Headliner USA Issue 13

UPPORTING THECREA T I VE COMMUNITY

What a busy start to the new year it has been for the music and pro audio industries. At the time of writing, we are just a few weeks into 2023 and we have seen a brand new events production rental firm officially enter the market in the form of 22live, a flurry of new products and innovations teased ahead of what will be the most highly-anticipated ISE since its relocation from Amsterdam to Barcelona, and artists from across the musical spectrum have either released or revealed release dates for new records in the wake of the festive lull.

One such artist to have released a new album already this year is none other than this edition’s cover star, the inimitable Gaz Coombes.

The iconic Supergrass frontman has just unveiled a brand new collection of songs in the form of Turn The Car Around , his fourth solo record to date, and arguably, his finest. Some 10 years on since the release of his debut solo outing, Turn The Car Around finds Coombes in the form of his life, combining all the hallmarks that have made him one of the most compelling, and indeed, underrated songwriters of the past 30 years.

When Headliner spoke to him ahead of its release, he revealed that he considers the album to represent something of a creative line in the sand, from which he will look to deviate next time out. He also opens

up on the journey of self-discovery he has been on since breaking out as a solo artist, as well as his performances at that emotionally charged Taylor Hawkins tribute concert at Wembley Stadium in the Autumn of 2022.

Elsewhere, we explore some of the most exciting new projects and installations happening across the world, while also hearing from the engineers pushing the boundaries of what will be possible both in the studio and out in the field in 2023.

And before long, we’ll no doubt be gearing up for another NAMM and what will hopefully be another buoyant summer festival season.

So here’s to a healthy and prosperous 2023. If the start we’ve made to the year so far is anything to go by, it looks set to be a good one!

Daniel Gumble Head of Music, Headliner

90 / EMILIANO CABALLERO

86 / AUDIO PRODUCTION

76 / IRKO

70 / DARA TAYLOR

82 / SCORING THE MENU

94 / ANNA PANCALDI

60 / HANIA RANI

66 / CHRIS CARMOUCHE

Photographer: Jeanné Kietzmann

NOTHING TO PROVE

MAUVEY

Ghanaian-born, transatlantic artist Mauvey is known for being an emotional wreck both on and off stage – his words, not Headliner’s. The professional basketball player-turned singer-songwriter explains why he’ll never pretend to be something he’s not…

“When I say ‘emotional wreck’, people always go to the extreme like that’s a bad thing,” a pensive Mauvey clarifies from a family member’s house in Southampton. “I don’t think it’s a good or bad thing. I just think it’s a real thing. People at their most honest are not all the way together, and that’s not a bad thing. I try to be as honest as I can – in your typical day, you’re not in the same mood the whole day, you know? I think a lot of people pretend for most of their lives,” he considers. “Pretending to hold it all together, pretending to like something, pretending to fit in, and I just don’t do that – especially when I’m performing.”

On stage, the alt-pop rising star endeavors to get to the heart of raw sentiment through his songwriting, intertwining striking melodies and hypnotic beats with his distinctive and resonant vocals. He’s only ever his authentic self, even if that turns some people off.

“Because people have paid money, come out of their way, got ready, left their house, gone on public transport or whatever to get to the show,” he explains. “I don’t want to cheat them by being lifeless and pretending to be something else or pretend I’m too cool or whatever. So I’m just myself and I really mean what I’m saying.

The minimum that I want is for everybody to leave there and be like, ‘I might not even like the music, but at least I believe what he’s saying, and I believe that he feels it’, because I do.”

Born in Ghana and raised across the UK and Canada, Mauvey’s upbringing inoculates his rich palette of unique alternative pop music, taking inspiration from the likes of Michael Jackson, Kanye West, Oumou Sangaré, Prince, and Labrinth – although music wasn’t his first passion. Mauvey was a professional basketball player until his close friend died, prompting him to drop everything and embark on a music career with one mission: to spread love.

“I’ve always felt creative,” he muses. “It’s a creative art in itself – sports and athletics. When my best friend was killed, that was one of the defining moments in my life. At that moment I thought, ‘I really love basketball, but I’m not doing what I need to be doing.’ Life is so short, and I really took that to heart and said, ‘I’ve done this thing for so long, but I’m not going to play basketball forever. I’m not making an impact on anyone else’s life by playing the sport,’ so I just quit. It was a bit of a journey to find out what actually would make a difference.”

It turns out that for Mauvey, that thing was music. Within melodies and lyrics, he found a level of comfort in his own skin, and so far he’s garnered support from BBC Introducing and BBC Radio 1, and has performed at SXSW, The Great Escape, BBC Radio 1’s Big Weekend, Isle of Wight Festival, and has embarked on a 20-date UK headline tour.

“I’m quite obsessive in general as a person,” he smiles of his lazer focus U-turn to music and artistry after quitting basketball. “In the beginning, I wrote poems and short stories. I started on a novel and I wrote for hours a day, every day. Then I turned the poems into spoken word, and then into folk songs, but I never performed anything. I just wrote.”

After being encouraged by his sisters to attend an open mic night, he began to feel his way as a performer – although it wasn’t smooth sailing at first.

“I was like, ‘I’m not going to an open mic, I don’t know how to sing! I don’t know how to rap – I’m just writing these things down.’ They pushed me to go – and it really sucked,” he laughs, shaking his head slightly at the memory. “But I’m quite obsessive, as I mentioned, so I just kept going. I went to four open mics a week. Every

week, I just kept going, kept singing my own songs and learning how to perform them. I knew, actually, before I played for the first time, that music is what I’m going to do.”

And back to that overriding message that powers his artistry: spreading love. “My inspiration and my drive for making art in general is dissecting all the different facets of love,” he nods. “It’s really simple. All I want to do is distribute love. Basically what that means is equipping people with a very simple tool, and that is to realize that they’re important, and then for them to be able to empower people with that same message. That’s how I approach anything I create. So am I talking about heartbreak? Am I talking about something that’s heartwarming? Am I talking about love between friends? A romantic relationship? Parents to child?

“It sounds really airy fairy, but I’m trying to really dissect and experience love and then be able to have people relate and share in that experience,” he points out earnestly, adding that his songwriting process isn’t always as poetic as the end product:

“I actually always write it like a diary entry,” he shares. “So if the story is: I took a train to London, went to a party and then came back home, I will literally write – in the plainest English – what the story is about. Then I tried to find a melody that matches that story, and that becomes the foundation. Then I either go in and make the words more poetic to fit the melody, or it just is what it is. Sometimes, you just literally have to

say: ‘I took the train to London, went to a party and came back home,’ and that’s the song,” he laughs. “Sometimes it can be very simple, and sometimes it’s a bit more poetic.”

His new single, PROVE IT! – taken from his new EP, BEFORE THE ALBUM: A love letter to the moons of Mars – serves as an uplifting message of self-love to his younger self. A continuation of his mission to distribute love through his music, he bares all on this candid single. Above glistening keys and a thunderous beat, he reassuringly chants: “I bet you I love you / More than you think I do,” followed by “And if you want me to / I’ll prove it”.

“You hear people say, or maybe you’ve asked yourself, ‘If you were confronted with your younger self, what would you tell that kid?’ Especially during the pandemic where people had more conversations and you had more time to think about the answers. For example, aside from when we were actual kids, the pandemic is the closest we’ll be to where we didn’t have anything to do. We could either waste all that time or spend it doing something. It’s the most time we’ve had to reflect, and probably will have, to reflect in our lives. I really thought about that question. It took a while, but PROVE IT! is my answer. I wrote the song by myself and the song is that conversation – it’s like you’re saying it to yourself.”

Mauvey adds (somewhat cryptically) that the EP is setting the scene for something more that will come later,

and that the title of each song, when strung together, make up a poem. It’s clear he’s a man with an artistic plan.

“I always say I’m a multi dimensional, multi disciplined, creative artist,” he says. “I’m a complete, creative artist. I’m someone with a purpose. I’m using art, music, fashion, film and literature to distribute love, and sometimes it’s obvious, sometimes it’s not obvious – sometimes it’s metaphorical. But I am here to inspire people, I’m here to give people confidence. For me, it’s way past entertaining people, or being here to make money or gain fans,” he adds.

“I want to play the biggest shows possible for the sole reason that you can say anything you want to say. So you can make people hate you, you can tell people that you love them, you can tell people to keep going, you can tell people that they’re important. The biggest possible platforms are places where you can make the biggest possible change. The drive I have is to be the absolute best so I can perform on the biggest platforms and make the biggest impacts that anyone can make in a singular lifetime. We only have right now. I’m just a person with a purpose, basically.”

SPONSORED BY

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MAUVEY.COM

INTERVIEW BY GRACE MCGUIGAN

“MY INSPIRATION AND MY DRIVE FOR MAKING ART IN GENERAL IS DISSECTING ALL THE DIFFERENT FACETS OF LOVE.”

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GAZ COOMBES

by

EXPLORATION & DISCOVERY

Marking his 10th year as a solo artist, Supergrass frontman Gaz Coombes released his fourth solo album to date, Turn The Car Around on January 13. Headliner sat down with him for an in-depth chat about musical discovery, calling time on his old band, exploring themes of masculinity through songwriting, and why he has no idea where he is headed next…

Gaz Coombes occupies something of a niche in the pantheon of great British songwriters. When Supergrass emerged at the height of Britpop as a trio of baby-faced upstarts, early singles like Alright and Caught By The Fuzz became instant classics; impossibly hooky vignettes of youthful abandon and misdemeanor that would stand shoulder-to-shoulder with the biggest hits of the ‘90s and etch themselves permanently into the

pages of iconic 20th century guitardriven pop. Subsequent releases such as Richard III, Sun Hits The Sky, Moving, and Pumping On Your Stereo would serve only to reinforce their status as masters of melody and purveyors of some of the finest singles of the era.

But while their songs have undeniably stood the test of time, the band’s frontman has not found himself

fixed by the media gaze in the way that some of his contemporaries have been. The absence of highprofile spats with other artists, or a reluctance to engage in the public sniping and macho posturing that typified so much of UK indie rock at the time, has perhaps led to Coombes being perceived as a more anonymous figure; simultaneously a musical national treasure and one of its most underrated talents.

When Supergrass split over a decade ago, Coombes’s transition from band leader to solo artist was also scrutinized to a far lesser degree than some of his peers. An obvious case in point being the demise of Oasis, where the anticipation of where the brothers Gallagher would tread musically was almost secondary to the inevitable slagging match that would ensue between them.

This, it seems, has been to Coombes’s benefit. With no such baggage on his shoulders, he has spent the past 10 years releasing a volley of everintriguing, ever-evolving records that rank among his finest creations to date. His latest and fourth solo album Turn The Car Around, a refined blend of pop melodies, fuzz infused rock, and gentle acoustic numbers, feels very much like the distillation of everything he has produced since breaking out on his own. What’s more, that instantly recognizable vocal has simply grown richer over the years, seemingly immune from the ravages of almost three decades in the business. Few voices in British pop have aged this well.

When Coombes joins Headliner over Zoom to discuss how Turn The Car Around came into being, he explains

that he always felt the record needed to draw a line under his solo output so far. Following 2015’s Matador and 2018’s World’s Strongest Man, he says he publicly declared the record as the final installment of a trilogy purely to put pressure on himself to mix things up next time out.

“What I said was sort of bollocks,” he says with a laugh, sitting in the newly built studio at the end of his garden where much of the new album was made. “I publicly said it was the end of a trilogy to back myself into a corner. I don’t know if it is... well, it is, as I’ve said it now! That was the point. I wanted it to be set in stone so that it pushes me onto something completely different next time. I don’t want to start the next record like I’ve started the last three, which have all been made in a very similar approach or process. I just decided I wanted whatever I do next to be different and leave this as a moment in time. And they are all totally connected. Lyrically I have got across all of the themes I was playing with, and I have explored that as much as I would like to for now.”

That warm and familiar tone of voice, such a defining feature of Coombes’s music, is very much present in conversation as well. He’s funny and

thoughtful in equal measure, and generous with his time, happy to discuss at length everything from Turn The Car Around to Supergrass’s final shows this year and his performance at the Taylor Hawkins tribute concert, following the Foo Fighters drummer’s untimely death in 2022.

One of the aforementioned lyrical themes that courses through the trilogy he speaks of is that of masculinity. With album titles Matador and World’s Strongest Man, to recent single Sonny The Strong, it’s a subject that has been central to much of his solo work to date. Inspired by English artist Grayson Perry’s book The Descent Of Man, he explains how he has sought to discover more about himself through lyrical exploration.

“I suppose it’s not just that area, it’s everything,” he says, pausing for thought. “There was that book and other documentaries and other things I’d read; I took inspiration from many places with regards to how different people approach life and how they live their lives. Stories about what people go through to keep surviving are always really fascinating. I’ve been finding out about myself in many ways over the past 10 years, being a solo artist.

“I’M ALWAYS LOOKING FOR THAT AMAZING RECORD. I’M STILL AS PASSIONATE AS I WAS WHEN I WAS 17.”

“I spent most of my life in a band and it was an incredible time, but it’s different coming out of that and going into this. There was a lot of discovery about who I am, and along the way you are asking questions about bigger things that are happening around us - my kids, inspiring stories, problems that I see around me in the world. And you try to process those through writing and sometimes they’re really direct and other times they are really vague and just part of a mood. Like The English Ruse on Matador was definitely a time when, like so many times throughout history, the government was just so awful. I’d kind of think, well, I’m not a political writer and I don’t have that mind, but equally I can just say what I’m feeling about this situation, and I can put it into words and put it in a song.”

Given the seemingly ever-escalating political and social turmoil of the times, was there ever a chance that Coombes would address those matters more directly this time around? Or does the concept of the protest song pale before the scale of the challenges so many are facing at present?

“I don’t know,” he ponders. “There isn’t the innocence that there maybe was back in 1965 when Dylan would be a bit more overt about the element of protest with his writing. They were more innocent times. It’s like writing too much about the pandemic, which could easily have been done during the making of this record. It’s tricky - you don’t necessarily want to date it or put it in a hole. I’d like these records that I make to be quite transient and float through time, and you can go back to them whenever you want. But on the other hand, documenting what’s around us, like old books, is where you make notes of what’s happening. It’s all autobiographical essentially.”

THE BIGGEST THING I LEARNED WAS TO TRUST MYSELF AND MY GUT FEELING.

On the subject of self-discovery, Coombes suggests that he is increasingly learning to trust his hunches in the studio. After 10 years as a solo artist, he explains that he is now feeling more comfortable in his own skin than when he initially emerged from what had always been a tight knit creative partnership between himself and fellow Supergrass bandmates Mick Quinn and Danny Goffey. This certainly rings true throughout Turn The Car Around, its nine tracks navigating a range of stylistic and tonal shifts more seamlessly and confidently than ever before.

“We all wrote together in Supergrass,” he elaborates. “The first solo record was definitely the transition record

and it maybe took me one album to get into that new headspace. Around Matador quite early in the writing I got some really important feedback from people I trust and that gave me a lot of confidence, but confidence to write however the fuck I wanted to write; to let myself just go with it and be as honest with the writing and recording as possible.

“Before that it had been a case of maybe writing what I think I should write or recording the way I think it should be recorded. It’s just uncertainty, I guess. The biggest thing I learned was to trust myself and my gut feeling. That had a knock-on effect in life as well – in working with people, making important decisions around my career. Believing in my instincts was a really big thing.”

Coombes also highlights the role of regular producer and collaborator Ian Davenport in steering the direction of the record.

“I’d start off at my studio and just record and write and put as much down as I could,” he says of how the record first started to take shape. “Then I’d get a bit restless and need a change of scene, so I’d go to the other studio where Ian works and stay there for four or five days. Then we’d go through all the madness that I’d done the previous week and try to work it out and make sense of it all. And Ian is great at that. His initial response is what I always look for. He just has good taste. One of the things you always look for in a producer is trusting their ear. You trust that you are both on the same page sonically, aesthetically and stylistically. Quite often you might

work with a mixer or producer that is great, but you just don’t connect somehow. But Ian is amazing, he’s a great facilitator and pulls out the best of what I do.”

While the completion of Turn

The Car Around was one of the defining aspects of Coombes’s 2022, another significant moment came at the highly-anticipated return of Glastonbury. Celebrating both its 50th anniversary and its first post-Covid outing, the legendary festival also saw Supergrass take to the stage for the very last time, as the band brought the curtain down on their reunion tour with a crowd-pleasing set bursting with hits and fan favorites from across their entire career.

“The gigs always feel great,” he smiles when asked how it felt to be gracing the stage with his old

bandmates for the last time. “This was a reunion that was always about just having fun. We wanted to get together again and celebrate all the great stuff we did. We still have that connection onstage and it’s still really exciting to play together. But the reunion has to end and you just keep dancing on through.”

Another big moment came in the form of Coombes’s appearance at the emotionally charged Taylor Hawkins tribute concert at Wembley Stadium. One of Hawkins’s favorite bands, Supergrass had previously toured with Foo Fighters in the ‘90s. And at the tribute concert, the band performed a selection of Hawkins’s favorite Supergrass songs, while Coombes joined Chic icon Nile Rodgers onstage to perform a rendition of David Bowie’s Modern Love

“It was an incredible day,” he reflects. “It was unbelievable how they put it together. All the different artists and musicians they got; it was just an incredible place to be for a day. Really powerful, really moving and emotional. The crowd was incredible. We had been lucky enough to play with Foo Fighters at Wembley before and those guys are great. They’ve always been so supportive, and Taylor was such a big fan. Whenever we’d see him, he’d greet us all with this ear-to-ear grin and he was always such a joy to be around. He would have loved that day. It was a mind-blowing display.”

For now, Coombes’s focus is very much on the release of Turn The

Car Around, his upcoming tour, and carving a new way forward after the completion of his musical trilogy. But with so many landmarks and milestones now in the rear view mirror, does he ever take a moment to reflect on all that’s gone before over the past three decades?

“I don’t do that,” he laughs. “Sometimes with interviews about Supergrass you get asked about the old days, but even when we were back on a tour bus together, we didn’t do much reminiscing. I never feel like I have the time to sit and bask or evaluate what I’ve done. I’m obviously very proud of certain things, but it’s all just an ongoing process. I’m always looking for that amazing record, and

I’m still as passionate today as I was when I was 17. It’s always just been in me to go and explore.”

Three decades into his career he may be, but it still feels like Coombes’s journey of exploration is only just getting started.

GAZCOOMBES.COM

Credit: Tom Cockram

drow s by ALICE GUSTAFSON

STAR WARS BATTLEFRONT

BEN MINTO

Ben Minto, former audio director and sound designer at EA Dice and now company director and supervising sound designer at Sweet Justice Sound, reflects on bringing the sound of Star Wars Battlefront to life, the fans’ favorite sonic moments, and the one in a million sound hidden in the game…

You were the sound director for Star Wars Battlefront at EA Dice, which has elements that we all recognize as being a part of the franchise’s sonic universe. Where did you start?

The first Battlefront came out just before The Force Awakens, so it was this idea of – let’s go back to the original trilogy from the ‘70s and early ‘80s. I think I was one of the few people on the team who was actually born before the Star Wars titles! There’s always this idea of: how do you up-res things? How do you take things that were obviously recorded on tape – maybe in mono. There’s not a lot of variety to that. How do you take

those roots and then expand it to bring up the fidelity overall?

We were super fortunate early on to visit the ranch at Skywalker Sound to ask Ben Burtt and Matt Wood questions, and could we have access to the film stems in the original recordings? If we asked for material and they had it, they would supply it to us. We had these ingredients to start from the original different, iconic Star Wars sounds, but we needed to expand and build upon those so that we could cover all the areas needed in the game. People said, “Don’t you feel really constrained?” And actually

that was great. It’s like, “Okay, it has to sound like the films” – you don’t have to reinvent anything, you don’t have to come up with a brand new lightsaber sound. What you have to try and do is make the game sound like the film, which obviously is a challenge in itself!

Did Battlefront see you visit any weird and wonderful places all in the name of capturing some interesting sounds?

Yes! On the first one, we went to four locations in the Star Wars universe. There was Endor, Tatooine, Hoth, and then a planet which is part of the lore, but it’s not part of the films as such. I did end up in the Redwood Forest to record ambiances for Endor and I had two weeks recording in Iceland. Hoth was originally done in Norway; I went up to the top of Sweden in the middle of winter and that got most of those. For EA Dice’s 20th anniversary, they flew the entire studio to Dubai for a week and I got to spend some time in the desert recording the stuff needed for Tatooine. There’ve been such great books about how Ben Burtt did a lot of the original sounds –and we obviously tried to recreate a lot of those as well. I went to a guywire – the one where you hit it and it goes “twaaang” – to try and recreate the blasters.

Did you slip the famous Wilhelm scream in there somewhere?

Of course! The way it works in the game is you have a bank of screams –I think there’s 100 from all the different voice actors. What you want to try and do is find the right conditions. So if a person falls from above 10 meters velocity and reaches this speed, then there’s a chance they do the Wilhelm scream. There is another one as well. It’s the famous Tarzan scream that Chewie does in Return of the Jedi, and he does it in The Clone Wars as well. We put that one in with, I think, a one in a million chance of it playing – so somebody would have heard it somewhere. I’ve never heard it!

Are you surprised by fans’ attention to detail when it comes to game sound?

Not really, because with some of these online multiplayer titles, people put in hundreds of hours, sometimes even thousands. Playing games isn’t a passive experience – it’s active; the soundscape is giving you information about what’s going on in the game that’s vital, so people usually listen deeper. In the first game, we had Darth Vader, and when he went below 10% health somebody suggested that we switch over to his labored breathing at the end of Return of the Jedi – spoilers! – where they take a helmet off, and he’s wheezing away. It’s like, “Wow! Such a great idea and very simple to implement.” So we fixed that in the next patch and then for the next title as well.

What are some of Battlefront fans’ favorite sounds in the game?

In Star Wars there was a sound for a thing called a Thermal Imploder, which is a device that’s a bit like the sonic mines that come out of the back of – if I get this wrong, please don’t crucify me! – Jango Fett’s ship in the prequels. It sort of drops, but the great thing about it from a sound point of view is it sucks all the silence in before it detonates. We knew it had to sound a bit like the sonic mine, but we had

to record some other elements as well as a type of plucked string sound. Ben Burtt, who made the original sound, has never said how he did it. I did ask him once, and he said, “Can’t I keep some secrets?” Sure you can! But I think we did it justice – and it was the most talked about sound in the game. People have ripped it and made ringtones, memes, all that kind of thing.

EA Dice has over 300 Genelec speakers and is upgrading two Atmos rooms to LCR Ones and the rest on GLM. We’re guessing you’re very familiar with Genelecs for your game sound design work?

Very much so. When I started at EA Dice, they had Genelecs from about 2008 and then we upgraded them with the SAM system. I think most studios ended up on 8330s and 8340s by the time I was there, and then when we moved to Atmos, we started drilling holes in the ceiling and sticking some more up there.

“THE SOUNDSCAPE IS GIVING YOU INFORMATION ABOUT WHAT’S GOING ON IN THE GAME THAT’S VITAL.”

“WHAT YOU HAVE TO TRY AND DO IS MAKE THE GAME SOUND LIKE THE FILM.”

What is it about Genelec that is such a crucial part of your sound design work on these games and how important is that when you’re working so closely on intricately mixed game sound design?

The first thing for working on something is just the confidence that what you’re hearing is correct and that you’re not going to take it somewhere else and be surprised, like, “There’s too much bass in this, or the high end is mushy, or this TV tone coming through.” They need to be transparent, but they also need to be accurate as well so that you can just get on with the work and not worry. If I go somewhere else, the same thing has to translate between different rooms.

We don’t typically work where the platform we share is something like say, Pro Tools or Reaper or a DAW like it is in the post production industry. Our shared space is obviously the game engine. If I make something in my room, somebody else should be able to play it in their room and it sounds the same – there should be no surprises. When you have many different contributors towards the

game, where there’s a final mix that needs to be done, you will need to adhere to certain standards regarding loudness and frequency content.

I first got to know the Genelec people in Sweden and they came by the office one day because they were buying lots and lots of Genelec and upgrading the rooms, and they left me a pair of The Ones and said, “How would you like to try these?” It was a pair of 8341s and I loved them because for some reason they remind me of the Pet Shop Boys [laughs]. I don’t know why, maybe just the white speaker with the black bit in the middle. That’s so Pet Shop Boys! They just looked so different and a bit alien. I was like, “Yeah, sure, I’ll plug them in.” I did the whole thing of going through denial like, “Sure, they’re probably 5% better. They sound different.” But then it made me start to question my previous setup and where I was sitting and everything like that. I went through a whole period of doubt and then eventually was just like, “Okay, you’re not taking these back. Sorry, they’re staying here with me.” I’ve been a fan ever since.

Yes, I started with a stereo pair of 8341s and then as I’ve expanded into a new room, I did LCR with 8351s – so the next size up – working on things like explosions and guns. I try not to monitor too loud, but occasionally you do need to, so I did like having the extra power in the 8351s. For the subs they did recommend I went for the 7380, but I did go for the 7370 in the end as well.

GENELEC.COM

Do you have Genelecs in your home studio as well?

Photograph

Credit: Jon Gorrigan

A LIFE IN MUSIC bY DANGUM B L E

Words

It’s hard to shake the sense of familiarity that pervades when Dermot O’Leary joins Headliner over Zoom. As one of the best known and best loved faces of TV and radio from the past two decades, the feeling that you’re catching up with an old friend or acquaintance is almost palpable. The warm smile, enthusiastic cadence, and reassuring presence that have been his stock in trade for so long are immediately disarming...

“Sorry there isn’t anything interesting to look at,” he laughs, almost apologetically. “We’re renting a little house next to ours which we are doing up, and that’s quite stressful this close to Christmas. We don’t really have any rooms, but I’m just glad we have a roof over our heads!”

At times, the humble, chatty, and occasionally self-deprecating personality that emerges over the course of our conversation seems almost at odds with his standing as one of the most recognized and successful broadcasters in the UK this side of the millennium. Few broadcasters can lay claim to the kind of 21st century pop culture ubiquity that O’Leary has achieved. Following a stint on Big Brother’s Little Brother during the reality show’s early ‘00s heyday, as well as a regular spot on the fledgling XFM (now Radio X), his time presenting The X Factor cemented his place as one of the nation’s most bankable presenters. Since 2004 he has also had his own Saturday show on BBC Radio 2 and, amongst many other high-profile gigs too numerous to mention, hosted The BRITs, Comic Relief, Children In Need, Sports Relief, the National TV Awards and This Morning

Yet in spite of the vastly varied nature of his work over the past

20 years, music has always been the driving force in his career. In addition to his weekly radio show, he tells us he is consistently looking for new and exciting ways to tell stories from across the musical spectrum. His Reel Stories series on BBC2 has seen him conduct candid chats with the likes of Dave Grohl, Kylie, Noel Gallagher and Robbie Williams about the highs and lows of their careers, while his latest project, Radio 2 All Stars, which ran from December 26-29 on Radio 2 and the BBC Sounds app, found O’Leary talking with some of the most iconic names in broadcast, as they share stories from their time in the business.

“I saw an ad for the Match Of The Day podcast,” he says, explaining how he came up with the idea for All Stars, “and I don’t listen to many sports podcasts, but it was this lovely warm fireside between Gary Lineker, Ian Wright and Alan Shearer just talking about their favorite strikers, and it hit me that we have all this amazing talent at Radio 2, people who have these amazing anecdotes about musical legends, and we never hear them. I thought we were missing a trick.”

Which begs the question, who are some of O’Leary’s personal ‘all stars’?

“Well, on the broadcasting side there was Terry Wogan and Jonathan Ross, just because of how great they were. And then Chris Evans and Johnny Vaughan.

“In terms of meeting artists, Springsteen and McCartney are hard to top. They are just incredibly magnanimous, giving, smart, wise… to spend time in their company was amazing. Then latterly, people like Dave Grohl. We did a Reel Stories with him, and Foo Fighters and Radio 2 go back so far, from when he was starting that band and coming out of the members of Nirvana.

“One of the great things about working on The X Factor was that we’d put all the effort into the Saturday show because it was the big bells and whistles, entertainment spectacular, and then Sunday was almost like Top Of The Pops. You’d have a recap of what happened last night and then on Sunday it’d be like, ‘holy shit, Gaga is on tonight! Or Rihanna, Beyonce’… it was extraordinary.”

Photograph

Credit: Jon Gorrigan

Having settled into a comfortable role on Big Brother’s Little Brother , O’Leary says he was initially hesitant to make the leap across to The X Factor. However, it didn’t take too long to realise that snubbing the chance to front a bona fide TV phenomenon was never seriously an option.

“I was a producer on Little Brother and it was such an exciting time to work on Big Brother ,” he recalls. “Then they offered me the transfer to the Premier League and there was all the pressure and everything that comes with that, but I knew I had to take it.

“The first show was a complete sensory overload,” he continues with a laugh. “Mrs O – Sharon Osborne –had two of her artists in the bottom two and she just threw her shoes off and shouted, ‘I’m off’! And I was like, ‘what? You can’t just leave’! But she refused to choose between the two. And there was a great quote afterwards where she told the producer, ‘you want reality, this is f***ing reality’, and slammed the door! It was a lot of fun to do. I know people can be sneery about it, but think about the amount of really good artists it has launched over the years. It’s done a good job.”

Alongside the charming, breezy manner, there is a discernible passion and excitement for his work that reveals itself at various points, particularly when recalling his X Factor days. It’s also evident when discussing many of the more music-oriented jobs he has undertaken so far. As he explains, music has been his first love since childhood.

“I grew up in a house of music,” he says. “And growing up in the ‘80s going into the ‘90s was a really exciting time for music. Having the charts and Top Of The Pops and the Saturday pilgrimage into town to buy records set the torch alight. But I was a million miles away from even thinking about working in music and being a broadcaster.”

After a spell working at WH Smith – “I thought I was going to be behind the record counter but ended up on pens!” – and a year spent traveling after completing a degree in politics, O’Leary landed a job as a runner at a documentary production company.

“I was super interested in broadcasting,” he states. “I love politics, but it wasn’t something I saw myself pursuing a career in. I wanted to work in telly but didn’t know if that was possible. I sent out about 200 letters and ended up getting this job as a runner. Then I just grafted, made myself indispensable and loved every minute of it.

“After about six months they asked me what I fancied doing. I told this guy I’d like to do something in front of camera. He took pity and gave me a gig for a pilot. Nothing came of it but at the end I had a showreel and an agent. Then you have your tools to go into battle and try to get some work.”

While his CV is overflowing with all manner of highprofile presenting roles, the one constant in his career has been his Saturday show on Radio 2. Having cut his teeth in radio in the very early ‘00s with XFM, which at the time was home to a wealth of up-and-coming talent that included Ricky Gervais, Stephen Merchant, and Karl Pilkington, he was keen to return to the medium after a two-year spell working solely in TV. His decision to join the BBC is, he tells us, one of the best of his career.

“

T4 had a loose affiliation with Global, and when they worked out I loved indie they invited me to do some tests for XFM, which I was over the moon about because it was such an exciting place to be,” he says. “They gave me a three and a half hour show on Saturday morning… and my producer was Karl Pilkington! It was an unbelievable time to be at XFM. The line-up was Zane Lowe, Ricky Gervais, Christian O’Connell. I really enjoyed it, but after a couple of years the workload got a bit too much with the TV stuff, so I had to knock it on the head. But after a couple of years I was missing radio and my agent got me a meeting with Radio 1 and 2, and it quickly became apparent that Radio 2 was the right fit. And I’ve never looked back.”

The advent of streaming since the show began in 2004 have reshaped the music industry in ways unimaginable at the time. But for O’Leary, the role of radio has remained largely the same.

“In the same way that books haven’t gone away because the Kindle came along, radio hasn’t gone away because streaming has come along,” he asserts. “The real test for me was during the pandemic. You realize that radio is still a huge part of people’s lives and the fabric of the nation. To be able to play some music and provide those who couldn’t go out with some company and normality was such a privilege.”

Dermot O’Leary’s Saturday morning show airs from 8-10am on BBC Radio 2. All the shows are available for 30 days on BBC Sounds.

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HOME COMFORTS

MIKESMITH

A top record producer has revealed his secret behind more than two billion plays, as Headliner recently discovered…

Mike Smith has created popular songs that have sold more than five million units and been streamed more than two billion times, all made in his home studio.

The music industry whizz has spent years creating the perfect home setup for collaborations with some of the biggest artists, including Snoop Dogg, and boasts a professional studioquality array at his home in Charlotte, North Carolina.

Music-lover Smith has just added a Neve BCM10/2 console to his already impressive setup, which contains a great mix of analog and digital tech to maximize a hybrid workflow.

Smith has worked with household names like DJ Khaled and RZA, and his newest track, a collaboration between Snoop Dogg and Billy Ray Cyrus called A Hard Working Man, has just been picked up for NFL Primetime Thursday Night Football – one of the most watched US shows.

“Working with Snoop and Billy Ray is phenomenal. It’s a real dream come true,” says Smith. “I originally released A Hard Working Man in February 2020, and it hit number 25 on the Billboard Rock Charts - a week before the world shut down for COVID.

“So after that, nobody wanted to talk about A Hard Working Man any more. So it sat for a couple of years, and all of a sudden I got a call from the Avila Brothers – well-known music producers I’ve worked with a bunch. They said that we want to remix the song and pull in Snoop and Billy Ray and I was like, ‘yeah, of course, that would be phenomenal.’ It all really snowballed from there.”

Smith makes all his music at his home studio, where he has built up an impressive collection of recording and mixing equipment, including four Neve 1073 Classic preamps and a 1073DPX, as well as a Neve 2254 E and the Neve 2264ALB compressors.

In the studio, built above his garage, Smith uses the Neve 8816 for his summing mixer, which completes the coveted ‘Neve Sound’ that he wants on all his tracks.

“It’s a real dream setup for me,” he continues. “I wanted to have the absolute best setup I could, so Neve was the obvious choice for fitting out my studio. The Neve Sound is depth, warmth and breadth – it’s something that I want to put on every track. It’s a level of comfort that you don’t get with other equipment.

“The Neve Sound is personal to everyone, I think, and to me it has three different aspects. To me, Neve brings real weight to a song. Running through Neve gear gives the sound real, solid weight. It’s the difference between a good recording and a world class recording. And the clarity is on another level - especially when the sound runs through the transformers. You get that immediate clarity which is so difficult to replicate with any other hardware. It’s the big weight at the bottom of the song, and then, all of a sudden, the vocals sound crystal clear, because of the saturation and distortion. And Neve equipment is also so kind to producers, because it can obscure errors and makes you

sound like a much better engineer and producer.”

Smith started in the industry around 2013, after a successful career in IT and business, but has played guitar since he was four.

He adds: “After picking up a guitar at the age of four, I’ve been massively interested in music. I taught myself bass and piano and kept up with music as a hobby until about 10 years ago, when I decided to give music a go for real.

“I had a couple of chains of medical practices in the early 2000s, and when I sold them, I went headlong into music, and then it just snowballed from there, really. I’m a rock guy at heart, but I ended up writing for all these hip-hop guys, so it was kind of funny but they all love the hooks that I write.”

Smith appreciates that most people could only dream of having his home recording setup, but he says that for him, the investment in his home studio is far better than working from a professional studio.

“For me, it’s all about the workflow,” he concludes. “I do my best work at home, when I’m in my comfort zone and have complete control over everything. That’s why I built my studio at home – there is nowhere else I’d rather work from.

“If I could have anyone in my studio, it would have to be Keith Richards, or Mick Jagger, or Jimmy Page. I’d love to have any of the iconic guitar players in my studio - just to jam with them would be incredible. And I have all the right equipment to make great recordings.”

“RUNNING THROUGH NEVE GEAR GIVES THE SOUND REAL, SOLID WEIGHT. IT’S THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN A GOOD RECORDING AND A WORLD CLASS RECORDING.”

Words by DAN GU M ELB

The International

PLAYING THE GAME

Currently in its 11th iteration and dubbed The International, the annual eSports 2022 Defense of the Ancients 2 (DOTA 2) world championship tournament was held recently at the Singapore Indoor Stadium, featuring a d&b audiotechnik Soundscape system. Headliner spoke to sound designer and owner of post-production and live events agency Aural Fixation, Jason Waggoner, about the complexities of the project and enhancing the audience experience through sound.

For Valve, the game’s developer, the game audio in the arena needed to sound as close as possible to what it would be like if the audience were wearing headphones or watching at home. The d&b system was primarily focused on game sounds, announcer commentary and video playback in the arena, as well as supporting live entertainment elements when called for. While d&b has been part of the event for several years, Soundscape was specified just last year. But due to COVID, 2022 was the first time the audience was able to experience its sound capabilities in person.

“My role on The International is to oversee all of the live audio elements that happen in the arena and how those elements interface with broadcast,” Waggoner explains. “That means designing the sound system, bringing the primary crew members and overseeing the deployment of the sound system and working with the broadcast department to makes sure we can get them the live audio they need from the arena,

and they can get us the audio they are producing for the broadcast, because for these eSports events the show that gets broadcast over Twitch or other streaming platforms is the same show that happens in the arena. There is a lot of audio and video exchange between the people building the show in the space and the people broadcasting the show over the web.”

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the task of managing the event’s audio is an incredibly complex one.

“The International is typically the biggest show I work on in the year in terms of time commitment, equipment and complexity,” he says. “We start planning these shows about six months in advance and it takes a lot from a lot of different departments to get them off the ground and make them successful.”

Despite having been involved in the event for a number of years, this was the first time that the d&b

Soundscape system had been capitalized on to the fullest.

“This is the first year we really got to use Soundscape the way I hoped we could,” Waggoner elaborates. “I deployed it on the previous show but we had to cancel the audience and it greatly changed the way we utilized the sound system in the space. We still used it, but it was very different compared to if we had an audience. The gameplay is the most important part of the show, and I wanted to create a really similar experience for the viewer to what they would have if they were playing or watching at home, and they would get a really strong stereo image of the game sounds and they would hear things coming from where they should be coming from. In a traditional PA, that doesn’t happen so much, most of the audience is hearing whatever stack of speakers they are closest to.

“Soundscape allowed me to create a much greater stereo image for the game sounds for a very wide majority of the audience. It also allowed me to take all of the voices that happen on top of the gameplay, all the play-by-play announcers and things like that, and really create a very seamless centre image. The way the system was deployed was like a big LCR system for the entire arena in the round, and in order to do that, Soundscape has some really complex but flexible and useful ways that you can route

audio to different sound objects. That allowed me to make a left right system for every seating section that gave a wide stereo field to the listeners. But then I can pop a vocal channel right in the middle of the stage, so you have this seamless image of the vocal coming from right down the center.”

So how did it feel to finally put the system through its paces?

“As an engineer it was incredibly satisfying to be able to walk around

the lower bowl of the arena and hear the interactions between the different line arrays, and as you moved from one source to the next the transition was really seamless,” he smiles. “There was no interference or phasing as the different sources combine. It was a really smooth transition, and on a technical and personal level that was incredibly satisfying.”

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“IT WAS A REALLY SMOOTH TRANSITION, AND ON A TECHNICAL AND PERSONAL LEVEL THAT WAS INCREDIBLY SATISFYING.”

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Credit: The Standard, London

THE RETIRING ROOM

From January 17-23, a deep listening, multi-sensory sound installation dubbed The Retiring Room took over a room at The Standard Hotel in London, offering visitors ‘an escape from the hustle and bustle of everyday life’. Stephen Dobbie and Colin Nightingale, founders of A Right/Left Project – the organization behind the project – spoke to Headliner about its origins and how L-Acoustics helped shape the experience…

How did you come up with the idea for The Retiring Room?

Stephen: We both have experience of creating experiential projects, and a lot of the work we’ve been doing and exploring over the past four or five years has been really high impact; trying to elicit emotional responses from people coming to experience the things we make in the simplest way possible using the transformative and transportive power of sound and music.

About four years ago we started developing a piece of work called Beyond The Road, which was the deconstruction of some pre-existing work. We worked with James Lavelle (aka UNKLE), where we initially approached him and asked if we could deconstruct some music and reconstruct it in a 3D space. So, you walk into one room and hear the synths, another room the vocals, another the strings. We then paired that with a load of visual art from people who had orbited James over the years.

Colin: We essentially created a walkthrough album. We did it in 2019 and took over the top floor of the Saatchi Gallery and a version of that project was taken to Seoul in 2021. Coming out of that and some other work we were doing, we had been playing around with spatialisation, but it was always with pre-existing music. In 2019 we set up A Right/Left Project, which was a vehicle for us to explore more audio led work. We have been part of [experiential theater group]

Punch Drunk for 20 years and Right/ Left is a very different thing as it allows us to explore experiences in a very different way. And this project started with us saying we wanted to create a one room project with fairly simple components but high impact. It was also about us exploring a relationship with musicians - a composer called Toby Young composed some music for the project that was only ever really going to exist in a spatialised way.

Talk us through the experience. What can people expect when they enter The Retiring Room?

Stephen: It is a 15-20 minute deep listening experience in a hotel room. It starts with arriving at the hotel as if you are a guest. You say you have an appointment at the Retiring Room and are then given a key card with a list of instructions, like switch off your phone, once inside you might want to take your shoes off, etc. You’re then directed to the lift and part of the experience is navigating the labyrinthian corridors of the hotel. Then you get to the room and go in as normal. As soon as you go in we have full control of the lighting in the room, then you sit down and a voice encourages you to lay down, rest your eyes, ease your breathing and basically listen to the music and see where it takes you. It’s very much an invitation for the guest to give themselves over to the experience.

Then the music comes in and it has a breathy quality and a breathy rhythm. It subtly introduces the idea of slowing your breathing and it takes you on a journey of three acts. At times it’s challenging – it’s not a piece of spa music. There are bits of electronics and there is a lot of space and it’s a gentle, undulating piece of music.

How have people responded to it?

Colin: A lot of people have come out of it saying that for the first time in a long time they didn’t have anything in their head. It’s a real cathartic purging of daily thoughts and the things that occupy your mind. It’s proved to be quite transformative.

Tell us about the sound system.

Colin: The music comes out of an 8.1 system (eight L-Acoustics 5XT fullrange loudspeakers, one L-Acoustics Syva sub, three L-Acoustics LA4X four-channel amps) installed in the room using L-Acoustics speakers. The speakers are hidden in the walls and the ceiling. A lot of people coming in were so confused as to where the sound was coming from and how it was happening. The room is so clean, and we wanted to make sure that the technology isn’t visible. It’s all about removing that busyness from the space.

How did L-Acoustics come to be involved?

Colin: We’ve worked with L-Acoustics before. The version of Beyond The Road in Seoul had L-Acoustics as an audio partner, and there was a connection between someone at The Standard and L-Acoustics in London. So, with these connections we spoke

Credit: The Standard, London

Credit:

to them and they quickly said they wanted to get involved. They provided the speakers and the amps. We really wanted to elevate the audio element of the experience.

Stephen: L-Acoustics systems are silky smooth. It really has elevated the audio, especially the sub. It’s like a warm hug that cradles you through to the next phase of the listening experience. There is a crescendo in the middle of the piece… but we don’t want to elaborate on that too much as we don’t want to give anything away for those who want to experience it.

Colin: The pinnacle is about two thirds of the way in, because it was really

important to us that we didn’t build to a massive crescendo and then it ends, as the arc of this whole thing is that we want to ease people back out. So, it peaks, then breaks down, and then builds back up but in a slightly different way, and it leaves people feeling as though they are suspended in sound. And then, a bit like a yoga session, it’s open ended as to when you get up and leave the room.

Do you have any plans to take The Retiring Room to a new location, or return to The Standard?

Stephen: This version of it is coming to a conclusion but the response from The Standard has been really good, so it may pop up here again. But it

can have a life in different places, and because of our background, we have created something very much informed by the design of the room here. The core concept is quite transferable to something that could be scaled up.

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interview bYWILL H A SNIKW

TOMI LATE BLOOMER

L.A-based producer and songwriter TOMI visits the JBL L.A. experience center to reveal the musical influences that have shaped her sound, and teases what fans can expect from her new album, Late Bloomer…

TOMI’s music is characterized by ferocious guitar and resounding

vocals – an unfettered, urgent, and emotionally affecting sound that was forged from a ruthless determination to sing, play, and do things her own way, even in the face of life’s obstacles. For TOMI (real name Pam Autuori), music has been a sanctuary since coming out as a lesbian at age 12, and to this day she fights to protect the LGBTQ+ community through her music.

Photography: Michelle Shiers

Where did you grow up?

I was born in Connecticut but I lived in New York for a long time. I like to consider myself a New Yorker. Now I’m in L.A, I have had to learn to slow down and to be patient when I’m getting coffee! Now I just meditate in line [laughs]. I played shows probably three times a week in New York. I was living in Brooklyn so I played all the old punk bars like The Trash Bar, Spike Hill – every dingy, drunk bar – I was playing!

When did you decide it was time to move to L.A?

I was walking in the winter and this cold wind slapped me in the face, and it was my boiling point [laughs]. I was like, “I have to get out of here!” I just wanted to have quiet. I wanted to have a little house. I saw my friends who moved out here and they were like, “I have a house and I pay less rent than you.” So that was a big selling point, and I like being in nature – it’s really helpful to let your mind relax. I love New York though. I love the energy. I love the conversations there.

What is your songwriting process like?

My best songs come from writing lyrics – I do a lot of free writing. Then I’ll sit and play a couple of chords on my guitar and read that page of words and just pull things out. From there I’ll finesse the song and create the story that I am trying to tell. I usually don’t go into it with an idea – it forms on its own as I figure out what I’m feeling and what I’m trying to say. It’s very rare that I go in like, “I’m gonna write a song about this today.” It’s more about capturing a feeling that I’m experiencing in real time.

What were some of your early musical influences?

I grew up listening to Bruce Springsteen – I’m an East Coast girl – and there was a lot of pop music when I was a teenager. As I got older I got really into Brandi Carlile and big female vocals. That has been a huge influence – she’s done it her own way. She was with a major label and got dropped, but didn’t give up and kept going. I really love her story.

Why is it so important for you to be a strong advocate of the LGBTQ+ community?

I love the community here. I’m a big LGBTQ+ community advocate. I have found everybody to be incredibly supportive - there’s a tonne of musicians here. Everyone shows up to the gigs and is cheering the whole time. It is a really nice place to be for that support.

As an emerging artist, how do you utilize social media to promote yourself?

Social media is my frenemy. I love the fact that I can talk to anybody, anywhere. I think that’s really special. Especially with touring, there’s people that I met when I played a show three or four years ago, and I can still DM them and they can check in and see what’s going on. I love that aspect of it. I find it to be a little complicated because I prefer to see people in real life and to perform in real life. In the pandemic, playing to my phone was really disorienting and it made me go inward, which is why I wrote a folk album.

“MY BEST SONGS COME FROM WRITING LYRICS –I DO A LOT OF FREE WRITING.”

What does your recording process normally look like?

I’m kind of a one-song-at-a-time person. I like to finish the song and move on. My demos usually make it into the final cut. I really like using the same vocal that I recorded because it’s usually the exact emotion I’m going for, because I’m going through the experience of whatever I’m talking about. Grabbing that when it’s fresh is really important to me.

Your EP, Sweet, Sweet Honey was recorded and released during the worldwide lockdown. What was that experience like?

I flew home to Connecticut and I was at my parents’ place for three months. I honestly wrote it as a practice of coming back to my roots of playing guitar and focusing on my lyrics and my storytelling. I was never going to release it. It was just going to be for me. As I started to develop the production of it, I was just like, “This is something I’m really proud of.” It’s not about the numbers. It’s not about how many people are hearing it; I wanted to put it out because it felt like a really big part of my story.

What can you tell us about your upcoming album Late Bloomer?

I started that process at the beginning of 2020 and then I came back to it. I didn’t know at the time if I wanted to release it, but again, it was a very big part of my story. I took a couple of the songs and I actually re-recorded them. I kept the vocals and I rerecorded everything else. I wanted to bring it into the realm of what I want to be and who I am and where I’m going – live with my band. It’s a piece of the puzzle. It’s the whole thing.

What thread is there between your EP and the new album?

The EP is very introverted and lyrical, and this is very in your face and extroverted. It has this duality, which I really enjoy. I think, especially as the album progresses, you can hear where the EP weaves into it. Sonically, it starts to feel like the EP does, and then there’s a nice tie at the end between the two. It’s about coming into your own voice. It’s about being empowered by yourself, having to be your own cheerleader, and being in your 20s. It’s about my time in New York. It’s about how to find your own

voice and to listen to the voice inside of your head that’s giving you the right advice – and just to follow that. I think that’s really hard for a lot of people to do. We go through that process, and hopefully, we come out the other end better for it.

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CUPOJOY MUSIC THAT INSPIRES

Words by ALICEGUST A F NOS

Some 33 years after it was founded, the 550-seat CupOJoy live music venue in Green Bay, Wisconsin recently welcomed its first permanently installed sound system in the larger space within the two-auditorium venue to which it relocated two years ago (having successively occupied two previous locations).

Part of a complete AV fit-out masterminded by local system integrators CCCP (Camera Corner), a Martin Audio Wavefront Precision WPS line array was specified after careful evaluation against other leading brands.

Since the facility – whose mission is to be a family-friendly venue offering ‘music that inspires’ – is a non-profit organization run by volunteers, the two-year fundraising programme leading up to the investment required an outcome that would please operators and donors alike.

As CupOJoy’s technical director, Mark Berg, puts it: “When we fired up the PA for the first time before the launch event I was flabbergasted by the quality of the sound, and [CupOJoy director], Jan Oettinger, said she was moved to tears. After the benefit concert two days later, multiple people came up, including one of our donors, stating that it sounded amazing.”

As this is the first sound system installed in the main space, in view of the size and scope of the room, it presented a major challenge. Reviewing the process that had led to this deployment, Oettinger explains that three potential vendors had been interviewed.

“When we compared the different proposals, we felt Martin Audio offered the expediency of delivery, was rider friendly and provided better value for money.”

CCCP had been more transparent than the others, she says, and “laid it right out there. They also took us to another venue where they had installed WPM [Martin Audio’s smaller format line array] so we could hear the sound.”

CCCP had previously worked with Martin Audio point source systems for a couple of years with the WPM installation marking their first Martin Audio line array experience. They too offered several alternative, riderfriendly brands for evaluation prior to the Martin Audio solution being

adopted. But the operators were in no doubt:

“We had done our own research, both online and talking to FOH engineers we know, and received a lot of positive feedback,” continues Oettinger. “Besides, having experienced other sound systems in the room with touring artists’ own production we felt like the Martin Audio sound was superior to anything we had heard in the room previously.”

“THE MARTIN AUDIO SOUND WAS SUPERIOR TO ANYTHING WE HAD HEARD IN THE ROOM PREVIOUSLY.”

CCCP’s Steve Littlepage was tech head and system designer. He detailed two WPS line array hangs, seven elements per side, driven in single box resolution from two Martin Audio iKON iK81 amplifiers (with channel eight of each iK81 used to drive DD6 front fills). These are set either at the edge of the stage, or operate on a thrust with a different system preset. Four SX218 subwoofers, driven by the iK42, are flown in an end-fire configuration and aligned with the arrays.

Berg points out further advantages of reduced real estate in having the iKON multi-channel, process-controlled amps. “It means we can run the entire system off just three amps instead of many more required in the rack with the other two systems [we reviewed]. It was one of the main selling points of the system.” But given present

supply problems, the fact that all this ordinance was delivered to site for the opening benefit concert, said Littlepage, had been due to the efforts of Martin Audio’s Martha Callaghan. “She was amazing – she went above and beyond to get everything to us in time.”

In terms of system set-up and optimization, the CCCP engineer said this couldn’t have been easier using Martin Audio’s DISPLAY 2 and 3 software (for 3D modeling of the space). This was backed up by EASE plots, which lined up perfectly with Martin Audio’s modeling.

As part of the requirement, CCCP also provided new projector, screen and PTZ cameras, and created a flexible infrastructure for touring productions to patch into the system with their control. Crucially, this will also be

networked to CupOJoy’s smaller 200 capacity venue across the hall, where an appropriate PA is installed. A Q-SYS backbone provides system flexibility between Performance mode for concerts and a Presentation mode via touch panel or iPad app, for corporate events.

“Anyone that’s already heard [WPS] loves it,” enthuses Berg. “I can’t imagine anyone not being enamored.”

“The new sound system means the world to us and will make a huge difference to our programming, as I can now plan bigger,” nods Oettinger.

“When [acts] walk into the room now, they know they can leave their production on the bus!”

Photographer: Nicole Roetheli

droW s by colby ramsey

CODA AUDIO BRINGS THE ENERGY

HECHT FOR LIFE

Widely acknowledged as Switzerland’s best live band, Hecht recently appeared at Zurich’s Hallenstadion, one of the biggest multi-purpose arenas in Europe. The show was the largest on the band’s Hecht For Life Tour and saw 13,000 fans turn up to see their heroes deliver a stunning sold out show.

Hecht’s high energy pop-rock has been finely honed over a decade with an unchanged lineup, and it was clear to everyone present that this was a band at the top of its game. A breathtaking light, laser and video production contributed to a party atmosphere in the giant hall where production specialists Schallwerk supplied a CODA Audio system to provide the required clarity and power for every seat.

Schallwerk’s own Stefan Zumstein performed FOH duties for the show, having worked with the band on the three shows immediately leading up to this marquee appearance. A CODA Audio system was the natural choice.

“In halls of this size, which are not primarily designed for concerts, the prevailing acoustic conditions can be challenging,” explains Zumstein. “The high directivity of CODA Audio systems is indispensable in these circumstances for achieving a powerful mix - the phase linearity of the systems brings out all the nuances in crystal clear fashion even where acoustics are tough, and helps fight the reverb time of the hall. On this occasion we also needed to make sure every note could be heard above the incredibly loud Hecht fan community!”

Production specialists Schallwerk recently supplied an extensive CODA Audio system for leading Swiss pop-rockers Hecht at their triumphant arena show…

At the Hallenstadion, Switzerland’s largest venue, Schallwerk deployed CODA Audio’s flagship line array system AiRAY for the main PA. The main hangs (per side) comprised 12 AiRAY and four SC2-F Bass Extensions, with three ViRAY as downfill. 20 SCP Subwoofers were deployed on the floor, with the system completed by a side hang of 12 ViRAY and 12 N-RAY as delays.

Described as “awesome”, “unforgettable” and “unique” by fans who spoke to local station Radio Argovia, the show firmly established the quintet from Lucerne as being very firmly in the front rank of Swiss pop-rock.

“We’re pleased to have played a part in this prestigious occasion for the band,” comments CODA Audio

director of global sales and marketing, David Webster. “Arenas like the Hallenstadion can present difficult acoustic environments for concerts, but it’s clear that on this occasion a CODA system in the experienced hands of the Schallwerk team more than met the challenge.”

CODAAUDIO.COM

Photographer: NicoleRoethel i

L- ISA STUDIO

YOUR PORTAL TO SPATIAL AUDIO CREATION

Photographer: Rein Kooyman

MUSIC FOR GHOSTS

HANIA RANI

Polish piano-prodigy and synth-maestro Hania Rani has exploded onto the neoclassical scene in the last few years with a prolific amount of work, bringing some much-needed diversity to a previously malecentric genre made famous by the likes of Nils Frahm and Ólafur Arnalds. She’s just collaborated with the latter for his some kind of peace piano reworks project, alongside luminaries such as Dustin O’Halloran and Sophie Hutchings. Rani reveals her upcoming third solo album with a theme of ghosts and spirits, how she was losing interest in music until seeing a Nils Frahm YouTube video, and talks about her very special, first full-band show last summer at Les Invalides, Paris, the resting place of Napoleon.

Born on the Baltic coast of Poland in the city of Gdańsk, Rani studied piano and music in Warsaw and then Berlin, and now splits most of her time between the two capital cities. Perhaps the reason why her work seems so prolific is that after many years of releasing collaborative works, particularly with cellist and close friend Dobrawa Czocher, Rani did not release a solo album until 2019 with Esja. As if making up for lost time, four albums quickly followed within three years: Home, Music For Film and Theatre, Inner Symphonies (her second album with Czocher) and her original score for Venice: Infinitely Avantgarde

After overcoming a slightly dodgy WiFi connection, Rani appears via Zoom back in Gdańsk where she is visiting. Headliner asks about her presumably intense piano studies from childhood — most artists in the neoclassical scene are much more known for their compositional skill which they play themselves on the piano, more so than any virtuosic playing on the instrument. Rani and Nils Frahm (who is one of her biggest inspirations), are by far two of the most advanced piano players among this crop of artists.

“I started playing when I was seven,” she says. “It was a very long education process and in Poland, we have quite professional music schools. There are a couple of music schools which mix regular subjects with music, and you have to choose your instrument

when you are seven. And I quickly realized that I liked it a lot and I really wanted to be a famous classical pianist. So I was practicing a lot, doing competitions and some master classes.”

Then came a big shift from her dream to perform Bach, Brahms and Beethoven in concerts to suddenly moving into the more indie world of composing post-classical music for upright pianos, which might sound clunky to those used to the pristine grand pianos at your typical classical concert. And that’s not even mentioning her Prophet synthesizer.

“It’s hard for me to believe now that I thought I was going to be a classical pianist,” Rani says with a laugh. “I was always composing a little bit for myself, because I was also into different genres like pop and electronic music. But I never thought I would be doing it professionally or that it would even be possible. When I moved to Warsaw, which is a big capital city where most of the cultural life is happening, I started to meet people who were doing different things and producers involved in different kinds of music. I started to get some proposals, ‘Maybe you can arrange something for strings? Maybe you can record this line on piano.’ And I was always saying yes. Things started to happen slowly because I was just involved in more and more projects. We recorded the first little album with my friend (Biała Flaga with Dobrawa Czocher) which was

still very classical, but it was a very big step out of my regular environment. It was a very long process, but maybe, in my case, quite natural.”

Rani’s pivotal, mind-expanding moment was when a friend shared a YouTube link of a certain Nils Frahm. While many would consider the German composer a very niche, almost underground artist, his influence on the music industry has been fairly profound. Since the release of his 2011 album Felt, which used close-mic recording techniques on the piano strings which all had a strip of felt placed on them to create a highly intimate sound, this style caught on to the point where it is heard in film scores, rock music and even on a Katy Perry track. It not only completely changed the way Rani approached music, but reinvigorated her when her interest in making music was waning.

“I was quite fed up with music,” she says. “The music coming out at the time wasn’t impressing me and I was losing interest in the piano. But my friend sent me a link to a Nils Frahm YouTube video. And I thought ‘what is going on here?’ Because he was playing an upright piano. In the world of classical I was coming from, music is always recorded on an expensive grand piano, never a cheap looking upright! But I learned that Nils Frahm and Ólafur Arnalds were recording entire albums on upright, in really interesting ways.

Photographer: Sonia Szóstak

Photographer: Aleksandra Zaborowska

“It was a huge turning point for me, because I was so bored of how the piano was always recorded in the exact same way in the classical world, but I became fascinated with how these composers were doing it and what you could achieve with the instrument. Me and my sound engineer had no idea how to achieve the sound, so we just experimented.”

And then several years down the line, Rani is given the opportunity to work on an Ólafur Arnalds project. In late 2022, two years after the release of his sixth album, some kind of peace, the Icelandic artist decided to enlist some of the very finest names in neoclassical to rework each of the album’s tracks and release as a new LP.

Dustin O’Halloran, Lambert and Sophie Hutchings, to name a few, breathe brilliant new life into an already stunning album. Rani’s reinterpretation of Woven Song is a very faithful yet gorgeous rendition of the song which also utilizes her wonderful singing voice (some of her album tracks are songs rather than instrumental pieces).

“I met Ólafur already a couple of years ago,” Rani explains. “We have the same booking agent — we’ve played the same festivals once or twice and I’ve supported a few of his headline shows. And he was always encouraging me and supporting my music. He proposed this rework to me, and the idea was that the reworks album would come out around the same time as the sheet music book for some kind of peace

And I took it quite literally! [laughs] I’ve done a couple of reworks and remixes before, but for this one, I decided to just perform it how it is and just add a little bit of my input.

“I think the result was quite natural and easygoing. I admire this song so much that I didn’t feel like it needed a lot of changes; it’s nice as it is. And now we’re trying to do something together. I’ve already been to Iceland twice recently, and I hope that these tracks will be a part of my new album.”

A big 2022 highlight for Rani was a spectacular outdoor, full-band performance at Les Invalides in Paris, a complex of buildings which opened in 1678, and a resting place for such historical figures as Napoleon.

While in her solo shows she is capable of creating a bigger sound than many full bands as she darts from one keyboard to another, this concert was very special as she was able to welcome a trumpeter, saxophonist, guitarist, double-bass player and drummer, all joining her on the trip from Poland. Organized by Cercle, who specialize in concerts in stunning locations, the full performance is available on their YouTube channel.

As you can probably imagine, such a concert required a fair bit of preparation. Rani explains that: “When we received the offer from Cercle, we were preparing for nearly two years to perform in this very special place for French people. And because I was already preparing my new album, I thought this concert

would be a good chance to say goodbye to my first and second album, which made up most of the music that night. It was a bit stressful because of the live stream and recording it all, but it was such a special evening and I’m so glad we managed it.”

And with that tantalizing tease of her third solo record, Rani reveals that it will be released in the fall.

“It seems that it will have quite a lot of singing! Because I’ve been working so much on soundtracks with a lot of piano, I decided I want this album to be different from that. It’s quite a complex album; the main theme is ghosts, spirits, and the little bits in between life and death. It’s a bit chaotic getting it finished but I’m very excited.”

Note well that 2023 will see the next album from Hania Rani, a hypertalented composer and live musician who is completely rejuvenating the modern classical music scene. She is also embarking on a tour this year — go see her if you can, as her shows must be seen to be believed to comprehend that just one person can fill a venue with such a cinematic level of sound.

HANIARANI.COM

“THE MAIN THEME IS GHOSTS, SPIRITS, AND THE LITTLE BITS IN BETWEEN LIFE AND DEATH.”

The “Yes” amp.

It’s not just that the 5D has integrated audio networking. Or flexible output power sharing. Or that you can easily hide it. You’re saying “yes” to more. A d&b system that provides the scalability, flexibility, and reliability needed for installations. Still, the 5D is a very impressive amplifier.

Discover more: dbaudio.com/5d

The art of creative engineering.

Photos: Thomas Peham (background), Alexander Popov, Benjamin Ch ild, Donny Jiang, Hulki Okan Tabak, Marcos Luiz, Pablo MerchanMontes, Rodan Can, William White (all unsplash)

SPEAKING UP

CHRIS CARMOUCHE

A Grammy-winning producer and engineer, Chris Carmouche had his breakthrough after meeting OutKast as a young intern – going on to be an integral collaborator with the multi-million record-selling duo. After the award-winning success of Speakerboxxx/The Love Below, Carmouche has built an unbelievable discography, working with Beyoncé, CeeLo Green, Diplo and Tinie Tempah. Carmouche provides a retrospective of his career, of which Waves plugins have been an integral part since he was a young assistant in the studio, fresh out of college.

So while Carmouche’s credits, particularly in the world of hiphop, are quite outrageous, his breakthrough and ensuing career has seen regular work with Outkast and the solo work of the duo thereafter. But as a young intern in a studio with

the duo, there was a moment where he chose to speak out while André 3000 was recording – a decision that could have sent his career the other way had it been an artist with a bigger ego or a distaste for young studio hands.

“I remember on the first assistant session, we were recording She Lives In My Lap,” Carmouche recalls of the song which featured actress Rosario Dawson. “There was a section where André plays the guitar at the very end. When he was playing one of the notes, it was kind of flat. I’m sitting in the control room with the engineer, and I’m telling John that it sounds flat. John was like, ‘Tell him!’ I was almost too nervous, but I did say, ‘Hey, Dre, I think that one note is flat.’ It made me nervous as shit! But André checked it and said, ‘Okay, yeah, you’re right, thanks.’ And from that point, it kind of relaxed me to be more a part of the session and have this organic, intuitive type of approach to everything.”

Not only did Speakerboxxx/The Love Below go on to win a Grammy with the single Hey Ya! still being a ubiquitous song to this day, but Carmouche has stayed by the duo’s side the whole time. It’s safe to say his gamble paid off.

Other fond memories include his work with CeeLo Green: “He’s one of those artists where he’d pick up the mic and magic would just happen.”

He suddenly recalls working on Bubble Butt with Major Lazer: “It was fun meeting Diplo, and through him I

met Tinie Tempah. I didn’t know what to think of the song, and this was before Bruno Mars [who features on the track] was really big, but it ended up being their first Top 100 record.”

Big Boi is not one of the only constants throughout Carmouche’s career: Waves plugins have also been with him from the very start as a young intern.

“I learned Pro Tools and a lot of the digital when we were working on Stankonia,” he says. “We had one foot in analog and the other foot in the digital world. We were transferring 24 tracks into Pro Tools sessions. So it was back in 2000 when I started getting introduced to Waves plugins.

“I just loved everything right away,” he adds. “I could tell digital plugins were the way things were going and that Waves were at the top of the food chain. So I used them on everything. Drums, vocals, guitars, bass, and I’m using many of the same plugins today – the same ones from Waves as back when I was working with Akon, T.I. and Lil Jon.”

Like many of the established engineers who rely on Waves, Carmouche has his main, tight-knit set of plugins that are his go-tos.

“The L1, the L2, the DeEsser, the C4 and the C6, those have always been in my vocal chain. Recently, when I worked on the Baby Rose album, To Myself, we used a bunch of Waves plugins. The J37 tape was used to get some grimy little dirty sounds out of it. We also used the Manny Marroquin series on that album.

“Then there’s the SSL channel — I use that a lot, especially in the earlier days when we were moving away from using the SSL console at the studio. I would use the Waves version all the time, and the SSL Compressor as well. Chris Lord-Alge is another series I use all the time. I did some presets for the Cosmos Sample Finder, and I’ve ended up using that too quite a lot! And more recently, I’ve been using Kramer PIE on a lot of projects – I love that one.”

Fittingly, Carmouche ends the conversation by revealing that his current project is – perhaps you’ve guessed it – Big Boi of OutKast fame. “I’ve just started on the new record with Bigs. But I’ve also been tapping into some of the local acts here in Atlanta and working with them, which I’m really excited about,” he smiles.

WAVES.COM

TWITTER: @MOUCHE1

Words

SCORING THE NOEL DIARY

DARA TAYLOR

Dara Taylor explains how she composed a folk-inspired score for the number one-streamed Netflix Christmas movie, The Noel Diary.

Cleaning out his childhood home at Christmas, a novelist (Justin Hartley) meets an intriguing young woman (Barrett Doss) searching for her birth mother. Will an old diary unlock their pasts – and hearts? An intriguing plot summary from the director that brought audiences The Parent Trap, The Father of the Bride and 2004’s Alfie combined with a Netflix release at the tail end of November proved to be a recipe for Christmas movie success.

The Noel Diary racked up 21.8 million CVEs (complete viewings equivalent) in just four days, and spent four weeks in the top 10 of Netflix’s mostwatched movies chart. “The Noel Diary is the number one movie in the US today; I’m freakin’ blown over!” enthuses California-based film and TV composer Dara Taylor. “What a thing for which to be thankful!”

When it came to the festive flick’s score, director Charles Shyer reached out to Taylor, whose diverse past work includes the George Clooney-directed Amazon movie, The Tender Bar, highly acclaimed television series The Boys, 2016’s Bad Moms (starring Mila Kunis, Kristen Bell, Kathryn Hahn, Jada Pinkett Smith and Christina Applegate), Netflix sci-fi series Lost in Space, long-running CW show, Supernatural and 2022 American horror thriller, The Invitation. It turns out that when it comes to Christmas movies, this isn’t Taylor’s first rodeo.

“I’ve done a surprising amount of holiday movies over the course of the last year and a half,” says Taylor from her home studio. “What is beautiful about them is that you can be really earnest and speak directly from the heart. There’s less subterfuge and averting expectations – you can really speak from the emotion.”

Streaming has opened up a whole new world – and amount – of festive films in the last few years as studios

capitalize on people’s enduring fondness for the genre. Best of all, with a captive audience happy to be soothed by the feel-good cheer of a holiday movie from the comfort of their sofa – they don’t even have to be good to get people watching – although it doesn’t hurt to have a captivating plot and watchable leads steering the way.

“I guess the thing about Christmas films is they’re heartwarming; it’s about finding that sense of familiarity,” nods Taylor on the popularity of the genre.

Helmed by Shyer, the film was in a safe pair of rom-com hands. “He’s a master in all things film, especially films that come from the heart,” acknowledges Taylor. “It was such a treat and an honor to work with him. When I got that call, it was surprising, just because he has such a legacy. I started off by sending some theme ideas to see if we were on the same page, sonically. It was the best of both worlds because he was very involved, but also very trusting at the same time. He was there for every session and it was one of those experiences that you take with you where you learn just how nice a collaboration can feel.”

On scoring a holiday movie, Taylor shares that she was mindful of Christmas music cliches, but also acknowledges that they play an important part in what audiences expect from a festive movie’s score.

“There’s a little more sleigh bells than you might normally put in,” she laughs good naturedly. “But it’s finding ways to put them in steadily and finding more subtle ways to use them. There’s a scene where there’s a lot of trains passing by, and it’s this kind of sonic tableau where he’s telling you a story, but then there are trains and the music, and it all kind of melds together. We use some tubular bells in that section, which do evoke Christmas, but they also kind of evoke the train. So it’s finding ways to speak to both things and finding moments to use the more Christmassy elements, but that speak to more than just Christmas. This film is one that takes place at Christmas, so Christmas has its own special through line in the film, but it’s really about the romance and the charm, so I feel like Christmas is more the backdrop of the emotional through line than it is the main focus of the film,” she points out.

Each cue from The Noel Diary can be found on the film’s soundtrack album, and some of Taylor’s particular favorites are Cleaning Montage, Wonderful Life, Jake’s House and Your Mother’s Estate – which, far from the sleigh bellsinfused score one might expect, have unmistakable elements of folk to them.

Photograph

Credit: KC Bailey/Netflix

“These were really fun to do,” says Taylor. “These are the ones with a little more rhythm. It’s a very folksy score for a Christmas movie, I would say, which was something we discussed early on – to have this home grown feeling in addition to the sweeping Christmas strings. We really wanted to get to the heart of the matter. The first thing I said to Charles after I watched the film was just how adult it felt – it’s not a teenage love story. I think it speaks to a lot of different age groups, so we wanted to bring a little bit of maturity to it as well. So a little less strings and a little more folksy acoustic guitar.”

Taylor will instinctively reach for different instruments to get her initial ideas down depending on what she feels most effectively resonates with the voice of a particular character. Given its folksy nature, The Noel Diary saw Taylor using an acoustic guitar and her own voice for the initial brush strokes.

“I tried to add vocals to a lot of things just because that’s where I came from and that’s where my love of music began,” she shares. “It’s what feels the most organic to me. Sometimes I’ll hum a melody at first. There’s something so fluid about the movement between notes and

sometimes I really want to feel every little cent between one note to the next to feel that connection.”

In her home studio Taylor uses a Focusrite Clarett audio interface, which boasts 26 inputs and 28 outputs, linked up to her Mac, an API lunchbox with a few preamps, a Kemper amp for guitars and bass and an Arturia Matrix synthesizer.

“I’m very used to Focusrite now from working with Christopher Lennertz on Bad Moms, who uses their Red series interface range, so I was familiar with them and how good their support is,” she explains. “I’ve used Focusrite for a while because I wanted more inputs. I’ve got various microphones and Kemper amps and other interfaces, and it’s great to have everything at the ready at all times instead of having to swap things out. So that was the main reason I went for the Clarett initially – to have more freedom of choice and to be able to quickly get an idea out without having to worry about fumbling with wires and losing it in that time. Focusrite has always been really stable, reliable and dependable for me.”

The Clarett incorporates high quality Clarett analog preamplifiers with a unique Air function, which subtly

modifies a preamp’s frequency response to model the impedance and resonance characteristics of Focusrite’s classic transformer-based ISA mic preamps. It’s one of Taylor’s favorite features. “I have Air mode on more often than not. It just adds more life to any sound. It’s one of those things where it’s better to take more in, and then if you want to filter some out later, that’s fine. It’s great to have the whole gamut of sound available and it adds more life, emotion and presence, I think.”

The interface’s accompanying software, Focusrite Control, allows for a minimal amount of interaction, letting Taylor configure the Clarett with signal routings appropriate for the most common recording tasks.

“It’s important because I can change things and I don’t have to run over to the side of the room to turn things on or off or adjust levels,” she shares.

“I just do it all on the app – the ease of use and consistency is really important. When you have things that don’t work…you don’t realize how much time you’re saving until you lose that time. The sounds are always clean and consistent, and having a stable workforce is integral to meeting deadlines.”

“THE MAIN REASON I WENT FOR THE CLARETT WAS TO HAVE MORE FREEDOM OF CHOICE AND TO BE ABLE TO QUICKLY GET AN IDEA OUT.”

byALICE GUSTAFSON

KINGDOM COME

IRKO

One moment IRKO was working on music in his dad’s garage just outside of Venice, the next he was in New York engineering Jay Z’s Kingdom Come album…

“I’ve noticed in my life that stuff develops in steps – but not in a linear way,” muses Italian multi-platinum audio engineer IRKO from his studio complex in L.A on his springboard into the hip-hop big time. “It’s like, one day it’s here, the next day, it’s here,” he says, widening the gap between his hands dramatically.

Growing up in a small town in Italy, as a boy IRKO became obsessed with US hip-hop after getting his hands on Busta Rhymes’ 1997 record When Disaster Strikes and Snoop Dogg’s debut album, Doggystyle, plastering his room with posters of everyone from Snoop, Dr. Dre, Cypress Hill, Ice-T to Wu-Tang Clan.

“Niche is not even the right word for my musical taste at the time,” he points out. “Nobody knew what any of that was where I was from – no one! So that shows the weirdness and the uniqueness of my situation. My little town started hearing about the stuff that I was listening to once I was able to drive. I would blast music in my car driving around this little town with 30,000 people in it,” he reflects nostalgically. “I would drive around in this car where the subwoofer was more powerful than the engine!”

After getting a taste for manipulating music by DJing locally, IRKO set up a small studio in his father’s garage, inviting local talent over to record. By

the early 2000s, he’d outgrown his modest set up and had connected with Tokyo-based producer B-Money on Myspace, who invited him to New York. “This new chapter of my life opened up in the most dramatic, typical IRKO way,” he recalls. “I was involved in a very large project right away – three weeks into being in the country. That was a ‘welcome to America’ moment right there!”

No sooner had he adjusted to the timezone and IRKO was working on

Jay-Z’s so called “comeback album”, Kingdom Come. Featuring guest appearances by Beyoncé, John Legend and Usher, the rapper’s ninth studio record debuted at number one on the US Billboard 200, sold 680,000 copies in its first week and was nominated for Best Rap Album at the 50th Grammy Awards.

“The hilarious contrast was that I was working in New York, but my diet basically consisted of fruit and the little snacks that they had at the

studio,” he confesses with a chuckle. “And when I didn’t go to the studio, my plan B was Wonder Bread and cream cheese from the bodega next door – for months. It was tight, but when you’re 20 years old, committed and have a strong goal and something to achieve, you do whatever it takes. I showed up to this country, literally, with a bag of clothes – nothing else. So it was like, ‘Okay, let’s make this thing happen.’”

At first he didn’t know what he’d be working on, only later finding out that it was a Jay-Z album. IRKO ended up securing a credit on the track, The Prelude, which was produced by B-Money. He remembers it like it was yesterday: “In the very beginning, B-Money didn’t even know – it was all hush, hush. Then eventually, the trickle of information started to come in. It was like, ‘Okay, it’s a project with this label’. That’s nice. And then, ‘Okay, it’s a project and this artist is involved.’ Okay! I was tracking the multitrack files out of an MPC into Pro Tools, and the choice of which preamp, compressor and EQ was involved. It was something that I could have done with my eyes – or ears? – closed, yet that was a big step and a major accomplishment. But still I personally didn’t know that I was gonna get credited. Most of the time the credits are all messed up anyway and the chances of getting credited properly on a big record are very slim, especially for engineers. When the record actually came out, B-Money called me to say my name was in it. I remember jumping on the bed. Sure enough, a few months later, the gold plaque appeared, then the platinum, then the double platinum. It’s still in my living room right now,” he smiles.

In typical IRKO style, his studio situation went from one extreme to another – “my first studio was in my dad’s garage, then the second was a standalone building that was humongous, and then the third one is

“THIS NEW CHAPTER OF MY LIFE OPENED UP IN THE MOST DRAMATIC, TYPICAL IRKO WAY.”

even better,” he enthuses, gesturing around the room. StudioBeat2 marked his first big leap into a bigger studio space (it’s currently being upgraded to Atmos), while StudioBeat3 is under construction at the moment – IRKO regularly shares the studio build’s progress through a series of entertaining YouTube videos. As for the all important kit working behind the scenes across his complex, IRKO uses Focusrite’s Red 8Line in studio 1, a Red 8Line, RedNet MP8R, RedNet R1, RedNet X2P in studio 2, and a RedNet X2P and a Clarett+ 2Pre in his production suites. It turns out, he and Focusrite go way back.

“In the very first studio in my dad’s garage, my very first preamp and compressor that I bought was made by Focusrite with which I did everything,” he recalls. “Since then, I’ve been using their stuff every day. In my previous studio I had three Focusrite sound cards, and then when it was time to build this place I needed something that was easy to install in terms of the drivers, and Dante-ready so we can interface a computer with everything else in the whole building: room to room, live room to live room, and booth to booth. Focusrite offered the highest quality sound cards and allowed us to do all of this, not to mention across the three production rooms we have in the building as well.”

The Red 8Line 58-input, 64-output Thunderbolt 3 audio interface stood out to IRKO right away as something that would be ready for any recording situation he might throw at it: “What we needed to hear was something that had that duality of having everything digital with Dante, a million channels, and enough analog channels, because I have a lot of analog gear here too,” he points out. “We wanted to have something high quality that was flexible, and that works all the time. Those sound cards, the same ones that we have in both control rooms, operate just like that. They’re super simple and everything works all the time. And not to mention even the preamp on the sound cards are very good,” he says, adding that these sound cards should never be overlooked.

“Higher level producers and engineers know that these Focusrite sound cards are nothing to be messing with,” he nods. “They are real tools designed to be used by real people on real records. Stuff that I’ve mixed and recorded on these sound cards has been heard literally billions of times. It’s nothing to sleep on.”

Meanwhile, IRKO uses the RedNet MP8R eight-channel remotecontrolled mic pre and AD interface in studio 2. “The ideal scenario is to have the microphone connected to the preamp in the smallest run ever, because fewer cables means more power, more definition, less noise – it is always better,” he explains. “But in some room layouts, you might not be able to do that, so the best thing would be to put the preamp right next to the source this time. So if we’re talking about a drum set, for example, it would be right next to the drummer. Although when you do that, how can you operate the preamps? One of the best ways to do that is to be able to see and operate the preamp from a distance. Digitally, you can go up a notch, but that information is being transferred to the location where the preamp is, and that’s where the notch-up activity

happens – without you needing to be there. So the run is still short, but the information of notch-up from notchdown can be sent from a different place. That’s why units like that are so smart,” he enthuses.

IRKO shares that he selected the RedNet X2P 2x2 Dante audio interface for stereo monitoring in studio 2 and across his production rooms. “Again, it’s very simple, just like a USB-driven interface – you can have it on your desktop, but you have all the ability of being interfaced to Dante. So Ethernet in, and you’re now in the Dante realm for the whole building. That’s very easy to set up and is super high quality. It’s got the same converters as the big dog sound cards.”

With all his Red audio interfaces it makes sense that he’s using the RedNet R1 desktop remote controller for control of his monitor selection, source selection, as well as factoring in its Dante, Pro Tools HD and Thunderbolt connectivity. “Exactly! Basically, with the press of a button, you can switch from stereo where you have speaker one, two or three, press another button and you’re in 5.1 classic surround, press another button

and you’re now in Atmos. Literally at the press of a button, you can switch from different modalities in which you can monitor your stuff. It’s super easy and very effective – and it’s quiet. That’s the other thing – it doesn’t color the sound, and that’s very important.”

Not forgetting the Clarett+ 2Pre interface which he uses in his production suite upstairs and for any last minute work he needs to do quickly. “I just plug it into my laptop so that I can power the speakers – it’s the quickest, easiest USB.”

With that IRKO has to go, as he’s busy working on the upcoming Street Fighter 6 game, in between building StudioBeat3 and updating his progress videos for YouTube –although the last one he published was nine months ago. “The fact that there are no new episodes means that I’m hard working at actual music,” he grins. “Although no studio or project of this magnitude is ever really finished –there’s always something. The sky’s the limit for that room!”

Words

COLINSTETSON SCORING THE MENU

by ADAM P R ZTO

Photographer: Ebru Yildiz

With saxophone in hand, Colin Stetson is a one-man orchestra. By looping parts, plus the fact he seemingly doesn’t breathe while playing (thanks to a fairly ancient technique called circular breathing), his symphoniclevel of sound has seen him collaborate with Bon Iver, Arcade Fire, and on his eight greatly-loved solo albums. He’s also become a prolific film composer in recent years, and this Michigan-born composer and multiinstrumentalist chats to Headliner about working on The Menu, the brilliant foodie-themed black comedy which stars Anya Taylor-Joy, Nicholas Hoult and Ralph Fiennes.

Now mostly based in Montreal, Canada (where he lives with his partner, Arcade Fire’s violinist Sarah Neufeld), and now aged 47, Stetson’s journey to possibly being the most in-demand saxophonist-composer in the world began with music lessons at school, leading to more serious

studies at the University of Michigan, and very quickly becoming an active performer and collaborator with Transmission Trio (which he cofounded while at university in the late nineties). Only a few years later, Stetson found himself recording and playing live with legendary American musician Tom Waits. This gave him larger exposure, including performing with Waits on The Late Show with David Letterman, and it wasn’t long before he was also hired by Laurie Anderson, Arcade Fire and Bon Iver.

Stetson believes a huge artistic turning point, without which the aforementioned alternative acts may not have paid him any mind, was when he started approaching the saxophone in a more experimental way and began to employ the techniques that have since become his signature: circular breathing (in which the player breathes in through their nostrils while pushing

air into the instrument via their mouth), growling into his instrument, playing multiphonics and more. He also became best known as a bass saxophone player, setting him apart even further.

“I was studying classical and jazz,” Stetson says, “but I was playing a lot of funk, soul, R&B, and more abstraction doing free improvisation and listening a lot to more adventurous players on the instrument and emulating those things. It came to a head when I first started to use the techniques of circular breathing, and I took that technique and started to combine it with things like extended multiphonic playing, singing and vocalising through the instrument and these cyclic arpeggiated systems on the horn. Some of those original concepts ended up being codified finally, on my first proper solo record, which was New History Warfare, Vol. 1 in 2007.”

Photographer: Ebru Yildiz

One way to break into film scoring is to move to a city like Los Angeles and find a film composer who will have you making coffee, doing dry cleaning and replying to emails until they eventually let you help score a scene in a film. Another way is to make your name as an artist first, releasing enough solo material until directors start coming to you as fans of the music you’ve put out.

It’s by no means a straightforward path to go down, but it’s one exemplified by Stetson, who has eight albums released under his own name, including three volumes of the New History Warfare series. And it’s certainly paid off in his case, as he has now worked on 13 films, including Netflix’s Texas Chainsaw Massacre remake, and the psychological horror film Hereditary

Stetson has described working on The Menu as “pure pleasure”, and it’s not hard to imagine why with its stellar

cast of Ralph Fiennes, Anya Taylor-Joy and Nicolas Hoult at the forefront. The latter couple travel to an extremely exclusive island restaurant to try head chef Fiennes’ lavish offerings, but things quickly begin to take a dark turn for the attendees.

“I adored working with Mark [Mylod, the film’s director, also known for directing Ali G Indahouse and episodes of Succession and Game of Thrones],” Stetson says. “And I don’t want this to sound trite, but I really feel the score wrote itself based on the pages in the script. On my first reading, I could immediately feel the structure and rhythm of the film and I knew what I wanted to do. With a phenomenal cast, filmmakers on the top of their game, and fantastic cinematography and editing, there’s nothing for me to fix, which isn’t always the case for the composer.

“As composers, we’re often the last thing to be brought in and we’re the

last defence. If there’s something wrong with the script, if there’s something sluggish in the edit, if there are poor performances, the music has to try to push the film up a hill. But there was nothing like that with The Menu.”

You may not be surprised to hear while being simultaneously baffled by the challenge of it, that Stetson has created entire film scores with just saxophone and clarinet recordings which he then manipulates on his computer. His deeply eerie score for the Toni Colette-starring Hereditary is a great example. And while the word ‘classical’ is very unlikely to be pinned on Stetson by anyone, for The Menu he has created a score that is both elegant with its touches of classical, while of course having the staunchly modern approach you would expect from him.

“ON MY FIRST READING, I COULD IMMEDIATELY FEEL THE STRUCTURE AND RHYTHM OF THE FILM AND I KNEW WHAT I WANTED TO DO.”

The soundtrack album’s opening number All Aboard leaves you feeling, like the guests in the film, that this is simply going to be a lavish, luxury experience. This is thanks to gorgeous splashes on strings, piano and woodwinds. High-end music for a high-end experience, at least until things unravel.

“There is still a lot of sax in there, but it plays more of a supporting role in this one,” Stetson says. “Because the music is mostly rooted in a baroque-style feeling, and I think what really makes this score unique from my others is how rhythmic this one is — I drew heavily on the pizzicato (plucked) strings and pizzicato piano strings. It’s a much more percussive score in that regard.”

Stetson then offers a peek behind the curtain of how he creates a score like The Menu from his studio. The first name that comes up is Spitfire Audio, who he says “create really wonderful libraries. I know people who create finished scores entirely using Spitfire’s libraries. I use them primarily as tools. I’m a very tactile composer. I need to use my hands, and I use these tools to write parts and to explore and experiment with different sounds, and different approaches

on those instruments. I’ll then have the parts re-recorded by real players. I do sometimes use a hybrid approach and keep Spitfire parts in there to augment or be a foundation for the real string parts, for example. It’s all an EQ game for me. Otherwise, I use loads of the Universal Audio plugins, I use Valhalla reverbs a lot, and Soundtoys are a mainstay. I use their Decapitator on most things.”

2023 is set to be another very exciting year in the world of Stetson, who can only tentatively tease his next film projects, as he has signed non-disclosure agreements and must keep schtum about them. But the brilliant news is his first solo album release since 2017 is on its way. “When I released All This I Do For Glory, I mentioned at the time that it would be the first of two parts, one side of a coin,” he concludes. “So my record coming out soon will be the other side of that, the corollary in that story. There will be the same kind of imagery, creation myth and quality to the two of them.”

Image: Searchlight Pictures

DON’T LOOK AT THE DEMON

Words by ALICE GU S T NOSFA

LAWRENCE CHICK

Malaysian horror movie Don’t Look at the Demon takes the phrase head-banging to a whole new level. Production sound mixer Lawrence Chick explains how he captured every jump scare…

In Brando Lee’s film Don’t Look at the Demon, a team of paranormal investigators led by an emotionally damaged spiritual medium head for the highlands of Fraser’s Hill in Malaysia to probe a series of alleged disturbances at a house with a sinister past. Reportedly based on real (banned) religious rituals and Lee’s own personal experiences, the film sees a paranormal investigative TV crew visit a seemingly haunted house, only to discover the dangerous entity that dwells within.

The paranormal activity / possession plot may sound a familiar one, however this movie stands out as a breakthrough for the Malaysian film industry – reportedly being the first movie made in the country to enter the U.S. feature film market.

“I only learned about this by reading it in the newspaper the day after the premiere screening,” remarks production sound mixer Lawrence Chick. “I could not believe my eyes when I read it! It took me by surprise and I read it again. It was certainly humbling and I am grateful to be a part of this experience. I am still amazed to this day!”

In order to keep viewers on the edge of their seats with sound every bit as riveting as the visuals, Chick turned to Lectrosonics Digital Hybrid wireless. His transmitters include four SMQVs, two watertight WMs and a plug-on HMa for boom work, while receivers comprised five UCR411a and an SRb –all supplemented by ALP650 amplified directional antennas – while IFB was handled by an IFBT4 transmitter and three R1a receivers.

Making audio capture interesting was the film’s paranormal investigative reality show format, following an ensemble cast through tight interiors – the jump scares mounting all the while. For this specific type of filming scenario, Chick relied on Lectrosonics’ gain structure.

“Capturing natural-sounding dialog is the priority,” Chick stresses on horror movie sound. “Getting high quality audio is essential as you need to capture the dynamics of the human voice, whether it is whispers, talking softly, screams or shouts. Getting them to sound as natural as possible allows the viewer to be fully immersed in the movie. Distortion and noisy backgrounds can be a distraction and take the viewers out of the moment –you certainly want to avoid that!

“Some of the sets were so cramped that there was no room for my boom operator to move around,” he adds.

“So, of course we had packs on the talent. They’re normally speaking quietly or even whispering, but when there’s a jump scare, there’s a lot of screaming. I adjusted the gain on the transmitters for the maximum peaks I knew I’d be getting, and the system was able to pick up all the normallevel dialog clearly as well.”

Another element to factor in when shooting a horror movie in low light (or pitch black) is any lit-up kit that might show up on camera. “Being a horror film, you know that there will be scenes in a darker environment,” he points out. “One thing to watch out for is that the transmitter’s light does not shine though the actor’s clothing. A simple electrical tape over the indicator lights easily solved this though!

“Capturing natural-sounding dialog is the priority.”

“There were also times when the crew had to film in small spaces, hence getting access to the actors and actresses would be difficult, although not impossible,” he adds. “When it was too small a space for my boom operator, I would plant a microphone there instead. In these cases, when using Lectrosonics, I could easily monitor things like the battery level of the actors and actresses or the planted mic from my receiver. Making level or frequency adjustments on the transmitter can easily be done using a third party app on my phone which plays out a specially coded audio to make those adjustments.”

For more frenetic scenes, transmitters including the HMa plug-on (so named as its XLR connector plugs right onto a mic) made their way from actors’ bodies to microphones planted around the set.

“There were some rather violent stunts,” nods Chick. “If you’ve seen the trailer, there’s this scene where

one of the characters is floating off the ground and banging her head against the wall. For such scenes, we didn’t want to put a transmitter on the actor in case they fell on it — we were worried about the person getting hurt, not the gear! So, we switched to plant mics and Lectrosonics still captured all the sounds beautifully.”

Chick also touts Lectrosonics’ product features that make his workday easier. “I can send the transmitter’s commands using tones from my phone and see the transmitter battery levels from the receiver. That means I can know ahead of time if batteries are getting low and change them before it interrupts a take.”

Above all else, Chick’s choice of Lectrosonics comes down to superior audio quality:

“I’ve always had a passion for sound,” he says. “When I was first studying, you didn’t hear people in this part of the world talking about

wanting to go into production mixing. The mentality was that sound was something you did in post-production. In any magazine article about film sound, the conversation was about FX and the photos were of the inside of a recording studio. I was always thinking, ‘But wait, how do you record great sound to work with in the first place? Not everything can be done in the studio.’ Now I know. With Lectrosonics, I’ve even had camera operators comment on the sound quality. That’s saying something!”

Despite working so closely on the movie and knowing every jump scare, Chick shares that the horror film still had the intended effect on him as a viewer: “Even though I was on the crew and was at the filming, I had no idea what the final edit would look like. When the cinema curtains rolled up, I still got goosebumps,” he smiles.

Credit: Barnstorm Entertainment Sdn Bhd

TOOLS OF THE TRADE

EMILIANO CABALLERO

Words

by COLBY R A YESM

Two-time Latin Grammy nominated mix and recording engineer, Emiliano Caballero recently joined Headliner on a Zoom from his home in L.A. to discuss bridging the musical gap between Latin and US artists in his production work, and his role managing artist relations as one of the co-founders of elite plugin developer, Leapwing Audio.

Could you start by telling us about your background in music?

I was born in Montevideo and was then brought up and raised in Spain, playing guitar from the age of maybe 10 or 12 years old. I started off writing songs, forming my first band when I was 16 and releasing my first studio album when I was 19. I wanted to get into music production, and started looking for internships in recording studios, eventually landing one at Galaxy Studios in Belgium.

How did you first meet the other cofounders of Leapwing?

When I started as an intern at Galaxy in 2012, Robin was working there at the time, and Jeroen was working on Auro Technologies there. After a few years working there, I moved to the USA in the Christmas of 2015 to start working as Michael Brauer’s assistant at Electric Lady Studios in New York.

It was during that time period when Leapwing was founded.

Tell us more about your role at the company.

I’m in charge of artist relations, where I connect with other creatives, and build a community around our values. Since I arrived here in the US I became a friend of Al Schmitt. He was one of my mentors, and would often invite me to Capitol to just sit with him – to learn and spend time together. We had a lot of respect for each other as engineers and as friends, and out of that friendship our first signature plugin was born.

That’s one of the proudest things I’ve done in my career, and I am so humbled that I was able to spend time with Al.

What do you think makes Leapwing’s products unique to the plugin market?

Besides Leapwing, I am a musician, producer and engineer. The same goes for Jeroen and Robin. It’s important for us to be able to put ourselves in our customer’s shoes, because essentially, we are the customer!

Could you describe your creative process in the studio?

The only rule that I apply to myself is to enjoy the process, and really have fun doing it, because otherwise there’s no point. It’s all about experimenting, and throwing everything you know out of the window to see if you can come up with something new.

Every project is different, but every project presents an opportunity for one to reinvent and rediscover. If I record drums without ever trying anything new, I will not surprise myself and create happy accidents.

“EVERY PROJECT IS DIFFERENT, BUT EVERY PROJECT PRESENTS AN OPPORTUNITY FOR ONE TO REINVENT AND REDISCOVER.”

What are you working on at the moment?

One of the main things I’m focusing on right now is finishing the new album for my artist project ‘Zelmar’. It’s alternative music in Spanish language – electric and bass guitars, drums, Juno and Prophet synths. I play all the instruments and write all the songs, and when I perform it’s set up like a band. I’m an old school kind of guy! My first single Mi Sustento just got released, and there is one song out every month until summer and then I’m going touring in Spain doing some festivals.

Regarding production and mixing projects for clients, at the moment I’m working with a great Colombian artist called Angel Bleu, making some urban Latin pop with her which is fun.

I also just did a Netflix soundtrack recording for a new movie called Rustin; it’s made by Barack and Michelle Obama’s production company and it’s about the civil rights movement in the ‘60s. I’ve recorded a couple of the title tracks on the soundtrack for that which has been cool, because I do love film scoring.

More recently, I became the co-author of Modern Recording Techniques. We just finished the 10th edition with the author and my dear friend David Miles Huber. So there’s been lots of things keeping me busy at the moment!

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LAY ALL THE LOVE

ANNA PANCALDI

You could almost say Anna Pancaldi has ‘broken America’, after headline shows in New York, Los Angeles and Nashville, and opening for such acts as David Ryan Harris and Jake Isaac. She’s also had her songs placed in hit US shows like Pretty Little Liars and in the Paramount film The In Between. Pancaldi, a British singer-songwriter based in London, opens up about overcoming debilitating stage fright, her time spent in the States, and the new songs she has coming out soon, hoping to match the multi-million streams of her song, Brother.

“I’m doing well, it’s five o’clock on a Tuesday and I’m boiling some broccoli,” she says from a house in Kew, West London, where she is temporarily staying. “I’m trying to find a new place to live at the moment – it’s always interesting, trying to be creative while feeling like your foundation is up in the air.”

Despite adoring music from a very young age, her love of music was delivered with a very strong case of

stage fright. A young Pancaldi simply could not sing in front of anyone.

“I knew from a young age that I love to sing. But I couldn’t sing in front of anyone without bursting into tears! As soon as singing became about being in front of an audience or being marked in an exam, my subconscious couldn’t seem to take it.”

What was the solution to a problem that was clearly going to be insurmountable for a career as a singer-songwriter? Moving to South Africa for a few years, as it happens.

“I lived there for three years as a teenager,” Pancaldi recalls. “At this point, I’d already had my fear for many years. But in South Africa I had this incredible vocal coach called Gavin Smith. He really was the epitome of tough love.

“It was still completely paralyzing – I would cry and walk off stage. But he would walk over to me and say, ‘It’s just like falling off a horse, you need to get back up.’ He didn’t really give me a choice, in a loving way. So I left the UK not being able to sing in front of people, but when we moved back I just had normal nerves like most singers. I get goosebumps thinking about it; Gavin is a real hero of mine.”

With regards to Pancaldi’s success thus far in Northern America, it didn’t originally come about due to a specific opportunity prompting her to travel there. She simply felt a strong gravitational pull to the U.S, and acted upon it.

“It was a time where I’d written loads

of songs, traveled a lot, and I’d been building up a fan base in London. But honestly, I just felt like I wanted to go to America. It wasn’t necessarily that there was some enormous opportunity waiting for me there. Just this sense that I wanted to go. So my first trip there involved me saving up money. I went and I played at loads of open mic nights. I got connected with some people. Then I eventually got introduced to my American manager, and he’s been incredible.”

One song that has really caught on internationally for Pancaldi is her song Brother, currently clocking well over one million streams on Spotify alone. It’s not difficult to see why, apart from the almost unbelievable fact that this is the first pianoaccompanied song she has released. A deeply raw song – both lyrically and musically – about grief and loss, it showcases her vocals to stunning effect, especially in its honest and anthemic chorus.

And there’s plenty more where that came from, as Pancaldi has a string of new songs ready for release in 2023. One of which is Stay This Way, a song which veers between a vulnerable verse and a huge chorus with touches of gospel power. It packs

plenty of singalong power matched with excellent production.

“This song came out of a Zoom writing session,” Pancaldi says. “Which is strange because I usually only write like that when I’m writing for other artists. But I was working on this song with a lovely guy called Kevin in Los Angeles and when we finished it, I realized I really loved this song, and decided to keep it in my special box of songs which no one else could have,” she laughs. “It’s a song about honoring childhood – I know not everyone is lucky enough to have a treasured one like me. But it’s about the many parts of mine that I deeply miss and that I wish could have stayed the same forever.”

All in all, it would certainly seem 2023 is shaping up very nicely for this undeniable talent. “We’re organizing the tour at the moment — so hopefully you and everyone reading this can all come along! I love touring, being in the room with everyone, it’s my favorite part of the whole creative process,” she beams.

“IT’S A SONG ABOUT HONORING CHILDHOOD – I KNOW NOT EVERYONE IS LUCKY ENOUGH TO HAVE A TREASURED ONE LIKE ME.”

GUMBLE

SUBURBAN GARAGE PARTY VIBES

WALKER HAYES

Nashville-based singer-songwriter Walker Hayes recently embarked on his first headline arena tour, with the help of The Darkroom Creative (Seth Jackson and Nathan Alves), who were responsible for the stage lighting.

Helping them build their set was a bunch of classic ‘impression’ LED fixtures from GLP – notably around 60 of the compact X4 S LED washlights and X4 Bar 20 battens, agile workhorses which helped make the production budget stretch. The inventory was provided, as is so often the case on Darkroom’s projects, by Bandit Lites.

The Glad You’re Here tour, as it is known, is the creative team’s first outing with the artist – who straddles multiple genres, but is fundamentally a country/popcrossover singer-songwriter. They

were contacted initially by Walker’s manager, Robert Carlton, and then systematically built up the touring and technical bandwagon with production manager, Chris Newman, in readiness for the six-week stint.

Long-term design collaborators, both Jackson and Alves acknowledge that with Walker Hayes’ reputation growing fast, the team is on “a meteoric trajectory… expanding from a few trailers behind their bus to now being in a few trucks.”

But if there are two things Darkroom specializes in, it is scaling rigs for different sized venues and doing due diligence with production budgets. As Alves points out, “It’s one thing to build something that looks good when hung as designed, it’s another to be able to grow and condense with the room and fill that upstage space effectively and responsibly. This is where our equipment choices really helped us. Seth and the team at Bandit really executed an effective Swiss army knife of a lighting design that lets us cover the show very effectively.”

For those choices, they had to do little more than delve into the GLP catalog – a product portfolio that both Jackson and Alves are well familiar with. Their quest was for the most flexible, reliable, compact fixtures they could find, wherein every light would be expected to perform a myriad of tasks. In other words, make the budget really work.

Speaking of the impression X4 S, Alves says: “We’re big into large amounts of small wash fixtures in the air right now. I think there’s something to be said for having that much horsepower in the form of a meaty wash to lay in as a base layer to build on top of.”

“We went to older-tech fixtures in the GLP line because we knew they were reliable and proven technologies,” adds Jackson. “We also knew the

personality of the fixtures – how the color changes, how their speed reacts, and how the brightness and color temperature react. We also knew these lights could be multi-functional – something we absolutely needed.”

The stage scenography itself emanated from various conversations which Alves says “suggested a suburban dad party vibe”. Jackson elaborates by saying, “[Walker] stressed that he and his family live a typical suburban life and his favorite thing was a neighborhood party in the garage and the driveway. Once Nate came up with the idea of putting the standard suburban garage door onstage, the rest just followed naturally. And after a crew trip to the local Home Depot, a mailbox, vinyl siding and a fence had quickly joined the party as additional stage props.

In terms of other key personnel on the tour, lighting director Dom Hickman became the designers’ “ace in the hole” during pre-viz. “He knew Walker’s tastes, the nuance of every song, and he helped complete the team feeling about the show,” says Jackson. “This was collaborative, fun, and adventurous with everyone from the start.”

Bandit Lites, in the shape of crew chief AJ Quintel, supported the tour, as they generally do on The

Darkroom Creative’s outings. “It’s a great relationship and they always make us feel at home when we walk in,” says Alves.

In conclusion, both LDs acknowledge that the entire Walker camp has been a pleasure to work with, ”without ego or strife, everyone having a great time together, all just pitching in, with job titles blurred.”

Saving the best till last, the most telling testimonial about the GLP fixtures is provided by Alves as he simply says: “They just work.”

And as to what qualities the lights themselves bring to a set, Jackson is unequivocal. “For me it’s all about the color system, which provides exactly the same response across the product line. You can get rich, solid hues and subtle pastels. You can also do a lot of color temperature choices. Of course, ultimately, it is about the people at GLP. As we have said many times, everyone makes a great light, it is the quality of the people and support behind the light that really matters!”

“WE WENT TO OLDER-TECH FIXTURES IN THE GLP LINE BECAUSE WE KNEW THEY WERE RELIABLE AND PROVEN TECHNOLOGIES.”

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Words bYDANGUM ELB

ON THE ROAD MOBILE SESSIONS

In 2018, music manager Christine Hufenbecher and audio engineer Kenny Moran founded Mobile Sessions, an L.A.-based, Dolby Atmosequipped mobile recording and production studio inside a customdesigned 30ft RV that boasts a tech spec to rival any major facility in the business. Headliner caught up with them to talk business trends, changing the mobile studio game, and the Merging Technologies kit that has been so central to its success…

Tell us about the origins of Mobile Sessions?

Christine: This venture started at the end of 2017. We had met at a studio in L.A. before, I was on the management side and Kenny was on the engineering side, and we decided we wanted to do a studio project together. Tons of studios were really expensive, and we thought, hey, we already have the vehicle, so why don’t we put a full

studio inside this 30ft RV and make it the same quality as any major studio in L.A.? But we’ll make it more convenient and more versatile.

Kenny spent a year ripping out the traditional RV furniture and building out the studio. Then we officially launched at NAMM in 2019, so we came in right before the pandemic when mobile recording started becoming a thing. We were building

our clientele, doing live recordings, studio recordings, and offering the RV as a VIP space at festivals. Then, during the pandemic, we were able to roll up to people’s houses and do safe recordings while studios were closed. Then the whole mobile recording business developed from there, so we were there right before it blew up.

“WE CAN RECORD FULL ORCHESTRAS, WE CAN PULL UP TO VENUES, WE CAN DO EVERYTHING FROM SMALL INDIE ARTISTS TO BIG PRODUCTIONS. WE ARE AHEAD OF THE GAME.”

How competitive is this market? And how has the market changed since the pandemic?

Christine: Mobile recording has been around for some time, but the way we have constructed it is like nothing else out there. We have a Dolby Atmos setup - no one can do this to the extent we can. We can record full orchestras, we can pull up to venues, we can do everything from small indie artists to big productions. We are ahead of the game.

Tell us about the setup of the studio?

Kenny: Originally, gear-wise I wanted to make sure we were in a place that far exceeded any kind of remote or simple mobile setup. In L.A. there are broadcast and video trucks everywhere, but they are not music-centric. They are meant to do video and capture audio as needed, which is very different. We wanted something as good as any studio in the city.

The first room has an SSL console in it and all of the top outboard gear I would be using if I was at Capitol or any major studio. That set us apart immediately from anything else. We were thinking over the past few years that we wanted to be able to do Atmos, so we started speaking to Dolby and Dynaudio (whose monitors we use throughout) about it. We had several meetings about design - where can it be, how can it be? So we essentially had the SSL room as the back half of the RV, and there was an isolated room for vocals and acoustics, and then there was the lounge. I thought, if I tear apart the whole lounge and make that the Atmos room we would have so much more space. Now it’s a 7.1.4 Atmos room.

The other aspect was that mixing in Atmos is cool but producing and writing in Atmos is where it’s going to be, so we had Dolby tune

the room so that we can record and write in Atmos in real time. It’s shockingly powerful. We can go anywhere from 1-128 channels coming into the SSL room, then we can take those inputs and feed them directly to the Atmos room, so we can do both at the same time. No other studio at this point can do that. We have seen some trying to pop up around us, but they are very minimal in their capabilities.

Presumably this is a shock to people expecting a mobile set up to be more minimalist?

Christine: People have built their own studios, but they do it more for personal use. We are a commercial studio and we have all of the extras in mind.

Kenny and Christine with Fatboy Slim in the Mobile Sessions studio

Kenny: I had just started working with a major artist and all he would use was Merging Technologies systems. I really dived into Merging and about a month later I was introduced to the new Anubis they had been working on. So, I started using the Anubis, and the Atmos setup is based on two pairs of Anubis and a Hapi, and it powers the entire Atmos room and runs on AES67. There are two key things for me with Merging. One is the sound quality. As you can see by the other gear in the studio, sound quality is paramount, and Merging fits right in there because their ADDAs are amongst the best in the world, so the quality is astonishing.

The other point is that one Anubis handles everything from the EQ: it’s the controller, it’s the routing, the delay times. It’s all set inside the Anubis and that is what did the entire tuning for the room. It’s really, really powerful in a small box, which is exactly what we needed. So, Merging has worked out incredibly well and with running AES67 that allows us to have inputs coming from everywhere.

The studio can take any digital input - we have inputs for MADI, Dante, AES67, AES50 and analog. That’s part of my live background, that it doesn’t matter if we roll up at a house that has no connections, or the Staples Center or the Hollywood Bowl, we can take full MADI inputs and run it all directly into what we are doing. And Merging is a huge part of that.

How high is the demand for Atmos in a mobile studio?

Christine: We see demand for all sorts of projects. And Dolby Atmos mixing has been on the rise, we are definitely seeing an increase. There is no question that Atmos is on the upswing – the requests for it are really ramping up.

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Case Study

FOCUSRITE PRO IN WAYSTATION STUDIOS

GRAMMY ®-winning producer/engineer Dave Way's resume runs across all genres , spanning pop, rock, R&B and more, and his credits include such acclaimed artists as Christina Aguilera, Fiona Apple, Ziggy Marley, Macy Gray, Michael Jackson, “Weird Al" Yankovic, Phoebe Bridgers, Ringo Starr and dozens of others, in addition to the acclaimed soundtrack to Echo in the Canyon. His most recent GRAMMY nomination was for “Best Immersive Audio Album," for his work as immersive audio co-producer on the 2019 album The Savior by A Bad Think.

Learn more at pro.focusrite.com or scan the QR code below

Like many working in the world of immersive audio, Way's attention has turned to the Dolby Atmos ® format, and in 2020 he took the leap and upgraded his personal facility, Waystation Studio, to be able to mix in Atmos. Since last year, he has been settling in with the new setup, mixing several projects and even recording an entire album specifically to be mixed in Atmos –helped in no small part by his arsenal of interfaces and a RedNet R1 controller from Focusrite Pro.

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