Headliner USA Issue 6

ISSUE 06 / SEPTEMBER 2021 HEADLINERMAGAZINE.NET UK £3.95 / USA $6.95 / CANADA $7.95

SUPPORTING THE CREATIVE COMMUNITY

MAGAZINE / 06

A RARE BREED

GOO GOO DOLLS DAVID DUCHOVNY

BILLIE EILISH

DUSTIN O’HALLORAN

ON SONGWRITING AND MUSICAL OBSESSIONS

BEDROOM PRODUCTION REACHES NEW HEIGHTS

REVISITING THE PAST ON LATEST SOLO ALBUM

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

— Mick Jagger

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SUP P

IVE C EAT O CR

ING THE T R O

NITY MU M HEADLINER USA

06 In the process of putting together this edition of Headliner USA, I had the immeasurable pleasure of chatting to four individuals who between them form the creative core of two iconic bands and have amassed between them more than two centuries’ worth of music industry experience. The four gentlemen in question are this issue’s cover stars, legendary Goo Goo Dolls founders and songwriting duo Johnny Rzeznik and Robby Takac, and the enigmatic Mael brothers Ron and Russell of the mighty Sparks.

While speaking to these very different yet similarly experienced artists, there was of course no shortage of topics to discuss and stories to be told. But arguably the most intriguing aspects of our conversations came about when assessing not only the changes they have seen during their time in the business, but most importantly, how they have traversed them.

Of course, the arrival of the internet, streaming and digital technology over the past 20 years has changed the musical landscape beyond all recognition. But the journey from an analog world into a digital one is only part of their story, not to mention one that virtually every artist established circa 1999 has had to navigate. Where their experience and knowledge really reveals itself is in their ability to maintain a fresh creative approach through the decades, while avoiding slipping into the cracks of insignificance.

Rather than resist change and persevere with the tried and tested artistic methods that delivered them to prominence, both outfits have consistently adopted new methods, reinvented their processes and embraced the new.

In the case of Rzeznik and Takac, the pair may well have held rock steady as the Goo Goo Dolls’ creative engine, yet they have taken on a multitude of approaches down the years, whether collaborating with new producers, working alone, or combining various processes. And as for Sparks, as Ron Mael bluntly explains in our interview, their aim has always been to torch any preconceptions of what has come before with every new release.

Longevity is the holy grail for most artists, and the art of attaining it remains as mysterious and intangible as ever. But there is certainly plenty to be learned from those who have achieved it.

Daniel Gumble Head of Music, Headliner HEADLINERMAGAZINE.NET

20 / MIMI BAY 14 / CURTIS STIGERS 08 / HALLE KEARNS

24/ BOBBY BALOW

28/ GOO GOO DOLLS 36/ FERRY CORSTEN

44 / HAPPIER THAN EVER 40 / LESLIEGASTON-BIRD

58 / JON BATISTE

52 / FIONACRUICKSHANK 48/ LIVE SOUND

64 / HERB MIDDLETON 62 / BRANDON BLACKWELL 68 / POST PRODUCTION

76 / DAVID DUCHOVNY

72 / PAM & TOMMY

80 / MUSIC TECHNOLOGY 84 / SPOTLIGHT REVIEWS

102 / SPARKS

108 / WALTER MAIR

112 / DUSTIN O’HALLORAN

118 / MICHAEL LEAGUE

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HALLE KEARNS

HEADLINER USA

Making Plans

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MAKING PLANS

HALLE KEARNS Nashville artist Halle Kearns recently played to a live crowd again, but it wasn’t the fact that the performance was in her hometown of Missouri that made it special...

“I actually haven’t gotten the chance to talk about this yet, but I had a mini meltdown after that show,” she laughs, quickly reassuring Headliner that it was “a good one, though”.

She remembers the reason why like it was yesterday: six years ago the aspiring singer songwriter wrote a bio about herself for a local music venue, envisioning a time when someone would sing her songs back to her.

“I wrote, ‘if Halle can one day look into a crowd and see a little girl singing the words back to her own songs, she will have achieved her wildest dreams’. I released my first single in July of 2020, and I haven’t really gotten to play them out yet. At this charity event I played at the Rose Music Hall there was a little girl there who was about 12 years old, and she knew every single word to every song I’ve released. I

couldn’t even look at her when I was on stage because I was so emotional.

After I finished playing I just sobbed because that is something that I’ve worked towards for six years, and just getting to feel that full circle moment was so beautiful and special. I’m sure she has no idea just how much it meant to me!”

There’s a reason it made Kearns so emotional; she moved from Missouri to Nashville (with a stepping stone stay in Kansas City along the way) in 2019 to make her music dream a reality, and her bold move paid off. She burst onto the music scene in 2020 with her first three singles, culminating in the release of her debut EP, Finally at the end of the year. The EP reached over 4 million collective streams, reached number 7 in the US iTunes country charts and number 5 in the UK.

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Making Plans

would pre save it?’ That was my goal, just 200 people, which is a lot of people and I still understand that’s a huge feat in itself! But this project has been streamed over 3.8 million times I think we’re at now; that is mind blowing! There’s nothing I could have done to have prepared myself for that number. I still don’t understand it. I can’t wrap my head around it. I feel extremely appreciative and grateful to anyone who’s loved it, because it’s definitely a project that comes from my heart, from my life.”

“I knew if I wanted to dip into the industry side of things and the business side, that I had to come to Nashville because this is where all of the labels, publishers, and anything to do with music business is located,” she explains.

is playing and singing, and I know I haven’t done anything with it yet as far as shows or anything, but I think this is what I want to do’. And from that point on, I just had my heart set on it. Right after high school I moved to Kansas City and just started playing full time.”

“It’s tough because every single day is different here, but that’s my favorite part about it. I’m not a big routine person – I love the mystery of what each day is going to hold.”

On the success of Finally, Kearns is stunned to have made such an impact with her debut EP, particularly considering it was launched during a global pandemic.

Kearns shares that she’s not from a particularly musical family – “my mom would kill me for saying this, but she’s 100% tone deaf and can’t sing a note to save her life,” – adding that her dad and three sisters are great singers but never pursued singing, however they all love music. Kearns grew up listening to ‘90s country music from the likes of Martina McBride, The Chicks, Faith Hill, Alan Jackson, George Strait, and then discovered Kelly Clarkson, Carrie Underwood and Colbie Caillat, while Jason Mraz awakened her inner singer-songwriter.

“I still don’t have the words for it!

Honestly, I really had no expectations,” she says. “When I was gearing up for the release I just knew that this is something I’ve been working for a really long time towards, and hopefully a couple people will listen to it and love it.”

“You can hear a lot of that influence in my songs now – a lot of country, for sure! I was definitely more shy with my love for music at first,” she admits. “I started playing guitar when I was about 13 years old; my parents got divorced when I was 12. I felt this therapeutic thing happening whenever I played guitar, so I really fell hard into it and it became my escape. When I was about 16 years old we started having these conversations about what’s next and about going to college and I just said, ‘the thing I love more than anything in this world HEADLINER USA

This reminds her of a phone call she had with her father last night, where he reminded her of how far she’s come: “We were just talking through everything and he said, ‘do you remember before you released your first song, you were working so hard and were just hoping that 200 people

“The more music I’m releasing, the more people are understanding me and who I am not only as an artist, but as a human being.”

Kearns’ recent single, Plans is the follow up single to Finally, which was by far her highest streamed song across all music platforms in the first four weeks following its release, opening more doors for her than ever before.

“It’s such a groovy laid back vibe; I’m just happy that people are happy listening to it,” she smiles. “I know this year has been really, really hard, and really confusing and just, a lot for people. I’m happy that I was able to offer up three minutes of distraction from that and that people were able to dance and have fun. The more music I’m releasing, the more people are understanding me and who I am not only as an artist, but as a human being.”

The inspiration from the song is taken from Kearns’ self confessed selfsabotaging nature when it comes to relationships.

“I can definitely be a little bit of a headcase when it comes to the early stages of things,” she laughs. “I got to this point in my life where I’m like, ‘you know what, if you don’t expect anything out of anyone, especially relationship-wise, you can’t get hurt’, so it’s better to not have any expectations and not give yourself away to anyone. But the song was kind of about meeting someone that changes your mind on that and just makes you be like, ‘okay, you have me making plans, you have me looking down the line; I want to plan out a future with you because you make it worth that risk again’.”

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Making Plans

All of her music is based around experiences she or people she knows has had – each one of her tracks is authentic.

“I’ve made it a goal to not write or release anything that I haven’t personally experienced, whether it be through someone else or my own walk in this life. So anything you hear me release, I have lived at at some point. It can come from heartbreak, it can come from falling in love, it can come from just an experience or an emotion I felt – family or friends, or whatever it may be. I always pull from HEADLINER USA

my own personal life because I feel like that’s how I’m most connected to my music. I never want to feel like I’m releasing something I don’t actually believe.”

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CURTIS STIGERS

HEADLINER USA

A True Gentleman

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A TRUE GENTLEMAN

CURTIS STIGERS Curtis Stigers, an award-winning singer, songwriter, and saxophonist – and perhaps best known for his string of ‘90s hits including I Wonder Why – has spoken to Headliner about his creative and artistic process, the formative blues jam sessions that lead to him becoming one of the most highly-regarded jazz singers in New York, and how he’s recorded new versions of those very hits for an upcoming 30th anniversary record...

Photographer: Marina Chavez

A multi-platinum selling artist, Stigers has navigated a three decadespanning career as a successful songwriter, and has nurtured a fierce commitment to artistic growth during that time. Yet, over the last 18 months, he has been forced to tread cautiously on unfamiliar ground.

When the lights went out on the live music industry in March 2020, Stigers found himself going from being on the road, and on the cusp of promoting a brand new album, to sitting in his

kitchen with his dogs, wondering what to do with himself next.

“Among other things, I eventually created a live stream show called Songs from My Kitchen,” he tells Headliner, “which allowed me to stay in touch with my fans and promote my latest album. It also stretched me; I had to learn how to edit and how to light things, and teaching this old dog some new tricks has been fun. I didn’t make any money, but I had a great time, and I think I grew quite a bit artistically.

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A True Gentleman

“I’m just sort of instinctual and do what I want to do; I find 10 songs I love, and I don’t really think about how they fit together,” he continues. “But I listen a lot and I write a lot, and at the end of the process, I look back and I realize that these 10 songs have this obvious theme that really fits what I’ve been going through over the last couple of years, or at some point in my history. So for me, it tends to be about instinct.”

These days, Stigers lives back in his hometown of Boise, Idaho, but was grateful to board a plane for the first time in 17 months recently to meet his band in the ski destinations of Vail and Aspen to play some shows.

Aside from the anxiety of travelling post-pandemic, he admits that he also experienced an initial wobble when it came to performing.

“At first I thought, do I remember how to do this? Are we going to remember these songs?” he recalls. “And then the first night in Vail we killed it - we had a great time and everybody played great. I’m sure I sounded a little rusty here and there, but I remembered how to communicate with an audience, and to hear that applause once again in real life was just great.”

Humble Beginnings Just three or four years after the freshfaced, yet extremely naturally gifted Stigers first found himself in New York, he had landed himself a record deal, a period he admits produced some HEADLINER USA

of the most amazing, fun times of his whole career.

With saxophone his speciality – and having been heavily influenced by the likes of Jimmy Page and B.B. King – he soon found himself playing rhythm and blues jam sessions with many highlyregarded musicians of the time.

After finding his way into some of New York’s top blues bars, he became acquainted with accomplished guitarist Mark Schulman, who encouraged the 21-year-old Stigers to start writing his own songs. The person that really helped him hone his craft however was jazz bassist, songwriter and producer Wayne Cohen.

“He really knew how to write pop songs, and really liked what I did,” shares Stigers. “Having a deadline to finish a song – and also the nerves of it all – churned my creativity, and allowed me to find things in myself that I didn’t know were there.”

Before he knew it, he had signed a significant record deal with Arista Records, and the album cycle process had begun.

“When I made that first record [which was eponymously named and released in 1991], I was trying to follow in the footsteps of John Hiatt and Bonnie Raitt, with a little Al Green thrown in there,” Stigers remembers

fondly. “I still play several songs from my first record because they’re my babies, and I wrote them and I’m proud of them, but when I listen now to the production it sounds like really thick layered stuff, which wasn’t where I was headed. So on that second record [1995’s Time Was], I tried really hard to take the sheen off, and to make it sound like the records that I liked.”

Following a small dispute with Arista, Stigers parted ways with the label, unaware that a new deal with Columbia was just around the corner.

It was then that he dropped his third album, Brighter Days, which was released in 1999.

“I really got to make the record I had been trying to make for a while,” he explains. “Something that was more organic, and that sounded like a band.

Sure there’s some ear candy in there, some loops and things like that, but it was what I wanted to make.”

This third outing however proved to be critical for Stigers, and made him realize that the well-oiled pop music business machine was no longer for him. Unsurprisingly, he turned to his first musical love for answers: jazz.

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A True Gentleman

FULL CIRCLE

“I WAS ABLE TO – SLOWLY BUT SURELY, ALBUM BY ALBUM WITH CONCORD – REBUILD A CAREER THAT WAS BASED ON WHAT I DID AS AN ARTIST, NOT WHAT I DID AS A COMMODITY OR A PRODUCT.”

“Now my career is about playing music for people who want to hear my music,” he says. “I took a huge pay cut, and I went from my first album selling one and a half million copies to my first jazz record selling 20 or 30,000 copies at the time. But it worked, because I was able to – slowly but surely, album by album with Concord – rebuild a career that was based on what I did as an artist, not what I did as a commodity or a product.

“I love showbiz and I love good dancing and all that, but there’s something about being in a room where you’re fairly close to somebody and they’re telling you a story with a great song. I’ve been able to surround myself with amazing musicians who have been loyal, some of which have played with me for 20 years!

Historically, most jazz artists have taken pop songs of their day, or of the previous day or decade, and turned them into jazz tunes. I kind of made that my goal, or one of my goals, besides trying to write modern jazz to a high standard.”

Gentleman, Stigers’ latest record which was released in April 2020, explores HEADLINER USA

what it means to be a good man in an era of political turmoil and social distancing, and offers a collection of wry yet hopeful songs about love, loss and elegant masculinity.

This year however marks the 30th anniversary of his debut album, and to toast the occasion, he has been busy working on another record that includes new versions of all his classic hits. All being well, Stigers and his band have got a string of European live dates on the horizon, starting from September 30 and encompassing Denmark, Germany, and London, UK. “We’ve done a version of I Wonder Why which is a track we’ve been doing for 20 years; this new version sounds

nothing like the original, as is the same with Never Saw A Miracle,” he reveals excitedly. “It will come out in February, but officially it will still be the 30th anniversary because that first album didn’t come out until ‘92 in Europe.

Once it gets going, I’m gonna be on a tour bus or aeroplane for the next three years straight!”

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MIMI BAY

HEADLINER USA

Right In The Feels

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EMERGING HEADLINER

Right In The Feels

MIMI BAY This summer, Swedish dream-pop innovator Mimi Bay dropped a lo-fi six-track EP called far from home – a release that features the Gothenburg-based singer-songwriter’s signature jazz-infused sonics and one which has catapulted her to the forefront of the genre.

For 20-year-old Bay, writing and recording music has always served as a coping mechanism; an escape from the trials and tribulations of everyday life, and one which she has immersed herself in from a very young age.

Like many creatives, the global pandemic provided her with the chance to hone her focus, and finish off musical projects that otherwise may not have seen the light of day.

Bay started sharing her music online throughout her mid-teens, but confesses that she never expected her following to explode in the way that it has. Her YouTube channel, Hi I’m Mimi, which currently has a

quarter of a million subscribers and counting, resonated quickly with young audiences, while her music has now racked up over 20 million total streams on Spotify. It was these same loyal fans who helped her choose which songs to include on her 2019 vinyl pressed triple-single daydreams.

“I’ve always been writing music, and I initially started doing YouTube out of boredom – I guess I just wanted to have a creative outlet,” she recalls.

“And so I just kind of merged those two worlds. I never expected it to be something people would connect with, or that they would bring into their lives.”

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Right In The Feels

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Bay reveals to Headliner that her favorite songs are those that make her feel melancholic (as she lets out a resounding sigh).

“I really like things that make me feel emotional, but not necessarily in a sad way,” she says. “Stuff that just brings me into my feels; I just kind of sit there and float away.”

While Bay cites artists such as Frank Ocean, The Beatles and Nick Drake as some of her most inspiring, along with (Sandy) Alex G’s Trick album, she admits that she often has a hard time finding new music due to being entirely absorbed in her own creative process.

Bay’s sound is one that’s full of dreamy, mellow vibes and catchy hooks, and one that she’s developed significantly since her early SoundCloud days.

“I’ve just learned how to use Logic, and feel like I’ve evolved my musical ability by getting better at producing,” she shares. “When I learn something new, I’ll tend to use that for a while, and then I move on, whether that be to a new synth or chord progression or something else. I feel like things are constantly moving.

“I’m obsessed with the feeling of songs, and what a song makes me feel personally. It usually starts with finding the right feeling from some chords, or a drum loop or sound. I love arpeggios, and use them in my music all the time.

I’ll just try out a lot of different melodies, and as I get settled, start looking at what I can do vocally. And then I just kind of add on from that – bringing in some guitar or some crazy synth sounds – but it always starts with the feeling that I get from the chords.”

Bay’s beautifully ethereal EP far from home chronicles a particular period of her life; outgrowing her bedroom and exploring what it’s like no longer living at home with family.

HEADLINER USA

“I guess the thing that connects all of these songs is this feeling of wanting to belong somewhere,” she ponders.

“I took inspiration from when I was 16 and I moved out for the first time, searching for where I would truly fit in and belong. It’s about capturing the feeling from that period of time when I was doing a bit of soul searching.”

Headliner proceeds to quiz Bay about her favorite track on the record.

“It has to be between b the same or all 4 nothing, I can’t really decide,” she responds in honesty. “I also really like break because it’s one of those little instrumentals that I did back in 2019, and it kind of means a lot to me. It’s also one that’s super fun to play live.”

And talking of playing live, Bay goes on to reflect on her immense performance at SXSW Online earlier this year: “South by Southwest was very fun in terms of getting some live experience out of this year, during that time when everything was really shut down,” she remembers fondly. “It was fun because I had just written no doubt, so we took that and turned it into a live performance that we premiered at the festival. It was also great to get that input from my drummer and my bass guy, and creatively work out how we’re gonna perform the rest of these songs live. So that was cool.”

Bay excitedly lets on that she’s been busy making more music ever since she finished far from home, and it’s clear that she’s very much looking forward to working on her next project. With some new tracks already in the bag, hopefully we’ll see another big release from the incredibly talented broody bedroom-pop star this fall…

INSTA: @HIIMMIMIB

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Photographer: Ida Blom

EMERGING HEADLINER

“I TOOK INSPIRATION FROM WHEN I WAS 16 AND I MOVED OUT FOR THE FIRST TIME, SEARCHING FOR WHERE I WOULD TRULY FIT IN AND BELONG.”

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BOBBY BALOW

HEADLINER USA

That’s Science

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THAT’S SCIENCE

BOBBY BALOW Mix and mastering engineer Bobby Balow from Raytown Productions talks to Headliner about his mission to impart valuable tips and tricks to like-minded creatives through video tutorials, why he always wants to help others create better sounding music, and why oeksound soothe2 has become one of his ‘Desert Island’ plugins.

“One of the first things that I pivoted towards during the pandemic was doing more tutorial work, helping other creatives make their music sound better,” Balow begins as he joins Headliner on a Zoom call from his studio based out of the Washington D.C. area. “I did some photography stuff, and was playing with the idea of doing video tutorials.

And obviously, I love the music stuff, so I kind of blended the two passions and started doing tutorials. What was shocking to me was, when you share your passions with people, it’s very easy to get them interested in what you’re doing, and then they want to work with you. That alone has grown my business a ton.”

What’s rather interesting is that Balow is not actually an audio engineer full-time; he makes his living as a PhD chemist.

“There’s not too many of us who have the logical science mind as well as the creative art kind of mind,” he says.

“But I think it gives me a more unique perspective on music, and that’s why I’m so interested in audio technology and plugin design etc. because it satisfies both parts of my brain.”

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“IT’S ABOUT HAVING THE RIGHT GOAL AND THE RIGHT VISION, AND REALLY UNDERSTANDING YOUR TOOLS.”

So where did the inspiration to start the blog and video tutorials come from?

“The blog was an attempt to try to build credibility and help people,” Balow responds. “It was very slow for a long time, but once I started coupling that with YouTube, and developing the video tutorials, I could literally take viewers inside a session and show them how to mix vocals and make their music sound good, even if they don’t have a good interface or microphone.”

Typically, Balow provides tips and tricks to those who may have already bought some basic gear and are learning how to use it, but are starting to hit some roadblocks with their mixes. His audience, he says, seems to be divided into two camps, one of which being hip-hop, rap and EDM, and the other being more aggressive rock and heavy metal. The common denominator being that these genres are all very beat-driven.

In the last two years, he has been toying with the idea of transitioning completely to an in-the-box workflow:

only pops in to take care of things when it gets unruly, and then gets out of the way.

“It feels more fun and exciting to mix by turning knobs, but at the same time, I think in terms of quality, you’re just getting maybe a slightly different flavor out of plugins,” he shares. “It’s about having the right goal and the right vision, and really understanding your tools.”

Balow also uses soothe during mastering to target and clean up any type of ringing or harshness, especially in a big song that builds up into a chorus with lots of different elements.

Speaking of tools, Balow reveals that he is a big user of oeksound’s soothe2 and spiff plugins, which “do things that I can’t do by any other means. Soothe particularly; if I had to pick one plugin to take with me to a desert island, it would be that one.

“Mainly I use it for vocals, especially now with the direction of pop music getting really airy and bright,” he adds.

“It helps to take just a little bit of the edge off the sibilant vocals. You can think of it as an intelligent de-esser, so it

“With spiff on the other hand, it can intelligently boost specific frequencies of interest that you want to enhance,” he explains. “On the mastering side for example, let’s say the drums feel a little lifeless, because maybe someone limited or clipped the audio too much – I can very easily target a kick or a snare so that it adds a lot of snap without making the vocals sibilant or bright, because it only goes in when there’s that attack of the snare.”

Off the back of his video tutorials doing so well, Balow reveals that he’s started developing his very own mastering course: “That’s something I’ve been working on actively over the last three or four months, and now we’re in the final stages,” he tells Headliner excitedly.

“Within the next few weeks we’ll be seeing my first full intensive mastering course roll out for people with home studios. They’re tired of their songs sounding like demos, and I think this is gonna help a lot of people.”

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GOO GOO DOLLS

A Rare Breed

goo goo dolls A RARE BREED

Headliner finds Goo Goo Dolls’ creative driving force and songwriting duo, Robby Takac and John Rzeznik in a contemplative mood when we reach them over separate calls to discuss their new rarities collection.

Fittingly entitled Rarities and spanning the first 12 of the band’s 30 years (and counting) career, this new compilation is a veritable treasure trove for fans of the band, featuring previously unheard studio outtakes, covers and live performances from 1995-2007. It is not Rarities alone, however, that has prompted the pair to take a rare backwards glance at their time together. Currently working on a new studio record, Takac and Rzeznik have taken something of an artistic sojourn, both literal and figurative, to the place where it all began for them more than three decades ago…

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Photographer: Ed Gregory & Dan Cooper

COVER STORY 29

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Photographer: Ed Gregory & Dan Cooper

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COVER STORY

Headliner is joined first by bassist and vocalist Takac, who calls us from the studio in which the band wrote and recorded some of their earliest material. Located in the Buffalo woods, he describes it as an idyllic retreat for the band, who have decided to return to their roots for what will be their next album, eschewing the trappings of the city to focus solely on making music and recapturing some of the spirit that shaped their formative recordings.

“It’s been cool, but I’ve never felt more like a city boy in my life,” Takac laughs with an easy charm, his voice possessed of the kind of weathered, road-worn drawl that only 30 years of rock stardom can provide. “We were sleeping in an old church, the walls were full of interesting things that made noise during the night, there were some animals mangled by hawks left on our porch, deer running through the yard... It was amazing but our band hasn’t been sequestered like that, doing nothing but making a record, for an awful long time. It brings you back to that place when you’re just getting started, when we had nothing else going on. All we had was making music. It’s been decades since then and our lives have progressed in a lot of ways, so it’s great to alleviate as much of the distraction as you can.”

Vocalist and guitarist, Rzeznik, concurs on the subject when Headliner speaks to him a few days later. Like his cohort, his is a voice that bears the excesses of a three-decade career, albeit with a tone that floats somewhere between dreamy and meditative.

“We went back to the original process,” he explains, elaborating on the decision to adopt a more traditional approach in the studio.

“It was really fun and that is how you get to the core of a song, I truly

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“WHEN YOU BRING A PIECE OF MUSIC INTO A BUNCH OF GUYS, YOU’RE SHARING A REALLY VULNERABLE MOMENT WITH THOSE PEOPLE.” believe that. That said, it’s a bigger pain in the ass than sitting around in these nice, tight writing sessions, but the music has to have some grease – I call it grease – on it, and it has to have some soul to it. You have to get to the heart of what you’re doing. When you bring a piece of music into a bunch of guys, you’re sharing a really vulnerable moment with those people; I’m scanning the room looking for turned up lips and rolling eyes. But it’s really fun, getting the feedback from the other guys, or hearing a mistake and going, ‘Robby, what the hell did you just play? That was awesome’!”

Rzeznik also offers some insight into the technical crossover of old and new methods that underpins the band’s upcoming material.

“The recording process itself was a hybrid of digital and analog, but mostly analog,” he continues. ”I wanted to record the album in analog, not because it sounds so much better than digital – which it does, but let’s not go down that rabbit hole! – but because I wanted to limit the number of tracks that we had. I wanted to be able to make decisions. The biggest thing when we started recording digitally was going from having 48 tracks or 24 tracks to having 125 or 300 tracks, so you get these songs that are dense bricks of music and they lack nuance. I may have 17 guitar parts that I think are all really cool but we have to get rid of 15 of them. That loaned itself to a much more open-sounding record. There is a dynamic and breath on the album, which is exciting to me.”

HEADLINERMAGAZINE.NET

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GOO GOO DOLLS

A Rare Breed

This period of reflection, both in regard to the band’s creative process and the decision to release a rarities compilation, was provoked in part by the pandemic. For a band as busy as Goo Goo Dolls, with 13 studio albums to their name and a regular fixture on the live circuit, the past 18 months have put their working lives on hold for an unusually lengthy period. So when Rzeznik happened upon a bundle of lost recordings, it offered a new project to embark on and provided the opportunity to keep their fans sated with a new release.

For Takac, the Rarities project presented a way of staying occupied during the uncertainty of lockdown.

“It’s been a weird year for everyone, especially people in bands, because our whole existence is shared with this huge group of people,” he says. “And after doing it for so many years, you don’t take it for granted, but you don’t realize what an important part of your life that is. We and the label had a lot of time to reflect on what was going on. We don’t often have time to dig through old boxes of pictures and stuff and Warner Bros was going through their vaults at the time and had a significant amount of things... and there is way more where this came from. So, we felt it was a good time to share some of what we had collected over the years.

It was just good to be busy, and a lot of people didn’t have the luxury of staying busy during this time.

Photographer: Ed Gregory & Dan Cooper

“We used to have these things called DAT recordings and we found a closet full of them, but we had nothing to play them on,” Rzeznik recalls. “So I went on eBay, bought a DAT machine and gave it to my manager. He started going through all these old recordings of us, alternate versions of things, live things, and he said there was a lot of interesting stuff. He gave it to me and I was like, ‘this is pretty cool’.

There’s a lot of rough stuff on there, which I like. And during the pandemic, for full disclosure, we just wanted to keep

putting things out there as much as we could. It was a chance to have a look at a really fun period for this band.”

HEADLINER USA

COVER STORY

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“As for the selection process, we just reached in, closed our eyes and grabbed a handful. There are so many things we did as special oneoffs, and I think that era is one that a lot of people discovered us during. It was a classic period of the band.”

While not typically a band predisposed to nostalgic reminiscence, Takac did take pleasure in rediscovering not just some of the music they were making, but also the wildly different headspace they were in at the time.

“A lot of the recordings were from radio station appearances, so we could probably do a 40-record box set of acoustics versions of Slide because we have so many,” he laughs. “That was one of the things I was amazed by – how much effort we put into breaking those records. You can hear us singing at 6am on some of them and you can tell we were up all night, because we were throwing down hard back then! We’re teetotallers these days, so it brought back memories of some of those all-nighters that ended up at radio sessions in the mornings.

Looking through that vault was a lot of fun. It was a cool walk through time. We don’t do a lot of that with this group, we always move forward and try to worry about what’s next.

Maybe we’re superstitious about looking back.”

HEADLINERMAGAZINE.NET

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GOO GOO DOLLS

A Rare Breed

In each of Headliner’s conversations with Takac and Rzeznik, talk turns naturally to the vast, incalculable changes that have altered the music industry over the course of their career. While they could scarcely have predicted the incredible success they would go on to achieve when they first started out, the digital revolution that continues to shape and reshape the business would arguably have been even more difficult to foresee.

“The internet and the availability of digital services changed everything, I don’t think any of us could have foreseen this,” Takac says. “I’m sitting in the exact same space where we made our first album, and just to think about the difference… the studio still operates, but to think about the process when we were kids. If we were lucky, we sold 10,000 copies of that first album, but it took so much to make that record happen, months of getting it together and manufacturing and finding a label. Now these kids come in here, they record a song, and they already have the artwork, they mix it that night and they are uploading it for distribution on the way out of the door. I never thought I’d be having that conversation 30 years ago. It’s an unrecognizable business, but it’s become exciting again.

“There will always be the mainstream of music, and that is awesome because for some people that’s all they need. But now you can find what you want. Bands I’ve never heard of before are selling out the L.A. Forum.

That wouldn’t have happened 20 years ago. Now you can find the music you want and stay away from what you don’t want. It’s an exciting time right now. For a band like us, our fans know where we are. The business is about to make another huge change with NFTs… It feels like a direct outreach to your fanbase and it will all be based on a purchase rather than social media. It just makes it easier.”

As for how the band has managed to navigate such immense change and maintain their success, the pair point to hard work and good management HEADLINER USA

from the people they surrounded themselves with.

“I didn’t think we were going to last long,” states Rzeznik. “Especially after we had one song that was a hit. For me, having one hit song was like hitting the slot machine, then everyone applauded and said ‘do it again’! And we just kept going and going, that was the key thing.

We didn’t get a chance to really celebrate our big success because our manager told us to keep our heads down and that was when the real work started. With that in mind, Robby and I cut loose some dead weight and just got on with our career and really tried to learn and listen to everything and put out as much material as possible.”

“We were lucky enough to find people early on who pointed us in a good direction; we were able to keep the vibe we were trying to put out there,” Takac notes. “We’ve formed a huge community of people and they participate and connect with each other. On the other side, you’re not making money selling records anymore so you have to figure out a way to deal with that. Luckily people come to see us play because we have a lot of songs people want to hear, so we’re able to make some money. It’s not that way for some bands and that sucks, but we’ve been able to shift our business model that way. We do a lot more touring – obviously not over the last year. You just make it work.”

For now, Takac and Rzeznik are relishing the return of some form of normality to their world. With the release of Rarities and a new studio album in the offing, as well as the

gradual return of live music, there will be plenty to keep them busy over the coming months.

“We’re going to start a full tour at the beginning of June 2022, but we’re doing a show here and there,” Rzeznik says as we bid our farewells.

“Things are starting to open up. We skipped the last summer touring and this summer we’re obviously not out – to take two years out in a row for this band is crazy. We’ve never done that.

Mostly because we’re masochists! But we’ll do 110-120 shows a year, and I think that’s the reason we’ve had some longevity.

“But it’s nice to have the chance to miss someone. I sat up in the woods for two and a half months with Robby and the band and by the eighth week I was excited to get away from them so I could miss them again!”

You can listen to our conversation with Takac in full at Headliner Radio.

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FERRY CORSTEN

Bringing It Home

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FERRY CORSTEN Hailing from Rotterdam, The Netherlands, Ferry Corsten’s illustrious career as a DJ, record producer and remixer has seen him work with artists including The Killers, Justin Bieber, Moby, Faithless,

HEADLINER USA

Duran Duran and Nelly Furtado.

Here, he explains the reasons for his mysterious aliases, explains how he approaches a track, and reveals his top production tips.

PRODUCER

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You create music under the aliases System F, Gouryella (with Tiësto), Moonman, FERR, and others; why is this?

FC: That was basically a product of the times, because then it was simply not cool as a Dutch person to release something under your own name, so I would come up with a different name to get around that. Then I started my own [Flashover Recordings] imprint, and I was producing music at such a high rate that I was just producing too much for one label to release, because they would plan in one release, and I would already come up with two others. So I would come up with different names for different labels so I could put my music out everywhere! Then I decided to just skip all that and focus solely on ‘Ferry Corsten’, which is definitely ‘my main character’, but the System F and Gouryella aliases became such favorites for that particular sound with the fans that that I decided to bring Gouryella back after a pause of about 14 years. So once a year, I release a track under the Gouryella alias as well.

“I WOULD COME UP WITH DIFFERENT NAMES FOR DIFFERENT LABELS SO I COULD PUT MY MUSIC OUT EVERYWHERE!”

You have produced and remixed for a number of high profile artists spanning completely different genres; how do you approach each track?

FC: I try to find the common ‘thing’ that could work with their original, but that could also work for my genre.

Besides the song, I’m always very focused on a melodic hook – that’s a signature thing about my sound.

I have a good listen to the original and will listen out for something that they’ve used; it could be a guitar lick, or a synthesizer riff that I could amplify and build my remix around. My tracks definitely have the spirit of the original, which I feel the word ‘remix’ suggests, because sometimes you hear a remix and it’s a completely different track – there’s nothing of the original there that you can even remotely recognize.

I don’t think that’s a remix, that’s more like a remake. I always want to have a wink to the original in terms of melodies, with certain elements really amplified. Once someone approached me for a remix and the track simply didn’t resonate with me,

so I said, ‘I don’t think I can do the best job because I don’t really feel anything here’. I didn’t do the remix just for the sake of doing the remix; I don’t think that’s the best choice for the song.

HEADLINERMAGAZINE.NET

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FERRY CORSTEN

Bringing It Home

Why is Steinberg’s Cubase your DAW of choice?

How does Cubase help get your ideas from your head to the computer when working on EDM music?

FC: I’ve noticed that it works best when you just jam in the studio and you have your idea; you lay down a big chunk – and it’s not fine tuned at all – but the basic idea is there.

Pretty much the structure of the song or the track is there and then once you’re happy with that, you dive into the fine tuning. The danger with all the possibilities nowadays is that you get stranded along the way. If you start diving in too early you can lose your drive, and you lose the

momentum in the DAW. I’ve been there a few times where I’ve been editing away, playing with all these different effects and crazy stuff, and by the time you think, ‘oh yeah, I was working on this track!’ and you get back to it, that whole drive is gone.

When that happens, the basic idea that you had that was feeding your enthusiasm has faded away, and it’s much harder to finish the track with the same sort of oomph that it had in its basic form. I really learned my lesson there. Now with Cubase, I always say, ‘lay it down, as rough as it is’, like a diamond in the rough, and I polish it after.

FERRYCORSTEN.COM STEINBERG.NET

Photographer: Peter Baas

FC: I’ve used it ever since I started – that’s how I learned to produce.

Then I tried a different DAW for about two or three weeks, and I was about to throw my computer out of the window! I ran back to Cubase, and I was glad I did – I never went back! It’s my main DAW and I pretty much do everything on Cubase.

When I switched back, Cubase VST had just come out, which was way better in terms of audio editing. I felt like all of a sudden they came back with a version that had everything that I missed before. I couldn’t get my head around the other DAW at the time, so I knew I just had to go

home! It has the audio editing part covered; it’s just phenomenal.

HEADLINER USA

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See what’s possible at dbaudio.com/club

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LESLIE GASTON-BIRD

The Mix Messiah

THE MIX MESSIAH

HEADLINER USA

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ENGINEER

Former Governor-at-Large for the Audio Engineering Society, member of the Recording Academy, the Association of Motion Picture Sound and Motion Picture Sound Editors, former tenured Associate Professor and owner of Mix Messiah Productions – there’s not much that re-recording mixer and sound editor Leslie Gaston-Bird hasn’t done. Headliner catches up with the multi-talented audio engineer to talk about what inspired her to write the book Women in Audio, and what she looks for in studio monitors.

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“my goal is to join the Dolby Atmos certification process and start delivering courses to women and underrepresented groups.”

How did you start Mix Messiah Productions (specializing in 5.1 surround mixing)?

LGB: I was sitting in a television production class in college, and someone thought I said ‘mix messiah’, and we had a laugh. And I thought to myself, ‘yeeeeeah, mix messiah!’

The first things that I was doing were little projects, then I got into notation and scoring until I made my Limited Liability Company in 2014. Then I started freelancing with some clients who were at the first post house where I worked.

What changes have you seen in technology over the years that have affected the way you work?

LGB: I left working in radio in 2002 so I could get my master’s degree, and that’s when I started working at Post Modern restoring audio for classic film titles. Sony was re-releasing them on DVD and they wanted them to sound clean. We wanted to get the tape hiss down, but back then we were using the Cedar Cambridge system – this big tank of a thing! This was not a plugin, it was a four-rack space tank with three cards: one for de-noise, one for de-crackle and one for de-click – painstaking! Now I have the Dolby Atmos Production Suite on my computer, and my goal is to join the Dolby Atmos

certification process and start delivering courses to women and underrepresented groups who want to get into technology.

What inspired you to write the book Women In Audio?

LGB: When I worked at NPR, 50% of our staff were women. We had 40 techs, and 20 were women, and 20 were people of color. When I moved to Colorado, I was the only woman I knew doing audio at the time, and the only person of color. So I’m like, ‘okay, there seems to be a dearth of representation here. What is going on?’ And that question, ‘what is going on?’ has been answered in various ways over the years: why aren’t there more women, right?

I came across this feminist album called Virgo Rising that came out in the ‘70s, and I emailed the engineer for that album, and her name was Joan Lowe. She sent me an email detailing how they recorded this

all-woman performed, produced, released and engineered album, and then it occurred to me that this is not a research paper, this is a living history document. This is history that would have vanished, and it put a fire under me, so I started finding other stories. I think I was really naive to think that I was just going to write a book on ‘women in audio’ – it’s not that basic or simple.

You used Genelec monitors at NPR and at the University of Colorado; why are you planning on investing in them for your own studio?

LGB: I’m a Genelec fan! My first encounter with Genelec was at NPR when we moved to Massachusetts Avenue in Washington D.C. and we had a couple studios with Genelecs installed. The first time I heard them, Noah Adams’ voice was playing over the loudspeakers, and I could swear he was in the room – it was like he was there!

HEADLINERMAGAZINE.NET

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LESLIE GASTON-BIRD

The Mix Messiah

And I had a trained ear as an audio engineer. I wanted to know, ‘what the hell are those speakers?’ And they were the Genelecs, so I was in love with them from the first time I heard them. At the University of Colorado Denver (UCD) we had the 1031As, and we did work for Dolby doing a critical listening paper which was a comparison of three multi channel codecs, and we used the 1031As in that listening test. Now I attend the University of Surrey, and they have a 22.2 system that’s all Genelecs and they used the GLM kit to calibrate them. So my goal for my studio HEADLINER USA

is to get a 7.1.4 system with GLM calibration.

When I go to audition the Genelecs that I’m going to buy – the 8340As, the 8330As and the 7370A subwoofer – the two pieces of critical material that I will use are Donald Fagen’s album Morph the Cat and an album called The Flat Earth by Thomas Dolby. The reason I use The Flat Earth is because there’s this really high bit that’s almost like a digital artefact that I can hear right as the CD starts, and I can’t hear it on every system that I play it on. So I’m looking for a system

that can reproduce that really high frequency. On Morph the Cat, the way the instruments come together on the album is just freakin’ tight! When I solo between the different channels on that album, you can hear Donald Fagen’s voice, you can hear his breath, and it’s also got this kick-ass bass and drum thing going on there. Visually, speakers can be pretty, or they can be ugly, but what do they sound like? So that would be my method: bring some critical material, listen, and see what grabs me!

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BILLIE EILISH

Happier Than Ever

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Photographer: Kelia Anne Maccluskey

BILLIE EILISH

HEADLINER USA

MUSIC PRODUCTION

Billie Eilish’s second “studio” album, Happier Than Ever, was one of the most anticipated albums of the summer. Headliner draws attention to the word ‘studio’ there because famously, Eilish’s chart topping debut, When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go? was not recorded and produced in a studio at all – but entirely in her brother Finneas O’Connell’s bedroom in their family home in Highland Park, Los Angeles – with it revealing a seismic shift in the way commercially successful music can be made without all the bells and whistles.

Perhaps a few years ago the average music-listener would not have even been aware of the term “bedroom producer”, however now the brother-sister duo’s success has thrust the term firmly into the mainstream for all to see.

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“There’s such a private feeling to what we’re doing because we’re not at a recording studio.” ~ Finneas

The Finneas-produced When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go? dominated the charts in various countries in its first week of release, and in three months it had sold more than 1.3 million copies in the US, going on to become one of the bestselling albums of 2019.

And that’s not mentioning the Grammys – the album picked up six in total at the 62nd awards, including the much coveted ‘big four’ – Album of the Year, Song of the Year, Record of the Year, and Best New Artist, while Finneas took home Producer of the Year, Non-Classical for his efforts.

Notably, while picking up the Grammy for Song Of The Year for Bad Guy, Finneas dedicated the award to “all the kids making music in your bedroom”.

Clearly, a professional studio kitted out with state-of-the-art gear was no longer necessary in order to produce a hit record. Finneas

demonstrated that armed with a laptop, an acute skill, and free from expensive studio rental costs, the sky was the limit.

Early on, Finneas highlighted his preference for bedroom recording in a Tweet: “People act like recording Billie’s album in my bedroom was difficult but in reality, every time I’m in a fancy a-- studio it takes them a f---ing hour to get the aux cord working”.

in Apple TV +’s The World’s A Little Blurry documentary, where we see Finneas’ modest set up where he has everything programmed to react to everything as fast as he can think.

Capturing the vocals turned out to be surprisingly simple: Finneas would pass a mic to his sister, and she recorded almost every vocal for the first album sitting on his bed with her legs crossed.

Finneas and Eilish gave fans a glimpse into that very bedroom where the first album was recorded HEADLINERMAGAZINE.NET

BILLIE EILISH

Happier Than Ever

Photographer: Kelia Anne Maccluskey

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“There’s such a private feeling to what we’re doing because we’re not at a recording studio where different people are there every day; it’s our house and it’s where we live,” he explained.

Finneas handed off the first album’s songs (pre-compressed and prepanned) to mixer Rob Kinelski and mastering engineer John Greenham to make things more balanced due to the bedroom recordings having too much bass.

HEADLINER USA

For Eilish’s debut album, Finneas used Logic Pro X, a Universal Audio Apollo 8 interface and a pair of Yamaha HS5 studio monitors with an H8S subwoofer. The producer also previously revealed that he used Logic Pro X’s Vocal Transformer plugin on Bad Guy to make what he calls “the rattlesnake vocal” sound “crazy and unique”.

In an interview with Pro Sound Network, Finneas revealed that when he started to make music, “I thought

I had to pay a bunch of people to do all my things professionally and that would be the only way I would ever have any success. It’s really important for kids to not think that there’s something intangible and out of reach for them. The truth is that you just have to make a song that people like.”

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Photographer: Kelia Anne Maccluskey

MUSIC PRODUCTION

A now 23-year-old Finneas no longer lives in the family home, and has set up a similar recording space at his new house in the basement, which is where the 16-track Happier Than Ever was recorded during 2020 and 2021 – reportedly with no contribution from any other producers. “It’s literally me and Finneas and no one else,” said Eilish. “No one has a say anymore.”

Eilish has spoken openly about finding the recording process a lot less stressful this time around, and has said that despite what the title suggests, “almost none of the songs on this album are joyful” – which a quick listen will swiftly confirm, the album seeing Eilish grappling with fame, body-shaming, stalkers, abusive older men, toxic breakups, NDAs and death.

The siblings stuck to a loose schedule (suggested by their mother) when recording the new record, committing to time in the studio every Monday, Wednesday and Thursday during the pandemic.

It is important to Eilish that she is known for more than one sound, which is evidenced on Happier Than Ever by the mixture of her warbled, jazzy tones and signature sulky vocals on anything leaning towards more obvious ‘chart-friendly’ hits, which aren’t as easy to pick out this time around.

“Anytime I hear somebody say, ‘Oh, your songs sound the same,’ it gets me,” she said in a recent interview.

“That’s one thing I really try hard to not do.”

Happier Than Ever was always destined to be another record breaking bedroom-produced record. In the lead up to release day, Apple announced that the record claimed more than 1.28 million pre-adds to users’ libraries – the most in Apple Music history to date – while it swiftly debuted atop the Billboard 200 as Eilish’s second number one album in the US, and effortlessly topped the charts in 20 other countries.

BILLIEEILISH.COM

In an interview with Vevo, Eilish shared that she wanted to create a timeless record this time around, and was inspired by jazz singers such as Julie London, Peggy Lee and Frank Sinatra, also revealing that the songs on Happier Than Ever are “all over the place and very versatile, different to one another, but also very cohesive”.

HEADLINERMAGAZINE.NET

Symphony In The Shell

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HEADLINER USA

LIVE SOUND

A visually stunning new outdoor concert hall sounds equally striking thanks to a large and aesthetically designed L-Acoustics K2 system that envelops and immerses the audience...

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Credit: San Diego Symphony

The $85 million Rady Shell at Jacobs Park, the brand new outdoor home of the San Diego Symphony, is an architectural wonder on the edge of San Diego Bay and in the heart of the city’s downtown.

Designed to complement the sails of the nearby San Diego Convention Center, the concert shell is wrapped in a translucent flexible material that covers a generous 13,000-squarefoot performance space for accommodating the full orchestra and guest artists. Depending on the event, audience capacities and setups are able to vary widely, from intimate two- and four-person table seating arrangements to standing crowds of up to 10,000.

As incredible as it looks, though, ‘The Shell,’ as it has come to be known, also sounds fantastic. This is thanks to an immersive L-Acoustics PA system designed in Soundvision by François “Frankie” Desjardins of Solotech.

Working in tandem with sound consultant Shawn Murphy, Solotech integrated the venue’s full AVL system.

“It does look as good as it sounds,” says Solotech business development manager and senior engineer Aaron Beck. “The white exterior wrapping material is a kind of plastic cloth and the interior is covered with a white scrim material. L-Acoustics was able to provide an entire K2 system in white, as well, to match it. It’s only the second one like it; the other is the Hollywood Bowl. The way it all works together visually is quite wonderful.”

The system comprises two main arrays of 16 L-Acoustics K2 per side, flanked by two hangs of eight cardioid-configured KS28 subs per side and a center array

of nine K2. Another 16 KS28, also in cardioid configuration, are located underneath the stage.

In addition, six towers comprise the surround elements of the 7.1-type system design: two side-surround towers per side (for a total of four) hold four A15 Focus speakers each, with the rearmost tower on each side also holding six Kara II with mechanically adjustable HF-steering fins. Two rear-surround towers are fitted with four Kiva II and two SB15m subs each.

The system is powered by two dozen LA12X amplified controllers, with system processing by L-Acoustics’ LA Network Manager.

While it’s designed to project the orchestra across the wide span of the open-air venue, this powerful PA system will also offer Rady Shell

and the San Diego Symphony a highly flexible venue that will easily accommodate a wide range of visiting artists.

It will also give the orchestra the impact it desires when performing live scores from movies shown at the park. Beck says the immersive design of the system reflects the growing demand by touring artists for that type of sound – and the L-Acoustics system at Rady Shell does just that – very costeffectively.

“One way we’re achieving that sense of immersion is by taking some of the reverb returns from the front-ofhouse console and sending them to the surround speakers, which really enhances the immersive effect,” he explains.

HEADLINERMAGAZINE.NET

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Symphony In The Shell

Credit: San Diego Symphony

Beck also notes that the large number of subwoofers has less to do with impact than with directionality, always a difficult goal to achieve with low frequencies.

“It’s not so much about output as it is about control of the low frequencies,” he says. “There are very strict noisecontrol measures in place here and on nearby Coronado Island, and the KS28 subs in the cardioid configuration give us tremendous ability to steer that energy where we want it to be and away from where we don’t want it.”

The same, he says, goes for the K2 Panflex horizontal steering technology, which combines mechanically adjustable fins with DSP algorithms effective from 300 Hz. “It’s all about putting the sound on the seats and keeping it from escaping the venue,” Beck adds. “K2 gives us not only excellent sound quality but also the tools we need to stay in compliance with local noise ordinances.

Soundvision was incredibly helpful for that.”

Finally, says Beck, K2 and the other speakers that make up the system HEADLINER USA

are all remarkably robust, able to withstand the kind of weather they will face since they’re right next to the ocean.

“Having the venue be so close to saltwater can be pretty harsh on sound components, and the temperature swings here can also be dramatic at times,” he says. “But

the L-Acoustics speakers handle that very, very well. Combine that with how rider-friendly they are, and you easily see how they were the perfect choice for this project.”

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FIONA CRUICKSHANK

Supernova Sounds

Photographer: Will Evans

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ENGINEER

Engineer, producer and mixer Fiona Cruickshank’s recent TV and film credits include Netflix’s Sex Education and the movie Supernova, the latter starring Colin Firth and Stanley Tucci. She explains how she brought a key sense of intimacy to Supernova’s film score using a vintage Neve console.

Cruickshank worked in-house at London’s prestigious AIR Studios for over 11 years before she joined AIR Management in 2018, by which time she’d already been involved with several high-profile film and TV scores, classical recordings and pop mixing projects, swiftly becoming a sought-after engineer among composers, artists, producers and musicians alike. But it’s not just being a go-to person when it comes to the tech that has secured Cruickshank a plethora of work over the years.

“There’s a certain sort of personality side to it,” she begins, speaking to Headliner from a 5.1 mix room she

uses when she’s not working at AIR or The Church Studios. “What I really learnt at AIR is how to run a session and how to show your client that everything’s under control and that you’re taking a lot of the burden.

They’ve probably been working on this thing for months, and they finally got to the point where they get to record and mix it – they might have had no sleep – and they’re probably quite stressed. Just the fact that they can come to us, and then we’re like, ‘okay, we’ve got you now; we’re going to get this done, and we’re going to make it amazing’.

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FIONA CRUICKSHANK

Supernova Sounds

“We take a lot of that weight off them hopefully, and help them as a second pair of ears by taking that step back in seeing the bigger picture. You might be able to suggest things while you’re recording or on the mix, or try things out that they might not have heard anymore because they’re deep in it. That’s the sort of thing that I have learned about how to run a session: how to communicate effectively with musicians, producers or directors.”

A knack for inspiring this type of confidence in people has seen Cruickshank work with some of the world’s best engineers and producers on everything from film and TV scores, classical albums, to film music editing projects for high profile movies including Aladdin, The Grand Budapest Hotel, Beauty and the Beast and The Alienist.

A recent show Cruickshank worked on was the second season of Netflix’s Sex Education as the score mixer, which saw her work closely with the hit show’s composer, Oli Julian.

of using on a daily basis when she’s there. The 88R is the desk she finds herself using the most, but her all time favorite is the famous AIR Montserrat console.

“He called me up and asked me to get involved with the tracks. He was writing some stuff with Ezra Furman and they’d been recording together abroad, and they recorded a lot of stuff,” she recalls. “We were sent the stems to mix for the show, so that was my part of the process. Sex Education is so funny, and I like that it’s kind of weirdly timeless, yet modern in the ideas that it’s showing on TV; it’s doing things that we haven’t seen before that are breaking boundaries.”

“AIR has the 88R in the hall, which is 96 channels – and yet some people do run out!” she laughs. “The 88R has become a film score standard because of the flexibility of monitoring; we can put things on lots of different stems; when we’re recording scores we often have to record a live mix of what we’re listening to, so being able to bus to lots of different monitor stems is really useful.”

AIR is of course renowned for its enviable Neve console collection, which Cruickshank has the pleasure

She shares that for the Mary Poppins Returns score, the team at AIR had drums and percussion in one booth, double bass, guitars and separate vocals in other booths, and the orchestra in the main hall.

“We were able to put all those different things on separate monitor stems and then print a separate live mix for each thing, which meant that if we just needed to do another take with the orchestra, but not everyone else, we could play back the mix,” she explains. “We had all these separate mixes, so if we needed to edit down or play something to a vocalist that was working out their part for the next day, it was very useful.”

HEADLINER USA

ENGINEER

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Photographer: Lee Kirby

“THE 88R HAS BECOME A FILM SCORE STANDARD BECAUSE OF THE FLEXIBILITY OF MONITORING.”

HEADLINERMAGAZINE.NET

FIONA CRUICKSHANK

Supernova Sounds

Photographer: Sam Taylor

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When Cruickshank works in AIR’s Studio 1, you’ll find her on the legendary custom Neve console, complemented by an enviable array of classic outboard.

“In Studio 1, I’ve either assisted or recorded on really special, smaller, more indie scores, or bands and records,” she considers. “Whatever you’re recording through the custom Neve, whether it’s jazz, rock, or a lovely French film score, it just has its own warmth and personality, and it sounds amazing. A lot of great records have been done on that, as well as scores.”

Outside of AIR, Cruickshank can often be found working at The Church on their 72 channel vintage EMI Neve desk (the only one of its kind in London) with 1091 modules, or at Snap Recording Studios on their 1972 vintage Neve 5316 desk.

“The Church is a bit of a dream studio… I mean, Paul Epworth,” she trails off. “Can you imagine basically owning that desk and it being your own? I’m blown away! It’s just such a beautiful console and everything you put through it sounds gorgeous. But also, it’s just really satisfying to use – there’s something about the size of the knobs. The desk makes a big difference to

everything that I record in there, plus Neve desks are really intuitive.”

A recent project Cruickshank recorded on a Neve desk was the critically acclaimed 2020 film, Supernova starring Firth and Tucci, who play a couple embarking on a road trip as dementia starts to take hold of one of them. The EMI Neve desk at The Church was the only one that would do for Keaton Henson’s film score.

“I paired the EMI with quite a lot of valvey stuff to get a warm and intimate sound rather than too clean and classical,” she explains. “The idea of it was that you could hear every little movement of the bow on the strings, like you’re really sitting next to the players. There’s such an intimacy to the film, you’re part of their relationship, basically, and you’re on this journey that they go on. We wanted the music to reflect that and be really intimate, but also have the sound of that gorgeous room.

“Everything about it was the ideal place for this particular score – it was such a treat. They were really good at getting me involved quite early on; I saw the film without any music at the very start, so to see it all finished, it’s just so lovely,” she smiles.

AMS-NEVE.COM FIONACRUICKSHANK.CO.UK

HEADLINER USA

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JON BATISTE

HEADLINER USA

Soul Man

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SOUL MAN

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JON BATISTE Jon Batiste doesn’t read the comments under his YouTube music videos, but if he did happen to glance at a few under his new single, Freedom, he would see everything ranging from “YouTube recommended me this… I feel like I did something right in this life”, to “Jon, how many snazzy suits do you want? Jon Batiste: Yes.”

“I love that kind of stuff,” he laughs, speaking to Headliner in Manhattan, from where he’s naturally radiating a palpable sense of energy and positivity – “my spirit is feeling strong.

God has given me another day to live on this earth, and I’m making the most of it!”

Photographer: Justin French

He shares that he does sometimes go through his Instagram messages though.

“It is really a beautiful thing to be able to connect again, it’s just a beautiful world in that way. I feel like the frequency of love that we aim to put out with everything that I do, I feel that coming back from people, and I’m really humbled and grateful by that.”

One could imagine that being an Oscar and Golden Globe winner, musician, recording artist, author,

activist, and the bandleader and musical director of The Late Show With Stephen Colbert, that it could be very easy to slip into some not so humble traits – but he is nothing but modest. Headliner jokes that with all of his many achievements under his belt, surely he should be a much older man...

“Everybody has a purpose and a gift,” he says with sincerity. “Everybody has something that they do that nobody else can do. I’m just trying to do my thing, and I don’t think it makes me better, but it does make me unique. It makes me my own version of a human being that I think is contributing to other people’s lives.

I think we judge each other too much based upon that kind of achievement, and not based upon the quality of who we are as humans and what we provide to our family. That, to me, is the value.”

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JON BATISTE

Soul Man

Batiste is here to talk about his album, We Are – a new body of work that somehow sounds like a timeless soul classic, and one which represents a completely new sonic chapter for the Louisiana native. Rooted in catharsis, joy, freedom, contemplation and sensuality, We Are is a love letter to his southern roots and the heritage of black music, boasting guest appearances including Quincy Jones, PJ Morton, Mavis Staples, Zadie Smith, Trombone Shorty, St Augustine Marching 100, his father Michael Batiste and grandfather David Gauthier (Batiste was born into Louisiana’s legendarily musical Batiste family).

The aforementioned Freedom music video sees an impeccably dressed Batiste cutting loose in the streets of New Orleans – “like the Willy Wonka of New Orleans!” – all captured on an intense one-day shoot. Interpret the song as you will, however it took on a more powerful meaning for many due to its release date around Juneteenth.

“I think the track embodies the sort of spiritual and social and sexual revolution,” he considers. “It’s about freedom, and I think that’s exactly what I wanted a song like this to mean to people. The spirit and the meaning behind the song is meant to apply to those pursuits of freedom that make us more human.

The whole vision of this album is to show people that we’re never alone, we’re always together in all the different ways that we separate and divide each other. People are judged not based upon merit or the content of their character, but all these other aspects of things that are really a false construct that take us further away from humanity. I wanted to bring people back to that feeling of humanity, connection and community.”

We Are was recorded in New York, Los Angeles and New Orleans, melding inspiration from Batiste’s new home and new collaborators with that of the Batiste musical dynasty. You only have to talk to the man for a few minutes to get a sense of the amount of plates

he’s got spinning, so Headliner isn’t surprised to learn that the album was written and planned in about a week from his dressing room at The Late Show, and recorded in between sessions for Disney/Pixar’s 2020 film Soul, which saw Batiste’s music – and hands – incorporated into the animation about a teacher who dreams of being a jazz pianist.

His efforts (and those of Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross) were rewarded with a Golden Globe, BAFTA, and an Academy Award for Best Original Score.

“I have a lot of things going on,” he concedes, grinning. “It’s a busy life being Jon Batiste, and I’m thankful for it. I had a vision for this album and when it comes to me in that way, I feel compelled to capture it as soon as possible before it fades or I start to overthink it. So I set up a studio in my dressing room, but at the same time I’m recording this album I’m going into studios with my whole jazz orchestra and recording the soundtrack to Soul. I like that kind of creative flow. I think good things come out when one thing spills into the other.”

Photographer: Louis Browne

Batiste feels that his role as cocomposer for Soul was meant to be:

HEADLINER USA

“A jazz film about a New York musician, and he’s a piano player, a black American lead in a Pixar film… I was born for that role! It’s so far outside of the realm of what you consider ‘kids content’ in its themes, so I was so pleased to see that Pixar were down to make it be real jazz, and do some real heavy stuff. It was one of the most beautiful collaborations I’ve ever been a part of.”

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ARTIST

“MUSIC CANNOT BE REPRESSED, AND IT CANNOT BE DICTATED BY CONSTRUCTS OF GENRE AND CONSTRUCTS WITHIN OUR LIFE THAT MAKE PEOPLE FEEL THAT THEY HAVE TO SUBSCRIBE TO A CERTAIN WAY OF BEING.”

Batiste finished We Are smack in the middle of the first wave of the worldwide pandemic and volatile social unrest. The result is a body of work characterized by the consciousness of Marvin Gaye, the grounded optimism of Stevie Wonder, the iconoclasm of Thelonious Monk and the swagger of Mannie Fresh.

“We Are is a real arrival point,” he states. “Everything that’s happened before is of great value to me and has been a snapshot of the time. I’ve had

this kind of circuitous path; this is my eighth album, but it’s my first major label studio album. I think people will take away from this album the fact that music cannot be repressed, and it cannot be dictated by constructs of genre and constructs within our life that make people feel that they have to subscribe to a certain way of being.

It’s life music, it’s freedom music, it’s music that’s about my life. I know that my life has unique experiences, but it will connect with other people because we all, deep down, are

more alike than we are different. All these constructs of genre to me are just another form of the same stuff we see when we have the tribalism of race and all the different ways of marginalisation and the ways that we hold each other back. This music represents breaking free from that.”

JONBATISTE.COM

HEADLINERMAGAZINE.NET

BRANDON BLACKWELL

The Icing On The Cake

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BRANDON BLACKWELL HEADLINER USA

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“With Lizzo - I approach her show like it’s a party and she’s just the emcee.

Honestly, she’s one of my number one favorite vocalists that I get to mix for.

That microphone is always there in her face and you can hear her singing every single word, night after night.”

“I LOVE WORKING WITH NEW ARTISTS BECAUSE THEY’RE JUST SO HUNGRY.”

Naturally, Blackwell needs audio gear that he can rely on while touring with top acts. As the conversation turns to technology, he quickly reveals that his recently acquired JH Audio Jolenes are his new favorite pair of in-ear monitors: “I just feel like the Jolenes are the Roxannes, but with even more depth,” he says. “You get left-right, but you also get this forward and back, so when I’m mixing monitors, I can use reverb and other tricks to really place things in specific spaces, and my Jolenes have been great for that.

“And I don’t get ear fatigue at all; I can leave them in for hours and they always feel comfortable. It just feels like I’ve got a PA in my ears, and that’s how I go about mixing.”

Sound engineer and production manager Brandon Blackwell – who has toured with the likes of Lizzo, A$AP Rocky, Camila Cabello and more – reveals how he got his first big break in live sound, his approach when it comes to mixing vocals, and why he doesn’t leave the house without his JH Audio Jolenes.

Over the last few months, Blackwell has been tremendously busy freelancing for audio giants Clair Global and Eighth Day Sound, yet this didn’t stop Headliner prising him away from his mixing desk for a chat over Zoom recently…

“It’s a blessing to be honest,” Blackwell says of his recent activity. “I toured relentlessly for seven years, and then considered whether I wanted to go back out on the road ever again.

But just one gig made me realize I couldn’t let it go. The pandemic made me re-fall in love with my career, and has probably made me take it more seriously.”

Since completing his studies at Full Sail University in Florida, Blackwell has grabbed every opportunity by the horns; some of his early gigs saw him working on shows for the likes of NeYo and TLC. And when it comes to mixing – at front of house for example – the main core of his mix is based off of the original record, “because that’s what fans know,” he shares. “My approach to mixing is that the record is the cake.

The live elements are the icing, and then I just slot the vocals in there somewhere as decoration – not too loud, not too crazy.

Blackwell can barely contain his excitement at the prospect of going back out on tour with some new talent, along with some big artists who he is doing “try-outs” for very soon.

“I also take care of 24kGoldn who’s a new artist, and who I think is going to be massive in the next five years. It’s nice to watch him grow and we start rehearsals next week! I love working with new artists because they’re just so hungry; you kind of get to shape and mould them into who they’re going to be for the future.”

INSTA: @BRANDONBLACKWELL23 JHAUDIO.COM

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HERB MIDDLETON

HEADLINER USA

Medicinal Music

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PRODUCER

MEDICINAL MUSIC

HERB MIDDLETON The word ‘legendary’ is often tagged onto music producers a little too freely, but one man who is more than worthy of the title is Herb Middleton, a veteran of over 26 years in the music industry, multiple Grammy Award nominations, and a man who has worked with such lauded artists as The Notorious B.I.G, P Diddy, and Mary J. Blige.

Headliner caught up with the South Bronx-born producer about his career so far, and how Waves plugins have revolutionized his sound and workflow in the last few months.

“Producing actually started as a result of me being a musician,” Middleton says on his musical beginnings. “I was at a church in Brooklyn, and one of the head musicians was already a producer. His name was Loris Holland.”

Hill and Mariah Carey. “He ended up leaving, contacted me and basically took me under his wing. It was pretty amazing. He showed me the ropes on a production and some tips on songwriting. After that it just took off from there.”

Holland being something of a legend himself, who has worked with Lauryn HEADLINERMAGAZINE.NET

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HERB MIDDLETON

Medicinal Music

“I’M SOMEONE WHO BELIEVES EVERY ARTIST SHOULD HAVE THEIR OWN SOUND. SO WHEN I WORK WITH ARTISTS, IT’S ALMOST LIKE MENTORING.”

But when talking about breakthroughs, it doesn’t come much bigger than Sean Combs, aka P Diddy, aka Puff Daddy – at the time known as Puffy – calling your phone to request your services.

The world famous producer, rapper, record executive and entrepreneur was leaving Uptown Records to start Bad Boy Entertainment, and it was in 1993 that he and Middleton would work together on several projects. It was through this collaboration that would see Middleton work with Mary J. Blige and The Notorious B.I.G. “Yeah, his name then was Puffy,” Middleton says with an air of nostalgia.

“It was the beginning of what I feel was my most successful stint as a producer in the early ‘90s. I got to work with Biggie when he featured on one of Total’s biggest songs, Can’t You See. Then I got to work with Mary J. Blige right after her My Life record, which was a great experience.”

With all that said, it’s a fairly logical conclusion that Middleton has pretty high standards these days when it comes to who he works with – not only is he looking for talented artists, but it’s very important to him that they adhere to certain principles and want to release music of substance, rather than chasing a cheap hit.

HEADLINER USA

“At one point I chose to leave the mainstream,” he explains. “I’m someone who believes every artist should have their own sound. So when I work with artists, it’s almost like mentoring also, because I’ve seen that side of the music industry and the way it was going in terms of how record labels were treating me and others.”

Conversation then turns to Middleton’s new love affair with Waves plugins, which he started using in the latter part of last year. “They came in, we shook hands and they supplied me with these amazing plugins. There are so many of them! I love that there’s so many diversified plugins within the package that I have. And they are all easy to use.

Believe it or not, I’m not really a super technical guy. I work more by ear, and I find Waves perfect for my style. Some of my favorites are definitely the SSL plugins. Those are amazing. And the Butch Vig Vocals plugins with the pop vocals give you a nice fresh EQ without really having to do anything. Having this package, it’s like a toy store.

“I was using Waves when I worked with an artist called Marc Staggers, and our song hit the top of the soul charts in the UK! The plugins can make a regular instrument sound extraordinary. Everything is just

immaculate for a producer like myself.

As far as compression goes, I would definitely float down to the SSL plugin for compression and EQ actually, because they have the SSL channel where it gives you that analog kind of look – you have all your expands and your threshold buttons just like the old days. And the CLA vocals, I use that a lot. You can monitor your bass, treble and compression in that plugin. That’s amazing. It’s almost an internal EQ system right in the plugin. You have a delay, reverb and pitch right in there.”

It’s special to hear Middleton describing those incredible musical experiences from the early ‘90s, then fast forwarding to how he uses cutting edge technology to craft hits today. He is truly one of those rare musicians who expertly shifts and evolves within the changing landscape of his industry to keep that music pouring out.

HERBMIDDLETONMUSIC.COM WAVES.COM

Evolution Wireless Digital

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Bang For Your Buck

HEADLINER USA

POST PRODUCTION

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BANGFOR YOURBUCK Award-winning audio and post production house Bang Zoom!

Entertainment – noted for its highly original animation work – has integrated a Dolby Atmos immersive audio system and Focusrite’s RedNet HD32R interface into a seamless workflow.

If you’ve seen cutting-edge animated series, films and other media in recent years, there was a good chance they had their audio post-production done at Bang Zoom! Entertainment.

The Burbank, CA post facility, which has earned two Daytime Emmy Awards for Outstanding Sound Mixing and Outstanding Sound Editing and provides audio post services for the Adult Swim series Rick and Morty, operates from 15,000 square feet of space housing seven ADR recording stages, two Foley stages, six edit bays, and four Dolbycertified mix stages with 5.1, 6.1 and 7.1 surround-sound capabilities.

Most recently, the facility has added a mix stage for Dolby’s Atmos immersive audio format.

Critical to moving all of that sound around the facility is a Dante network, served by six Focusrite RedNet HD32R 32-channel HD Dante network bridges. These system components act as the backbone of the facility’s content/ signal transport infrastructure, enabling them to handle the high channel count of a Dolby Atmos mixing session.

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Bang For Your Buck

“WITH REDNET, WE COULD SIMPLY EXPAND ON THE EXISTING SYSTEM. IT GAVE US A CLEAR AND EASY PATHWAY FORWARD.”

In addition, Bang Zoom! also utilizes a RedNet X2P 2x2 Dante audio interface as a headphone monitoring and talkback solution, along with a RedNet PCIeR Card for the rendering engine, and a pair of RedNet 4 eight-channel mic preamps in their other studios.

When the time came to update their mix stage for Dolby Atmos, Bang Zoom! reached out to Westlake Pro who specialize in design and integration for immersive studios and post-production facilities. Westlake Pro supplied all the RedNet products and worked closely with the team at Bang Zoom! to ensure the install met Dolby’s specifications.

The new Atmos mix stage is designed as a one-person mix position: four HD32R units take up to 128 channels from the Avid Pro Tools | HDX system to the Dolby RMU Atmos rendering and mastering processor; two more HD32Rs serve as the interfaces for the studio’s Pro Tools recording system.

August Belfiglio, lead audio technical engineer at Bang Zoom!, says two of the HD32R units were already in place at the facility before the addition of the Atmos mix studio.

“So instead of having to get a new interface for that increased channel HEADLINER USA

count, we just added two more HD32Rs to the mix rig and then added two more to the dub rig,” he explains. “So it was easy to keep expanding with that instead of having to get something new. With RedNet, we could simply expand on the existing system. It gave us a clear and easy pathway forward.”

The RedNet infrastructure also allows the studio to move fluidly between its traditional stereo and 5.1 workflows and Atmos. A RedNet X2P 2x2 Dante audio interface, featuring two Red Evolution mic pres, stereo line out and a stereo headphone amplifier, also adds flexibility to the Atmos room.

“It’s there if the mixer wants to mix in headphones, but it also serves as talkback for when we’re on remotemixed view-downs with clients, and if we ever need a microphone for someone to lay down some quick scratch or [vocal] sound effects,” Belfiglio adds. “It comes in handy for a lot of things and it’s fully integrated into the entire RedNet system, so it’s always there whenever we need it.”

RedNet products add any number of workflow advantages at Bang Zoom!, but for Belfiglio, the real benefit is RedNet’s simplicity.

“I love the fact that it just shows up in Pro Tools as an HD I/O, which most people are familiar with, and the fact that it can go right into your Dante system for routing,” he concludes.

“You can see all your different devices, monitor them, change settings on them, and display them in your own custom user interface.

“With one click of a button to open the program, you can look at all of them.

You can see if they’re passing audio, and you can see if the settings are correct. You can see if they’re being recognized, which is also nice for troubleshooting if that need arises. The HD32R now makes up the backbone of our system I/O. It’s small and compact – just one rack space – and it just works. We love RedNet!” BANGZOOMSTUDIOS.COM PRO.FOCUSRITE.COM

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PAM & TOMMY

HEADLINER USA

Notes On A Scandal

AUDIO PRODUCTION

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NOTES ON A SCANDAL

PAM & TOMMY “Based on the true scandal that started it all…” teased Hulu on its upcoming Seth Rogen-produced biographical drama miniseries, Pam & Tommy, which is based on the tumultuous relationship between Mötley Crüe drummer Tommy Lee and actress Pamela Anderson.

Details are scarce, but it’s safe to assume viewers can expect to have their memories refreshed about the pair’s whirlwind romance that started with them marrying after knowing each other for 96 hours, their divorce three years later, and that stolen tape.

“I said yes right away, because of what the two represent in Hollywood and the music industry,” says Emmy awardwinning sound mixer Juan Cisneros, whose company Sound695 Services worked on Pam & Tommy.

“I knew it was going to be a challenge for the sound department and I knew that many fans would be drawn to the content of the story! I started reading the scripts and saw that it was not going to be easy.”

on Lectrosonics wireless audio. Their most recent acquisitions – five DSQD receivers and two DPR-A plug-on transmitters for boom mics, and some new DBSM digital bodypack transmitters recently ordered – join a legacy arsenal of SMV, micro-compact SSM transmitters, and wideband SMWB transmitters.

The production twists and turns through many locations, and throughout it all, Sound695 relied HEADLINERMAGAZINE.NET

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Notes On A Scandal

“Our five DSQDs are split between three on my main cart and two on a more portable system,” explains Cisneros. “We have a sixth on order so the carts will both have 12 channels each. Lately, it seems like every show we do goes more smoothly with two systems. Not just for backup, but for going into a process trailer or any remote location where the main cart is not feasible.”

Part of Lectrosonics’ new all-digital D Squared line, the DSQDs are not only backward-compatible with Digital Hybrid Wireless units, but also wideband – a feature Cisneros finds useful on a daily basis.

“On Pam & Tommy we shoot all over the L.A. area. We might be in the [San Fernando] Valley for one scene, in Hollywood the next, and all the way down in San Pedro the next. The RF spectrum is very different from one location to another, so I love being able to scan from 470MHz all the way up through all available blocks.”

Recreating the tumultuous romance of Pam & Tommy often required frenetic blocking on the actors’

HEADLINER USA

part, which is where the DPR-A transmitters on the booms came in.

sound but not picture?’ – and we like to keep it that way!”

“We shot a scene where Pam and Tommy are going from the hallway to their walk-in closet while changing clothes, and then to their bedroom, whilst getting into a heated argument along the way,” he recalls. “They’re getting undressed, twisting and turning, going from a whisper, to yelling at each other. I had two booms: boom one for Pam (played

by Lily James), and boom two for Tommy (played by Sebastian Stan).

There were also five plant mics, but there’s no way we could have captured all their dialogue with cables attached to our booms. With the DPR-As and SMWBs we had the freedom of movement to follow the talent all over the house.

Cisneros shares that he’s used to following a rigid call sheet, but that Pam & Tommy meant that the sound team had to react quickly to last minute changes.

“I couldn’t do the show if it wasn’t for the Lectrosonics wireless mics,” he points out. “Sometimes the locations are not good for sound, but we managed to make it work! When we work on shows, now that cameras are using wireless systems, one thing we often hear from directors and producers is, ‘how come we’re getting

“I knew the locations, but most of the time the call sheet didn’t mean anything on this show! The script was changing very secretly during rehearsals, and due to covid limitations there were only limited rehearsals. If there were changes we just had to be creative and roll with it, but the actors, directors and producers are very happy with the final product. It takes years of experience to master these types of situations, but in television you have to be prepared because you might only get one take, and it better be right! When you do a lot of TV, you have to get creative because your ‘A’ plan might change in a split second, and Lectrosonics understands this.

That’s why I’m a huge fan of them as a company.”

LECTROSONICS.COM

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DAVID DUCHOVNY

The X Factor

THE X FACTOR W o

DAVID DUCHOVNY HEADLINER USA

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ARTIST

David Duchovny is not your typical actor-cum-musician. And not just because his music doesn’t have you instantly reaching for the off button. Where many film or TV icons have leveraged their status to fulfill lifelong dreams of rock and pop stardom, Duchovny only started learning to play guitar less than 10 years ago as he was entering his early-50s. Since then, he has released three records, his latest landing last month in the form of Gestureland, a collection of gently distorted, California alt rock demonstrating yet further evolution in his songwriting and story-telling prowess. Here he tells Headliner what drove him to music so late in his career and opens up on his creative process…

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“I’d always been a music lover, whatever that means,” a relaxed, disarmingly open and often selfdeprecating Duchovny says of his lifelong love of music, as he joins Headliner via Zoom from an anonymous looking room somewhere in L.A. “I always bought records back in the day, when that’s what you did. I saved up my monies. There was a record store called Free Being on Eighth Street and Second Avenue where I grew up, and an album was $3.99, and that was significant to me. Music was not only something that I loved, but something that I was willing to sacrifice for.”

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The X Factor

“HAVING THE SUCCESS THAT I HAD AS AN ACTOR GAVE ME A SAFETY NET, IN THAT IF PEOPLE HATED MY MUSIC, I STILL HAD SOMETHING ELSE I’D CONTINUE TO DO.”

Despite his passion, a future in music was never a consideration for the young Duchovny. As an accomplished sportsman at school and a welleducated student of English Literature, a career in sport or academia looked the most likely option.

“I took a few guitar lessons when I was 10, and unfortunately it didn’t stick – I want to blame the teacher, but I should probably blame myself,” he says. “For whatever reason, I wasn’t ready to dive in. I wasn’t a singer, so it was never a question. It was never like, ‘Oh, you know, am I gonna make music?’ It was never something I thought of.”

After leaving education, Duchovny eventually decided to try his hand at acting, where after numerous TV and film parts he landed the role of FBI agent Fox Mulder in The X Files, one of the most iconic shows and characters of the past three decades.

He then went on to star in the hit show Californication, and has continued to appear in and direct a variety of film and TV projects. So what was it that inspired him to change course and pick up a guitar?

“I reached the point where I was divorced and living alone,” he recalls.

“I wasn’t spending 24/7 with my kids.

I had a lot of free time and I was in a vulnerable place. So, I was just like, ‘I’m HEADLINER USA

going to start playing guitar’. I didn’t know that I was going to write songs, I certainly was never a singer. After about a year playing guitar, I started putting chords together, hearing melodies... I was less surprised that I could write lyrics, but I was surprised that I could write songs.”

Upon discovering that he had a knack for songwriting, he started to collaborate with a group of musicians that not only enabled him to bring his initial sketches to life, but also to develop his ability to craft arrangements and melodies. Before long he knew not only that this was more than just a passing hobby, but that he wanted to start releasing music at the earliest opportunity.

“The first song I wrote, I was like, ‘holy shit, it’s kind of a song’,” he says. “I didn’t know if it was a great song or even a good song, but I know it was a song. And it had a melody of sorts.

At that point, a friend of mine, who’s a tremendous musician named Keaton Simons, recorded a few songs with me in his garage, and that’s how it started.

Then I met people who wanted to do more with it, who pushed me.

“It was then suggested I release some music but make it a charity album. But I thought it would be like, ‘okay, don’t hit me, I’m doing it for charity, don’t judge

me’. And then it was like, ‘no, you can just put this album out, you don’t need to hide’. So it was sequential in a way. It wasn’t ‘damn, I’m good. I’m gonna go record’.”

It would be easy - and understandable - for someone in his position to be defensive, or even a little touchy about discussing the trappings that come with releasing music when already so famed in another field. With Duchovny, this is not the case. There’s a frankness and honesty in his manner that frequently surprises, his instantly recognizable laconic drawl the only reminder that we’re speaking to the man behind one of the most beloved characters in TV history.

“Having the success that I had as an actor gave me a safety net, in that if people hated my music, I still had something else I’d continue to do.

And it wasn’t a case of either or,” he reflects when asked if he ever worries about the stigma that comes with moving from acting to music. “Yes, it hurts if somebody says I can’t sing or whatever, and I read that and I kind of fucking agree,” he laughs. “I’m like, yeah, I guess if singing is that thing where you’re hitting a bunch of notes perfectly on this huge range, then no, I can’t sing. But I can get in a certain pocket. I can tell a story. I can emote.”

ARTIST

Over the course of Duchovny’s three albums to date, his evolution as a songwriter is clear. The style may not have changed drastically, but his particular brand of melancholic, road-worn rock has grown more sophisticated with each release.

There is an authenticity and unpretentiousness to his music that is often lacking in others who have trodden his path. So has he deliberately set about honing his skills in order to show off his newfound musical chops, or has it been a more natural process?

“Every time I pick up a guitar, I’ll go down C, G, A minor, but let’s start

somewhere else, right? I know more chords than that,” he explains. “So I am conscious of developing. But I also have collaborators now, where my lack of musical competence doesn’t have to dictate the song completely. I can go, ‘I’m hearing a different chord here. I don’t know what it is, but it’s kind of here’.”

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You can watch a full length video of this interview at HeadlinerMagazine.net and via the Headliner YouTube Channel.

DAVIDDUCHOVNY.COM

For now, all efforts are focused on supporting the release of Gestureland, but with a prolific hit rate of three full length albums in just six years since he first started playing, the wait for yet more new music is unlikely to be a long one.

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MELISSA MISICKA

HEADLINER USA

Adapt and Overcome

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Brand marketing director at iZotope, Melissa Misicka, discusses the ways in which the company has pivoted during the pandemic, how it has tried to adopt a more agile mentality throughout the company, and how it continues to streamline the music making process for creatives.

“The pandemic has become a great time for iZotope to connect with more users who maybe hadn’t been around their DAW for a while, but are now getting back into it,” begins Misicka.

“It’s a seismic shift as an organisation for us to change to a subscription business model.

“We’ve been exploring new ways to organize our work to make it more centralized, and help everyone be

more aware of what everyone else is working on. It’s so critical when everyone is working remotely to make sure we’re all on the same page.”

Having worked at iZotope for over a decade now, Misicka has seen the company evolve in more ways than one. Following her music technology degree, she secured a paid internship as a quality assurance engineer at Cakewalk, although the barriers

to entry as a woman working in the audio industry were palpable, and she was heavily discouraged from applying for it by her male counterparts. Despite the apparent odds, Misicka smashed the interview and got the job.

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Adapt and Overcome

Pictured: iZotope Spire Studio

“What’s notable about that internship was that there was another QA intern there whose name was Mark Ethier, who is now the CEO and co-founder of isotope,” she recalls. “For a while I moved over to technical writing, but I really felt a longing to get back into the music world. It was a serendipitous time where there was a role open at iZotope; me and Mark connected again and it was the right fit. So that’s how I got back into the audio industry, and I’ve been so happy to be here since.

“In terms of gender equality in the industry, I would say it’s only been getting better over these last few years. We’re definitely not where we want to be in terms of our workforce representing the breadth and type of folks we serve, but this is a big focus for a lot of us – as well as starting to think about how we can get more involved in the community and help the next generation of talent come up. It’s not something that can be immediately fixed, but iZotope has been really great for friendliness and inclusiveness.”

HEADLINER USA

And when it comes to industry trends that have driven some of the recent marketing efforts at iZotope, Misicka makes sure she has her finger on the pulse at all times.

“With music production technology moving so quickly, and with more and more people becoming creators, and creating a platform for themselves, we at iZotope have a lot of healthy debates around who we focus on right now, because I think an anti-goal we have is to try to be everything to everybody at all times,” she shares. “How can we package our stuff in a way that is easy to use? Previously there has been quite a learning curve to our products because they’re so powerful, and we were packing in so many features that were not always clearly visible.

“That’s where we have been transitioning – to still include all that power and control, but try to service things a bit differently, like with our Intelligent Assistants. But in all cases, if somebody does just need something

quickly, we’re there to help them get to a better sound more intelligently right away based on their content.”

The key, Misicka says, is establishing how to reduce friction throughout the creative process.

“I think that is a real core value for us – that the friction can just be in the lack of understanding of audio itself,” she concludes. “We have some really amazing researchers and audio experts, and at iZotope we’re always looking at different ways of making complex things simple, and describing them in a way where we’re not doing it just to sell Ozone, or another of our products. We just want to help everyone better understand what it is they’re working with, and why things sound the way that they do!”

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MOD DWARF

All Mod Cons

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MOD DWARF

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SPOTLIGHT

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The MOD Dwarf occupies a unique area when it comes to multi-effects processing. It combines software containing vast effects options and capabilities with portable and durable hardware, resulting in a tool with plenty of potential for use on stage and recording.

The unit is designed to comfortably fit on a pedalboard but, when connected to the browser-based web interface, you can create intricate effects chains from your computer that can be recalled on the Dwarf in an instant. Effectswise the Dwarf contains all that one could want, with many more effects available to purchase or download from MOD’s plugin store which is frequently updated. Thanks to the new assignable control system, it’s also relatively easy to edit and save assigned parameters from the device itself meaning you can take it out and edit sounds without having to connect to a computer.

“IN TERMS OF QUALITY SOUNDS, THE DWARF HAS SOME GEMS; MANY OF THE DISTORTION PLUGINS HIT THE MARK REGARDING THE ORIGINAL PEDALS THEY’RE IMITATING.”

Most of the effects seem to be aimed at guitarists and are based on familiar stomp boxes.

There are plenty of options for distortion, dynamic effects (such as compression and noise gates), filters, some great reverbs, delays, and lots of modulation effects.

There are also utility plugins, which include a metronome, gain meters and A/B switches. You can get more plugins from the plugin store and if you’re into coding you can even write your own plugins and make them available online for other MOD users to download.

In terms of quality sounds, the Dwarf has some gems; many of the distortion plugins hit the mark regarding the original pedals they’re imitating. Reverbs and delays such as the Open AV Roomy and Shiro Modulay sound excellent and amp

sims like the Veja Onyx are also convincing.

Using the MOD interface is relatively simple once you get your head round it, though I would highly recommend visiting the MOD Dwarf wiki page before trying to use this device. To connect the Dwarf to your computer you can run a USB cable between them or connect via Wi-Fi which can be less responsive. If this doesn’t work automatically you can easily download a driver from the MOD website.

Creating pedalboards is quite intuitive; you simply drag the plugins at the bottom of the page and patch them together with one click.

Each plugin has visible parameters from the pedalboard, but most have additional controls that are accessible by clicking on the Settings icon above each plugin. The best way to switch between different sounds quickly is by creating ‘snapshots’ which are accessible in the top right corner of the screen.

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MOD DWARF

All Mod Cons

With the Dwarf, the software has received some updates, the main one being a file manager to which you can upload audio, MIDI and impulse response files.

The impulse response files can be used for profiling and there are plugins available that allow you to make your own profiles.

snapshot mode you use foot switches B and C to scroll up and down the list of saved snapshots for a given pedalboard; this is the quickest way to switch between varying sounds. In control mode you can assign any parameter on the pedalboard to a knob or switch on the front of the Dwarf.

Having had some previous experience with the MOD Duo, I was keen to see how the Dwarf would perform.

MOD had hinted that the Dwarf would allow you to create new pedalboards using the controls on the device, and while this isn’t the case (yet), it has far more flexibility than the Duo. There are two modes for using the Dwarf: snapshot mode and control mode. In

The three endless knobs are all assignable and can be used as switches; footswitches B and C are also assignable. The three buttons underneath the knobs represent different subpages and footswitch A flicks between these optional pages. There are eight pages available meaning that in total there are 88 potential controls available to assign for each pedalboard.

HEADLINER USA

SPOTLIGHT

When it comes to hardware, the Dwarf seems robust and road-worthy. It also doesn’t seem out of place next to other guitar pedals looks-wise, certainly when compared to the Duo and Duo X. The controls respond well although not everything is accessible by foot, especially when wearing shoes.

A downside is the lack of expression pedal input which renders most wahwah or whammy style plugins as pretty useless; this is probably due to MOD’s plans to release an expression pedal that plugs into the control chain port along with additional assignable

footswitches which can be daisychained together. It’s definitely possible to use the Dwarf on the fly but it does become difficult if you have multiple pages of effects; flicking between pages could put a damper on the spontaneity of a jam. Another downside is that the current power supply that is provided with the Dwarf is quite noisy although this has allegedly been rendered and future power supplies will not have this issue.

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are holding it back. I would however recommend this to anyone who is into patching many effects together or who is keen to integrate a large variety of sounds into their recording and live rig.

I can certainly see myself using this in the future and I’m keen to see how the future of MOD devices pans out.

MODDEVICES.COM

I love the concept of this device and I think it has tons of potential, but there are still a few teething issues that

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IZOTOPE

HEADLINER USA

Music Production Suite Pro / Pt.3

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REVIEW

SPOTLIGHT

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DICKER CK S I R

MUSIC PRODUCTION SUITE PRO / PT.3

IZOTOPE

In this, the third and final part of Headliner’s close look at iZotope’s ‘Music Production Suite Pro’, we’re looking at the range of Neutron mix plugins together with iZotope’s Nectar Pro plugin, which features a range of vocal mix tools. Lastly and by no means least there’s the intelligent Neoverb, rounding out a comprehensive array of products designed to help you create better mixes with a more efficient workflow.

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IZOTOPE

Music Production Suite Pro / Pt.3

Music Production Suite Pro features the full complement of Neutron 3 plugins including Neutron Pro, which utilizes all of the available plugins as modules in a similar way to Ozone Pro (which we looked at in Part Two of this review) and RX Pro (in Part One).

Gate. The display is a clear graphical representation of everything that’s going on. Having a scrolling waveform that reflects the audio either side of the gate in real-time makes this a particularly easy gate to quickly set up and use.

is being applied. There’s also the familiar crossover section which takes this from a full range compressor to a multi-band. The Learn button on the compressor also searches your audio for the optimal crossover points for multi-band processing.

Neutron Pro features the Intelligent Assistant which in this instance is known as the Mix Assistant. I think this is a great place to start when you’re getting to grips with these excellent modules.

I’m convinced they really aid your ability to speed up workflow and can even throw up interesting combinations that you might not have otherwise landed upon without a few spare hours on your hands.

Of course, you could speed up your starting position by simply pressing the Learn button and allowing the gate to set itself up. However, the Gain Reduction Trace is perfect for tweaking the ratio, attack and release controls as it shows in real-time how the gate is responding and by how much it’s attenuating. I have to admit that I always thought a gate was a gate, but within seconds of loading this Neutron Pro Gate, I’ve realized all gates are not born equal and this is now my go-to.

There’s a Vintage button which adds that authentic character and color of analog devices, especially when driving the signal at higher ratios.

In Vintage mode, the Auto Release is active, furthering the analog authenticity. Three level detection options are available: RMS, Peak and True. To the left of the manual gain slider are the Auto Gain (A) button, which matches the compressed signal to the level of the uncompressed one, and the Auto Release (L), which analyzes the input signal and automatically applies release times that maintain that in-your-face sound but as transparently as possible. If you want that pumping characteristic, then switch to Vintage mode and increase the ratio.

Neutron Pro is also a great way to build and save presets which can be tailored to your particular way of working, and used to help create your signature sound. There’s the added bonus of a limiter which is only available from within the Neutron Pro plugin, ensuring you’re happy with your processing chain preset and its ability to cope with a greater dynamic range of source material. As with all things iZotope, there’s a comprehensive range of presets already available for all the Neutron plugins.

Particularly useful is the Neutron Pro HEADLINER USA

Another really useful feature is the crossover selection which provides a means of selecting the frequencies at which the gate becomes active or which triggers it. This is also an option on a number of the other Neutron plugins/modules.

The layout and interface for the compressor are very similar to the gate.

There’s a real-time audio waveform display along with the familiar Gain Reduction Trace running across the top which shows how much gain reduction

SPOTLIGHT

The more I have played with the Neutron compressor plugin, the more I have warmed to its versatility and array of options, not to mention a vast library of presets which make this a very flexible compression tool and in no way a one-trick pony.

In true iZotope tradition, the EQ is a fully featured bundle of delight. Like all of the Neutron Pro plugins/modules it suddenly became apparent how quick, flexible and powerful this EQ is. To help you in your EQ manipulation is the spectral display which shows the amplitude and frequency of the incoming audio. When it comes to metering, I like the inclusion of the Piano Roll option along the bottom which allows you to quickly identify issues relating to mic placement or fundamental resonance.

For each selected node there’s manipulation of Frequency, Level and Q which is represented by a filter response curve, which makes up the permanently displayed composite curve. Each node has a number of available band filter options depending on what you want it to

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do, while a Soft Saturation button further increases the creativity of the Neutron Pro Equalizer.

The Exciter is another really easy-to-use but effectively creative tool, and you can be as subtle or as brash as you like with it. Control-wise there’s a simple heads up display that controls the ratio and type of harmonic distortion you want to introduce, followed by a mix control that blends the harmonic distortion with the original signal. Transient Shaper meanwhile is very similar to Exciter in its control layout, but is used to enhance or reduce transient attack and/or sustain. I was able to make a drum kit sound a whole lot closer and bigger with just a few simple clicks.

Sculptor is a multi-band compression tool which can utilize up to 32 frequency bands to help make your tracks better versions of themselves. It works by applying a target curve from a menu of curves under various instrument and application headings. I was pleasantly surprised to find it worked extremely well on bass and some of my piano recordings.

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IZOTOPE

Music Production Suite Pro / Pt.3

NECTAR PRO Nectar Pro is a dedicated plugin specifically aimed at vocals. Unlike RX, Ozone and Neutron whose modules are also available as standalone plugins, all of Nectar’s modules are only available from within Nectar Pro. Nectar has an intelligent Vocal Assistant which is there to help create a good starting point and vocal chain for your vocal track.

Vocal Assistant gives you an Assist option and an Unmask option, the latter of which is there to help make room for your vocal by affecting a track which may be masking the vocal. Assist on the other hand offers an optimized processing chain for your vocal.

Nectar Pro has a pretty good pitch correction tool which, if used carefully, works very well and doesn’t sound like obvious pitch correction. The DeEsser is also beautifully transparent and always well set up by the Vocal Assistant. The EQ is very similar to the EQ I described earlier in Neutron Pro; it doesn’t feature the saturation and has slightly fewer nodes but it behaves and sounds similar. The compressor is a very different animal but is also very easy to use. There’s a selection of compressor types from which you can select either Digital, Vintage, Optical or Solid State. The Gain Reduction Trace and real-time audio spectrum are still here. For additional vocal production, Nectar Pro includes a Harmony module, as well as Reverb, Delay, Dimension and Saturation, similar to the Neutron Pro Exciter.

Nectar Pro is no slouch. None of its modules feel like cut downs of other iZotope plugins. This is another really useful plugin clearly refined to get the most out of your vocal recordings and speed up your workflow.

You’ve been living in a dream world, Neo Neoverb is a collaboration between iZotope’s intuitive interface, Intelligent Assistant, and Exponential Audio’s legendary reverb engines. Exponential Audio was recently brought into the iZotope fold and is famous for its high quality algorithms and incredible reverb sounds.

I remember the first time I loaded Neoverb I was struck by just how good the reverbs sounded and how easy it was to blend them, creating everything from a small room reflection to a massive hall just by simply dragging a little circle around the ‘Blend Pad’. The intelligent assistant in Neoverb is a little like filling out a questionnaire, and while it doesn’t always come back with what you might have had in mind, it most definitely gives you usable options. It can also inspire you to move out of your comfort zone and take a different journey. Dare I say it; I love you Neoverb!

In conclusion, I personally think this is an unbeatable package of software for anybody who takes their music seriously. If you’re interested, head over to the iZotope website, download the full package for a free trial period, and draw your own conclusions!

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StageOne

LEAPWING AUDIO

HEADLINER USA

CKERSON DI

STAGEONE

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REVIEW

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SPOTLIGHT

Last year I picked up a set of licences for Leapwing Audio’s RootOne, DynOne, CenterOne and StageOne. Headliner founder and editor-inchief Paul Watson reviewed RootOne and really liked it, so I started using it almost immediately and came to the same conclusion. More recently, Headliner’s Adam Protz took a closer look at Leapwing’s recently released Al Schmitt Signature plugin and he was also very impressed. So it wasn’t long before I was using Leapwing Audio originals for various tasks, and all five are excellent.

Leapwing Audio is a fairly young company that prides itself on innovative audio plugins that didn’t previously exist. Aimed at the creative community, they set out to make tools that inspire creativity, are easy to use, and above all sound great. So good are they, it wouldn’t be unusual to find them in a mastering engineer’s processing chain as well as for individual channel and instrument enhancement. Particularly popular in both fields of engineering are RootOne and DynOne.

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When it comes to mixing, the ‘One’ that is fast becoming my new best friend is StageOne. I feel we should all get to know more about this plugin, so I’m going to have another close look and find out what it’s capable of, and how easy it is to use.

Sound around us is received threedimensionally. Placing instruments and voices in a stereo field from left to right is the easy part. Developing a perception of depth – how near and how far something is from you – was traditionally achieved with the use of HEADLINERMAGAZINE.NET

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LEAPWING AUDIO

StageOne

volume and EQ; the quieter, less bright and deep a sound is, the further away it is perceived.

There’s also delay and reverb to help with a sense of depth and space.

However if you’re looking for a more consistent and speedier way to build your mix that could reduce the need for multiple busses and short reverb presets, check this out.

EveryOne should Have One StageOne is better described as three plugins in one. Each can be independently switched in and out, HEADLINER USA

giving you a single or combination of audio manipulation tools within your soundstage. The three selections are ‘Width’, ‘Depth’ and ‘Mono Spread’ – all of which absolutely deliver in a way that you can clearly hear happening as you adjust each control.

What’s equally impressive is the ease with which this happens, and the complete lack of phase issues or mono incompatibility.

The Width control has a value zero to 100 and opens out existing stereo, giving a much broader perception of the off-center audio while keeping the center audio intact. Alongside

the Width control is a High Pass with a range from 20Hz to 500Hz, which lets you leave as little or as much low-end information unprocessed.

This is particularly useful for retaining the mono presence of a kick drum for example while expanding the rest of the kit, making it seem larger and therefore closer to you.

The Depth control is likewise graded from zero to 100 and as you increase the amount, the perception is that the subject audio moves further back on the soundstage. This is a really quick and easy way to take an instrument or a backing vocal and place it, for

SPOTLIGHT

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StageOne

“StageOne is very good at opening up a mix and giving that little bit of space required to bring it to life.”

example, mid-stage by the piano or keep the brass section upstage to the left of the drum kit.

Now this is not a concert hall amount of depth; it’s more akin to Abbey Road Studio 3 – but it’s those tight, transparent, right in front of you type of reflections that are so hard to accurately achieve in a reverb unit. In StageOne, Depth is easy to achieve with 100° of separation. Next to this is a handy tilt EQ, which will either enhance the low end and reign in the high frequencies at one extreme, or vice versa at the other. This is really useful for further enhancing the perception of, and the environment of, the space that the distance represents, whether it’s a bright space or a darker space.

The Mono Spread section is very clever and again very musical. The algorithm just seems to create a stereo image without any artefacts or phasing and it sounds beautiful.

Then if you press the Mono button on your external mixer you get the exact same mono track back. The center gravity control is a pan fader, but even when fully left or right, never loses the perception or ghost reflections of a stereo image.

It’s a pleasure to see that StageOne is not particularly processor HEADLINER USA

intensive, and that you can throw it on all sorts of tracks, from drums to big synth pads – with equally fabulous results. It’s also very easy to use all three sections together to create a stereo track and make it wider. You can then adjust from side to side, pan around and move back and forward on your soundstage at will without sacrificing mono compatibility.

I’ve pretty much used this plugin in every project over the last 10 months. On some projects, numerous instances of StageOne have been used. I’m already a fan, so it’s easy to write about a great plugin when it’s part of your regular workflow and has helped to speed various processes up. I am aware that a couple of mastering engineer friends of mine have also been taken with this amazing plugin and while I’m no expert in that field, it has cropped up in conversation that with some modern mixes where everything is louder than everything else, and constantly in your face, StageOne is very good at opening up a mix and giving that little bit of space required to bring it to life.

CONCLUSION I’m still really impressed by the simple way in which the Mono

Spread just magically transforms a mono track into a pseudostereo more effectively than trying to send it through a stereo room reverb, harmoniser etc., without getting anything close to the amazing transformation Leapwing’s StageOne will give you. The great thing about StageOne is it’s unique; I don’t know of anything that offers this level of soundstage manipulation in a single plugin, and as for the other Leapwing plugins, there are very few alternatives that come close.

I think the thing that has really inspired me to keep using this plugin again and again is its musicality.

It really doesn’t matter what type of source audio you apply it to – it just makes things sound better. And it does so cleanly and without any of those nasty jarring sensations or frequency cancellations associated with phasing. Head over to the Leapwing website where you can get a fully functional 30 day trial for free.

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PRESONUS Looking for an audio interface designed for recording and streaming? PreSonus’ new Revelator io24 USB-C audio interface might just be the solution for you...

Shipping now for $199.95, the Revelator io24 USB-C audio interface integrates high-headroom mic preamps, a two-channel loopback mixer and extensive HEADLINER USA

processing, promising to deliver polished, professional-sounding results for streaming, podcasting and music production.

In fact, PreSonus claims that the Revelator io24 is the only audio interface specifically designed for both recording and streaming. Fully embracing today’s adaptation to more remote working than ever,

its easy-to-use mixer lets users quickly record Zoom calls or Skype interviews and add backing tracks and sound effects for podcasts, live stream performances and music production.

Users can engage Stream Mix mode with the click of a button, at which point their complete mixanalog inputs, loopback channels,

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“The Revelator io24 promises to deliver polished, professional-sounding results for streaming, podcasting and music production.”

reverb and effects are routed to the USB output. From there, users can easily send it to their streaming software.

Two analog mic/instrument/line inputs with PreSonus’ professionalgrade XMAX-L microphone preamps (which can be stereo linked), present the Revelator io24 as a high-quality production frontend.

Users also get two balanced 1/4inch line outputs, a high-powered headphone output, professional metering and zero-latency monitoring – not to mention they can record up to 24-bit, 96 kHz audio to the included Studio One Artist or other recording and production software.

But the real magic starts with the Revelator io24’s simple loopback mixer, which makes it easy to add backing tracks to live stream performances, or conferences in a Zoom caller to a podcast.

With two dedicated stereo channels for loopback audio on macOS or Windows, users can simultaneously mix and record the audio from two

different applications, along with the two analog input channels.

Not stopping there, users can easily remote-control their mixes, processing and routing using PreSonus’ Universal Control software for macOS, Windows, iPad and Android tablets, while Stream Mix mode turns the Revelator io24 into the ultimate compact streaming mixer.

Want to process each input channel? No problem: use PreSonus’ Fat Channel DSP, which provides a high-pass filter, 4-band parametric EQ, compressor, gate and limiter.

Those who are fans of effects can apply the detuner, vocoder, ring modulator, filters and delay.

more factory presets can be loaded from Universal Control for fast processing. However, the Fat Channel processing also is fully editable, so users can dig in and create their own presets, which are available for each processor, so it’s quick to make customized channel settings.

When users are ready to dive into Revelator io24’s compressor and EQ models and more, all they need to do is launch Advanced mode to expose a fully editable Fat Channel, complete with State-Spacemodeled vintage processors.

The PreSonus Revelator io24 is shipping now.

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Looking to add just the right amount of ambience? Look no further than the dedicated reverb bus, plus the Revelator io24 comes with a wealth of software, including Studio One Artist and the Studio Magic Suite, which includes Ableton Live Lite and a collection of virtual instruments and effects plugins.

Revelator io24 locally stores two presets per channel, and eight HEADLINERMAGAZINE.NET

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SPARKS For more than five decades, brothers Ron and Russell Mael, aka Sparks, have bucked virtually every rock ‘n’ roll trend to become one of the most prolific, innovative and influential acts in music. Since forming in 1966, they have released 25 records, been a regular fixture on the touring circuit, reinvented themselves innumerable times and avoided the cliched crash and burn fallouts that so often exist in bands built around brothers. Here, the pair discuss the brand new Edgar Wright documentary about the band – the first official Sparks film – The Sparks Brothers, their enduring appeal, and how they have kept their creative process fresh for more than 50 years…

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What was it that convinced you to give The Sparks Brothers the green light? You’ve always been such a private band.

Russel Mael: It was because it was an Edgar Wright film. We’d had a few offers through the years to do a documentary and we felt either the director wasn’t right, or the angle wasn’t doing justice to what we thought were the important elements of Sparks.

A few years ago, Edgar approached us after a show in L.A. and said there has to be a Sparks documentary – it’s been far too long for there not to be one. So, when he proposed doing it we were over the moon because we were fans of his films, and if there was a visual equivalent to what we do musically then Edgar would be the person to do that. And he convinced us that it would focus on all eras of Sparks equally. Some people focus on a particular era and then spend five minutes talking about the remaining

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18 albums! Edgar felt all 25 albums were equally important, even if they weren’t commercially successful. He thought they were all part of the story and the saga of Sparks. Then later on we realized he has a large Rolodex of artists and people who were either Sparks fans or who he expected were Sparks fans. He then assembled this incredible line-up of people to talk about what Sparks meant to them.

Were you aware Edgar was such a fan of yours?

Ron Mael: Not really. We always felt watching his films that there was a kinship, stylistically. Music is a driving force in all of his films, but we’d never spoken to him until this idea was broached. As for the others in the film, there were a couple of musicians we knew may have been fans, but all the writers and actors, we really had no idea. We work in a very closed off way, so to hear from all these people was extraordinary. And it made it more

comfortable for us because we don’t especially like talking about ourselves, so to have these people who were incredibly eloquent talking about what it was that we do that has affected them, was so much more effective in the final film.

Were you at all involved in the making of the film on a stylistic level?

Russell: We weren’t that involved because Edgar’s sensibilities were so in tune with ours. And he’s such a complete fan of the band and has this knowledge from the beginning to the present, so he’s so invested in what we do. Our only reservation was that we hoped it looked like an Edgar Wright film; that this wouldn’t be an outlier where he does a dull documentary and then goes back to making really exciting narrative movies! We purposely didn’t give any input – the only input we gave was the extensive interviews for the film itself.

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“OUR USUAL MINDSET IS TO ERASE WHAT WE’VE DONE IN THE PAST AS MUCH AS WE CAN AND FOCUS ON WHAT WE ARE DOING NOW.”

You mentioned that people tend to focus on what they consider to be golden eras of Sparks. Do you feel that there are certain albums that are unfairly overlooked that aren’t considered part of those ‘golden’ eras?

Russell: Yes, there are albums that are overlooked. Fortunately during the documentary quite a few of the artists point that out. Flea from the Red Hot Chili Peppers speaks eloquently about an album that really went under the radar, Introducing Sparks. It was our eighth album and had almost zero visibility, but he’s saying very passionately “this is a fucking cool record”! It means a lot more when other artists speak about those albums that didn’t have the mass visibility that some of the others did. When people see the documentary they’ll see that most of the albums are treated fairly, and hear people talking about some of the records that slipped through the cracks, not just Kimono My House and No. 1 In Heaven.

Is it a strange process for you to look back at your career so comprehensively? You’ve always been so prolific in releasing new music and looking to the next project.

Ron: Our usual mindset is to erase what we’ve done in the past as much as we HEADLINER USA

can and focus on what we are doing now. That’s one of the keys to us being able to make music we feel is still alive at this point; feeling like we are making music and we don’t know exactly where it’s going. But with Edgar we felt comfortable with looking back, as it leads up to what is happening now. It’s a tidy summation of all this time. And purely in a crass way, it’s a way to find out in two hours and 20 minutes what’s happened over the past five decades.

How has your working relationship changed over the years? Do you still make music the way you always have done, or do you try to alter the process?

Ron: It’s expanded in recent years with technology. We still write some songs in the way we did in the beginning, where you sit down and plod away and sometimes something happens, then you take it in and record it. And sometimes nothing happens. In the past it was always a case of taking it into a very expensive studio, but now we’ve had our own studio for the past 20 years and it’s really helped me in that it’s expanded the way we write.

And in the studio, we can go in and not have any idea where things are going to go. Ultimately, there are more possibilities because of the technology that has emerged over the past 20 years, and Russell has become a

really proficient engineer. So, we have different ways of writing, which means we never freeze up.

How have you kept the relationship so fresh? Bands centered around siblings don’t tend to last this long, let alone go so long without a break.

Russell: One of the most important things is we are just passionate and have pride in what we do. We constantly want to see how we can do pop music in a fresh way that doesn’t sound like it’s coming from a band with a 25-album-long history. We really work hard at trying to make music that, if someone was to hear today, wouldn’t be able to tell we have so many years and records behind us.

You can listen to an extended version of this interview at Headliner Radio.

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WALTER MAIR What do you get when you cross Gerald’s Game with a particularly hardcore version of Home Alone? The answer to a question you’ve probably never asked presented itself this year with survival thriller Till Death, starring Megan Fox as Emma, who wakes up in a secluded lakehouse, handcuffed to her husband’s dead body.

way. So for me, it was super engaging and there was a lot of emotional scope.

The music became very dark, with elements of thriller and horror at times, combined with some beautiful, bright, light and positive elements with themes in there for motifs. I was totally in love with the concept; I definitely wanted to score it and try to provide a voice for the film through music.”

Trapped and isolated in the dead of winter, Emma learns this is only the beginning of her husband’s twisted plan, and to survive, she must fight off hired killers.

Dale was drawn to Mair as a composer because he is known for his atmospheric soundscapes to create one-of-a-kind music for his scores, with Till Death being no exception.

“From the moment I found out the plot, I thought that this could be very interesting, but it could go either way,” admits Ivor Novello-nominated and Telly Award-winning composer, Walter Mair, who’s no stranger to tackling a psychological horror, having recently scored the 2020 film The Unfamiliar.

“We really honed in on the darkness and the landscape – the cold and the frost, and knowing that people wouldn’t survive if they were exposed out there for too long,” he explains. “All of that had to come into consideration when creating the music.”

“I knew it could be very cliché or it could be very different. What I really loved was that the director, Scott Dale [he goes by S.K], told the story in a different

To capture his frozen sonic vision, Mair tasked a Foley team with recording snow and ice sounds, who travelled to Finland to capture everything from ice breaks, cold pressure creaks, and

freezing water – which he then pitched, detuned or even slowed down by 600%.

“For instance, if you throw a stone on a frozen lake, it just doesn’t make a ‘clunk’ sound, it sounds like a laser beam [here Mair does a pretty good impression of one] – this kind of weird sound, which is amazing. And if you record that, pitch it down two octaves and slow it down by 600%, it creates this deep sound which is very expressive; it’s very dark and sinister. I was presented with this huge library of sounds that I requested, and then I incorporated that into the music to find a voice for the frozen world that this film is set in. There were no limitations or set rules for getting this nordic kind of sound.”

A total sucker for unique instruments, Mair enjoys finding sounds that no one else has. Paired with a selection of hydrophones – instruments which in his own words “resemble the frozen world” of Till Death’s story – he commissioned the build of a bespoke instrument he calls a Contra-Hurdy.

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“I WANTED AN INSTRUMENT THAT SOUNDS LIKE EMMA CONSTANTLY ON THE CHASE AND ON HER TOES, TRYING TO SURVIVE. I NEEDED SOMETHING THAT HAD THIS DARK UNDERCURRENT OF EMOTIONS.”

The unique Contra-Hurdy he uses in the score is what he calls a “Frankenstein instrument” that combines the mechanics of a hurdy gurdy and the corpus and strings of a large contrabass, more akin to a cello or double bass. The combination of the two can twist and distort sounds depending on how fast he moves the mechanical parts to produce dark, lowend tones – ideal for this foreboding score.

“For the last 15 years or so I have tried to come up with a unique way of telling a story, and to bring in different instruments – even custom made instruments,” he explains. “I wanted an instrument that sounds like Emma constantly on the chase and on her toes, trying to survive.

I needed something that had this dark undercurrent of emotions, and something that we hadn’t heard before. I said, ‘I’m going to get an instrument-maker involved in that, and we’re going to build an amazing instrument that no one has seen or heard before’. The Contra-Hurdy has these pulsating, propelling movements that you have in each note, and

depending on how fast you play it, the mechanical parts respond to that and it creates this very eerie, dark, low droning sound. That’s a key element in Till Death.

“When you play with the bow, it doesn’t produce the same sounds again, it always changes slightly,” he furthers on the unique invention. “The benefit is that you create something that’s not predictable. It’s like outside: it’s cold, it’s harsh, it’s unpredictable – it could be minus 20 degrees tomorrow, it could be minus 10. Who knows? That was the thought process behind it, to have this feeling of the elements around the audience so it feels all-encompassing.”

For someone that specializes in crafting unique sounds for everything from feature films, documentaries, to video games, Mair is actually a big fan of silence in scores.

“The music should come in when it needs to be there, and when there is a purpose,” he considers. “I think what I’ve tried to do is sneak in music at a level where the audience can’t pick up on it, and eventually, it really gets

you, but by the time it’s too late for the audience, as they’re already lost or transfixed in the emotion of the scene.

I think this is what horror scores are really good at doing; to really hit you hard, but you don’t know exactly when the music lured you in.

“I think the music in horror films should be a bit more understated at times,” he adds as we wrap up the interview.

“Of course there’s always a jumpscare moment that we have in every thriller and horror film,” he points out, “but I use my interpretation of which sounds to use, and if the sound itself is haunting on its own, and is quite cool and different and twisted, then I don’t mind it being super loud for a jumpscare.

But if it’s just a loud impact sound that has no resemblance to anything in the score, it’s just a bit of a lost opportunity.”

Till Death is available on Amazon Prime and Apple TV. WALTERMAIR.COM

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DUSTIN O’HALLORAN

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DUSTIN O’HALLORAN Oscar-nominated, Californian composer Dustin O’Halloran has been quite desperate to release a new solo album. In fact, it’s been a whole 10 years since his much-loved Lumiere, a hallmark record in the neoclassical genre. What’s been stopping him? Oh, only the 28 film and television soundtracks he’s worked on since. Not that he would ever complain to have been involved in such films as Lion, Ammonite or The Old Guard, but he has just released his new album, Silfur, his first with classical giants Deutsche Grammophon.

Indeed, his endeavours into film haven’t only included the huge perks of working on brilliant pieces of craft with filmmakers he admires hugely, but O’Halloran also earned an Oscar nomination for his work on 2016’s Lion alongside his film-scoring partner in crime Volker Bertelmann (who you may also know as Hauschka), and he won an Emmy award for his musical contributions to the comedy-drama series Transparent. But, if his regular movement around Europe is anything to go by, he’s not someone you’d expect to rest on any award-shaped laurels.

He starts by discussing his most recent move to Iceland, which seems to be one of the nicer places you could have spent the last year, and the contrast of being briefly back in his native Los Angeles, where he speaks to Headliner from.

“I’m still having a bit of culture shock coming back to Los Angeles,” O’Halloran says. “I grew up here, and I have family here, but I’ve lived in Europe for more than 15 years. I lived in Italy for a long time, and I lived in Berlin for 10 years.”

with its unfathomable creative output, and Los Angeles, the city where everyone and their dog goes to ‘make it’, his career actually first started taking flight in Italy, a country among the richest in the classical music tradition.

And on his pre-pandemic move to Iceland: “It was an interesting transition. Because with the state of the world and Iceland being so isolated, I felt very grateful to be there, to be able to find space to do things. There’s been a kind of tension in the whole world, so finding space to write music, you have to be able to push things away too. I was definitely able to find some headspace to do that. And there’s an amazing music community in Iceland.”

“I was touring a lot with my band at the time,” he says. “And we ended up making a couple of records in Italy.

I was living in a small town called Lugo, near Bologna. I think I was always fascinated with the idea of being in a place where there were so many countries close together, and with such a cultural mix.”

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“I REALIZED, IT’S BEEN SO LONG SINCE I’VE MADE A SOLO RECORD, THIS WOULD BE A NICE WAY TO UNDERSTAND WHERE I’D LEFT OFF.”

On releasing his first solo album, Piano Solos in 2004 while in Italy, he says “a friend of ours had an old farmhouse, converted into a studio. I got set up and had this whole period of my life there. I didn’t really plan on releasing it, I was just documenting pieces for myself. When I played it for Simon Raymond at Bella Union, he really loved it and encouraged me to put it out.”

Next up was Berlin, a decade of O’Halloran’s life that he calls a “vital period”. Not too surprising when you hear him speak about the other composers and artists he was rubbing shoulders with. He tells Headliner how he “ended up moving into a studio community that was really wonderful. The late Jóhann Jóhannsson [composer for Arrival and The Theory of Everything] was there, Hildur Guðnadóttir [Oscar winner for her Joker score] was there also. A lot of really creative people in this complex with different studios that we shared. There were a lot of amazing exchanges between us.

Max Richter was living there too in my early days.”

And, perhaps inevitably, several directors came calling in this period after the release of Lumiere, as HEADLINER USA

well as wonderful output from side project A Winged Victory For The Sullen, for which a significant fanbase know him best. O’Halloran had already worked on a number of indie films (many of which starred Felicity Jones), when suddenly the huge popularity of the Australian drama Lion, plus the Oscar and Golden Globe nominations, raised his stock yet further. Next thing you know, all that quality time to work on solo music has vanished.

Silfur is the long-awaited new Dustin O’Halloran solo album, and Headliner asks him why he decided to end this sparse period of solo work with a record that revisits his older works (plus two new unreleased pieces). “It was the label’s (Deutsche Grammophon) idea to re-record some older material, and I wasn’t sure if I wanted to at first. But then I realized, it’s been so long since I’ve made a solo record, this would be a nice way to understand where I’d left off. After so many years of collaborating, you do slightly adjust how you write, so this was a nice archival trip.

“I did most of my first records really lo-fi on an upright piano and so it was a chance for me to explore how these pieces would sound on a

grand piano in a church in Iceland with great acoustics – how that was going to shift the music and what I would find in it.”

It’s truly wonderful to hear this LP, particularly the hitherto unrecorded and unreleased songs that dovetail the album — Headliner strongly urges you to listen to Silfur at the earliest opportunity. But with that being said, Headliner still can’t resist drawing O’Halloran on some of his film work — the two very recent projects that are also polar opposites. Worked on in very close proximity were Netflix’s The Old Guard, a streaming blockbuster that follows a group of immortal mercenaries led by Charlize Theron.

And also the stunning Ammonite, which sees Kate Winslet as a reclusive fossil hunter in Dorset, who is forced to care for Saoirse Ronan, as a strong bond forms between the two.

Both of these see the brilliant and continued musical partnership between O’Halloran and Volker Bertelmann, also known as the prepared piano artist Hauschka.

Following their first collaboration on Lion, the pair also wrote an excellent score for the BBC’s dark take on A Christmas Carol in 2019.

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“The Old Guard was a different film than anything we’d done before and was a nice challenge, to see what we could do with a more dynamic story, and our first film that had these big action sequences. I liked the idea of working a little bit more with electronics, using modular synths and getting away from piano and strings.

own record, and probably doing live shows next year. I’m just gonna be booking as much quality time as I can to do my music.”

“Ammonite was the complete opposite, a really minimalistic score with very few instruments. There’s really not much music in the film, so much of the natural sound design takes center stage. It was a wonderful experience, because Volker and I became very essential. Each note had to be cared for.”

DUSTINOHALLORAN.COM

Finally, Headliner is keen to know where O’Halloran’s completely unpredictable journey might lead him next.

“I’m actually doing a film right now with my partner [fellow composer Herdís Stefánsdóttir] and we’re doing the score together. Then I’m going to be working on my HEADLINER USA

Amen to that, the followup to Silfur will be greeted with open arms.

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MICHAEL LEAGUE

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MICHAEL LEAGUE He’s been described as an innovative force in modern music, a multiinstrumentalist who has won four Grammy Awards, and is even David Crosby’s musical director. Michael League is known best as the leader of the acclaimed fusion band Snarky Puppy, and shows no signs of slowing down in a year that has seen him release his first solo album, So Many Me, and evidenced further by the fact Headliner manages to catch him on a day where he’s running around organising a festival.

California-born League left his New York base four years ago to move to a small village outside Barcelona, Spain. Living in a beautiful place and with that glorious introduction above, it would be easy to over-glamorise League’s career, but he’s certainly put in the grind to get here.

40 players feature at one time or another, and a musical spectrum that covers jazz, rock, funk, world music, and more. The most recent Grammy came last year, for Best Contemporary Instrumental Album, awarded to their Live At The Royal Albert Hall record.

“I started a band called Snarky Puppy after my second year of school (University of North Texas) with college friends,” he says. “And as that band spent its first 10 years struggling on tour, all 15 of us in a van, I was playing with other artists, I was teaching, playing weddings, playing steakhouses, playing with Frank Sinatra impersonators. Every weird gig you can imagine!”

League certainly isn’t the first musician who has always fancied the idea of making a solo record, if only there was the time, only to find lots of it last year. And for someone as insanely busy as League, last year’s global lockdown and the clearest calendar he’s ever had was an opportunity he couldn’t pass up. Headliner asks him about his experience, knowing he seems to thrive the most in collaborative settings.

League’s four Grammys have all come from his work in Snarky Puppy, a music collective that has seen

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“I LEARNED A LOT ABOUT MYSELF, ABOUT MY DEFICIENCIES AS A MUSICIAN AND ALSO ABOUT WHAT I’M CAPABLE OF AND WHAT I’M ABSOLUTELY NOT CAPABLE OF.”

His answer is a self-deprecating one.

“It was definitely a new experience, and I was definitely a bit vulnerable.

Because I think my main talent as a musician, and maybe it’s not the most flattering thing to say, is really just about assembling people, knowing who will work together well, and what that musical result will be. I partly did it too as a challenge to myself to see if I can hang with that kind of environment. I learned a lot about myself, about my deficiencies as a musician and also about what I’m capable of and what I’m absolutely not capable of. So it was fascinating.”

Take a listen to this new solo work, So Many Me, and you will quickly know League is far more than some glorified musical curator, such is the level of craft, songwriting and

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assemblage of sounds. And with his background in jazz, the stunning and complex vocal harmonies are a real joy.

“It’s basically addressing one way that people handle the feeling of the world collapsing around them,” he says of lead single Right Where I Fall. “Some people like to be comforted, some people need to share their feelings with others, and some people just want to be left alone. And I’m one of those people – if I’m experiencing anxiety, I like to be left alone. I think it has a different resonance, considering that it was composed during a global pandemic, so the music video is designed to reflect that. Of what it feels like when you’re in the middle of a storm of anxiety or depression.”

Don’t go thinking this means an end to League’s collaborating days – he’s set himself the unenviable task of producing 12 albums this year alone, so plenty more to come after this excellent first outing as a solo artist.

“Two of those albums are Snarky Puppy and Bokanté records.

And those are always really big productions. Especially this Snarky Puppy one, which will be a live one in-studio with an audience. Then I’m also doing a documentary this year on Texan music, so I think I put a little too much on my plate, but I’m gonna live through it, I think.”

INSTA: @MICHAELLEAGUEPLAYSMUSIC

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