and they’ve always been really supportive. I think they’ve seen my journey, and they know that I started with TikTok and that’s how I grew on that platform.
“If anything blows up on TikTok you’re possibly going to get on the charts, you’re going to be trending on other social media platforms,
and that’s one of the reasons why being supported by TikTok is really important. A song from 10 years ago, if it starts trending again, gets in the charts. So, there’s a bit of a difference between signing to a major label and SoundOn.”
For now, Sharma is setting her sights on some live performances later in the year, as well as putting the final touches to her upcoming EP showcasing a new sound. It is, she concludes, shaping up to be her biggest release yet.
“The new EP is definitely different to the first one I released because I was 19 when I released that and now I’m 21,” she says. “I’ve gone through a lot more life experiences to write about. Also, this EP is a bit more on the UK
side, it’s got a bit more of that urban UK vibe to it. I’ve been living here for five years, and I really love the UK music scene and we’ve taken some inspiration from that. It’s going to be a six-song EP, and we have gone back and forth about some of the songs and I need to think about a name for it. But I’m just so excited for everyone to hear what we’ve been working on!”
The best sounding live console was originally designed for broadcast.
Santhan Reddy – one of the owners of TOMS (The Only Music Shop), a music tech reseller in South Africa – reflects on the company’s journey from selling musical instruments to studio equipment, the changes in the South African audio and music industry over the years, and why nothing can replace brick and mortar stores.
TOMS (formally That Other Music Shop) has been supplying musicians and hobbyists with musical instruments and pro audio equipment since 1978. Now boasting stores in Braamfontein and Rivonia in Gauteng, Bloemfontein, Durban, Cape Town and Bellville, TOMS Music Shops are more than just your average music shop, it’s a South African institution.
“It’s very easy to sell boxes these days,” Reddy muses. “What sets us apart is the staff that we’ve got; we’ve got absolutely fantastic people working in the company. A lot of them are musicians and producers and have been with the company for quite a long time, so their passion translates into helping clients. The most joy we get is from helping artists develop themselves in the musical space in South Africa.”
The Flagship store in Braamfontein opened in 1985, moving from its original location in Bree Street, which opened in 1978. This shop has since evolved into a three-floor music Mecca, encompassing all aspects of music, music production and pro audio, and has welcomed Hugh Masekela, Sipho “Hotsticks” Mabuse, Jimmy Dludlu, Matthew Mole and Jeremy Loops through its doors, not to mention playing a role in shaping the careers of numerous emerging South African artists.
“One of the biggest changes that we’ve seen in the industry over a couple of years is the rise of independent artists without the need for massive recording labels,” Reddy notes on the way the South African music industry has changed over the last decade or so. “These days, kids have smartphones with
apps like Tidal, Apple Music, Spotify, which create playlists for you. They have access to all the old music and the new music – it’s such a drastic change. Artists now can also express themselves on all these platforms on social media and the exposure and viewership these things get is crazy. It’s why artists can record albums in their bedroom and make Grammywinning hits. TOMS helps these artists from behind the scenes in terms of reaching these goals. I could list the amount of South African artists that have walked through the doors. It’s really incredible to know that we’re a part of that journey and a piece of South African music history, albeit kind of behind the scenes!
“Since the late ‘70s until now, music – in terms of what you can get – has evolved quite quickly,” furthers Reddy on the company’s growth alongside
the changing tastes of its customers since opening. “We started off as an instrument and speaker store and up until the mid ‘80s and ‘90s, it was pretty much what you could get in South Africa. If you needed to record something or wanted to work with really high preamps like Neve pres or record on really good systems, you’d have to go to big studios like BOP studios or the SABC. Since then, the technological boom has been so quick, and music gear evolved so quickly, that young kids these days have access to years of knowledge and experience at the click of a button. They can lay down complete tracks from their bedrooms, and these are the trends we’re seeing more often. These days, non-guitar players can lay down guitar riffs and drummers can lay down samples – it’s just the world we live in. That’s where our market is slowly heading. I don’t think
“IT’S REALLY INCREDIBLE TO KNOW THAT WE’RE A PART OF THAT JOURNEY AND A PIECE OF SOUTH AFRICAN MUSIC HISTORY.”
we’ll ever move away from traditional instruments,” he stresses. “There’s no replacing a guitar going through a valve head or feeling that kick drum on stage – some things you can’t replicate. It’s our job to advise clients and guide them.”
TOMS understands that in today’s digital age, content creation is vital, and its range of broadcasting and podcasting equipment is designed to help customers create professional quality audio content. TOMS provides a range of microphones, mixers, headphones and other related equipment from renowned manufacturers to cater to every wannabe podcaster that walks through their doors. “Since COVID-19, a lot more focus has been shifting towards podcasting and broadcast,” he nods. “That market just expanded and blew up; it got to a point when we
just couldn’t get enough stock to cater with the demand, the waiting period was so long,” he recalls. “That’s what we’ve had to do as a business; we’ve had to evolve and adapt to the world.”
The times are changing, indeed. Despite building the company’s legacy based on its physical locations and the knowledge of the professionals within, TOMS recently opened its online store. Reddy offers his thoughts on the implications of the shift from brick and mortar retail to online: “It’s been a bit of a challenging one,” he acknowledges. “There are a lot more online stores these days, but nothing can replace brick and mortar. A lot of customers in South Africa would rather interact with someone than go online. So while it is a growing and fruitful avenue for us – and it’s a platform for us to show ourselves to the world –
nothing would ever beat the brick and mortar stores and the people in there and the knowledge that they have.”
And what about the uptake in Dolby Atmos in South Africa; has he noticed TOMS selling more Atmos-enabled gear to accommodate this? “It’s really great. It was such a niche thing to begin with – people having to mix in Dolby Atmos – it’s such a daunting thing and the requirements are so high. We have found a lot more people wanting to get into this realm. It is probably one of the best solutions available. It’s a really cool thing and I have had a lot more producers starting to mix in Dolby Atmos because it’s going to be supported a lot more on these platforms. It just keeps evolving and evolving.”
TOMS stocks the very best musical instruments (think, Fender, Gibson, Taylor, Yamaha, Roland and Korg), but the best in pro audio studio gear is accounted for too, including Genelec monitors. “When I went to TOMS, the studio specialist at the time set up some 8050s with a 7050 or 7060 sub,” he recalls upon first hearing them. “Once he played it for me, I spent the next two months popping in and out of the studio just listening to tracks over and over again. I made a promise to myself: I said, ‘I don’t care how long it takes, I will eventually have a Genelec system at home’. The more I started researching Genelec and the way they designed certain things like the tweeters and the casing, the more and more I fell in love with them. I always tell clients, ‘It’s very hard for me to explain what listening to Genelec monitors is like until you’ve actually heard them yourself’. What I want in a speaker is honesty; I want to hear exactly what I’m listening to, and that’s what Genelec gives me. It’s the honesty when I’m listening to things; the clarity, the tone, the bold quality of them and small things like the green footprint that they have – the power consumption and reliability. It’s the benchmark for me, and it’s what I measure everything else against.”
TOMS started selling Genelecs around 2005, and Reddy credits the company with having a small hand in the brand’s popularity in South
Africa. “We were privileged enough to have access to these monitors, because they are high end monitors, and they’ve been in the South African market ever since. I think with a lot more marketing being done with us, more people are using Genelec and showing the versatility and the different applications that you can use the loudspeakers for. Genelec’s grown in popularity for the discerning user and the demand has been growing steadily. It’s obviously not a cheap monitor,” he acknowledges, “a lot more producers in South Africa tend to start off with more entry level, mid range monitors. However, a lot more people are becoming wise to Genelec due to the exposure in coming through to the stores where they can actually listen, understand and get advice on why they should choose Genelec.”
Reddy explains that Genelec’s room calibration capabilities make the speakers an easier sell, still: “It’s not just the speaker themselves,” he enthuses, on a roll now. “They offer so many handy tools which make them so user-friendly. The Genelec loudspeaker management software, for example, is such a handy tool because the speaker is only as good as the room. A lot of people have this misconception that they’ll buy the best monitors in the world, they’ll stick them in a room and that will sound absolutely amazing. It’s not necessarily the case. The GLM
software is an absolutely wonderful tool to keep that room under control in terms of what you’re listening to from the speakers, tailoring those frequencies and tweaking it according to the GRADE reports that you get.”
TOMS doesn’t just sell the gear, the team also works with a team of trained installers to see projects through from start to finish. Despite working on numerous brag-worthy Genelec installs for high profile producers, one in particular stands out for Reddy: “I have to be quite honest, my favourite Genelec project that I’ve done would be my home theatre,” he grins. “I’m a bit biassed, but it was a labour of love. It took me about five-to-six years to get everything together and I managed to put together a 5.1 system. I’ve been in this industry for so long, and you almost get desensitised towards gear and new products when they come out, like, ‘I’ve seen it before; it sounds okay’. Every time I listen to Genelecs – absolutely every time –I’m blown away. I get goosebumps. The soundstage that allows my brain to see (via my ears!) is something I can never part with. It makes me a bit of a snob with audio because when I hear something that’s not as good as Genelec, I’m a bit put off by it,” he laughs.
With six stores to its name now and an online presence, what’s next for TOMS? “We’ve got a lot of plans,” he says. “People have this misconception that we’re just a musical instrument store. We are in the process of showing our clientele in South Africa (and the world) that we are a lot more than that. This is a brand we’d like to grow and bring more people towards to show them why our music stores have been around for 48 years. That’s our biggest goal: to share TOMS with the world,” he smiles.
In this seventh LD Systems Live Session, powered by Headliner, Irish singer-songwriter Cormac Todd performed his original song Don’t Call Me When I’m Famous live at The Suet Yard, St. Albans through an LD Systems MAUI G3 rig and MON 15 A G3 Stage Monitors. Headliner caught up with him after the performance…
How did you first get into music?
It’s a funny one; I’ve been singing my whole life since I can remember. I did lots of theatre and just had a lot of musical experience growing up through school and all that stuff. I remember when I moved to London, I saw all these artists really going for it, and it really inspired me. So I said hey, I’ll set up an Instagram and start posting music videos – or just singing videos – and it snowballed from there.
What have you been up to more recently?
Over the last few months I’ve been super busy doing lots of recording in the studio, lots of writing, live gigs, and I’m planning some live gigs for over the summer later this year. I also just released a new single called Don’t Call Me When I’m Famous
Can you tell us more about the new track?
So the backstory behind Don’t Call Me When I’m Famous; basically it’s a play on the phrase ‘don’t forget me when you’re famous’. When I started off writing and pursuing music in 2020, I’d never talked about it before as far as being a singer, and everyone was like ‘Cormac, that’s a real curveball; that’s a real switch up from your current life.’
People always say ‘don’t forget me when you’re famous’, so I said ‘don’t call me when I’m famous’. It’s just a joke, but it’s about manifestation and believing in yourself before you’ve actually done anything, because achieving any goal is just about baby steps and backing yourself over a very long time. It’s just a bit of fun really.
How did you find performing through the LD Systems MAUI rig?
I found using the LD Systems rig absolutely excellent; it was just such a pristine experience. I felt super comfortable on the stage and I could pitch and hear myself perfectly. There was a great balance with the accompaniment and it was a really great all-round experience. I’d love to have this system for future gigs; it would be amazing. I’d absolutely recommend it to any musician that’s building themselves up and getting into the live scene.
“I’ve got no roots,” Alice Merton famously declared on her 2016 debut song. Born in Germany and raised in Canada and England, the singer-songwriter calls London home these days, but found that moving so often left her with a residual feeling of restlessness, leading to her asking herself some big questions...
Merton’s new EP, Heron, is made up of five songs examining the kind of thoughts that keep an overthinker up at night. Merton reveals how the EP’s lead single, run away girl sees her take an introspective look at herself:
“Especially feeling lost on the inside,” she says from her London home – her Canadian accent a reminder of her vagabond past. “Where do I fit in, in all this craziness? Who do I actually want to be in life? We are constantly surrounded by the opinions of others who show us what their version of happiness is, so we automatically assume ours must be the same. It often isn’t.”
Since the success of No Roots, Merton has played Coachella, gone 8x Platinum, her two studio albums, MINT and S.I.D.E.S. have racked up over one billion streams and three million sales, and she’s performed on NBC’s Tonight
Show with Jimmy Fallon, The Late Late Show with James Corden and ABC’s Late Night Show Jimmy Kimmel Live! – and all under her own steam. She explains the reasoning for creating her own label, Paper Plane Records International:
“It happened early, just because we didn’t get any other deals,” she admits candidly, bursting into laughter. “There were one or two labels that were interested at the time, but they kept cancelling meetings. Then they sent over a contract where I was basically signing 80% of all my rights to them for the next three albums. I thought to myself, ‘That’s just unfair.’ So it was an emergency solution of, ‘How are we going to get this out there? Let’s just start our own record label and put the music out.’ We didn’t like the other options that were around.”
Crucially, Merton owns her master rights, which sees her retain control of her work: “If I had signed to a big label, there would have been a lot of pressure after No Roots to come up with something bigger,” she says.
“I don’t think I would have been okay with that pressure from labels saying, ‘I’m going to drop you because you’re not earning me enough money.’ I wanted to be independent from that whole craziness. I really noticed myself getting influenced by people’s opinions and people’s input, so I needed to create a shield around me to keep doing what I think sounds good. I’ve said to myself, ‘I’m going to have moments where it’s going to be successful, and when it’s not going to be successful,’ but I am prepared to stick to it and keep going because I want to still be making albums in 10 years time. I see myself mainly as a songwriter that’s able to sing, and I’d like to still share those stories.”
Merton has matured as an artist along with the changes in the consumption of music. Today, TikTok is an essential promotional tool for artists and labels, with ‘pre-TikTok’ songs regularly reaching new generations of fans on the platform. No Roots is one such song. Merton shares her mixed feelings about Gen Z’s favourite social platform:
“I think it’s cool that there’s so much autonomy with artists in terms of how they can present themselves,” she considers. “They don’t need a huge amount of money or a huge label to push it anymore. I think it also requires a certain personality; there’s more and more artists coming up who are very good at presenting themselves and that keep feeding the machine. It’s the artist’s job to figure out if they want that or not, because these things are going to be on the internet forever. I don’t want to be 50 years old and look back at TikTok and see all this
embarrassing stuff that I’ve done! I don’t want to take away the magic of the music because there’s so much mystery in creating music. I find it a bit concerning. I want to let people in that enjoy my music, but there needs to be a limit – a shield and a separation between the private side of you and the mystery of the music. As a musician, the way I share my thoughts is through music and writing, and that’s not going to change.”
On Heron, the voice and alt-pop leanings that first enamoured fans remains at the core of Merton’s sound, but it’s adventurously doused with touches of indie, electronica, alt-rock and synth-pop. run away girl was released one day after the song’s live premiere at the ZDF New Year’s Eve party at Berlin’s famous
Brandenburg Gate, broadcast live to 3 million people, and puts a classic ‘80s tinge on Merton’s propulsive darkpop, infusing brooding, introspective lyrical themes. Merton shares that the song sees her admit that despite her success, she is her own worst enemy.
“When I look at myself, I don’t see….” she trails off. “I guess that’s the definition of imposter syndrome, but I don’t see what other people see. That’s not my personality. I think I’m too normal, in that sense, to ever look in the mirror and be like, ‘Damn, you’re amazing!’” she laughs. “I think that’s something that will always be there, but it’s good because it’ll always ground me. It’ll always make me appreciate what I have.”
“IF I HAD SIGNED TO A BIG LABEL, THERE WOULD HAVE BEEN A LOT OF PRESSURE AFTER NO ROOTS TO COME UP WITH SOMETHING BIGGER.”
Merton wrote and produced the song with James Dring (Lana Del Rey, Self Esteem) and her regular collaborator Paul Whalley, who she worked with on Charlie Brown and Waste My Life. Merton recognises that since she can remember, she has always questioned two things: who am I, and who am I supposed to be?
“I thought when you grow up, all these questions magically get answered, but as I continue to witness, I don’t think you ever quite know,” she muses. “It is the beginning of a series of events that have led me to realise that the more I learn about life and myself, the less I actually know.”
Lying awake at night and trying to work out her place in the world, Merton realised that she’s the the monster under her own bed.
“It was this feeling that I get quite often where I feel out of place, whether it’s in a certain location, or it’s in myself,” she says of the thoughts that inspired run away girl. “I’ll question everything about myself: Who am I supposed to be? Am I doing the right things? Am I in the right place? But I’ve learned that that’s a very unhealthy way of thinking because, where does it end? I could also always compare myself to the highest of artists and be like, ‘I’m not going to be happy until I get a Grammy.’ I don’t want that pressure in my life. My music has always been something fun and I want to always keep the joy of music. I don’t think fame and fortune should come first, it should be the love. Fame and fortune will either come, or it won’t,” she shrugs.
Her 2022 album, S.I.D.E.S was Merton’s first album where she acted as the executive producer throughout the whole record. On Heron, Merton is listed as a producer on each track, although she’s reluctant to accept the credit despite overseeing all aspects of her music.
“Even with the music in the beginning, I wasn’t listed as executive producer,” she recalls. “I don’t see it as being an executive producer, it’s literally just saying how you would like to create the music, sitting there with someone and having a good time and exchanging ideas. So yeah, it is producing,” she concedes, “but you’re overseeing the project. That’s something I always would like to continue.”
Merton may have crafted an EP out of being left alone with her own thoughts when unable to sleep at night, but she always finds solace in the process of writing songs. With the EP out in the world, is she sleeping any easier these days? She’s getting there.
“You have to go on your own road, at your own pace and do what makes you feel happy,” she says on finding contentment with her achievements. “Not everyone’s happiness is going to be winning Grammys or being super successful. My happiness is being able to do whatever I want without anyone telling me to. Don’t make it your whole life’s goal to do something that might happen in your life. It just doesn’t make sense. Do things that you love, because you love them, and everything else will either happen, or it won’t. You just have to accept that,” she smiles.
ALICEMERTON.COM
UK-based producer and mixing engineer, Tony Draper recently sat down with Headliner for a conversation about his accomplished career to date, his relationship with recording studios, and the Neve gear that has proved to be a gamechanger in his workflow over the years…
Draper dials into a Zoom call with Headliner from his mix room up in Ormskirk in leafy West Lancashire; it’s a characteristically stormy April day, and he’s eager to discuss all things music.
Starting his musical journey as a classically trained keys player, Draper was playing guitar in bands throughout his teens and quickly realised his calling. Discovering his best route into the industry could be through recording or working in live sound, he picked up a Mackie Spike two-channel interface at just 15, and started recording himself on Logic. He soon moved to recording other musicians and his love for the craft began to flourish, eventually ending up at the world-renowned
LIPA where he enrolled in a Sound Technology degree.
“LIPA is amazing,” Draper says, recalling his humble beginnings. “They give you free access to the studios once you’re enrolled in the first year, along with an incredible mic selection and loads of outboard and nice consoles. You get up to speed really quickly, so by the time I got to the middle of third year I was already working at a couple of other studios doing the karaoke sessions that no one else wanted to do. I eventually got in at a place called Parr Street Studios, which unfortunately since we last spoke has gone – the building got sold out from under us.”
Draper cites the biggest help of his career as coming from Chris Taylor, the former owner and manager of Parr Street, and now the owner of Kempston Street Studios – its new home in Liverpool city centre: “We had this lovely symbiotic relationship for a good number of years, where he was calling me and I was doing engineering sessions for Parr street, but then I was also bringing in my own clients,” he laments fondly. “That was my first introduction to Neve, because the studio had a vintage VR60 console which was a beast. The first time you ever get let loose on one of those consoles, it’s a day you never really forget. You think to yourself this is as good as it gets, and it was. I spent a good 10 or 11 years on and off in front of that console.”
Fast forward to today, and Draper has started working with a Londonbased producer called Simon Byrt, having mixed two albums that he was involved in producing over the last few months.
“One of which is for an Icelandic singer songwriter called Emilíana Torrini,” he reveals. “She’s made some amazing tracks and she was on The Lord of the Rings soundtrack. I mixed her album at the back end of last year, and the first single came out a couple of weeks ago.
“Another project is for Kiiōtō, which is Lou Rhodes from the Manchesterbased band Lamb and her partner Rohan. Their first single just came out a couple of weeks ago as well. There’s also a band called Kalandra, who fly a little bit under the radar here in the UK, but they are big in Europe. They are huge in Norway and are signed to the biggest label in Norway. They do the most stunning atmospheric, traditional Norse mixed with pop and metal. I’ve been working with them for probably 12 or 13 years or more, but they are doing new material now that I’m mixing. That’s
absolutely incredible stuff. So there’s a couple of really great projects there that are going to come out soon; they sound great and I’m really proud of them.”
Having worked in a number of different studios over the years, starting with the iconic Parr Street, Headliner was curious to know if Draper has any particular favourite locations to work from.
He explains how, somewhat surprisingly, music creators are in fact spoiled for choice in the Northwest of England, with the new Kempston Street in Liverpool city centre equipped with an API console, The Grand in Clitheroe with its baby SSL facility, and The Arch Recording Studio in Southport – a huge converted church with a stunning live room – to name just a few.
“In terms of overall favourites, there’s a studio in Norway called Ocean Sound, which is just outside a town called Ålesund,” he says. “Last time I was there they had a VR console, so I was very much in my comfort zone. As you sat at the console, to the left hand side, there’s a door straight out onto the beach. It’s this tiny little island that you have to drive over about eight bridges and 16 tunnels to get to. And then when you’re there, it’s just like Nordic paradise – snow on the mountains and northern lights and everything you can imagine. That’s an incredible place to make music.”
With the majority of Draper’s work falling into the mixing category these days, meaning he mostly works out of his own mix room, his tracking dates are not as plentiful as they used to be. With this fact in mind, he has been able to acquire a small but carefully-curated collection of outboard gear, and has integrated that into his setup. He has been using Neve, including their renowned preamps and recording consoles, to work on a large number of projects throughout his professional career, and continues to do so.
“You’ve got to track through a great front end,” he asserts. “As soon as you walk into a studio and they’ve got a pair of 1073s, you know you’re going to be absolutely fine. In The Grand up in Clitheroe they’ve got a pair of 1084s racked; you just know that that’s going to be your main stereo pair or vocal tracking route, and everything’s going to be fine.
Neve’s new 1073SPX-D has become Draper’s main digital to analogue converter, and he hasn’t looked back: “It’s got this low-mid thing without losing the top end. Everything’s a little bit more full and balanced without sacrificing the top and bottom extension that you expect to hear. There’s just something about it that I couldn’t put my finger on for ages; I was flipping back and forth but just always ended up going back to the SPX-D. I’ve used it on all my recent projects, even if it’s just
as a monitoring DAC, but on a lot of them it’s actually been used as a converter. It really is a dream box.”
Most recently Draper has been dipping his toe into Dolby Atmos, yet like many others, is somewhat dubious about its emergence as a listening format.
“I think it’s a little bit of the wild west at the moment,” he says in earnest.
“It seems to be a race to the bottom in terms of who can pay the least
for the spatial mix that’s required to get onto an Apple playlist. So hopefully that doesn’t end up being too disruptive. It’s tricky, because the labels aren’t going to see any bigger return on investment for spending another £3,000 or £4,000 to do Atmos mixes. But it certainly is exciting to see where that’s going.”
Our Engineer Ronan and I wanted a Neve, and we identified the 8424 - which is a magic desk. I have one in my studio here, and Ronan has one in his studio - it works really well.
Words by COLBY RA M
Headliner discovers how Lawo and zactrack demonstrated a new automated stage-tracking-based live audio mixing solution at Prolight + Sound 2024…
At the recent Prolight + Sound in Frankfurt, Lawo and zactrack – an incubator focused on the development
of VR, AR, and XR systems for the entertainment industry – hosted their joint ‘Theatre Future Tech Reception’, giving the audience an exclusive glimpse into the future of automated, object-based audio mixing workflows.
Lawo showcased its integration of zactrack’s innovative stage tracking
system with its acclaimed mc² audio production consoles, providing automated stereo, surround and immersive audio mixing workflows based on the performers tracking data.
“THE INTEGRATION REPRESENTS A SIGNIFICANT STEP FORWARD IN THE EVOLUTION OF AUTOMATED AUDIO MIXING WORKFLOWS.”
Zactrack’s Radio Tracking is a fully automated follow system tailored for diverse environments such as open-air events, theatre stages and TV studios. Using Ultra-Wide-Band realtime location technology, the system works in aerial (2D) and spatial (3D) configurations. zactrack precisely tracks any number of performers or objects in real time, facilitating seamless alignment of moving lights, video projections, cameras, and immersive sound to the position of a performer or object.
The zactrack system controls the Lawo mc² audio mixers for automated panning and even elevation in 3D audio systems. The Y positioning parameter can be translated into depth, meaning delay adjustment for replicating the depth of the stage. This seamless delay adjustment is only possible due to Lawo’s unique click-less delay functionality, which ensures a natural audience listening experience. Leveraging the mc² consoles’ delay functionality, users can seamlessly add delays of up to 1.8 seconds without any audible artefacts, even during live productions.
“The integration of zactrack’s stage tracking system with Lawo’s mc² platform represents a significant step forward in the evolution of automated audio mixing workflows,” says Lucas Zwicker, senior director, Workflow & Integration, CTO Office at Lawo.
“Thanks to automated audio positioning of the actors we allow users to concentrate on all the other challenges of a live production, while still delivering a real-time immersive, spatially accurate audio experience across any multichannel PA system supported by Lawo consoles.”
“Running a zactrack mini system on the Lawo booth at this year’s Prolight + Sound allowed us to showcase in a practical application how live positional data provided by zactrack can not only improve and automate workflows in audio mixing, but also help to enhance the acoustic experience for the audience whilst giving performers on stage full freedom to move,” adds Manuel Ewers, global sales manager at zactrack. “It was great to experience how seamless Lawo’s mc² platform integrates with our fully automated
tracking system and we are looking forward to seeing our users benefit from this synergy.”
The integration of zactrack’s stage tracking system with Lawo’s mc² audio production consoles marks a significant milestone in the field of dynamic, automated, immersive audio applications for live performances, and is the foundation for providing audiences with the immersive live audio experiences made possible by today’s multichannel audio systems.
oW
Emily Underhill, aka Tusks, opens up to Headliner about the making of her new album Gold, the contrasting and conflicting circumstances that informed its creation, and how she has learned to harness the cathartic power of songwriting…
Tucked away in a corner booth of London’s Soho Theatre Café, Headliner awaits the arrival of Emily Underhill, perhaps better known by her artist moniker Tusks, who is joining us for what will prove to be a farreaching, in-depth chat about the unique circumstances that spawned her new album Gold. Released on April 12, Gold is a breath-taking piece
of work in its own right, free from the context in which it is couched. But given the chaotic personal and professional conditions from which it was born, it is an achievement rendered all the more remarkable.
Her third album to date, it is a record that ebbs and flows with moments of synth heavy bombast and minimalist
beats, building on its predecessors (2017’s Dissolve and 2019’s Avalanche) with a greater sense of musical cohesion and sonic complexity. The story behind its creation is a compelling one, fuelled by a series of contrasting and contradicting events that set its release back several years.
“It was a funny time,” Underhill begins with a half laugh, half sigh, as she takes her seat opposite us in the booth. An immediately engaging presence, she is willing to talk at length about a range of subjects, from the tumultuous time surrounding the album, to politics, what she’s been listening to of late - namely the new Marika Hackman album Big Sighwatching GoggleBox, and more.
“It was early 2020,” she continues, explaining the origins of Gold. “I was writing loads of music and thought
I had an album that’d be ready by the end of 2020. But obviously the pandemic happened, and it went on for so long and there was such chaos in the music industry, so I just kept rewriting and rewriting and rewriting. By the time I actually started writing the songs that are now on the album, I guess it would have been the start of 2022.
“I say it was a funny time because I was in a situation where I was locked down while living in a warehouse with 12 other people in the middle of Manor House, right next to the main road [laughs]. I was in lockdown and surrounded by people, never alone. So when things started opening up and you could move, I went down to this little remote part of Devon where I didn’t see anyone for four days at a time and did a lot of the writing there. I’d be back and forth between
there and London, so a lot of the album was written between being in these hectic social situations where you either can’t escape or you’re completely alone.”
Inevitably, the dichotomy between complete isolation and crowded living profoundly influenced Underhill’s writing process.
“I felt like everything bubbled up in my mind when I was in London, but when I went down to Devon, I had the freedom and space and quietness to just record it,” she explains. “I was in a tiny little cottage, and you can just walk along the cliffs, light a fire. It’s a really magical space. I am someone that likes quiet and nature, and it was such an inspirational place to be to just write loads of music.
“I WANTED BIG CONTRASTS IN THE PRODUCTION, BEING REALLY LOW-FI AND REALLY HIGH-FI AT DIFFERENT POINTS.”
“At the same time I was also going through a breakup and then, shortly after, I was falling in love with someone else… so the whole album just ended up feeling like all these vast contrasts between being in a really hectic social situation in the middle of the city in the middle of lockdown, to being in the middle of the countryside, completely alone, breaking up one relationship, falling in love in another relationship… it was such an uncertain time and the album was like an anchor through all of that. It was just like, OK, write about it, and that will help me deal with all this confusion that’s going on.”
Despite the volatile nature of the period Underhill describes, she addresses even the most challenging moments with a coolness and a calmness that is mirrored in the album’s production. Its contrasting sonic threads are seamlessly, meticulously interwoven, resulting in a record that is at once incredibly dynamic and entirely cohesive.
“The fact that the album was going to feature these big contrasting moments was something that became apparent as we were going along,” she says. “It’s almost like your subconscious is making them happen and you only become conscious of them towards the end. Naturally, I really wanted to have big contrasts in the production, being really low-fi and really high-fi at different points. I wanted moments with as much instrumentation as we could get into one song, and then I would completely strip another song to the bare bones. I think it’s a subconscious thing. Sometimes it’s not until you’re thinking and talking about the album once it’s finished that you realize these things.”
As we broach the personal nature of the lyrics on Gold, Underhill cites her previous two albums, particularly Avalanche, as paving the way for what she has accomplished with album number three. Over the course of these records, she says that what began as a fear of baring her soul in public has now become an almost therapeutic process.
“I’m writing about a difficult time, but it wasn’t really a difficult album to write,” she states. “I feel like I broke that barrier with the first two albums. Especially the second one, which I was really nervous about. There was a lot about mental health in there and I was very nervous about putting that out and being so blasé with talking about it. It felt quite overwhelming, but then it quickly took away a lot of the feelings of fear of being judged or feeling shameful. It’s like you’re taking some control of the situation. So getting over that hurdle made this one feel easy in comparison.”
She continues: “I find it very cathartic writing about those things. Something like going through a breakup is incredibly painful, and I feel like the one good thing you can get out of it is putting it into a piece of art. And potentially someone else can find it cathartic if they’re going through the same thing.
“One of the songs that was about the breakup is Strangers, which has this really heavy middle eight where you just go crazy. I think that’s a very cathartic way to get out the angst of going through something like that. And writing it down in lyrics kind of clarifies things a little bit for you.”
One of the songs that veers away from the more intimate subjects reflected on the record is the title track. Born out of anger at the UK government’s handling of the pandemic, it sees Underhill take aim at the notion of corruption without consequence. Indeed, it is the only time during our conversation in which her mood shifts, as frustration becomes detectable in both her tone and demeanour.
“That song came from the frustration at seeing these PPI contracts going to Tory donors. I have friends and family who work in the NHS and knowing the struggle they were going through...” she takes a moment to pause. “I’ve always been sceptical of our government, and especially the Tory party, but I think that was another level where I was like, what is going on?! I couldn’t believe there were no repercussions. And there are still no repercussions. And there was ‘partygate’ and everything that came out of that. It was just despair at the whole situation.”
With almost four years having passed since Gold’s inception, Underhill cannot wait for people to finally hear the record. As we wrap up our time together, she is set to embark on a mini tour ahead of the album’s release, including some instore performances, before heading out on a full tour later in the year. As for new music, she’s already formulating ideas, hoping the wait to release album number four won’t be quite so long.
“It’s a bit surreal,” she smiles, as we finish our drinks and depart the warmth of the Soho Theatre Café for the February drizzle outside. “I want to celebrate the fact that it’s finally coming out, as I’ve lived it for a long time and it’s not new to me anymore. I think it’s important to realise that it is new in the world, because it almost feels like it came out yeah 18 months ago to me. It’s a strange thing. I saw an interview recently with Marika Hackman and she summed the process up quite nicely, saying it’s like Christmas - there’s loads and loads of build up to it, it happens, and then it’s gone.”
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In this Emerging Headliner interview powered by JBL, California-based Portland singer, songwriter and musician DINER explains how her hopeful love song, Goodbye To Someday, was actually inspired by the Chicago Cubs.
DINER has been working at her parents’ Portland cafe since she was five years old. When her age reached double digits, serving her teenage school friends may not have been the coolest way to spend a weekend, but it gave her a place from which to daydream, and shaped the future country-pop artist she would one day become.
“When I was two, my parents found this little diner and the owner was lying on the floor, drunk and said, ‘The next person that can come up with the money to buy this place can have it’. My mum bought it and they completely flipped the whole place around,” recalls DINER (real name
Madison Hurtado) from her nowhome in L.A.
“From as early as five, I was walking around taking orders; I started pouring coffee. It was really easy to run the register, so I started doing that as well. I’ve been working there my entire life. It’s been a really cool upbringing. My parents are still there every day.”
DINER may have moved to Hollywood to pursue her dreams, but she makes sure she’s back home every Christmas to clock in for her shift. “It’s tradition that the whole family works on Christmas Eve,” she smiles. “It’s cute. My mum is super
supportive and she has all these coasters with my face on at the diner, which is really weird,” she laughs.
While DINER was wiping down tables and pouring coffee, she daydreamed about making it as a singer, concocting elaborate scenarios to get through her shifts. “I would picture doing music videos in there, like flash mobs, musical dance scenes and all that,” she shares. “I have this place that I go to in my head – and maybe a lot of people do – when you are working really hard and you invent this dream world where everything’s okay. A lot of my music is inspired by that.”
Singing from the age of two and with big dreams, DINER has tried it all: American Idol, – “I biffed it,”– X Factor, America’s Got Talent and The Voice. “I tried out for everything! I tried out for every local musical. I never got the part I wanted, so I was always dreaming of it. I could not wait to get out of there, but it also inspired a lot,” she acknowledges. “As an artist, all you can do is tell your story, so I wanted to talk about growing up in the diner, what it’s like to deal with annoying people, creepy men or people that are entitled – all those things that you deal
with being in customer service,” she says knowingly. “I watched my mum do it every day, my dad has to deal with it and my sister, and that’s been such a huge part of my life. It really shaped me. I’ve had a community of people that basically raised me since before I could see over the counter and a lot of my music is inspired by that. I was the local diner girl growing up, and going to high school, all the kids would come in on the weekends and I’d be serving them and dealing with the aspects of that.”
With music on her mind and her family’s business so integral to her identity, an idea formed: what if she called her future album, Just Your Local Diner Girl? This led to her conjuring up artist name, Local Diner Girl. She settled on just DINER in the end. “I used to hide that I was the local diner girl and that I worked there with my parents, but I found the beauty in it.”
Raised on a horse ranch and inspired by the musical tastes of her parents who had an affinity for country and rock, DINER knew that Portland wasn’t the place to make it as a country star. But it was L.A that was calling for this aspiring country artist, not Nashville. “There are so many other blonde country artists there! It would be great exposure and connections, but I also don’t want to get drowned out,” she admits. “I’m excited to be on the forefront of this music scene here in L.A,” she adds, suddenly remembering a piece of advice she’d been given by a fellow country artist in Nashville. “She was like, ‘Don’t do it. That’s where you go to die. Stay out here and give it a go, and then think about Nashville,’” she laughs. “There’s this blossoming country scene happening in Hollywood, and for me, it’s like, do I want to be at the forefront of that? Or do I go to Nashville and be drowned out? I decided to make the move and fully commit to music out here. It was the smartest thing to do.”
A lot of her determination, or edge, as DINER calls it, comes from her mother, who formed a band in her own parents’ garage in the ‘80s and went on to share the stage with Black Flag and recorded with The Dead Kennedys. “My mum was a punk rock star,” she nods, proudly. “She got into a fistfight with Courtney Love – she’s such a cool person. We would have CDs in the car and we would all listen to Carrie Underwood, The Chicks or our favourite musicals. She was a huge influence and is this factor of why I do music. I didn’t really know how serious she was until I got a little bit older and then it made sense: having that little bit of edge in me, comes from her.”
With the country sound embedded from a young age, it was time to perfect her look. DINER is all peroxide blonde hair, sparkly cowboy hats and fringed riding chaps. Is she tipping her blinged-out Stetson to the Queen of Country? “Absolutely,” she beams. “Every time I do a shoot or anything,
I’m Dolly Parton inspired. I take a lot of inspo from her. I want it to be timeless. I want it to be a bit over the top as well. There’s so much going on right now that is terrible and I think that music should be an escape, so I try to keep my brand in that realm of Dolly Parton: fun, Barbie, you know what I mean?”
To Someday, was written in collaboration with multi-platinum selling producer Kevin Bard and Emily Reid. It’s a hopeful love song about finally meeting the right person,
although its inspiration actually stems from the Chicago Cubs’ World Series victory in 2016.
“My dad was raised in Chicago and the Cubs have been a super big part of my life,” she explains. “My dad said my entire life: all he wants is for the Cubs to win the World Series before he dies. That’s all he’s ever wanted, so when they were in that last game, I had to sit on the stairs, my mom had to sit outside on the porch, my sister had to sit on the floor and my dad sat in the dining room with an inverted cap – we were so superstitious about
“I CAN USE MY AKG MIC TO RECORD MY DEMOS AND IT SOUNDS AMAZING; YOU JUST PLUG IT IN, START RECORDING AND YOU DON’T HAVE TO WORRY ABOUT ANYTHING.”
it – it was just such a big deal. We all had our spots for every game, it was hilarious. When they won, I’ve never seen my dad cry harder, which then spiralled into all of us crying really hard. He fell to the ground, head in the couch, just man-sobbing,” she recalls.
“We were all a mess. The next day this commercial came out of this little kid jumping around in Franklin Park in Chicago and he says, ‘The Cubs win! The Cubs win!’ And at the end of it, it said, ‘Goodbye to someday’, as in, ‘Say goodbye to someday winning’. That is such a big memory for me, and especially how that commercial made me feel.”
With that phrase and core memory lodged firmly in her mind, DINER had an epiphany while in a local dive bar: “I’ve always had ‘say goodbye to someday’ and making all your dreams come true stuck in my head. I’m like, ‘That’s a song – duh! I have to write that song’. I went back and forth about it being a big game day victory song, but that’s very difficult to write – that can go corny really fast. I met Kevin and Emily and they’re like, ‘We love this idea. It should be a love song’. We wrote Goodbye To Someday in an hour on the guitar. I went into the booth, cut it and walked out with the demo basically done and ready to go that day. I was like, ‘Okay, I think this is the first single’.”
Did her dad cry all over again when he heard what he had
inspired? “You know… he’s such a tough guy. I know that he appreciates it, but he’s not showing it,” she laughs good naturedly.
DINER followed up with another family-memory inspired single, Lasso The Moon, taken from James Stewart’s iconic line in It’s A Wonderful Life. “I’ve always loved that movie, and that if she asked for it, he would lasso the moon down for her. I’ve always had that stuck in my head, so that was an easy song to write. It’s a Christmas Eve tradition for my family: we watch it and we just cry our eyes out. Also I fell in love and I started writing love songs, which is really weird for me. I’m really proud of this one; it’s definitely got way more of a country feel than Goodbye To Someday. It’s a fairy tale love song.”
When DINER is away from a professional studio and inspiration strikes at home, she uses an AKG C214 condenser mic to record demos with, which is a cost-effective alternative to AKG’s high-end C414 family of mics, which are a permanent fixture in the world’s biggest recording studios.
“I’m using it right now!” she points out brightly. “I have a little home studio. This mic is affordable and it sounds really clear. It’s small, I can hold it in my hand and I can also travel with it, which has been awesome, and there’s no feedback.” DINER has a confession: “I was recording my music, honestly, on my Xbox Call of
Duty headphones, which was such a pain. Now that I have the AKG mic it’s been great because it just sounds clear; I can use it to record all my demos and it sounds amazing. Plus the set up is really simple, you can just plug it in, start recording and you don’t have to worry about anything.”
DINER shares that she’s working on an EP that will be released this year. In terms of specific details, she’s playing her cards close to her chest: “I’m keeping it a bit secretive, but I will say that it is going to be not all country music,” she concedes. “It’s going to run into some indie a little bit. I’m going to do some experimenting and then there’s a bit of rock and roll. I want to show the broad spectrum of music that I can make, but it can still be me. There should be no boundaries with music. I definitely am a country artist, which is easy to grasp onto, especially with the DINER brand. The foundation is country, but it’s gonna grow into other things naturally.”
POWERED BY
Words by ADAM PR O ZT
Jamie Reddington is Sound Of Fractures, a London-based electronic artist and producer who is driven to forge a new path for creating a sustainable music career for himself and other artists. He’s not afraid to speak out on streaming platforms that don’t pay a penny, and social media platforms that make money off the back of musicians’ content. After the success of his early single Real Friends and experimenting with blockchain technology to sell his music, he brings us Bubbles, his new single with an interactive project built around it entitled Scenes that invites listeners to share photos and memories with the song that eventually becomes part of the artwork.
Music technology, and the tech that is emerging to help artists promote and sell their music is a key part of what Reddington does, while centering around a very human story. Making modern, forward-thinking UK garage and electronic music, he is one of the most prominent artists fusing his
work with web3 platforms, which use blockchain technology to enable musicians to keep more of the profits from their music that would otherwise go to middle-men and the traditional gatekeepers of the music industry (record labels, streaming platforms, managers, take your pick).
“I started out very much into hip-hop and soul music,” Reddington says when asked about his earliest music days. “I started playing in a band when I was a teenager. But in that period, drum and bass and garage were just having this massive moment, and that felt like the one thing that was ours in the UK. So I got drawn into that and I was going raving a lot. I guess the whole Bristol sound was really big for me. I was already into music like Massive Attack, Tricky and Portishead. That to me was really exciting – mixing electronic music with the indie sounds.”
Besides the aforementioned teenage band he was in at school, Sound of Fractures is not Reddington’s first taste of the music industry. He had tasted success as part of the production
duo Money Adam, who secured a publishing deal and had their beats appear on albums by the likes of UK emcee Skinnyman. But it was an experience that gradually left Reddington disillusioned: “You just end up on this treadmill of making records on other people’s terms. Now, I’m all about making music about how I felt in that moment, whereas a lot of people in the pop industry just become really good at churning it out. It sounds disingenuous, but it’s just this ‘more more more’ culture.”
Sound Of Fractures was then born out of Reddington’s need for greater authenticity in his music. However, this isn’t just to say he wanted to release music that was more personal to him, but also born of a craving for more authentic and less transactional relationships with fans and people in the music industry. It just so happened that releasing one of his earliest singles, Real Friends, coincided with his discovery of the web3 music scene – the new phase of the internet which uses blockchain, the technology behind cryptocurrency and NFTs.
“YOU END UP ON THIS TREADMILL OF MAKING RECORDS ON OTHER PEOPLE’S TERMS.”
“The main thing that drew me to it is that everyone’s experimenting,” Reddington says. “And that I can do something new for every release. For one release I released 200 editions and they were all cheap, and then I tried a release where it was just five editions of the song and they were more expensive. There’s a really engaged group of people who are keen to collect music this way, just as there is with vinyl or trainers. I’d be making, say, a grand and a half — which is around 300 or 400 thousand streams! Which is incredibly hard to get as an independent artist. It got me thinking about the demo versions of the songs on the Real Friends EP, and about why we often think demo versions don’t matter. So I had a go at selling the demos as single edition pieces, and people bought them for a substantial amount of money, like 700 or 800 dollars.”
This leads us to the new Bubbles EP, one of the most personal Sound Of Fractures projects to date. The track
Willow’s Heartbeat samples his child’s heartbeat throughout the track, and the title track samples one of his kids laughing at a bubble, as uplifting electronica begins to swirl around the sample. In this spirit, Reddington invites listeners to become part of the web3 project for the EP, entitled Scenes, to anonymously submit photos and memories that the music evokes for them.
“It’s free to take part,” he explains. “And the idea was that from all the photo submissions that people sent in, I’d choose one to be the official artwork for the release on Spotify and Bandcamp. So it’s not just me putting my memories into these releases, but everyone else is too. People told me it’s been very emotional for them, like people telling me they were crying as they did it, and revisiting feelings they hadn’t felt in ages. And prompting them to say things to their partners that they hadn’t before because of the memory they chose.”
Waves plugins form a concrete part of Reddington’s music and production: “My go-to plugins from Waves appear in every single session I do.” He promptly loads up his DAW session for Bubbles and goes through the many Waves plugins he used on the song: “I use the Kramer plugin all the time, I use Abbey Road saturator a lot, and I use the J37 Tape a lot as well. I like a lot of tape saturation as you might have guessed. I like some of the classic ones as well — I use the C6 Compressor on lots of sessions. The C6 and the C4 have always been plugins I go to often. The Doubler is one I find really hard to beat. I love the flexibility of that one.
“I use the H-Reverb on a lot of vocals. I like some of the quick-fix plugins as well; I do like to mess around with the Maserati plugins. And I still find the easiest way to create the effects I want is by using the SuperTap Delay plugin. I love some of the functional things on the SSL Compressor, some of the old SSL channel strips, because
“THERE’S A REALLY ENGAGED GROUP OF PEOPLE WHO ARE KEEN TO COLLECT MUSIC THIS WAY, JUST AS THERE IS WITH VINYL OR TRAINERS.”
“It’s the same with, for example, the H-EQ,” Reddington continues. “There are certain stereo and mono things that I know I can load up and I know what I can do with it. I like the CLA compressors because they always do what I need them to do. I use quite a lot of the API ones. I think the most
common stuff I use are the ones that I find it hard to find anywhere else that does the same thing — for example Doubler, MaxxBass, and Renaissance Bass. There are lots of plugins that say they can get the same results, but I always go back to these Waves plugins. I use the X Noise ones, they are so handy. I also find that Waves plugins are really really good in terms of usage — the balance of usage compared to CPU usage and sonic output is still so well-built.”
It’s fascinating to stop and think about where all this will take Sound Of Fractures, with Reddington being one of the earliest and most prominent they just do what I want them to do. I use the R-Vox Compressor quite a lot, and Meta Flanger a lot as well. I still use MaxxBass if I’m dealing with trying to pull sub out from places. And the L1 Limiter — I don’t use it for the same thing that everyone else uses it for but I still use it, even though I do have the L2 and L3.”
adopters of web3 technology and using it to create deeper connections with his fans. It’s very early days both for him and on-chain music, but his pioneering path could be completely pivotal for his music career. In the meantime, Bubbles is available to listen to now, both on streaming platforms and on the Scenes website Reddington has created, where you too can submit your own cherished memories to the release.
“8 HOURS AT ROCKFIELD GIVES PARTICIPANTS THE CHANCE TO GET HANDSON WITH THE VERY LATEST TECHNOLOGY.”
Prism Sound’s hugely popular 8 Hours At Rockfield music production educational event will be returning to the historic Rockfield Studios in Wales on July 16th 2024, as Headliner recently learned…
Held in conjunction with Project7 Residential Songwriting Retreats, 8 Hours At Rockfield gives participants an opportunity to learn about some of the most advanced pro audio technology on the market today. Prism Sound will showcase its full range of audio converter products, including the recently launched ADA-128 modular conversion system, while partner companies will also have demo rooms highlighting their technology to attendees.
“8 Hours at Rockfield gives participants the chance to get hands-on with the very latest technology and to learn about recording techniques from our panel of guest speakers who will host live streamed seminar sessions throughout the day,” says Prism Sound’s managing director Jody Thorne. “It is also a fantastic opportunity to experience Rockfield’s two state-of-the-art studios, The Coach House and The Quadrangle, both of which have undisputed places in music history for hosting some of the greatest bands in the world including Coldplay, Oasis, Queen, Iggy Pop, George Michael, and many more.”
Prism Sound’s event will be followed by Pro7ect’s annual
residential songwriting retreat where renowned music producers will lead daily writing teams, ensuring participants create memorable songs primed for release, while receiving expert guidance and support.
Since its formation nine years ago, Pro7ect has swiftly gained recognition for its exceptional output, with numerous songs progressing to further production and release. More than 200 international artists have collaborated to create 187 songs and this success has led to multiple syncs, numerous releases, and the production of many albums and music projects by artists within the Pro7ect Alumni network.
Pairing songwriters with experienced producers in a legendary studio that is equipped with the very best and latest technology is a winning formula, and this year Pro7ect attendees will have a host of talent to tap into. Headline producers for 2024 include industry luminaries such as Julian Victor Hinton (Stormzy, Seal, Rod Stewart, Robbie Williams, Trevor Horn), Sophie Ackroyd (Kings Elliot, lleo, RØRY, Kate Wild, Benjamin Francis Leftwich, Nina Nesbitt), Gethin Pearson (Badly Drawn Boy, Charlie XCX), Stew Jackson (Massive Attack & Phantom Limb), Jon Fletcher (The PFQ, Magpie Lane) and Lisa Fitzgibbon (The PFQ, The Standing, Moonshee), each bringing a wealth of experience and expertise to the table.
HEADLINER MAGAZINE
Pro7ect’s Residential Retreat begins on July 16th and culminates on July 20th with a one-day Masterclass, which will be hosted by Julian Hinton. Places on the residential retreat are limited; applicants must have some songwriting experience and include links to their music in their application. In contrast, the masterclass is open to all applicants – no previous songwriting experience is necessary.
PRISMSOUND.COM
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As part of AKG’s Stories Behind the Sessions Series, legendary radio and television presenter, producer and journalist Nic Harcourt catches up with No Doubt drummer and producer Adrian Young on making No Doubt’s platinum-certified breakthrough album, Tragic Kingdom.
In April 2024, No Doubt headlined the Coachella music festival – making it the first time the band performed together since 2015. No Doubt has amassed a wealth of achievements since forming in 1986, including releasing several multi-platinum albums (1995’s diamond-certified Tragic Kingdom, 2001’s Rock Steady and a 2003 singles collection) and a string of charttopping hits including Just A Girl, Don’t Speak, Hey Baby, Hella Good, Underneath It All and It’s My Life
At first overlooked by radio, the onceunderdogs went on to mainstream success and sold out multiple international tours, winning two Grammy Awards and five MTV Video Music Awards, and were invited to
perform for Paul McCartney and the President at the annual Kennedy Center Honors in 2010. Through all the success, the band members have remained grounded by a longstanding friendship that began when front-woman Gwen Stefani, guitarist Tom Dumont, bassist Tony Kanal and drummer Adrian Young bonded over a shared love of ’80s British New Wave and ska bands. Releasing their last album in 2012, the band’s legacy lives on in their punchy blend of skarock, dancehall, and electronic pop. With Coachella behind them, Young reflects on the band’s struggle to break through commercially in the early ‘90s and how they defied the odds with Tragic Kingdom
Why was it that the band ended up recording the 1992 debut album, No Doubt twice?
Before we had a record deal, we had a decent little following in Southern California. We were able to sell what we thought was going to be our first record at a local studio called South Coast Recording in Orange County,
so we started recording this record, and we never finished it, because then we started to get a little bit of label interest. Some of those songs that we recorded, that we were intending to release, ended up being re-recorded for our first Interscope record.
Your debut was released during a period of popularity for grunge music – an aggressive rock style which contrasted with No Doubt ’s upbeat sound. After the debut album failed to gain traction, did the label lose interest in the band?
To be fair to the label, in 1992 the sound of No Doubt probably was not going to be having much success at alternative radio. One of the radio stations said, “It would take an act of God for No Doubt to get on the radio.”
In 1992, there were a lot of Seattle bands, a lot of heavier bands, and there was no place for what we were doing at that time.
The ska punk-inspired followup, The Beacon Street Collection sold over 100,000 copies in 1995, more than triple the sales of No Doubt . Tell us about the decision to produce the record and record it in a homemade studio in the garage of your house on Beacon Avenue in Anaheim.
With our frustrations about the length [of time] everything was taking, we decided, “Fuck it! We’re gonna go make our own record. We’re going to sell fun and we’re going to put it out for the local fans, and for us.” We had so many songs. We were still working our jobs and going to school. So much time had gone by that we decided we were just going to record the songs that are not going to make Tragic Kingdom, ourselves. In a sense, it became a B-sides record – selffunded – but we put it out before Tragic Kingdom came out because we didn’t know if it was actually ever going to come out. We didn’t have that confidence.
1995’s Tragic Kingdom became the band’s most commercially successful record, reaching number one on the Billboard 200, topping the charts in Canada and New Zealand, selling over 16 million copies worldwide, and was certified diamond by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) in the US and Canada, platinum in the UK, and triple platinum in Australia. Not to mention it helped to initiate the ska revival of the ‘90s and included hit singles Just A Girl and Don’t Speak . What are your memories of recording the album at 11 Studios in L.A?
The label would call and say, “We found a good deal on a studio in Santa Monica; can you guys be there tomorrow?” Okay, here we go! We were excited. We were still young, we were hungry. Just to have the opportunity was something that we were very interested in, so there were a lot of those starts and stops.
By the time the album was mixed and ready for release at the end of 1995, did the band think there were any hits on the album?
No. It felt like a miracle that No Doubt would even be on the radio, even in ‘95 or ‘96. You’ve got to remember it was the Chili Peppers, Green Day and The Offspring. Was there an avenue there for No Doubt? It still felt foreign for a bit. When we finished this record, did we feel like, “Fuck yeah, we’ve got a hit record there?” – no. I think my personal goal was, if we sell 100,000 copies, it’s gonna feel amazing – and go on tour. That was a big goal.
Just A Girl was released as the record’s lead single and became No Doubt’s first charting single in the US, also reaching the Top 10 in several countries. Did the label start offering tour support after the band started to see commercial success?
There was more of it, yeah, definitely, though it felt very different. It felt way more real.
“WHEN WE FINISHED TRAGIC KINGDOM, DID WE FEEL LIKE, ‘FUCK YEAH, WE’VE GOT A HIT RECORD THERE?’ – NO.”
Was there a sense of vindication for you after not feeling supported by the label previously?
100% yeah. It felt deserved because the band had been together at that point for nine years, got a song on the radio, and we were told that it would take an act of God for this band to get on the radio, and there we were! So, I’m not a believer per se, but to have someone make a strong statement like that, the vindication was part of it, for sure.
Five singles charted from the album, and the band toured extensively for the next couple of years. What are your memories of that time?
We circled the globe three times on that record, and we grew up pretty quickly. It was a weird way to grow up because you’re struggling and living paycheck to paycheck and trying to make it all happen, scrounging for change on the bottom of your car to get a burrito after rehearsal. Then you’re headlining arenas and being recognised. It’s a different way to live!
How did the band adapt to being recognised and the sudden success?
I think we all handled it pretty well. No one developed any kind of crazy drug habits. We all came from solid parenting, so that was good. It was probably a lot more drinking – it was mostly celebratory [laughs].
Since Push and Shove, you’ve moved more into the production side of things. Tell us about setting up a production studio and a production company called Moxy Brothers with Todd Forman.
Our bands would play together, especially during the Sublime’s 40oz. to Freedom days – that’s when Todd was playing with them the most before he went off to Harvard. He’s a medical doctor now, except for when he comes over and plays music with me. We get along great and we started working with a lot of younger bands. I have a studio at my house. I have a basement, which is very rare in Southern California, and we set up this whole experience. I’m very gearnerdy and I do a lot of mixing as well. Our partnership is a good time. I really enjoy it. Now we’ve morphed into scoring films; we’re doing quite a bit of horror films. I love it. It’s not something I ever... it wasn’t a goal of mine. But now that we’re doing it, I absolutely love it.
If you were to take a look back at your career in No Doubt, is there anything you would do differently? And do you have any words of advice to offer an up-and-coming drummer or anybody trying to get into the music business?
I’m sure there are a couple of things that we would probably do differently. But I would not want to have it go any other way. Part of that is because it was humbling to be in
a band for that long and have local success, but we couldn’t get a record deal for a very long time. It was also humbling to put out a record with the label and have it be considered not successful. I think it prepared us better for Tragic Kingdom, because if our first record was as successful as Tragic Kingdom we would have been younger – in our early 20s. I don’t know if we could have handled it as well. But we loved our band. We were doing it because we loved it and that’s why we kept doing it for so long. That’s what I would say to any artist: do it because you love it, and if something else comes out of that, what a bonus.
Brittany-based Loops-Live has expanded its CODA Audio inventory by investing in the German manufacturer’s new compact and flexible CiRAY line array, as Headliner recently discovered…
The Octopus Rap Event 2024 took place at the Salle Hermione, Saint Brieuc, Brittany, in February. Comprising three nights of compelling entertainment for fans of the genre, the Diogène Productions event’s headliners included French hip-hop band IAM, and rappers Leto and Ziak. Plédran-based event specialist Loops was engaged to take care of the audio for the event, and gave a debut to its newly acquired CODA Audio CiRAY system.
The Loops Group provides a wide range of services to the Grand Ouest
area of France, including professional audio, lighting and AV installation and hire, digital signage, and musical instrument sales. Having first invested in CODA Audio in 2021, Loops-Live, the Group’s event-technology specialists, became the first French company to invest in CODA’s flexible and compact CiRAY line array.
“Our first CODA system was based around N-APS and HOPS, which we bought to take care of our TV Studio LE LOFT,” explains Mathieu Lefort, director at Loops-Live. “As well as staging broadcasts, we also use this space for premium after work parties and events. We were really impressed with the system, so when it was time to upgrade more of our ageing audio inventory, CODA Audio was the obvious choice.
“Whilst we handle maybe two or three music festivals a year, our main focus up to now has been corporate events - many of which have a music performance element. This prompted us to look at going further into the music sector and being able to comfortably deal with bigger venues. The timing of our interest coincided with the imminent release of CiRAY, and once we’d heard and seen the system and experienced its size/performance ratio, we didn’t hesitate. We have also added CoRAY, N-RAY, and CUE FOUR monitors to our inventory.”
A compact full-range, dual 10” line array system, CiRAY completes CODA’s VCA line array ‘family’, alongside ViRAY (dual 8”) and the flagship AiRAY (dual 12”). As well as building further on CODA’s technologies to offer an ultra-light, ultra-compact standalone system, CiRAY can also work together with its ‘siblings’ for optimum mix and match configuration to obtain the best sonic and logistical outcomes for a host of live and installed applications. The VCA range shares CODA Audio’s technologies, including the patented Dual Diaphragm Planar Wave Driver (DDP), Coupler technology and FSFIR Filters, with CiRAY also benefitting from the addition of CODA’s very latest Dynamic Airflow Cooling (DAC).
The Octopus Rap event played to a standing audience of just under 2400, where the main challenges were to manage the low frequencies and make sure that the balcony at the back of the venue was fully
covered. Engineer Xavier Bassi worked upstream with CODA’s System Optimiser prediction software to ensure that CiRAY was deployed to maximum effect. As the main PA, CiRAY was rigged with SC2-F subs and supplemented with SCV-F and SCP-F subs in front of the stage. The system was seamlessly supplemented with N-RAY (for the balcony) and HOPS8 & 12 for frontfill, infill and sidefill, and driven by CODA Audio LINUS14 DSP amplification.
“We are proud that this was the first deployment of CiRAY at an event in France,” Lefort continues. “The PA was perfect for the venue and delivered great performance. At first, some of the artists’ staff were doubtful about the size of the system, but once we’d sound-checked, all the engineers were more than happy with CiRAY.
“Rap music was a good style for the inaugural show as the productions were really fast, with mainly
electronic beats. The first night was a more boom bap 90s style, so we didn’t need to operate the system at its full capacity - we still had plenty of headroom - and then the other two nights were ramped up with a mixture of more dancehall (with live bass, drums and keyboards) and trap music with gorgeous subs and kicks!”
The Loops-Live team is looking forward to a busy programme in the near future where CiRAY will be front and centre on a wide variety of indoor and outdoor music occasions, including business events, rock, folk and EDM festivals, two nights of opera, and even a Challenge Tour professional golf event featuring DJ/ producers The Avener and Synapson.
Celestion’s Truvox 0615 fuses lightweight construction, heavyweight power handling, efficiency and multi-application flexibility in a new 6-inch driver, as Headliner discovers…
Words by ALICEGUST A NOSFCelestion, the premier manufacturer of professional audio loudspeakers for sound reinforcement, has introduced the Truvox 0615, a new six-inch mid-bass driver focused on superior quality at an affordable price point across a wide variety of use cases.
Where Truvox 0615 really excels includes when replacing six-inch drivers in fixed PA installations, for OEM use in new portable or fixed cabinet construction, improvement upon factory car audio speakers, or virtually any situation where a compact, lightweight driver must perform bass-midrange or even primary woofer duties.
Thanks to the Truvox 0615 being designed to industry-standard mounting dimensions, replacement in PA cabinets, cars, bass amplifiers, recessed wall mounts and other destinations is a drop-in operation that restores clarity and punch to hardworking but tired systems.
The Truvox 0615 is equally at home as the principal woofer in twoway cabinets or as the mid-bass/ midrange element in three-way systems. It is also an ideal choice for door placement in cars, as many vehicles share its mounting specifications.
An 8 ohm impedance ensures the broadest possible compatibility with power amplifiers, whether outboard or built into an active cabinet design, plus the Truvox 0615 handles an impressive 300 watts of continuous power, but thanks to its sensitivity of 93dB, still reproduces sound efficiently when a more modest allotment of power is on offer.
A pressed steel basket maximises energy transfer while bringing the Truvox 0615 in at the lightest weight in its product class: a scant 1.6 kilograms (3.5 pounds).
“THE TRUVOX 0615 MEETS OR EXCEEDS COMPETITORS’ SPECIFICATIONS IN ALL AREAS, WITH GREATER POWER HANDLING AND AT A COMPETITIVE PRICE.”
Meanwhile the ferrite magnet, 1.5-inch round copper voice coil, Kevlar-loaded cone and M-shaped dual-roll cone surround work together to allow for high fidelity and low distortion, even at extreme excursion. A centrally located vent assists cooling, and front and rear gaskets are included for ease of mounting.
The Truvox 0615 is the first member of a new product family – drawing on Celestion’s long tradition of the company producing highperforming general-purpose speakers as well as the world’s most sought-after drivers for guitar amplification.
Truvox was a brand known for its PA speakers throughout the mid 20th century, and in 1949, purchased the company then known as Rola Celestion. Thus, the Celestion brand added a broad range of PA drivers to its stable.
Celestion has revealed that it will expand the Truvox line throughout 2024 to include eight-, 10-, 12-, and 15-inch sizes. True to Celestion’s ethos, each model will combine rigorous research and development with today’s best materials science, manufacturing processes, and quality assurance metrics.
Celestion aims to make Truvox speakers the obvious choice when end users and installers alike are in search of outstanding value that refuses to sacrifice quality.
“This latest incarnation brings the famous Truvox brand back to life in the form of a superior performing sound reinforcement transducer,” says Celestion head of marketing Ken Weller. “The Truvox 0615 meets or exceeds competitors’ specifications in all areas, with greater power handling and at a competitive price.”
Mixing engineer, music producer and electronic music live act, Hannes Bieger explains why being fed up with the status quo with dance labels led him to create his own, and how new track, Black Hole went viral before he even released it.
Having put the finishing touches onto brand new single, Black Hole , mixing engineer, music producer and electronic music live act, Hannes Bieger ponders the question: how does he know when a track is truly finished?
“That’s a very good question,” he muses from his (sort of) home studio in Berlin. “You could call it a home studio, because I feel at home here and I spend a lot of hours here every week, but it’s a separate place,” he explains,
gesturing around the room. “It’s not in my house. I figured at some point that I spent more time every day in my studio than in my own bed,” he laughs.
Back to knowing when a song is complete: “It’s a great topic to talk about because basically, you don’t know! But, I have to paraphrase Picasso here, who’s one of my favourite painters. He was asked the same question once about how he knew when a painting was finished, and he basically said something along
the lines of, ‘The painting is never finished. It’s all about your decision as a painter to put the brush away.’ I really like that, because you can always record one bit more, or do one tweak more, or try to refine that EQ setting a little bit better. It all has to do with experience; knowing when enough is enough.”
As head of his own label, Elektrons, Bieger utilises the outlet to channel his positive energy back into the electronic music community. By founding his own label Bieger vowed to go against the grain of an industry that has become increasingly fast-paced and business-oriented to embrace an ideology that is focused on what’s really important to him: high quality music, artistry and creativity, building community, enriching the dance floor and nurturing the next generation of electronic music artists.
“I’ve been releasing with other labels all my musical life and it never really occurred to me as a necessity to
make my own label because it’s a lot of work and a lot of responsibility,” he admits. “Last year was special for me because I had the feeling that I was making some of the best tracks of my career, but I was struggling to get them signed with other labels. If you’re not nailing what they are looking for as a label in terms of the genre, they won’t consider it. I’ve been doing deep house and techno; I always have a hard time limiting myself to one style. I realised that I needed to do this myself. I don’t want to ever be in a situation where I create something that I feel is special (and people feel is special) and then I can’t release it because I don’t have an avenue to do
that. I decided I need to build my own universe, so to speak, by setting up my own label, and here we are.”
Inaugurating the launch of Elektrons is Black Hole, the beguiling cut that started it all. The mesmerising track is the product of one of Beiger’s many jam sessions in his studio and sees him channelling Italian composer and music producer Giorgio Moroder, resulting in a hypnotic bassline that combines a mid-’70s proto-house disco sound with a pulsating low end. He knew it was the one to launch his own label when he posted a snippet on his socials that quickly went viral.
“I realised that this was a special track very early on, and also, it only took me a little more than a day to make it, which also always is a good sign,” he points out. “I put a snippet of me playing it on my socials and that went absolutely viral, with more than 25 million views across all channels. I realised that this track indeed, does strike enough. But I sent it to three or four labels and they all rejected it. Everybody was reposting it on their Instagram stories and other artists asked me what kind of marketing campaign I did in order to achieve this. I said, ‘There’s no campaign; this went viral!’ It got me really excited about the track because it resonated so much with people.”
Black Hole blends a classic analogue hypnotic bassline and melodic components. Bieger recalls how the track came together: “I had a chord progression and the groove and vibe in my mind. I had the whole arrangement pretty much finished before noon the next day. I did a couple adjustments later, like shortening the intro, re-recording the synth bass and the lead melody in the breakdown because I had a feeling this could be a bit more dramatic,” he furthers. “Then I did a couple more mix tweaks, but not much. It’s that sculpting of the final sound picture that I did. To this day, when I open the arrangement of the track, I’m sort of in awe of what I created because it’s a rare thing to make something like this. It’s a track where if you mute a single channel in the arrangement – it doesn’t fall apart completely – but everything in there makes so much sense and brings so much to the table that every element that you take out, takes away much more than just a little element. That’s always a sign that you really nailed it and that there’s nothing in there that is not absolutely vital to the track. I landed inside the sweet spot with this one.
“It goes to show that the feeling of inspiration is very precious. If you feel inspired, it’s better to follow that lead
“I WAS MAKING SOME OF THE BEST TRACKS OF MY CAREER, BUT I WAS STRUGGLING TO GET THEM SIGNED WITH OTHER LABELS.”
and not push it to the side, otherwise you could do whatever you had to do first and then come back to it only to realise that the feeling is gone.”
Bieger explains that with his production, he embraces a ‘less is more’ approach and reveals that Steinberg’s Cubase is his trusty DAW of choice – he’s using the most up to date version, 13 – although his journey with the brand actually started out with Nuendo, at a time when he was more focused on creating mixdowns for other people.
“I went from Nuendo to Cubase because Cubase is a little more musician-centric,” he states, elaborating that he no longer has the need to organise thousands of channels of Foley recordings for a film recording project. “I just wanted to make music, basically, and I couldn’t be happier with Cubase. The most important feature isn’t something that you can actually pinpoint, it’s the overall sound quality that I like; the evenness and natural-sounding audio engine is what I like. It doesn’t try to blow it up in any way, but it also doesn’t take much away. I don’t buy into this notion that it’s transparent because it’s digital, because that’s wrong. So many people are so strict about the differences of different analogue circuits, but then when it
comes to software, they just assume that it all sounds the same because it’s all digital, and that’s just not the case. The biggest reason I use Cubase is because it sounds the best to me; it’s a blank sheet of paper, I don’t want it to have a sound, I just want it neutral. I think it is as neutral as it gets for a DAW. I don’t want it to have a special sound, I want it to be invisible, sonically, and I think it is much more invisible, sonically, than the main competitors.”
Bieger explains how Cubase played a crucial role when producing Black Hole: “Cubase is basically my workbench. It’s the software that I’m using to do every client mix on and it’s the software that I’m using to produce all of my music. From the first MIDI notes that are put in for the bass drum, to the final mixing touches, everything happens in Cubase. If you’re a truck driver, you need a truck. If you’re a pilot, you need a plane, and if you’re a music producer, you need a DAW. For me, that is Cubase. It’s very central to my work, but it’s not so much about the specific features, it’s a combination of all of them. It’s an environment I enjoy working in, because it allows me to do whatever I want to do with a good song, and that’s just what I need,” he smiles.
Daniella Peters, Director, North America Tour and Rental Sales at Harman Professional Solutions gives an insight into her role, which saw her transition from a live sound, rock and roll background into a corporate position. She explains how chance meetings have led her to where she is today, why one should never underestimate the value of relationships, how immersive for live sound concerts is gaining traction, why the SRX900 was an unexpected success in the touring sector, and why if there’s a problem, you should always have a solution at the ready.
You say your career has been a series of chance meetings. Tell us about how you got your start in live sound…
I feel that I ended up here due to chance meetings. For my very first job outside of university, I was applying to work at L’Oreal, the cosmetics company. I met a girl in a nightclub whose father owned a cosmetics company and she said, ‘We’re hiring too! Would you interview for us?’ I went to that interview in London, got the job and started the day after I finished university. I was with that cosmetics company in Germany for a conference and we were all sitting in the hotel restaurant and on the next table was Dave Rat [founder of Rat Sound], who was there with the Chili Peppers. We started talking, exchanged numbers, and became friends. When I ended up in L.A with the cosmetics company, I called Dave and asked, ‘Do you know anybody selling a car?’ He introduced me to his shop manager Jon, who sold me his truck. After only one day the truck broke down, but Jon ended up fixing it and from that moment on we also became friends along with Karrie Keyes [founder of Soundgirls and
monitor engineer for Pearl Jam]. From there, I started doing errands for Rat on weekends. I did everything from delivering amplifiers in my truck to helping production assist at weekend festivals such as Coachella (which was only in its second year at the time). One day I delivered some amplifiers to HHB, which was a British pro audio brand. They were looking for an office manager and I desperately wanted to work in music so I said yes to that and ended up working at HHB and then eventually at Rat Sound, eventually creating and heading their sales and installation division.
You were at Rat Sound for almost 20 years heading sales and instals for them. What was it like to transition from a live sound, rock and roll company into a corporate role at Harman?
It’s very different. JBL is under the Harman umbrella, which is owned by Samsung, so it’s very corporate, and I’ve taken to it like a duck to water. Having that experience of being with a live sound company on the production side has given me
insight that has been critical to my job. It was quite intimidating to start because a lot of my current clients are titans of the industry. People like Michael McDonald, the president of ATK was the ex-president of JBL and Dave Shadoan, for example of Sound Image, who I knew from my time at Rat, but who were both legendary names of the industry. I thought to myself, ‘How am I going to offer them something they know so much about already?’ That said, when I started, we had just come out of the pandemic, and I felt I had a responsibility to all of the clients nationwide to do my best from day one and give 100%.
What does your current role at Harman entail?
It’s a sales position; I manage all my clients and all the production clients nationwide. The role is senior manager for production audio, so all the clients do their own live gigs, kind of what I was doing before. Now, I am the sales manager for those clients. It is way more than just selling. It is problem solving, building relationships, and being our production clients’ and sales
reps’ go-to contact for all aspects of their business journey. At Harman, your role involves assisting both existing and potential customers in navigating and selecting products from the company’s extensive portfolio.
Could you share some of the recent projects you’ve been involved in and what makes them unique?
We do have a lot of products, and that’s something I like about Harman because there is something for every scenario. The team has worked on the SoFi Stadium, the Grand Ole Opry and The Roxy Theatre, which is a historic punk venue on the Sunset Strip. Something really cool about all those installations, or any live event gigs, is that there is a product for everything and every aspect of that job. It feels really good to play a small part in these massive jobs that our clients are doing. It’s exciting.
With the launch of the SRX900 line array system, how has this product reshaped discussions within the market among your potential customers?
When we launched the SRX900, we had a need in our product line for a high-feature, lower-cost powered line array that was usable for the masses. Originally, they were going to sell it as a retail product through retailers and music retailers. We did not estimate
how popular it would be with our massive large-scale touring clients as well, because a lot of these clients have a broad spectrum of jobs that they do, like massive concerts, but they’re also doing corporate gigs. So the SRX900 became hugely popular with our touring clients as well. We were not expecting it, but it’s been an added bonus. It takes a lot less truck space to have a powered line array too, so people can put it in a smaller truck, and off they go.
Harman is extensively engaged in nationwide roadshows and customer demonstrations. How does this proactive involvement help you in connecting with individuals who might otherwise be geographically challenging to meet face-to-face?
When you demo tour sound systems, having the right sonic environment plus the space to try them out, it can be tricky to get it exactly right, so what we did this past summer was take our demo truck to strategic locations across the country. Then we rented out several theatres and performance venues and we did demonstrations. In effect, we went directly to the client. We chose 14 cities in total and it gave people the opportunity to listen to our products who might not have the ability otherwise. I love that part of my job – it’s an industry of relationships.
You see how the clients operate and the challenges that they’re facing as a business and you get to build that relationship. There’s something really special about that.
We are on the cusp of something new with the role of AI. Immersive is a massive buzzword too, Especially with our recent acquisition of FLUX, immersive for live sound concerts is really gaining traction in the installation world. If it’s a fixed installation, you have time [to install], but on the live side like music festivals, for example, it’s a little harder to do right now because you’ve got different engineers coming in day in, day out, and there’s an expense: if you have more speakers, it’s more expense. We’re on the cusp of new things, so it’s an exciting time and there’s definitely some exciting things around the corner in live sound. What are some key topics and trends in the field?
Reflecting on your experience in the industry, you’ve witnessed its evolution from your early years to the present. How do you compare the landscape of your initial years in business to the dynamic environment we see today?
Early on, it was like the Wild Wild West! A lot of clients got into the business
because maybe they were ex musicians or loved building their own speakers in the garage, and off they went and built a sound company – it was a very different environment. There wasn’t as much education like there is today: you have all the live sound schools and everything like that. Whereas in the past, at least when I grew up, it wasn’t a big thing. You still need that experience on the job, because it’s easy to learn in the classroom, but what you don’t learn is all the back infrastructure of loading trucks and all the things that people don’t see before you start a gig. Today, it’s a lot more professional and it’s a whole different experience.
What guidance or advice would you offer to people aiming to establish themselves in the business?
Don’t underestimate the value of relationships. When I think back, I don’t think I got any jobs during my career just through a resume – you have to say yes and take opportunities. I’m hearing that a lot of smaller sound companies are struggling to get good people right now, so the jobs exist, but you’re not going to get a massive tour right out of the gate. You have to pay your dues, it’s going to be very different from a classroom environment. There are skills that you can only learn by doing. Don’t be afraid to start at the bottom and go for your dream, because it can happen. Every day that you go to work, it is a networking experience, because you never know: that person that you’re working with might be the person who hires you for your next job. Or if they’re out on a tour and all of a sudden somebody says to them, ‘We need one more person’, who are they going to think of? They’re going to think of the hard worker that they worked with a month ago, for example. Also, have a really professional email name!
“IMMERSIVE FOR LIVE SOUND CONCERTS IS REALLY GAINING TRACTION IN THE INSTALLATION WORLD.”
What is the best piece of advice you’ve received?
When I was at Rat Sound, Dave Rat used to have this catchphrase which was, “No problems, only solutions”, and that always stuck with me because it’s true. That resonated when I went to Harman as well, so if I have a problem, I must have a well-thought out solution to go with it. Otherwise, it is simply complaining.
Do you have any advice for the industry?
Let’s go back to simplicity; you don’t have to die on every hill. Prop people up, encourage people. Take care of yourself health-wise, get sleep. You’re not your best self when you’re overtired. Have compassion and empathy. Be kind to people; everybody’s doing the best they can.
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Adam Ayan, founder of Ayan Mastering, boasts a client list as vast as it is stellar, featuring the likes of Paul McCartney, Foo Fighters, Katy Perry, Bob Marley, Taylor Swift, Madonna, Nirvana, Bruce Springsteen, and Gwen Stefani to name a mere few. Here, he talks to Headliner about the art of mastering, how he fell in love with the process, and how Merging Technologies has shaped his work.
When did you first develop an interest in audio?
I started out as a musician and as a kid played in rock bands and thought that I’d be a professional musician. I had an experience with one of my bands going into a recording studio and cutting a demo in a small multi-track studio and I really enjoyed that experience. When it came time for me to move on from high school, I decided I would go to school for both music performance and sound recording and there was this great program at the University of Massachusetts at Lowell that covered both of those bases. Basically, the degree I ended up getting was
in music performance and sound recording technology and as I started to get into the audio and studio part of it I knew that’s where I wanted to go.
While I was at University, I also worked part-time at a small project studio where I cut my teeth as a young engineer and quickly got into the driver’s seat with clients. At that time I was recording and mixing and became really interested in mastering, which is what I ended up following for virtually all of my career.
What were the first steps in your career outside of university?
a mastering studio in the Boston area, which led to a job there I then ended up with a job at Gateway Mastering and I’ve just followed that as my career path ever since.
Why did mastering hold such an appeal for you?
I think it’s the overview that you get as a mastering engineer, or the viewpoint that you have within that part of the creative process. Firstly, the fine tuning really spoke to me. As a mastering engineer you’re hearing it as a whole, as opposed to a recording engineer. What spoke to me was that I could hear it and affect it at the very end of the process. I hear the whole Out of school I ended up interning at
arrangement, the whole recording is done, the mix is done.
How much room for creativity is there in the mastering process?
There is more creativity involved than most know. There are certain things that we just can’t do at all in mastering, like changing the mix etc., so the creative tools end up usually coming down to equalisation and dynamics processing. In a way, the mastering engineer can take the baton from the mix engineer to finish things up and there’s usually a fair bit of room for creativity there.
One of the other great things about being a mastering engineer is you get to work on a large swathe of recordings, much more so than producers or recording and mix engineers, just by nature of the work. All of that work takes infinitely more time than it does for me to master.
So, where a record producer might work on a handful of records a year, because they might take weeks and months or longer, I’m working on a handful of records a day sometimes.
Is working on a vast range of songs spanning styles and genre different or more challenging than working on an album by a single artist?
They’re vastly different from each other, and the expectations from one artist or producer to the next can be very different. For instance, with a lot of Latin music there’s often a lot of percussive elements, and one of the last things you want to do is anything that might round off those transients and those edges. On records that are sung in French, whether they be records in, marketed in markets like, like francophone markets, the vocal tends to be a little louder and a little brighter than we’re used to with American pop music, so you need to be sensitive to that. If that happens on
an American record, maybe I would do things to bring the voice down a little bit, but I know that this market dictates a certain thing.
Equally, working on 10 songs for one artist can have its own complications. Sometimes those 10 songs could be three or four different producers, four different engineers, three or four different studios and they’ve all been made over a long period of time. So, it has its own set of things that you need to get through in terms of making it sound like one cohesive album.
“I’M USING A NUMBER OF MERGING PRODUCTS BECAUSE IT ALL JUST SOUNDS AMAZING.”
Sometimes those 10 songs could be three or four different producers, four different engineers, three or four different studios and they’ve all been made over a long period of time. So, it has its own set of things that you need to get through in terms of making it sound like one cohesive album.
Tell us about how Ayan Mastering came together.
Ayan Mastering started in July 2023. I spent 25 years at Gateway Mastering Studios, also here in Portland Maine, and had my own mastering room for 22 of those years, developing a reputation and clientele. I knew Gateway was going to come to an end at some point and in late 2020, the owner, Bob Ludwig, said he was retiring and that it would be closing. I knew I would continue mastering records as long as people were willing to hire me, and I have a lot of exceptionally great clients, so I started my own studio.
Tell us about your relationship with Merging Technologies and how they figure you’re your workflow?
I’ve been using Merging products since 2005. It started with the Pyramix system. Essentially, I use the Pyramix for final assembly and final master output of all my masters and Pyramix fit the bill right off the bat back then and continues to do so today. In 2005 at Gateway I was the first to get onto that platform, figuring out the best way to utilise it, and I fell in love with it pretty early on. Then in 2006 I got the rest of our studio on to it, and I’ve been using it ever since. I brought that along with me to Ayan Mastering. I have a total of three Pyramix systems that run on turnkey CPUs that they put together for us several years ago. One is my main system that I use in my mastering room, one is a system that my assistant uses, and then I have a third system at home so that I can do last-minute things there.
It does things no other system does as well. Precision editing of two track audio, stereo audio, is key in mastering. De-clicking and things like that can be done really well in the Pyramix. Today, the king of distribution is digital. So, for every project we output various file formats for streaming. But we also still output formats for CD, vinyl, lacquer cuts, and all the various formats that our clients require for final masters. All come out of the Pyramix and it does them really well.
That was the start for me, and I eventually got on to their hardware as well. That started with the Horus around 2010, mainly listening for its AD/DA conversions and seeing at the time if it was comparable to the kind of AD/ DA processing we were using then, and it was beating processors. We immediately switched over to Horus and I use it to this day.
I also own a Hapi, which is like the light version of the Horus, and I absolutely love the conversion process in both of those units. And after Ayan Mastering started, I bought a third Pyramix system and the Anubis. They are fantastic. I have one for the rig that my assistant uses and one on my rig at home. So, I’m using a number of Merging products because it all just sounds amazing.
How did you find the Anubis when you first started using it?
Well, I wish I was making the most of everything it can do, because it can do so much. At the moment I’m really using them as a glorified headphone amplifier and their headphone amplifier is exceptional, that’s why I wanted to get them. I knew they’d play well with the Pyramix systems in terms of their integration and with the Ravenna network. It’s really a super clean monitor path for headphones and for doing quality control.
With the Anubis I have at home is the same thing. I can do editing or quality control if I need to, knowing that I have this great monitor path. But I’m just using the headphone amplifier. But there is just so much it can do. You have the Talk Back option, you can put line level into it, you can put a microphone level into it. It really is incredible.
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AYANMASTERING.COM
Rental house RGear explains that when it comes to reality TV, Lectrosonics is the only solution to guarantee plain sailing…
Since 2006, RGear has made a name for itself as the supplier of audio and visual equipment to the reality television industry. At first glance, the clients page of the company’s website could be mistaken for a streaming service devoted to the genre, boasting household franchises including The Bachelor, Real Housewives and Top Chef
Another big fish is Below Deck and its spinoffs, in which camera crews follow the crews of chartered superyachts and the affluent, often highmaintenance customers who book them. Robert “Bobby” Brehmer is the audio supervisor for the entire brand.
He and his mixing staff are currently employing Lectrosonics’ latest generation of all-digital wideband
wireless, collectively known as the D2 line. The DBSMD is the transmitter of choice, with DCR822 receivers filling roving audio bags and four-channel DSQD receivers feeding master control. DHCT and DCHR pairings send reference mixes to cameras.
Brehmer and RGear co-owner Gregg Kita shared how Lectrosonics helps them rise to the unique challenges of making reality-at-sea:
“Reality TV is very different than doing anything scripted, the way the story can change on a dime and how the crew has to follow that,” explains Kita. “Though you can mix and process audio in post, you typically can’t call talent in to re-record dialogue. So, it has to be right the first time. Lectrosonics met this need from the very beginning — I’ve been using it for probably 30 years on reality series.”
One of many factors that sets some reality shows apart from fictional
drama or comedy is the sheer number of cast members.
“Casts are often very large,” nods Kita, “often 25 to 30 members. Of course, they’re not usually all together at the same time. On the yacht(s), Bobby has around 30 receivers going at onceseveral DSQD receivers in a ‘control room’ with him and an elaborate antenna system around the boat to get coverage for the majority of the entire yacht.
“For the ENG mixers running around with each camera and mixing only what their camera is shooting, it isn’t practical for them to have that many receivers in their audio bag. The DCR 822 is ideal because it has two channels; so, they carry eight channels around (four dual DCR 822s) and rely on the party dial feature in the DCR 822.”
“THERE’S NO BETTER SOLUTION FOR THE WORLD OF REALITY TELEVISION.”
“One cool thing about the DCR822 is that you can have a person’s name show up on the channel,” adds Brehmer. “So, we don’t need to remember that so-and-so is on 500.125, for example. We can just dial them up by name.”
Another pitfall: film sets are stationary, but a traveling vessel will likely encounter ever-changing RF environments.
“The yacht might come into a port where there are new digital transmission towers for broadcast or 5G,” notes Kita. “That means we must be very agile and quick about switching to new frequency plots, but holding onto whatever is still working
in order to interrupt the story flow as little as possible.”
For this task, Brehmer keeps a laptop running Wireless Designer at arm’s reach. “Wireless Designer is now my primary intermod coordinator,” he says. “It’s very consistent and has become the straight go-to for us.”
Brehmer also notes that given the potential for electromagnetic interference from maritime communications and navigation equipment, not to mention the RF jammers some yacht owners deploy as a privacy measure, “the wideband ability of the DCR822 and DBSMD is just a game-changer. [It covers] the full legal RF spectrum and can
squeeze more usable channels into a given bandwidth. Like all the Lectro stuff that came before, they’re consistently easy to use, durable, and sound fantastic.”
“I listen to feedback from Bobby and all the other mixers who work with us, and everyone is giving us the thumbs-up on this newest digital gear,” adds Kita. “I’ve already moved one of our other shows, Bar Rescue, to it. We’ll definitely recommend Lectrosonics for more shows. There’s no better solution for the world of reality television,” he asserts.
The versatility of GLP’s new impression X5 Compact wash light provided a huge boost for theatre lighting designer Jonathan Chan at the Orange Tree in Richmond, south-west London, as Headliner recently discovered…
The theatre is an intimate and experimental house, with productions staged in the round – and Chan is one of its regular creatives. He recognised the X5 Compact as being the ideal complement for the house lighting grid after seeing it in action at the PLASA Show in London, and requisitioned five of the wash lights. The amount of power delivered from just seven 40W RGBL LEDs, set
within each compact housing, was immediately impressive.
Brought in to light the production of Oliver Goldsmith’s She Stoops to Conquer, directed by Tom Littler and Francesca Ellis, Chan was also mindful that in addition to the specific requirements for sections of the production – stretching the enlarged colour palette, zoom and dimming
features to the limit – it would also need to act as a workhorse for other productions simultaneously sitting under the main show, ranging from the children’s Tiny Tim’s Christmas Carol to two Shakespearean community projects.
“I COULD SEE IMMEDIATELY HOW BRIGHT AND PUNCHY THESE FIXTURES WERE.”
Of his PLASA encounter, the LD recalls: “I could see immediately how bright and punchy these fixtures were as they were focused right up to the roof amid the beaming sunlight!”
The GLP impression X5 Compact not only generates this punch but operates across an expanded colour gamut. Chan was impressed by the new super-fast zoom mechanics, with 16:1 range running from 3.5° to 60° and smooth dimmer curves.
He also commented on the zoom and dimming, and notes that the fixture was “incredibly silent, with great colour mixing – especially for recreating a beautiful tungsten. I also loved the dimming curves and the smoothness of the dimming when you go from 0 to 10%.”
The LD had been able to achieve enormous impact from just five heads: “In order to supplement my
heavily generic-based rig, I wanted a fixture that was bright enough with a versatile zoom range that would more importantly fit right within the tight grid, as it’s also important to ensure audience sight lines on all sides of the circle aren’t blocked by lighting fixtures.
“There are moments when these impression X5 Compacts have to pick out very tight bits of furniture,” he adds, exemplifying the impressive zoom range. “To be able to do this as well as conduct aerial washes was just amazing.”
Having used impression X4 Bars over the years, the LD describes himself as an “enormous fan” of GLP. “This is because I love the versatility across their products,” he says, and the X5 Compact is no exception.
The locational changes of the comedy have also tested the fixtures as the action moves from Hardcastle Hall, a stately manor
house, to an ale house and then the surrounding grounds and countryside beyond. “This demanded some warmer tones which is where these fixtures came into play,” Chan continues. “Being able to deliver both the warmth and coolness made it just sensational to use, especially within the intimacy of this theatre, which is one of very few designed in the round.”
