Headliner USA Issue 14

SUPPORTING THECREA T I EV YTINUMMOC

So where did March disappear to? It feels like it was just a matter of days ago that we were toasting the arrival of 2023 and exchanging wishes for a prosperous new year, yet here we are, with Spring well and truly sprung and almost a third of the year behind us.

This sense of time sped up in the industry is largely due to the fact that it’s been the closest Q1 to normality in three years. In recent weeks we’ve seen a busy awards season, with the Golden Globes, BAFTAs, BRITs, Grammys, and Oscars fly by at breakneck speed, while the return of ISE to its usual early-year time slot after a May outing in 2022 delivered the busiest show in its history. Plus, the annual AVA and AIM Connected conferences have enjoyed packed out editions.

It is perhaps no coincidence then that this edition of Headliner USA reflects the full gamut of themes and topics that have been defining features of 2023 so far.

As you’ll see from our cover, we had the great privilege of chatting with composer Jung Jaeil about his incredible original score for Netflix’s most-watched show of all time, Squid Game. In an extensive conversation, he delves into the art of what it takes

to create a great score for film and TV and his own personal creative process.

Elsewhere, we speak with goth rock icon and former HIM frontman Ville Valo about his maiden voyage as a solo artist, which saw him write, record, engineer and produce his debut album Neon Noir

We also cast an eye over the landscape for emerging artists and producers, as Chris Walton and Karin Ann open up on the biggest challenges and opportunities facing those looking to crack the industry.

Meanwhile, as the immersive boom continues to gather pace, we explore the very latest projects placing spatial sound at the core of their offerings, from the latest Dolby Atmosequipped studios to the colleges and universities training the next generation of audio professionals.

With so much going on, no wonder it’s been hard to keep up.

Daniel Gumble Head of Content, Headliner

08 / KARIN ANN

22 / KEVIN TEASLEY

32 / IMMERSIVE AV

44 / IMMERSIVE AUDIO

26 / VILLE VALO

56 / AUDIO PRODUCTION

38 / BRIAN MCOMBER

/ CHRIS WALTON

14/ jung jaeil

70 / KORI ANDERS

102 / KEITH THOMAS

88 / LIVE SOUND

60 / MEET ME IN THE BATHROOM

98 / LIGHTING

66 / INSTALLATION

82 / STUDIO

92 / CAROLINE ROSE

76 / ACRAZE

droW s by Alice Gustafson

KARIN ANN FOR A MOMENT

Slovakian alt-pop artist Karin Ann (dubbed Eastern Europe’s answer to Billie Eilish) is fast becoming a Gen-Z icon. She’s the first ever Slovak artist to feature on a giant billboard in New York’s Times Square, and she’s not shy about standing up for the rights of the LGBTQ+ community. She explains why it was impossible to be herself in her conservative hometown, and why being tired of people saying “what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger” inspired her new emotive popballad, for a moment.

What musical influences have shaped your sound over the years?

I listened to so many things growing up because I used to do figure skating, dance and ballet, and there were certain guidelines about what type of music you were allowed. It was mostly instrumental and classical music, but also my mom is really big on musicals, so I grew up listening to a lot of Czech musicals, because my mom is Czech. She also really loved Queen, so I grew up on that and The Beatles. I grew up on the Disney Channel too, so since I was five I was like, ‘This is what I’m gonna do. I’m gonna sing and act. It’s my thing.’ Everybody was like, ‘No, you won’t.’ So I put it aside until later. Then I started having my own mind and own taste, and that’s when I branched out a little bit.

You started writing music when you were just 14. Can you remember your early songs?

I actually wrote a poem first when I was in third grade, and it was horrible! Then I ended up writing a full song with music and melodies when I was 14 – I never want to hear it again! [laughs]. But it’s a cool part of my life, you know? It’s like having a diary. You look back on it and you’re like, ‘Jesus Christ, this is horrible!’ But it’s a chapter in your life.

How have you evolved into the artist you are today?

I think it’s still evolving – it’s always going to be evolving. As long as it comes from you and your authentic self, I think that’s going to show no matter what genre or no matter what

another Tuesday.’ Literally, that’s how I had to look at it because otherwise I would be stressing out about it.

You’re an outspoken advocate of the LGBTQ+ community and minority rights, and your lyrics tackle themes of gender equality, mental health and human rights. What led you to take such a stance here?

kind of path in music you choose – no matter the structure of the song, or if it’s pop, rock or whatever. As long as it comes from you and you’re being authentic to yourself, I think there is a signature to your sound. Genre-wise, it’s always going to be changing. I don’t think I’m going to ever stick to just one thing.

up on it a lot faster because they were at home. Everything has been snowballing since and I honestly have not really had a break, so I had to take a little bit of a step back to reevaluate a lot of things because of my health. I think I’m still finding the balance, to be honest. I’m still learning how to navigate this and how to make sure that my health is a priority – mental and physical. Which song are you most proud of writing?

I have this song that I just filmed the music video for that’s going to be coming out in a couple of months that I’m really proud of. I’m very self critical and usually whenever I have a song out I’m like, ‘Oh my God, this could have been better; I could have done this better, I could have said this better.’ But with this song I was like, ‘I actually like this.’ So I’m really proud of that.

You have opened for YUNGBLUD, Imagine Dragons, My Chemical Romance and Alfie Templeman, and have received support from BBC Radio 1 in a relatively short space of time. How have you adapted to this sudden success?

It’s been nonstop since I put out my first song. I put out my first song in English in the summer of 2020, which obviously was during the pandemic, and I think due to that people picked

You were featured in Spotify’s 2021 EQUAL campaign for women in music, which saw you become the first ever Slovak artist to feature on a giant billboard in New York’s Times Square. Has that sunk in yet?

When I found out it was very surreal. They were like, ‘Yeah, you’re gonna be on a billboard,’ and I was like, ‘Okay, sure. Definitely, I believe you,’ and they were sending me pictures and videos. Some part of me thought it was photoshopped, like fake news. It was very surreal and hard to believe. I think I’m still a little bit like, ‘No, it didn’t happen!’ Because I don’t think your brain can compute that. But obviously, I’m very grateful and it was a big honor. I don’t like to think of things as being big because otherwise they stress me out. I have anxiety and mental health issues so if I think of something as a big deal, I freak myself out about it. So I’m always like, ‘It’s just

I think it’s because I grew up in a very conservative, closed minded place. It could have gone either one of two ways: either I would become like that and be very against anything like equality and would be like, ‘The world doesn’t need changing.’ Or it could have gone the way it did go, which is the opposite. It could be either extreme – it could not be a middle ground when you grow up in a very closed-minded place like that. It also helped that I have two sisters that are both very much the same as me – they’re both caring and very outspoken about these things. One of the few upsides of social media is that it puts a lot of things into perspective. I was like, ‘If people in the world can function differently and it works, why should I stay here and feel so alone and closed off?’ Honestly, if I didn’t have that influence from social media and didn’t see the outside perspective, I don’t think I would be here; I don’t think I would be able to handle it. It’s sad and kind of dark but I’m really grateful that I live in a generation that cares about these things and is open to talking about them, and that we as artists can start talking about it. I try to do my part.

Photograph

Credit: Kevin Lynch

Let’s talk about your brand new pop ballad, for a moment. When did this song start to take shape?

It’s been in the works for a while. I really like this song – it’s one of my favorites. I really like what I talk about in it. It was very interesting how it came up as well, because I had a session and I didn’t know what to write about. It actually was supposed to be called something else, but I won’t say the name because I think I might use it for a different project. So that’s a little easter egg…

With lyrics like, ‘What didn’t kill me never made me stronger, time doesn’t heal anything, it just makes you forget’ – can you tell us about the inspiration behind the lyrics?

I didn’t know what to write about – nothing was really coming to my head. In my phone I always have my notes app that I fill with random sentences that I come back to at some point, especially in the moments where I don’t feel inspired at all. I looked at it and I had written down those words, and I was like, ‘That’s true.’ I don’t like that people put this pressure on you where if you go through something terrible that you’re supposed to forget about it, because it just makes you stronger. No, it didn’t! It gives you so many issues and you would have been so much better off otherwise! I’m not saying it doesn’t make you who you are, but I’m saying it gives you trauma, it gives you issues, it gives you things that you have to work through and deal with. It’s not something that you can just be like, ‘Yeah,

guys, I’m so much cooler now because I went through this.’ People look at it like, ‘The more trauma you’re able to have on your plate, the stronger you are,’ which is just not the truth at all. The song is about taking the pressure off of having to feel strong if something hurts. It’s about taking steps towards healing and being conscious of the fact that you’ve been through something bad and that you want to get better. So you take conscious steps towards healing because healing doesn’t just happen because a year has passed. Healing happens because you are able to look back on it and reevaluate. Think about how you feel, and feel how you feel. If you need to cry, cry. If you need to break something, go to a rage room and break something and deal with it head on. Don’t put it on the back burner, because that never ends well.

“PEOPLE LOOK AT IT LIKE, ‘THE MORE TRAUMA YOU’RE ABLE TO HAVE ON YOUR PLATE, THE STRONGER YOU ARE,’ WHICH IS JUST NOT THE TRUTH.”

When London’s legendary RAK Studios responded to demand and went immersive, they wanted the most truthful monitors available. So they chose The Ones Smart Active Monitors, finding them unbeatable for neutrality, imaging, fatigue-free listening and consistent mix translation.

RAK now enjoys a flawlessly cohesive and scalable immersive system that’s also pinpoint accurate in level, distance and frequency response alignment, thanks to our GLM calibration software.

So, if you’re serious about going immersive – whatever your room size – explore our industry-leading solutions online. Visit www.genelec.com/immersive-hub

“Genelec have set the bar for immersive monitoring.”

Emma Townsend, RAK Studios

A MODERN CLASSIC

When South Korean composer Jung Jaeil was handed the script for Squid Game, he had no idea it would go on to become Netflix’s mostwatched series of all time – and he probably wouldn’t have played the recorder on its main theme…

Photograph

Credit: Young Chul Kim

Photograph

Credit: Young Chul Kim

Directed by Hwang Dong-hyuk, Squid Game landed on Netflix in September 2021 and immediately captivated audiences in their millions…and millions. Battle Royale-meets Hunger Games for a binge-watching generation, the director’s nine episode format and brutal concept struck streaming gold. To put its success into perspective, it was the top-viewed show in 94 countries and was watched by more than 142 million households in its first four weeks alone. Word of mouth did the rest, and Squid Game quickly became the must-see show of 2021.

Even the hype leading up to the latest seasons of Stranger Things and Bridgerton, and the controversy and/or morbid curiosity surrounding Dahmer – Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story hasn’t shaken the South Korean hit from its top spot to this day – gluing audiences to screens for well over a billion hours combined, who gleefully watched as 456 desperate players were massacred while playing an escalating series of deadly children’s games for the chance to win millions in prize money. Jaeil, who composed the score for the series, admits he feels far removed from the streaming phenomenon.

“Nobody expected this,” he says humbly from his studio in South Korea. “To be honest, I’m a person who works backstage, so it’s a little surreal for me. I call it a phenomenon I don’t understand. But I guess it has drama. It’s very cruel, and it’s a very bizarre story. But it has humanity.”

Jaeil feels the same about four-time Oscar winning South Korean film, Parasite (also the first non-English language movie to take home the golden statue for Best Picture) – which he also lent his composing talents to.

“It’s like, did this really happen in the world?” He laughs modestly. “I’m just

doing my own business and working in my studio alone.”

Born in Seoul in 1982, Jung began playing piano at three and guitar at nine. By the age of 13 he was obsessed with Liverpudlian metal combo Carcass, and even though today he is known for his classical, emotive pieces of music, his heart still very much lies with rock and death metal.

“I can still play Carcass’ songs on drums and guitars,” he enthuses, eyes lighting up. “I really love their sound. I started piano when I was young, but it was my mom’s idea – I really wanted to play guitar! When I was 10 I fell in love with Metallica – I practiced Metallica for 15 hours a day! Metal music and heavy sound is very important for me. Even now, when I’m composing very classical scores or piano music, you can hear the influence of heavy chords.”

Fast forward to 2019 and Jaeil met with Dong-hyuk, who shared an intriguing script with him. Within its pages, characters were cruelly picked off en-masse or one by one in life or death versions of Red Light, Green Light, Ppopgi (which involves perfectly cutting out a shape marked out in honeycomb), tug of war, and a (seemingly straightforward) marblecollecting game.

“It was a really interesting story. But at the same time, I was so afraid of making the score for a nine-hour film,” he admits. “I read the script, and it was very brutal, but very interesting. It has speed. It’s very logical, brutal and dynamic. But the most important thing was humanity. We can say humanity wins…but I’m not sure who is the winner and who is the loser. It’s a little bit confusing, but we have to have humanity. That’s the most important part of this story.” Jaeil also identified the importance

of the show’s dynamic – dark, violent and dystopian, but also hopeful and defiant – as important sonic cues. “I had to keep one texture throughout the whole episode, but at the same time I needed to use various genres to make it not boring,” he notes.

A lot of the music heard in the score is performed on children’s instruments, including recorders and castanets, as well as being accompanied by traditional Korean instruments. Rather than this being a choice informed by the show’s sinister take on children’s games, Jaeil reveals that using a recorder was just a passing idea.

“At first, there were no children’s instruments – it was just a plan B; something unique and bizarre,” he admits. “It was all very serious sounds like pianos, rock guitars and electronic synthesizers, but one day the children’s instruments idea came into my mind because children are not good at playing – they’re out of pitch and out of rhythm. But I liked the idea of letting viewers know that something was a little bit scary in a bizarre way, but I wasn’t sure if the director would like it. I expected him to go, ‘What the fuck is this?’ – but he really liked it!

“However at first he didn’t like it and said to me, ‘Let’s keep this as a plan B because it makes this sound a little bit like a B-class, underground film.’ But as time went by, he thought that this unique, bizarre sound could be the best fit for this show, and he decided to use it instead of the serious music.”

Jaeil’s uncertain recorder-playing can be heard in Squid Game’s black and white opening scene on the show’s main theme, Way Back Then, showing children immersed in the South Korean playground game, Squid, which the series takes loose inspiration from. The rhythm of the song is based on a 3-3-7 clapping rhythm (commonly used in South Korea to cheer someone on during sports day). One of the notes played on the recorder is unmistakably sharp.

“This tune was very simple, and it starts like all children’s games, which are very simple – anybody could learn it in a minute. In Korean elementary schools, they have a day off for sports games where everybody in the school gathers, as well as their parents. They have a 3-3-7 cheering rhythm to help encourage their team to win,” he explains, clapping out the rhythm in quick succession: one-two-three, one-two-three, one-two-three-four-fivesix-seven.

“Everybody in Korea knows that rhythm, and I just grabbed hold of the idea and improvised on the recorder by myself and the melody just came out. To be honest, there’s a pitch which is out of tune. It’s not intended – I wanted to play D, but I’m not a good recorder player, so it became D sharp. I tried to fix it after, but when I heard it with a D note, it sounded a little bit awkward because everybody had got used to D sharp, so we just decided to keep it that way,” he laughs.

Jaeil had already made his mark on the big screen prior to his Squid Game success, crafting the scores for

Bong Joon-ho’s 2017 film Okja, and pairing up with the director again for 2019’s Parasite. (He also reveals that he’s currently working on the music for the director’s next film, the Robert Pattinson, Toni Collette and Mark Ruffalostarring Mickey 17).

“In Okja, [the director] didn’t mention genre or style at all. But in Parasite, he emphasized baroque music,” he shares. “While he was writing the scripts, he listened to baroque composers like Handel and Vivaldi. In one scene, he put the note, ‘Vivaldi Four Seasons winter’ – that was the reference. So baroque was the key for that film.”

Joon-ho had a specific vision when it came to Parasite’s music, in that it should subtly reinforce the narrative of a poor family who scheme to become employed by a wealthy family, infiltrating their household by posing as unrelated, highly qualified individuals.

“He suggested that I find a very concentrated sound to serve as the core sound for Parasite from top to bottom…I didn’t know what that would be, but I had to find it! In the end we decided on string instruments, because strings are very dynamic – sometimes they can be very warm, sometimes cold and disturbing, and sometimes beautiful. He suggested baroque music, which feels quite noble and beautiful – but sometimes can be funny – to accompany the poor family acting like they are rich people, but which they are not. I’m a self taught musician, so I tried to imitate baroque music. I call it pseudo-baroque! It’s something bizarre that just came out and it fitted perfectly for the poor family.”

OF FAITH THE BELT

When it came to the film’s main theme, The Belt of Faith, which was to be used over a key scene whereby the low-income Kim family put their plan into action to infiltrate the wealthy Park household, Jaeil hit a wall, presenting six different versions to the director – each of which was rejected. The secret to the seventh, over seven-minute version? A hangover.

“It was quite difficult,” Jaeil discloses thoughtfully. “The film goes to another level at this point. It’s an eight-minute sequence which means I had to compose a song that was eight minutes long, and if the director didn’t like it, I had to make another eight minute song. That took a lot of time. By version six I thought, ‘This is the final one; I can’t compose a better version than this.’ [The director] listened and he didn’t like that version either, so I just drank tons of wine that night. The next morning I woke up with a hangover, but I sat in front of the piano and improvised something without any thoughts. I felt vulnerable and powerless, but I thought, ‘Well, I can let him listen to this too,’ – without any thoughts, without any dreams. I let him listen, and he liked it! That’s how it came about. You have to compose thoughtlessly sometimes; it’s necessary,” he shrugs.

Photograph Credit: Young Chul Kim

More recently, Jaeil turned his attention to his own project in the form of Listen, an intimate piano-based album featuring warm cinematic strings that takes inspiration from nature, humanity and the need to listen to the planet and one another. For Jaeil, it’s long overdue.

“I’ve been composing for almost 25 years and I released my last solo album in 2004,” he points out. “After that, I failed to be a singer-songwriter and I became a music director who makes music for films, dance performances and pop singers. I was a little bit afraid because I hadn’t done my own project for such a long time, but I knew it was time to do my own thing. I started thinking about it right after Parasite won the Oscar. When the pandemic happened, I couldn’t go anywhere for more than two years. I felt vulnerable and powerless. I thought about how we didn’t listen to one another. We didn’t love each other and we didn’t listen to the voice of this beautiful planet. I hoped that everyone would stop and listen to one another more. I wanted to listen to all the voices of everything that surrounds us; I hope that people feel alive when they listen.”

Recorded at Rainbow Studio in Norway and performed by the Budapest Scoring Orchestra, Listen deftly

showcases Jaeil’s talent for crafting evocative and poignant compositions.

“This album sounds like my intimate feelings – more than language, more than words. That’s why I chose piano and orchestra as the main instruments for this album. I went deep inside of my heart to ask, ‘What do I have to do as an artist?’ Sometimes I feel art is powerless – it cannot change the world. But I truly believe art can soothe one’s soul; art can feed or can put a seed in one’s soul. A soul touched by art could change the world – I believe that,” he adds sincerely. “I hope this can be a tiny seed so that we can listen to each other, feel each other’s souls and do something good for this world.”

His success with improv on Parasite led him to use that tactic again as a starting point on Listen – albeit minus the hangover.

“All pieces are based on improvisation,” he nods. “I felt I needed a place to be locked away in, so I used this beautiful studio in Oslo. For me, the Scandinavian Peninsula is very innocent – I love cold weather as well, so I decided to work at Rainbow Studio. Thankfully the studio engineer let me use the studio for four weeks in a row. I got an idea about getting the chords down, not the melody. On The River, I had the idea of water flowing, so I started improvising and it just came out after 10 or 20 minutes, and then I just kept the fragments and the ideas…” he trails off, suddenly pensive. “My first language is musical instruments,” he smiles by way of explanation. “I’m very comfortable in front of the piano, more than when I speak.”

INSTA: @JUNGJAEIL.COMPOSER

“THIS ALBUM SOUNDS LIKE MY INTIMATE FEELINGS – MORE THAN LANGUAGE, MORE THAN WORDS.”

MIXING FOR THE GRAMMYS

KEVIN TEASLEY

The 65th Grammy Awards recently witnessed a host of legendary musical artists – including DJ Khaled, Jay-Z, Lil Wayne, Rick Ross, John Legend, and Fridayy – deliver an electrifying performance of the triple Grammy-nominated song God Did at the Crypto.com arena stage.

Music director, producer, composer and mix engineer, Kevin Teasley, mixed the song for the show at United Recording Studios, Studio K on a Neve 8424 analog mixing and recording console.

Based in Los Angeles, Teasley has worked with several A-list recording artists and specializes in trailer and TV production music, as well as running high-end music and sound design production company TONIC Music + Creative.

“It was an honor and a thrill to be a part of such a big performance and

contribute my skills as a music mix engineer,” says Teasley, who was excited to have been asked to mix the Grammy-nominated song.

God Did entered the 65th Annual Grammys Awards with nominations in three categories: Song of the Year, Best Rap Song and Best Rap Performance. The nods pushed Jay-Z’s career total to 88, tying him with his wife Beyoncé as the most nominated artist in Grammys history.

Beyoncé made history by winning four awards on the night, making her the most decorated act in Grammys history with 32. God Did just lost out in the aforementioned rap categories to Kendrick Lamar’s The Heart Part 5, while Song of the Year went to Bonnie Raitt’s Just Like That

Kevin’s outstanding mixing skills ensured that the performance sounded impeccable for the television broadcast audience.

Teasley divides his time between working on music for live concerts, trailers, promos, and recording artists, as well as internal projects for his company, TONIC Music + Creative.

The list of recording artists that Teasley has worked with in the past speaks volumes, and includes the likes of Jennifer Lopez, Megan Thee

Stallion, Rosalia, Britney Spears, Chris Brown, Neyo, J-Rock/Kendrick Lamar, Ciara, Usher, Tinashe, Kelly Clarkson, and many more.

Well-known for his hybrid studio workflow and love for the analog world, he mixed the six-artist song on the Neve 8424 and 8816, which have become a signature of his sound.

The Neve 8424 console’s slick design aims to fit the needs of the modern hybrid studio, featuring multi-DAW automation and ‘unparalleled’ connectivity to any piece of outboard gear. Supreme sound quality is ensured by combining modern and vintage Neve topology, including voltage mixing through Marinair transformers, made famous in the early 80-Series consoles.

Meanwhile, the 8816 summing mixer brings the legendary Neve console sound to a 19” rack format. Using the same topology as the classic 80-Series console, with two Marinair transformers on the stereo bus output, the 8816 represents –according to the company – the ultimate 16-channel rackmount Neve console.

“The Neve 8424 and 8816 are such an integral part of my workflow and sound that it has become a signature of my sound,” he reveals. “With both of these pieces of gear, I am able to get the beautiful sound of Neve analog yet keep the speed and convenience of digital and hybrid workflow with Pro Tools.”

INSTA: @KEVINCTEASLEY AMSNEVE.COM

Photograph

Credit: Juha Mustonen

Words

Former HIM (His Infernal Majesty) frontman Ville Valo joins Headliner for an in-depth chat about the making of his debut solo album Neon Noir, working in total isolation, and why now is the right time to strike out on his own…

Donning a jet black hoodie and with a twilight blue curtain as his background, Ville Valo cuts something of a spectral figure when he enters Headliner’s Zoom meeting room. A pale, disembodied face seemingly floating in the middle of the screen, it could almost be the result of a Ville Valo filter effect, such is the chilly, gothic aesthetic.

Thankfully, the proverbial ice is broken almost immediately, the former HIM frontman almost surprisingly warm, chatty, and frequently funny in conversation. It’s a persona that sits slightly at odds with his wellearned status as one of the most enduring goth rock icons of the past quarter of a century. With HIM, Valo notched up eight albums, a Grammy nomination, much critical acclaim and in excess of 10 million record sales. Along the way he became one of the most venerated figures in rock and attracted one of the most devoted fan bases in music.

He is joining us from his home studio in Helsinki, where he recently completed work on his debut solo album Neon Noir. Six years on from the cessation of HIM, it is a solo record in every respect. Each and every track was written, recorded, engineered, and produced by Valo himself, a result of lockdown restrictions and a long-held ambition to test himself further in the studio.

“It feels like losing my virginity with the release of my first solo album,” he grins. “By some miracle I’ve been able to pull this one off. It feels unreal, having worked all by myself since the pandemic. I was painted into a corner because of the pandemic, but I’m also a fan of Prince, Andrew Eldritch, and those dictators [laughs] that create very singular visions of what they want to hear, and I always wanted to do the same, so here we are.”

The fact that he was working alone wasn’t the only distinguishing feature on Neon Noir. Having spent over 20 years following essentially the same creative process, Valo was determined to completely reinvent his approach to writing and accumulating material.

“Having a band that rehearses 15 songs for four months, then hits the studio, records, gets it mixed and puts it out… I’ve done that so many times and wanted to challenge

myself,” he says. “Also, on this album I finished one song at a time. I’d do one song from scratch, including mixing it, and only then would I move on to the next one. I didn’t have any other ideas or melodies prepared; it was just one song at a time. I also had a weird setup –everything was set up in a circular fashion, so if I wanted to re-track drums at whatever point I had everything ready to go at all times. That’s what I loved about working on this album, it was so free.”

While there was a degree of learning on the fly while making Neon Noir, Valo explains that he had a clear idea of the sonic identity he wanted to convey.

“I wanted it to be a gothic Phil Spector record in stereo,” he states. “I wanted a massive, pompous wall of sound, but as a rock record. Phil Spector used to do lots of doubling of bass and drums, so it becomes this big wash. That’s something I’ve always loved but I want to bring a bit more Black Sabbath into proceedings.

“Regarding engineering, because I was working by myself I didn’t have to compromise my time and it enabled me to follow the sound. I was writing and producing and recording at the same time, so if a sound tickled me in the right spots, I was following that sound until the

very end to see where that sound and, in the end, that song would take me. That was such a new experience because in bands they are separate processes – writing, rehearsing, tracking. This time it all happened at once and I have never gotten so many goosebumps working on music ever. And being an elderly chap, it was about time,” he laughs.

With only a limited amount of engineering experience, Valo found himself drawing from the engineers he has worked with in the past to navigate his way through the process.

“I’d tracked vocals before and done some lo-fi demos, but that’s the challenge,” he says. “Tracking drums is hard, it’s very complicated. You need a good space and a good set of drums, there are so many moving parts. It took about four months to get a decent drum sound, but I had all the time in the world. I’ve seen some legendary engineers in action at close quarters, so I have been amassing and absorbing information over the years. This was the time to put that into use. And the sound of the album is very unique, it’s very me because I was involved in every aspect of it, for better or worse. I’m the one to blame,” he smiles, “and I’ll gladly take the hit in both possible ways.”

“I WANTED IT TO BE A GOTHIC PHIL SPECTOR RECORD IN STEREO.”

Photograph Credit: Juha Mustonen

A staple of Valo’s studio setup, centered around an API 32-track console and a raft of analog synths and ‘70s and ‘80s outboard gear, is his Genelec monitoring system. A fellow iconic Finnish brand, he and esteemed producer and mix engineer Tim Palmer (David Bowie, Tears For Fears, Robert Plant, Ozzy Osbourne), who mixed Neon Noir, came to rely on an identical Genelec setup in their respective studios.

“I had other monitors for a while just for testing purposes, but with Genelec I have the best translation,” he elaborates. “I know Genelecs very well, and Tim Palmer who mixed the album has always been using Genelecs - I think he’s had 1031s for 30-40 years. I contacted Genelec here to see if they would be interested in helping us out so we had an identical setup with sub and speakers. They have the GLM calibration software, which is great and made things really easy. It was about trying to be as realistic as possible with certain aspects of the recording process so that I could be as unrealistic and wild and psychedelic with others.

“I used to have 1032s and I used them quite a bit,” he continues. “I’m now checking out bigger Genelecs like the 1051s, as now the album is

over, I can mess about a bit more in the studio; there were certain things I didn’t want to change as the process was ongoing. And being a Finnish company, I don’t need to worry if anything breaks down. I’ve never had anything break down, but it’s easy to ship to them if I needed to, and they repair and service all the older stuff as well. They have been super supportive.”

Last year, Valo’s relationship with Genelec expanded beyond the studio walls when he was asked to come up with a visual design for a set of 8341, perhaps better known as The Ones, which would be auctioned for charity. Previous initiatives would typically see an artist simply sign a pair of speakers, but in this instance, Valo wanted to offer something more unique.

“It was during the pandemic and I thought, why not make it a bit more special,” he recalls. “I had the idea that if they give me the raw chassis without the speakers in, I could try to paint something on them. We have always been calling The Ones the Cyclops in Finland because of the one eye, so I thought it made perfect sense to make it look like an eye, kind of weird and spooky. There is a song on the album called Vertigo Eyes that is based on the Vertigo logo of Black

Sabbath. They used to be on the Vertigo record label, and when you put that record on [the spinning logo] is really psychedelic and makes your head spin, so it’s sort of my tribute to that. It took me weeks because I’m not a good painter but I’m very enthusiastic. That’s the cool thing about Genelec, they were willing to go that far and let me do something crazy and hopefully not ruin their perfect product!”

For now, Valo’s focus is squarely on touring Neon Noir and seeing how his new material translates from the studio to the stage. He’s unsure as to what form any future projects will take, but the one thing he is certain of is that there is more music to make.

“There are a million different ideas I could look at,” he closes, “provided the music is willing and giving. I just have to follow the song and see where it takes me.”

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THE FUTURE OF AV COLLABORATION?

INSIDE LIGHTROOM

Lightroom, a new exhibition space in London, recently opened with an innovative immersive AV exhibit showcasing the work of artist David Hockney. Headliner caught up with some of the project’s key players to find out more about the creative avenues the space is set to open up and why the HOLOPLOT sound system at its core can ‘do things no other system can…’

The term ‘immersive’ has been bandied about a lot in recent years. From Atmos mixes of studio recordings and surround sound effects in live music and theater shows, to cinema multiplexes that can shunt seats around while flicking water at you in the name of creating a more enjoyable experience - it tends to be applied to just about anything that doesn’t sit neatly under the stereo tag. But in the world of experiential events, visual brands and pro audio specialists appear to be exploring collaborative opportunities with greater vigour than ever before in the pursuit of projects that are, indeed, immersive.

In the world of live music, audio and visual providers have a tendency to stand in opposition to one another, with those on the audio side feeling increasingly maligned by productions

seeking ever-bolder visual elements. Yet, away from the live arena at least, there seems to be a coming together of sorts. Rather than competing for attention, they are finding new, mutually beneficial ways of working thanks in part to leaps in innovation by companies such as Berlin-based pro audio company HOLOPLOT.

One of the purest distillations of this ethos can be experienced within the simple, no frills setting of London’s Lightroom and its opening collaboration with much loved British painter and photographer David Hockney, entitled BIGGER AND CLOSER not smaller and further away. From the minimalist nature of its box room shell to the subtle application of its extraordinarily powerful HOLOPLOT sound system, it is a consummate example of how technology can be used to

complement an artist’s vision. Visuals can be projected onto its four walls and sound can be moved seamlessly around the room via the strategic deployment of just two hidden HOLOPLOT Matrix Arrays and some reflective surfaces.

The effect is mesmeric. As Headliner enters the space, paintings from Hockney’s 1985 Paint The Stage project have become animated, gliding across the walls with something unique to see on each surface. It’s all understatedly accompanied by an original soundtrack from Nico Muhly that is frequently punctuated by the voice of Hockney himself, sharing the stories behind his work and offering unique insights into his artistry.

Playing out over a 50-minute loop, different works from across his career are brought to life in a variety of different ways. Some are almost disorienting, with bright imagery flashing at pace in every direction as the score undulates in tandem. Others are profound in their simplicity, for instance when Hockney’s voice is quietly giving context to slowly materialising static images of various pieces of work. The resulting experience is like seeing splashes of imagination take audio-visual form before your eyes and ears.

While the visual component of the show is plain to see, the sophisticated nature of Lightroom’s audio element, given that the technology and speakers are literally invisible in the room, requires some explanation.

“We knew audio was going to be really important,” says Lightroom CEO Richard Slaney. “The HOLOPLOT system is amazing because it allows us to deal with a really challenging room, and the creative possibilities are endless. We’ve used a lot of reflection around the room, particularly with Nico’s soundtrack. He gave us around 24 original stems and we placed those around the room through different reflectors, so that

it encompasses you in the space. It’s incredible.”

The idea of blending an original soundtrack with Hockney’s own spoken word input was something that came about almost by accident.

“When we did the test with David, we put up some projections and he came and sat next to us, and as we put things up, he just talked about when he made them, how he made them and the stories behind them,” Slaney continues. “We thought, this is the show. You want him on your shoulder, that voice in your ear talking you through it. We took that and ran with it.”

One of the main objectives for the project was to develop an audio system capable of matching the visual impact of the 360-degree projection mapping. Built around a sound design from acclaimed sound designer Gareth Fry, it was vital that the system installed was hidden completely.

Reflecting on his brief for the project, Fry recalls the key objectives that had to be fulfilled, as well as the challenges that had to be overcome.

“We had to consider a system that would provide good sound

coverage, and not bother our neighbors in the office above the main space,” he elaborates. “And the speaker system had to be essentially invisible so that all four walls of highly reflective concrete could be an unhindered projection surface from floor to ceiling. It was an immense challenge because as built, the venue had a reverb time of over six seconds. It’s a huge volume of space and with very audible background noise of projector fans. All of this is the natural enemy of intelligible sound.”

Perhaps unsurprisingly, there was a degree of trial and error in arriving at the final HOLOPLOT system.

“I knew instantly that this could be the solution to all our problems,” Fry continues. “As soon as I left the demo, I called everyone and put the previous system design on hold, and HOLOPLOT were kind enough to arrange a special demo so everyone else could come hear it. There are many things that Holoplot can do that I’ve never heard any other speaker system do. It has a bunch of magic tricks up its sleeves. But first and foremost, it gave us a sound system that could provide intelligible sound with very even coverage in a highly reverberant space. For that alone it was worth its considerable weight in gold.”

“SOMEONE DESCRIBED IT TO ME AS THE INTIMACY OF A PODCAST ON THE SCALE OF AN IMAX.”

The system was installed by HOLOPLOT partner Creative Technology and consists of two X1 arrays at either end of the room. Each array comprises four X1 Modul 96s and four X1 Modul 80-S, embedded and entirely hidden within wall cavities.

“The acoustic centre of the East Array is at 4.61m and for the West Array at 6.66m,” explains Reese Kirsh, segment manager performing arts, HOLOPLOT. “These were the only possible positions to create wall cavities for the arrays. They were predefined and not possible to change. With a traditional audio solution, it would not be ideal to have the sources facing each other due to phase issues and spill between the sources. Thanks to HOLOPLOT’s unique optimization algorithms however, the predefined locations of the arrays weren’t an unsolvable problem. The listening area is able to be defined as well as the relative sound pressure level for each area. This allows for uniform coverage from each array no matter where the listener is within the space.

“Each of the arrays are hidden behind color matched acoustically transparent material, making for an unspoilt 360-degree projection surface,” he continues. “The immersive effects that are used in Gareth Fry’s sound design were created with X1’s Wave Field Synthesis (WFS) capabilities to create virtual sources.

“It was key at the Lightroom experience that visitors would be able to localize sound from these reflections no matter where they are within the main space. To achieve this, multiple reflections were distributed along the North and South walls of the venue.

Using WFS, the sound waves converge at a set point in space. These ‘bundled’ waves then reflect from the wall as if there is a point source positioned there, allowing the listener to localize the sound from a position where there is no array. It’s the combination of reflections and even sound coverage across the space that make this experience alive with sound,” explains Kirsh.”

The Hockney collaboration at Lightroom is only the first in what promises to be a busy programme of events, showcases, and exhibitions to be held at the new space over the coming weeks and months. Each will undoubtedly come with its own set of AV objectives and challenges, and according to Kirsh, the HOLOPLOT system is ready and waiting to be put through its paces.

“Choosing X1, Lightroom has set itself up for the future,” he says. “The next show they produce could be a rock’n’roll show, a narrated documentary, or classical music piece - our technology removes any boundaries to creativity. More traditional exhibitions in museums, with display cases etc. could benefit from our technology’s unique multi zone concept capability. Creating tightly defined listening zones inside an exhibition creates unseen before freedom for audiences by removing the need for headphones completely. Visitors simply walk in or out of a zone to listen to the audio accompanying the specific exhibit.”

For Lightroom’s Slaney, both the HOLOPLOT system and the concept of the space as a whole have raised the bar on what is possible with regard to the future of AV collaborative projects. For him, the aim will always be to harness the power of technology to service the artist’s vision. And on this evidence, that goal has been achieved to the fullest.

“Someone described it to me as the intimacy of a podcast on the scale of an iMAX,” Slaney closes, “which I think it is. It’s intimate but not overwhelming. It’s an immersive experience but it’s very personal, emotional, and there’s story in it. We want each project to be through the eyes of an individual, and this is David’s vision.”

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LANCE POWELL ON USING ANUBIS MISSIONS

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Lance Powell- Engineer / Mixer Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds, Miguel, Snoop Dogg, Jess Glynne, Blxst.

SCORING NETFLIX’S FAIR PLAY

BRIAN MCOMBER

After working in a biology lab to being the long-term drummer for the Grammy-nominated indie rockers the Dirty Projectors, as well as drumming for Björk and St Vincent, Brian McOmber is now settled in his new life as a film composer. He speaks to Headliner about his work on the Phoebe Dynevor-starring Fair Play, which has been picked up for release by Netflix after premiering at the Sundance Film Festival.

McOmber has something of a previous life as a rockstar, as a session drummer for Björk, David Byrne, Solange, The Roots and St. Vincent. Although his transition from full-time drummer to film composer is probably less strange than going from studying and working in evolutionary morphology to becoming a professional musician.

“I had a job at a university working as a lab technician in a biology lab,” McOmber says from home in Los Angeles, where he’s based his music career for several years, and is just getting over a bout of Covid. “I would do that to make money and then go on tour with the band (Dirty Projectors) to lose money, as most people do. But somewhere along the way, the band started to get some traction, I quit the job in the science lab and just started doing the band full time.”

It’s always a tough moment for any musician: weighing up whether to leave a day job for music, and picking the right moment to do so. But usually, that job would be something like a minimum wage bartending job; presumably leaving the science field was a tougher decision? Not necessarily.

“I don’t know, it might have been more lucrative for me to be a bartender!” he laughs. “It was when I switched labs that I wanted to do more touring. I started working more with bacteria, which you pop in the freezer – you literally put your experiment on ice and come

back to it four months later! So thankfully that meant I’d have a job to come back to before music became full-time.”

It was via the Dirty Projectors project that McOmber got to work with Icelandic music legend Björk when she collaborated with the band to co-release Mount Wittenberg Orca in 2010. “I got to write all my own drum parts,” he recalls. “One time, Björk came in by herself and was commenting on how I was preparing the drums. I’ll never forget that because I usually play very loud and bombastic. But for her specific record, I went as soft, gentle and minimal as I could. That was such a trip, being in the studio with her.”

Collaborating with the triple Grammy-winning St Vincent is another drumming memory that sticks out most fondly for McOmber. “Anne (Clark, aka St Vincent) approached me about doing a series of covers for the 10th anniversary of Our Bands Could Be Your Life , which is a book by Michael Azerrad that chronicles the history of American hardcore.

“And that was a trip because I got to play drums in a group where you see Anne Clark finally come into herself. We were playing this song Kerosene by Big Black, and she’s got her voice shifted down and she’s screaming into the microphone. Up until that moment she was the quiet, timid Anne Clark backing up these cutesy indie rock bands like

Sufjan Stevens, but we witnessed something click in her!”

Going from drumming for Björk and witnessing St Vincent going through a primal transformation to becoming a film composer was never going to happen in some runof-the-mill way. As it happens, while still The Dirty Projector’s touring drummer, McOmber got chatting with director Hannah Fidell on a flight, and being a fan of the band, she invited him to score 2013’s A Teacher , which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival.

And as if this story doesn’t seem unlikely enough already, one of the Sundance jurors, Indian director Anurag Kashyap, saw the film and asked McOmber if he would come to India to score his next film, Ugly.

“I said yes, not really knowing how the hell I was going to do that,” he says. “But I hopped on a plane to Mumbai, locked myself in a hotel room with my laptop, and somehow cranked out a score in a month. The next thing I knew, I was at Cannes! It all happened really fast for me. I realized how lucky I was to be in that situation, having talked to other people who spent most of their academic life trying to be a film composer. I didn’t stop playing drums straight away, but I didn’t make that my priority. Because being a professional touring drummer from band-to-band is tough work. I realized I was much happier creating film scores.”

Credit: Netflix

And ever since those two 2013 film projects, it’s safe to say McOmber has mostly set his drumsticks down and fully embraced the film industry, doing it full-time ever since. And with it now being a decade since those debuts, the invitation to score Netflix’s Phoebe Dynevor and Alden Ehrenreich-starring Fair Play is richly deserved. Dynevor and Ehrenreich play a young couple in love, but whose relationship takes a sinister turn as a promotion opportunity arises at the cutthroat hedge fund where they work together.

“I like to describe it as a feel-bad romance film,” McOmber says with a laugh. “I’m so bored of having my morality handed to me by all these films which feel so safe. I knew from the start that Chloe (Domont, Fair Play’s director) was never going to make a safe film, but that it would have a lot of ambiguity and people would take different things away from it. It really is her vision, and I was just trying to help bring that vision to life with the music.”

So naturally, McOmber certainly did not create a ‘safe’ sounding musical score, quite the opposite. He learned early on that “Chloe had an aversion to me using melody in the film, which was fine by me! As soon as I strung three or four notes together, she’d say that it was too leading and too melodious. She asked me what the sound quality of feeling anxious was, or even of being slapped in the face. That’s what led to me using a lot of percussion in the film.

“And completely misusing a cello; I recorded cello playing it with drumsticks and mallets, and I’d put metal objects on the strings and strum it with a credit card. We did some recording with small groups of string players and then a lot of manipulation afterwards. Sometimes I’d take an intense attack on the cello, put it through a whole chain of effects, and then double it with a synth.”

Following its Sundance premiere, Netflix acquired Fair Play to the tune of 20 million dollars, so expect a big promo run

for the film which will become increasingly anticipated as we edge closer to its release, as yet unannounced.

“There will be a theatrical run at cinemas,” McOmber says. “And they’ll be rolling out the red carpet for the film too, which is exciting. I don’t know if that has to do with the fact that Rian Johnson (The Last Jedi, Knives Out) is a producer of the film and has some sway at Netflix. But it’s just great knowing that the film has the right people behind it to make sure that, firstly, the creators all get paid, and secondly that lots of people watch it. Because at times it plays like a horror movie, and the best way to experience horror films is to be in a theater and share everyone’s reaction.”

McOmber wraps by speaking about the near future — and there’s lots more to look forward to from one of the more exciting film composers amongst a sea of copycats in the industry. “I’m scoring another film with Alden Ehrenreich,” he says. “He’s so great in Fair Play, and he’s in Cocaine Bear and Christopher Nolan’s next film, but he’s written and directed and is starring in his own film as well and I’m working on that, which is also kind of in the horror world. It’s being produced by Francis Ford Coppola.

“And then I’m working on a documentary with a longtime collaborator of mine about Immigration Customs Enforcement, aka ICE, which is a very, very dark film about some of the murders that this organization has been a part of.”

Duly noted – in other words, McOmber is working on some of the best films scheduled for release. In the meantime, watch out for Fair Play being released in cinemas and on Netflix, and for its soundtrack album.

BRIANMCOMBER.COM

“I RECORDED CELLO - PLAYING IT WITH DRUMSTICKS AND MALLETS, AND I’D STRUM IT WITH A CREDIT CARD.”

Words

HARNESSING THE POWER OF ATMOS

BLUE MARBLE SOUND

New Colorado studio Blue Marble Sound recently equipped itself for immersive projects with a Dolby Atmos setup and L-ISA Studio technology. Headliner hears from studio owner Amol Kitwadkar about his ambitions for the facility and the opportunities its high-tech spec is opening up for the future…

The inspiration for Blue Marble can be traced back to a webinar Kitwadkar watched during lockdown featuring double Oscar-winning composer (Best Score and Best Song for Slumdog Millionaire) A.R. Rahman, in which he discussed the benefits of using spatial sound within music. With a lifelong passion for music, including a five-year course in Hindustani Classical Music in his native Sangli, Western India, he decided to embrace immersive technology to the fullest in his next creative endeavor.

The studio found a home in a former boxing gym in nearby Loveland,

CO. Kitwadkar researched and implemented his new studio setup meticulously and thoroughly. These efforts involved taking his team, including Anthony J. Catalano, CEO of Denver-based pro audio vendor MediaVine Pro Audio Video LLC, and acoustician Tim Gulsrud of Soundpost Acoustics LLC, out to Los Angeles in June 2021. Here they met with Dolby and other potential equipment vendors and found a wealth of inspiration and resources.

While in L.A., he visited the L-Acoustics facility in Westlake Village, where he first experienced the company’s L-ISA immersive

technology, and subsequently asked MediaVine to design his L-Acoustics system.

The design features seven compact X8 loudspeakers: three for the LCR array and four for the surround array. Four smaller 5XTs comprise the signature Atmos overhead height array, while a pair of KS21 subwoofers provide the anchor for the 7.1.4 system, all powered by four LA2Xi amplified controllers.

“WE HAVE NOT DONE A SINGLE STEREO MIX AS A MAIN DELIVERABLE SINCE WE STARTED. EVERY SIGN IS POINTING TOWARDS ALL THE CONTENT DEMAND BEING IMMERSIVE.”

“The biggest thing I have noticed is that the L-ISA studio used with Dolby renderer definitely adds a punch to a song which sometimes lacks in a Dolby Atmos mix,” Kitwadkar tells Headliner when discussing the setup.“Both Dolby Atmos renderer and L-ISA Studio have their advantages and disadvantages but together they create magic. One of the notable features of L-ISA Studio is that you can group objects and move them together which is not possible through the Dolby Renderer. Another great perk is the ability to add a controlled reverb as you are moving objects away from the room easily without making the mix sound muddy.

“The speakers are extremely crisp and are two-way coaxial, which makes them phase consistent. This is great for rooms like ours that are on the larger side.

“It was a lengthy process to design and build the studio, especially because of the supply-chain issues during Covid. But when I realized the potential for immersive music and the fact that there were so few facilities that were capable of it at the time, I knew it was what I wanted to do. And one thing that became clear after we heard the L-ISA demo was that the monitoring system had to be L-Acoustics. The quality of the speakers and sound is incomparable and unmatched.”

He also insists that he believes the L-Acoustics monitors and L-ISA software setup could mark a new push for the company in offering a complete studio monitoring solution.

“I absolutely believe it does,” he states. “This is a complete solution if you want to deliver an immersive audio project. As Dolby Atmos has

a larger market share, the fact that it can work with Dolby Renderer is a competitive advantage as a lot of other immersive audio solutions don’t offer this feature.”

MediaVine, with guidance from the L-Acoustics application and sales teams, installed Blue Marble Sound’s monitoring system. Kitwadkar and his team then completed the setup using L-Acoustics L-ISA Studio software in conjunction with Dolby’s rendering software. This combination ensures the proper management of mixobjects and metadata embedding, as well as compatibility with Apple Music and Amazon Spatial Audio.

“What’s great about the 5XTs mounted above is that they have a wider dispersion angle than a lot of other studio monitors, which allows us to have a wider overhead image,” he explains. “The dimensions of the

speaker coverage are 19 by 10 feet, and the ceiling speakers are 13 feet from the ground, and those compact height speakers have no problem covering that much space. It does not feel like you lose sound in any part of the room, and the audio remains fully coherent when you walk throughout the space.”

“Using L-Acoustics speakers and L-ISA Studio software in a recording studio application represents an inflection point in the evolution of immersive audio”, says MediaVine Pro Audio Video’s Anthony J. Catalano. “The beauty of this system is that it can support both Dolby Atmos and L-Acoustics L-ISA as immersive recording formats,” he says. “The L-ISA Studio software can run natively on the studio computer, so both formats are instantly accessible.”

He notes that L-ISA is becoming a more widely used format for spatialized music recordings, a path Atmos has already taken. It’s also being adapted for highend residential applications.

Furthermore, he says, Blue Marble Sound can derive significant work in the future from touring music productions that deploy the L-ISA format for their live sound and choose to do preproduction premixes of some audio elements before shows: “There is a lot of track-heavy content for those sorts of productions, and Blue Marble is the place they can go to map out how the sound stage will operate.”

Catalano cites LifeGate Denver, the first house of worship in Colorado to install L-ISA technologydesigned, supplied, and installed by MediaVine - as a potential future client for the studio as the church creates its own immersive environment. “Once it’s all softwarebased, any user can mix in any format on any DAW,” he says. “You can really see the future taking shape here.”

Dolby engineer Jonathan Lessner tuned and approved the Atmos studio in October 2022. With projects for Denver-based label Bully Free Music artist Gareth Kelsall

and an Atmos up-mixed version of New Orleans band Vivian already completed, Blue Marble Sound is on the way to achieving Kitwadkar’s vision of “using Atmos and L-ISA to ‘lift-up’ the community and myself.

“We are entirely focused on immersive projects,” Kitwadkar says. “We have not done a single stereo mix as a main deliverable since we started. Every sign is pointing towards all the content demand being immersive as we move forward. With the latest developments in Dolby Atmos available in cars, through Audible audiobooks, and all major DSPs asking for Atmos mixes to get playlisted, demand for immersive services is going to be through the roof in the next couple of years.”

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PERFORMANCE IS EVERYTHING

RUMINATING THOUGHTS

Words by ALICEGUST A F NOS

CHRIS WALTON

In this Emerging Headliner interview powered by JBL, singer, songwriter and producer Chris Walton reveals the thoughts that keep him up at night, why he doesn’t want to sound perfect, why he’s embracing vulnerability and shares his home studio process.

Chris Walton wanted to be a jingle writer. “I latched on to the idea that I wanted to write really short, catchy songs used in adverts, TV and movies,” recalls the Boston-based singer, songwriter and producer from his home. “I loved the O’Reilly jingle!” he enthuses, grabbing his guitar and launching into, “O-o-o-o O’Reilly… Auto Parts. Ow!’” He’s not the only one – check the comments under the jingle’s YouTube video.

“It’s actually such a funny story because people think that what made me want to do music would be super deep, like I was listening to Tchaikovsky and that I had this epiphany that I wanted to be the next him. And it’s not – it’s a commercial that I saw on TV when I was 13,” he laughs. “It wasn’t until I got to Berklee that I realized that that career path isn’t as fruitful as it used to be. Mainly due to most of the time, with commercials and placements they’re looking for songs

that people already recognize, not newer songs.”

Just as well he had a change of heart, as today, Walton is known for his blissed-out blend of classic soul, jazz and funk with a chilled, modern flair, and for writing intimate, introspective love songs about the types of thoughts that keep him up at night. He’s speaking to Headliner on the tailend of his US tour, where he’s enjoying a rare 24 hours at home in between shows.

He shares that it was Coldplay that first inspired him to take up the acoustic guitar, while his early songwriting inspiration came from Stevie Wonder, Bob Dylan and John Mayer, although it wasn’t until a school career counselor suggested he should consider music to make a living that he started to take the idea more seriously. “I 100% stumbled into it,” he nods. “The career counselor at my high school said, ‘It says here that you’ve got straight As in music and you’re in all the plays, performances, you’re

in choir, you’re in orchestra. What if you went into music?’ That was the first time where I was like, ‘Oh, I guess that is actually an option and a possibility that I could do that for a living in some capacity.”

Fast forward to 2018 and Walton released his debut EP, Bsides, followed by his sophomore EP Fade in 2020. This year saw him release his debut album, Ruminating Thoughts – a nostalgic collection of love and heartache tracks.

“Most of these songs came to me at night when I couldn’t fall asleep,” he says of Ruminating Thoughts. “I struggle sleeping at night – I’m more of a night owl and I really struggle when I have an idea in my head. But I don’t want to get out of bed and write it down, you know? So a large majority of the songs are a combination of that process of me trying to get to sleep. That’s how the album came to be an album – it’s a collection of songs that were taken from that process.”

“AS A MAN, SOCIETY TELLS YOU THAT YOU SHOULDN’T BE VULNERABLE. THAT’S NOT RIGHT.”

Looking back on his earlier EPs, Walton acknowledges that his sound has matured. These days he’s also embracing being less of a perfectionist when recording – preferring to capture raw, spontaneous-sounding takes.

“Every guitar solo on this record is a one-take thing,” he explains. “There’s no splicing, there’s no studio magic, there’s no pitch correction. It’s just that I had a good take and that’s the one that we’re going with, whereas in some of my earlier work, one mix could take 16 takes because the way that I played a note on take 16 was great. I’ve become more comfortable with imperfection, I guess you could say, especially in my guitar playing. Even in my vocals, I definitely am one of those artists who does not want to sound perfect. I’m not looking for the Auto Tune sound. That doesn’t really appeal to me.”

In turn, he’s become more relaxed in his approach to songwriting over

the years – never agonizing over a melody or phrase, rather, letting inspiration strike when it may.

“I used to be a lot more precious about my songwriting process,” he admits. “As I get a little older I get more comfortable in my ability to write songs. What I mean by that is that I know that I can write a song in about 20 or 40 minutes or so, so with that knowledge I have been able to try different ways of starting songs. I wrote a song while I was warming up some food for dinner – I had a melody in my head that just came to me out of the ether. I was humming it and after I finished making the food, I put down the plate and grabbed my guitar, played it, recorded it, ate my food, and watched some TV. Then a couple of hours later, I finished it.”

Given that Ruminating Thoughts’ theme concerns the thoughts that keep him up at night, Walton says he has had to get comfortable with sharing his innermost feelings with the

world. In fact, just before speaking to Headliner, he was tentatively working on his most vulnerable song yet. “I think it’s something that you should get used to; I’m actually working on a song right now about this,” he discloses. “As a man, society tells you that you shouldn’t be vulnerable. That’s not right. I think that some of the best songs are examples of people being vulnerable regardless of gender or gender expression or gender identity. It’s something that a lot of guys struggle with, but we should work on ourselves a little bit more. I know I’m working on it. Actually, right before this call I was testing something that’s a tough topic for me to write about. It’s already written. It’s just putting it out that’s gonna be interesting…”

Ruminating Thoughts started like any other Chris Walton project: he wrote the songs and went through several rounds of revisions and edits to create the demos. He later traveled to Nashville to record the tracks in a friend’s studio over the course of two months, immersing himself in music city and experimenting with various recording techniques.

“Most songwriters should know how to make a demo because it’s going to save you a lot of money and headache in the future,” he advises. “If I could give any young songwriter any piece of advice, it would be to figure out how to make a good-sounding demo. It doesn’t have to be perfect, but good enough that if you send it to a player or producer, they’ll know what you want them to do or play, or what the general vibe of the song is.”

Once Walton had all his demos recorded at home, he was itching to get them out of his computer and into the ears of fans. In his home recording space he’s recently started using JBL 305P MkII powered studio monitors, which have significantly opened up his mixes compared to when he uses headphones.

“I still do a lot of stuff in the cans, especially with the hours that I work, but it’s always nice to listen back on a nice pair of studio monitors like this. I find that the JBLs have great sound clarity,” he notes, adding that they play an integral role in his tried and tested listening sessions when he’s finished a mix. “When you listen to something in headphones it is a very controlled space, so I always do a couple of different things when I’m listening to a mix. I’ll listen on headphones, then these studio monitors, then I’ll usually listen on my phone, because a lot of people listen to music on their phone without any sort of listening device. I listen on my AirPods and then finally I’ll listen to it in my car, which is a classic, age-old tested thing. Then I know it’ll sound good pretty much anywhere else.”

Given that the foundation of Ruminating Thoughts started at

home and is a culmination of a ton of hard work and countless mixes, going forward Walton can see his JBL monitors playing a big part in his demo process.

“I will be hitting the studio pretty heavily in the summer and fall. I’m gonna start working on newer songs that I’ve been writing, getting some demos going and maybe some full productions as well. I’m actually looking to do something selfproduced; I mean, everything that I do is self-produced, but solo selfproduced,” he clarifies.

“In this coming year, I’m looking to do two projects and having these monitors is going to help me vastly. I don’t have to go rent out a studio or be in a good listening environment to listen to my tunes anymore, so that’s great. Also, when we’re looking at stuff as musicians, I think we typically

look at stuff that’s outside of our price range – I know I do at least! One of the cool things about the JBL monitors is that they punch way above their price point. I would recommend that any musician who’s interested in starting up a bedroom studio situation invest in a pair of these, as they’ll be growing with you as you go along your music journey,” he smiles. CHRISWALTONMUSIC.COM

POWERED BY

Words by ALICEGUST A NOSF

ALLQUIET ONTHE WESTERN FRONT

Landing on Netflix in October 2022, Edward Berger’s All Quiet on the Western Front went on to become one of the most talked about (and most-awarded) films of the year…

Set during World War I, it follows the life of young German soldier Paul Bäumer, who, after enlisting in the German Army with his friends, finds himself exposed to the realities of war. Amongst the film’s numerous accolades, it received a leading 14 nominations at the 76th BAFTA Awards (winning seven, including Best Sound), and nine at the 95th Academy Awards (including a nomination for Best Sound) – taking home four golden statues on the night.

Production sound mixer Viktor Prášil collected his BAFTA for his efforts alongside Frank Kruse, Markus Stemler, Lars Ginzel and Stefan Korte for All Quiet on the Western Front

and for him, the film’s success is still sinking in.

“No one expected such success,” he admits, smiling. “It’s a joy! It is unusual for a German film on Netflix to be so internationally acclaimed. I have a theory that you can tell during filming whether a film will be good or bad, but you never know how much,” he discloses. “With All Quiet on the Western Front, I knew from the beginning that it would be a good film, but we never thought about such success while we were slogging through the mud!”

Prášil is quick to highlight the work completed by the post production team, who he says “did a tremendous

amount of great work in a relatively short time. We provided them with a relatively large amount of material from the set, which made the process easier for them. At the same time, I must also highlight the music and editing, which helped our soundtrack,” he adds. “And none of this would have been possible without the help of director Edward Berger. He is one of those directors who place the utmost emphasis on sound during filming itself.”

Prášil has his own take on why this film’s sound has received so many awards and nominations: “The film impresses me in particular with its rawness in the battle scenes in contrast to the negotiations and

scenes outside the front lines, where the war’s explosions do not reach,” he considers. “The principle of contrast is also used on the battlefield, as well as the subjective perception of sound from the perspective of the main character. Also, the sound in the film does not try to overwhelm the viewer with explosions and loudness, but draws them into the horrors that take place on the battlefield.”

Before filming commenced, Prášil listened to numerous podcasts and read interviews with Stuart Wilson – the Oscar-winning sound mixer on the 2019 war film 1917 – which he learned a lot from in terms of how to capture the chaos of war via sound. Prášil’s role on All Quiet on the Western Front saw him recording all the actors’ dialogue and vocal performances on set.

He tells Headliner that due to the amount of extras and battle scenes, the team needed to capture as much of the audio as possible there and then. “Since we were shooting a film about World War I, we had old cars on set, and we also wanted to record these unique vehicles,” he explains. “At the same time, it was important to bring as much footage as possible using soldiers on the battlefield to the post-production process. We had almost 100 extras and stunt performers – you only have the chance to record this during filming.”

On set he was armed with his trusty Lectrosonics wireless systems, safe in the knowledge that his Octopack

portable multicoupler, SRc receivers and SSM, HMa and SMDWB transmitters would capture any audio with pristine sound. When the shoot started, Prášil was initially concerned about the strength of the signal from the soldiers’ helmets, being that they were constructed of relatively thick metal:

“However, during rehearsals, it became clear that there would be no problem with that, and the radio transmitters in the helmets were our main sources of sound that we relied on,” Prášil explains, noting that they only had to be careful that the mic within the helmet was not seen on camera.

“We relied on Lectrosonics throughout the entire filming,” he clarifies. “The actors using helmets had an SMQV or SSM, and a second one in their coat. There were two reasons for this: the main reason was the dynamic range. In one scene, the actors went from whispering to shouting. The second reason was that the radio microphone in the costumes were not always 100% usable because the actors had various buckles over them, or they were crawling on the ground, etc. However, this had no effect on the radio in the helmet, and the actors could turn their heads in all directions and their voices remained the same.

“I have never encountered any problems with temperature or humidity when using Lectro either,” he points out when asked about how

his kit fared against the harsh filming conditions. “For example, our HMa accidentally fell into a puddle full of dirty water, and in another film, an actress got into the water with the transmitter on her body. However, it was enough to let the radio transmitter dry, and the next day it worked! I really appreciate the robust construction, waterproof capability and durability of Lectrosonics.”

Despite being a BAFTA-winner, Prášil shares that there is still an element of mystery surrounding his role as production sound mixer: “Many people have asked me what my role is during film production,” he smiles. “We are sound guys, but during filming we also have to be skilled diplomats to some extent. The sound we record during filming is only heard by a limited circle of people – the rest of the crew doesn’t see or hear our work. It’s therefore important to have a good relationship with all the other departments, because we need to have everyone on our side. From lock-ups, locations, costumes, props, special effects, electricians, grips…well, basically everyone!

“I have to honestly say that it was the most challenging shoot I’ve ever experienced,” he concludes, “but because everything was very well prepared and the synergy between the director and the cinematographer was contagious, it was also the best shoot of my life.”

“THE SOUND IN THE FILM DOES NOT TRY TO OVERWHELM THE VIEWER WITH EXPLOSIONS AND LOUDNESS, BUT DRAWS THEM INTO THE HORRORS THAT TAKE PLACE ON THE BATTLEFIELD.”

The “Yes” amp.

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

Discover more: dbaudio.com/5d

The art of creative engineering.

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

WORDS BY DAN GU M ELB

A ROCK’N’ROLL REVOLUTION

MEET ME IN THE BATHROOM

On March 10, Dylan Southern and Will Lovelace, the filmmakers behind Blur documentary No Distance Left To Run and LCD Soundsystem concert film Shut Up And Play The Hits, released Meet Me In The Bathroom, a new documentary detailing the early ‘00s NYC indie rock scene. Headliner sat down with them to discuss one of rock‘n roll’s most vibrant eras…

Inspired by Lizzie Goodman’s book of the same name, the film features extensive interviews with and archive footage of the likes of The Strokes, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Interpol, LCD Soundsystem, The Rapture, Moldy Peaches, and many more. It explores the artists’ personal experiences of the era, the highs and lows that punctuated it, and how they came out the other side. Here, Southern and Lovelace open up on why they needed to tell this story, its most compelling characters, and the likelihood of anything similar ever happening again…

How did you become involved in the project and how did you set about making sense of the extensive source material?

Dylan: It was an interesting challenge. We weren’t sure we were even going to do another music documentary at that point, but we read it and it was such a rich time. It felt like a good moment to reappraise that period in musical history, and it felt unlikely that anything like that could happen again with how much the world has changed in the intervening years. As for the process, it was long! The book covers a 10-year period which we knew we couldn’t put into a 90-minute film. We couldn’t tell the stories beginning to end for every single one of these bands, so we thought we’d do the origins story. That’s probably the most exciting section of the book as well, that sense of people coming to the city and there being this sea change and a need for something to happen in the culture. And the fact it all happened while the whole world was looking at New York was fascinating to us.

While sifting through the footage, did you pick up any sense of the scene being romanticized or mythologised with hindsight?

Dylan: Yes and no. It wasn’t like the bands were all hanging out together,

but it was definitely an exciting time to be young in New York. There was a degree of mythology, but that was something we wanted to explore, the notion of how individual lives become part of a city’s cultural mythology. So yes, I think there was a scene and it was exciting, but it wasn’t experienced as holistically as the British press made out. I like the fact there were lots of mini scenes happening. There was the Brooklyn art school vibe, then East Village rock n roll, the anti-folk scene, DFA making forays into dance music. It was the end of one thing and the beginning of another, culturally, technologically, everything.

You make a point of framing the scene culturally and socially. Can you contextualize the era for those who may not have been around at the time?

Will: In the film, lots of the characters talk about this sense of there being a void of the music they were into. Individually they were all searching for something different. That allowed these bands to make the music they made; they weren’t following whatever had come before. There was perhaps a lack of interesting stuff happening in this area of music.

Dylan: There was stuff happening in hip-hop and dance music and other

genres, but for the characters in the film, they weren’t finding what they were looking for musically. There was that nu-metal, rap-rock, incredibly corny thing happening… that was the guitar music of the time, and there was a vacuum waiting to be filled. The music they were making obviously had its roots in New York music of the past, but it was new enough that it broke through.

But then James Murphy and DFA is really interesting, and there is a British infusion there with David Holmes and Tim Goldsworthy crossing paths with a drummer in a punk band turned engineer, and that kicked off a whole other thing. There was a feeling that the best part of this scene happened very quickly, and then there were all the usual cliches of bands falling out and excesses and all of that.

We also looked at the film as a coming of age story for each of the bands, and some of them really fit into that genre. The idea of Karen O as quite a shy girl coming to a new city and transforming and almost having this split personality, and how long you can sustain being that wild. We looked for story arcs that fitted into that time and place, and were also quite universal.

“IT WAS THE END OF ONE THING AND THE BEGINNING OF ANOTHER, CULTURALLY, TECHNOLOGICALLY, EVERYTHING.”

“THERE IS AN ALMOST ACCIDENTAL NATURE TO IT. THE STROKES ARRIVE AS THIS FULLY FORMED BAND AND THAT’S ALL THEY HAVE IN THEIR SIGHTS.”

James Murphy’s story almost flies in opposition to the other characters, in that he is older than a lot of those breaking through and almost at the point of giving up on music. Yet he takes off in a huge way with LCD Soundsystem after the initial buzz around the rest of the scene has peaked. What were your observations of his place in this story, and how did it feel to document the birth of LCD Soundsystem having so comprehensively documented [what we thought was] its farewell with Shut Up And Play The Hits?

Will: James’s story was happening at the same time but is very different for sure. He was trying to figure out what he was going to do and that’s what we really liked. There are two stories running alongside each other.

Dylan: There is an almost accidental nature to it. The Strokes arrive as this fully formed band and that’s all they have in their sights; Karen has this urge to perform; Interpol are workmanlike; and James just gets there through a series of failures in one thing or coming up in opposition against others. He creates in opposition to people. When David Holmes comes on the scene, he’s like, ‘this guy doesn’t know how to play instruments, I can do what he does.’ We really liked his story, because as hard as he is to work with for some

people and single-minded as he can be, he is almost the underdog of the story. He is 10-15 years older than some of the other people in the story, and then suddenly he’s the last man standing when you look at popularity now.

How do Interpol slot into the story for you? They are clearly a staple of the scene but they also feel somewhat at odds with the more obvious rock’n’roll aesthetic of Yeah Yeah Yeahs and The Strokes, and the influences feel more British than NYC.

Will: In a different way they were the underdogs of the guitar scene. They had a clear vision of what they wanted to do, and while everyone else was exploding, they were a year or two behind but just carried on and did it.

Dylan: Very tortoise and the hare. They really worked at being a band, crafting the songs and doing the steps you had to do at that point. They just hit differently. The sound and aesthetic was completely different. And England also played an integral part in their development, in terms of the press getting behind them and putting them in with that scene. When you have journalists putting their name alongside The Strokes and the others, then they almost become a de facto part of the scene despite being so different.

Any thoughts on what your next project might be?

Dylan: If we do another music documentary it would have to take a different form. With the Blur documentary, that was a traditional story of a band, although we interweaved it with the story of their reunion and Graham and Damon becoming friends again. Shut Up And Play The Hits was a concert film, so if we did another one we’d have to reinvent the form of it. And it would have to be the right story. We’re looking at other things for now, but never say never.

MEETMEINTHEBATHROOM FILM.COM

byCOLBY RAMSEY

WISEOWLA

When Jozef De Kesel, the Bishop of Bruges, declared that he could see no future for The Holy Family Church in the Langestraat Quarter of the city, the building ceased to be a center for worship. Enter young entrepreneurs Mon and Zowie Hayen, owners of Brasserie Uilenspiegel, who envisioned the transformation of the 1904-constructed red-brick

landmark into a multi-purpose events venue. That vision became a reality with the creation of Owla Bruges, a 270sqm space suitable for concerts, performances, weddings, parties, corporate events, conferences, seminars, fashion shows, product launches and more.

Studio Haifax has supplied a CODA Audio ultra-compact N-RAY line array system for a converted church events venue in Bruges, as Headliner recently discovered…

High quality, flexible audio would naturally be essential to the venue’s success, although the team at Owla suffered something of a false start when its original installed system was deemed less than optimal during the first concerts staged in the space. Moving quickly to rectify the situation, and at the recommendation of its lighting contractor, Owla contacted audio specialist Studio Haifax to supply and install a new system. Pieter Begard of Studio Haifax recommended CODA Audio N-RAY to replace the existing setup.

As a regular customer of CODA Audio’s Belgian distributor Viladco, Begard was very familiar with the quality and power of the ultracompact N-RAY line array, and was confident that a CODA system would prevail where the previous system had not succeeded. He consulted with Viladco’s Hans Engelen over the system design. Using CODA’s proprietary System Optimiser 3D modeling prediction software, they were able to design a system that could comfortably overcome what was an awkward room layout.

The final system comprised a main PA of eight N-RAY and two

SCN-F 15” sensor controlled low frequency extensions per side with an additional center cluster of four N-RAY and a cardioid arrangement of nine SCV-F 18” sensor controlled subwoofers beneath the stage. Two HOPS were deployed as infill and six HOPS8 served as delays. The system is powered by CODA Audio LINUS14 and LINUS10C DSP amplifiers.

“It was quite a difficult setup because of the layout of the room,” reflects Begard. “The main PA couldn’t cover the entire space because there were overlapping audience zones on the left and right sides. To compensate for the height difference, we flew the SCN-F subs in the center of the left and right arrays. To maintain sight lines, the center cluster was necessary to freshen up the center area of the venue between the left and right balconies, since they were shadowing the main left/right array. The HOPS8 were used under the balconies.

“Because the stage depth can be altered, the main PA was mounted on a motorized rail so that it can be automatically moved up to two meters forward. The different presets on the amps ensure that this movement is taken into account.”

Following a fast turn around on

delivery and installation, the system was tuned and aligned by expert freelance audio specialist Tim Martens, enabling Owla to deliver its busy and varied programme of events without delay. According to Begard, every visitor to events at the venue now benefits from a full audio experience:

“Coverage is complete, the sound quality is excellent and the customer is especially pleased with the system because visiting sound engineers are satisfied that no extra speakers are required!” he concludes. “What had the potential to be a very tricky installation was made straightforward by CODA’s next generation technology.”

CODAAUDIO.COM

“WHAT HAD THE POTENTIAL TO BE A VERY TRICKY INSTALLATION WAS MADE STRAIGHTFORWARD BY CODA’S NEXT GENERATION TECHNOLOGY.”

MAKE OR BREAK

KORI ANDERS

Deciding at the last minute to ditch law school and pursue music, Kori Anders is a Grammy-winning audio engineer who has worked with Gucci Mane, Snoop Dogg, Nicki Minaj and Usher – to name a few. Anders shares the story of his breakthrough into the industry, what he feels is needed to get to the top, and his set of go-to plugins from Waves.

How’s life treating you in Atlanta, Kori?

Life has been great in Atlanta and keeps me super busy, but I’m enjoying every second of it.

Can you remember the moment in your youth when you started thinking of music as a potential career? Because you originally wanted to be a DJ before you discovered engineering, correct?

The first time I really fell in love with music was when I heard Whitney Houston’s Greatest Love Of All. I must have been eight or nine, and I remember listening to that song over and over again, and just really falling in love with the emotion of how the

music made me feel. Then I became interested in hip-hop, because I had older brothers that were listening to Run DMC and LL Cool J, and just seeing that whole scene and seeing how you could take music and manipulate it with turntables. That was always fascinating to me. That was how I got into DJing.

How were your early days interning?

I interned at a studio called Patchwork Recording Studios in Atlanta, Georgia. It’s a pretty legendary studio. Early on in my career I worked with Ludacris, OutKast, David Banner, Young Jeezy, pretty much a lot of the hip-hop scene. We’re talking about 2003, 2004.

The whole intern process was crazy because I was working 80 to 90 hours a week, going on food runs, cleaning up trash, making coffee – I’m sure y’all have heard the classic stories of interns. But it was in exchange for directly being able to sit in on these sessions, and learn the ropes with engineering. It’s as much the technical skills as it is people skills.

Did you ever have any nervous sessions that were make or break for you?

I did, shortly after I became an assistant engineer. I wasn’t quite seasoned in recording with artists, but I had sat in on enough sessions to learn how to deal with artists. In one particular session I was working with T-Boz from TLC. I was recording her, and I was young, new and nervous. She recorded this perfect take, and then I deleted it by accident.

In that moment, I thought that I could either panic and tell her I messed up and make her nervous for the rest of the session and lose her faith in me, or I could play this off and try to see what I could do. So in a split second decision I pressed the talkback button and said, “Tionne, you can get that again but a little better.” So she did

and she didn’t know that I had totally messed up, and we kept moving on. That was a profound moment for me because it really showed me the level of confidence you need in being able to not only do the technical stuff, but also psychologically keeping artists feeling comfortable, because it is our job to extract the very best performance out of them.

You recently worked with Gucci Mane on So Icy Boyz: The Finale. How has it been having him as one of your longest-term collaborators?

We essentially grew up in the industry together. I remember going on the food runs for his sessions to working with him, and eventually becoming one of the main engineers he works with. Our process is pretty streamlined now as he’s the easiest artist for me to work with. I’ve done so many records with him that it’s like second nature now to mix his records.

You must have some interesting stories about working with Nicki Minaj and Usher?

Nicki had the same manager as Gucci, and I got to work with her before she blew up. It was really cool to see her go from being unknown to one of the biggest superstars in the world. I

worked with Usher when he worked with Zaytoven on A. That was another experience where I went from being a kid in San Jose and listening to Usher’s music, and then suddenly I’m mixing his record and seeing how those records touch millions of people around the world.

You’re a big user of Waves plugins in your work. How did you initially begin using them?

I started my career in 2003. So, twoinch tape had pretty much phased out. Almost everything was going digital so I started learning how to mix. I did learn initially on large format consoles, particularly the SSL J 9000. I remember using Waves R-Compressors and DeEssers, that was like my first introduction to Waves plugins.

“T-BOZ FROM TLC RECORDED THIS PERFECT TAKE, AND THEN I DELETED IT BY ACCIDENT.”

A lot of engineers have their closeknit set of go-to plugins from Waves, is that the case with you?

This might sound boring, but always R-Compressors, R-Vox, R-DeEsser. R-Bass, which I might use slightly differently than a lot of engineers — I still use it on low end, but I’ll use multiple R-Bass plugins in succession.

What I do is I set my parameters in R-Bass based on the key of the song because I want to affect different harmonic octaves on the low-end, because what I found is that helps me to get a bigger overall low-end sound without going overboard on 40 hertz, for instance. So I use multiples of those. There was a song I worked on with Gucci Mane which featured 2 Chainz. When I got the files, the problem was they didn’t actually have the original recording session with 2 Chainz’s vocals on.

Have there been any times where using Waves got you out of a difficult spot?

beat that they weren’t using from the project. Believe it or not, I was able to use the Waves Clarity VX Pro to extract the instrumentation and create an acapella of 2 Chainz’s vocal which I could then bounce and send to Zaytoven. He literally created a whole new beat and we put it together and we mixed it and it sounded great.

How’s 2023 shaping up for you?

up in the Atlanta trap scene working with Gucci, Jeezy and Kanye – a lot of artists. He’s putting together different compilations, and I’m really excited to be working on that. It’s hard to say that 2023 is busy because it doesn’t feel busy. I might be in the middle of three projects, but because I love what I do, it doesn’t really feel like work!

WAVES.COM

IAMKORIANDERS.COM

All they had was a rough bounce of when he recorded the song. And the problem was he recorded it on a

Currently, I’m working with a producer by the name of Druma Boy, who’s from Memphis, Tennessee. He came

“I WAS ABLE TO USE THE WAVES CLARITY VX PRO TO EXTRACT THE INSTRUMENTATION AND CREATE AN ACAPELLA OF 2 CHAINZ’S VOCAL.”

L- ISA STUDIO

YOUR PORTAL TO SPATIAL AUDIO CREATION

s by COLBY RAMSEY

ACRAZE BREAKING THE INTERNET

DJ, producer and songwriter Charlie Duncker, better known as ACRAZE, recently sat down for a chat with Headliner to reflect on the viral success of his 2021 hit Do It To It, his creative process when it comes to production, and his latest single Take Me Away, which samples Natasha Bedingfield’s pop banger Pocketful of Sunshine…

When Duncker released his house anthem Do It To It during the height of the pandemic, nothing could have prepared him for the mass hysteria that would ensue. While music lovers were hard pressed to hear the track in any kind of live environment at the time, it set the dance and pop worlds alight with its pulsating bassline and nostalgic vocal hook. Incredibly, the track has now clocked up over 12 billion combined streams – a figure that is still rising two whole years later. It’s more than fair to say that it’s a true club banger for the ages.

“I made that song just as a club record, like all the other ones I was making

at the time, and had no intention of it being big at all,” Duncker reveals as he joins Headliner over Zoom. “I first played it when I opened up for Tchami going into the 2021 New Year, and the club just went crazy. The next day I woke up to like 600 DMs asking about the record, at which point I knew it was going to be big, but didn’t know how big. I started sending it to other DJs, and then DJ Snake brought me out at the Brooklyn Mirage and named it the song of the summer. And the crazy part is that it wasn’t even summer!”

Now the biggest weapon in every one of his sets, Duncker admits that, “it was crazy how it all unfolded, and now I’m just trying to make some crazier stuff.”

Do It To It’s popularity reached even greater heights when fellow DJ Zedd created a Squid Game mashup of the song, fusing elements with the seminal theme tune of the hit Netflix series, which garnered similar viral popularity around the same time.

“Zedd hit me up during EDC on the day he was flying there, and asked if he could use the song as his intro,” Duncker recalls. “I was curious to see how he would do that because the track is quite long and suspenseful, but when he ended up doing the Squid Game version I was so pleasantly surprised. I was actually all the way over the other side of the festival when he played his set, but I saw the fireworks from afar, and two minutes later my manager sent me the video. I just knew it was gonna go crazy on the internet, and that’s exactly what it did.”

As the live touring world started to find its feet again in 2022, Duncker used it as his chance to play as many gigs as he could –

racking up a staggering 160 plus shows that included his first Ultra and Tomorrowland, and a huge performance at the PSG Stadium with DJ Snake.

More recently, Duncker dropped a new single Take Me Away, a song which had been in the works for almost two years, as he reveals:

“I couldn’t figure out a drop for it for the longest time, and I was close to giving up on it. But then I did that show with DJ Snake at the PSG Stadium and I needed a new intro, so I thought I’d try something new and made this crazy drop for the opening, and then that became the second drop for Take Me Away. So that was where I got the inspiration to finish it and I worked on it pretty much all year.

“I try to look for those big moments in pop songs,” he adds. “There’s the part in Pocketful of Sunshine when Natasha’s screaming ‘take me away’, and I thought that would sound crazy in a house song – I was surprised no one had done it yet. I really love that record; I used to listen to it in the shower when I was a kid! And I’m always looking for samples that nobody has done yet.”

When it comes to creating a track, Duncker says he usually starts with a topline or vocal, and builds a beat around it. On the flip, sometimes it starts with a beat and then he adds in a sample – “I usually have all these beats just laying around, and then I put something on top.”

And while he does have his own production setup at home, Duncker mostly finds himself working out of a house owned by his label, Thrive Music. That being said, Headliner proceeds to quiz him on his go-to production tools:

“Diva and Hive from u-he are some of my favorite VSTs right now,” he says as we delve deeper into his creative process. “Anything Kontakt is amazing, and Astra from Splice is a great little synth plugin that I’m loving at the moment. Effects-wise, I use a lot of native FL Studio plugins. Little AlterBoy from Soundtoys is one that people usually put on vocals, but I think it sounds really cool on synths. Granulizer is one I use a lot, and time stretching is one of my favorite things to do as well.”

Looking ahead, Duncker reveals that he will be dropping a slew of new club bangers this year, and will also

be teasing a song with British dance music vocalist Hayla: “It’s a short song but very to the point, and impactful,” he says with excitement. “The melodies are crazy, and I think it’s one of my favorite songs I’ve ever written. I’m always striving to find what’s next through experimenting heavily with production.

“When I’m working with new people, I’m constantly looking for what we can do differently to how things are sounding right now. I don’t want to be boxed in as just this producer; I always try to keep the ceiling open, and then go above it.”

As our discussion comes to a close, Duncker highlights that something he lives by is “never take no for an answer. Just because it doesn’t happen now, doesn’t mean it won’t happen later. The biggest thing for me growing into the artist I am now, is being consistent and persistent.

“It’s about being fearless, and doing stuff that’s out of your comfort zone – not just doing what feels normal. Going out of your way to do something different that you haven’t done before is how you find the next wave of new stuff.”

Much like his stage name, everything in Duncker’s life seems to be a craze right now, and with plenty of new music on the way, it’s likely that the crazy times are set to continue for this tenacious DJ and producer on his journey towards global stardom.

ACRAZEMUSIC.COM

“I ALWAYS TRY TO KEEP THE CEILING OPEN, AND THEN GO ABOVE IT.”

GUMBLE

SONIC COLLEGE

GRAND DESIGNS

Headliner speaks to Lars Tirsbæk, audio expert and lecturer at Denmark’s Sonic College about its sound design programme, the ever increasing number of Atmos projects passing through its doors, and the Merging Technologies kit that is so essential to its offering…

Since opening in 2010, Denmark’s Sonic College has provided a stateof-the-art hub for students looking to embark on a career in sound design to hone their craft and discover the full range of opportunities that exists in art form. From music and film to TV, gaming, and more, the College enables students to explore an array of options and get to grips with the technologies shaping the business.

Here, Tirsbæk discusses trends in sound design, education, and the rise and rise of immersive audio…

How did you first become involved in sound design?

When I was a teenager, I dreamt of being a keyboard player in a band, so my background is in music. I had taken some pre-conservatory courses, and when applying to join the music conservatory I started thinking about what I really wanted to do, as I love playing music, but I also enjoyed working with synthesizers and creating sounds and playing with things like vocal processing on stage.

in charge of the build and the studio spec and design.

How has the popularity of the course grown over the years?

Sonic College is a sound design programme based in Denmark. It is a three-and-a-half-year course where we educate youngsters to become sound designers. Some are looking to work within film and TV, some in game audio, podcasting, music, and public welfare technology. There are lots of different areas we operate in. The college started in 2010 and last September we moved into a brandnew purpose-built campus.

Then in 2010 I found this programme had started and I applied. I started in 2011 and finished in 2015, so I’m educated at the college myself. After that, the head of the programme contacted me and asked if I wanted to teach on the programme, because I had done a lot of live sound and worked with sound and music production a lot in general, so I have a good track record in audio. I started as a guest lecturer in recording technologies and music production, and that turned into a full-time position. Then when we moved to the new campus I was put

For the first two years nobody really knew the programme. But, it turned out there were a lot of young people like me who were musicians who wanted to know different ways of doing music and being creative with sound. In Danish education there was a gap for this. When I started we were 24 students per year, and in 2015 when I completed the course, we had 40 seats per year and there were 150 students applying. We’ve been stable around that figure ever since.

Do you see people joining with a particular sound design vocation in mind?

It starts with music for most of them. Of course, some want to do sound for film or gaming, but mostly it’s people coming from a music background. A lot of them join wanting to be the next big producer for Billie Eilish and people like that. But once they come in and we start

Tell us about the origins of Sonic College.

to educate them, we tell them about all these different areas where they can work with sound. We ask them in the beginning what they want to do and 75% say they want to work in music, and by the end it’s about 10-20% as they get to see all the different areas in which they can still work in music but it’s for things like film, TV, gaming, interactive design and podcast. We see them explore several different fields.

we have a Foley stage with a control room that has a Neumann system, two mastering studios, two stereo editing studios, a fully equipped recording studio, synthesizer lab, and an immersive atrium with 180 speakers.

Tell us about the spec of the facility. When did you first come across the Anubis?

We have a Dolby Atmos dubbing stage and cinema playback room where we can do sound design and mixing, and we can playback theatrical content. We have 40 Meyer Sound speakers and a Pro Tools setup with a rendering and mastering unit, and an Avid console. All the things you need for doing Dolby Atmos. And it’s an 80-seat cinema. In addition,

We also have 7.1 classrooms where we can seat 40 students and do critical listening. We have a Merging Anubis as a monitor controller, and it is also used for streaming. It’s a hybrid setup, so the cue output of the Anubis has a mic feed going out and then it’s whatever we are listening to in the room going out through the cue output to the computer running Zoom.

We started in around 2020. We wanted a room where we could do this hybrid stuff because we already had some lecturing going on from abroad. So,

we wanted a setup where it was easy to have international lecturers but the class together in a room. I was looking for a monitor controller that could do multi-inputs and immersive inputs and multichannel inputs, so you could put a Blu Ray player through an audio over IP converter, things like that. We did that via AES67 so a lot of the inputs are Dante devices just going into the Anubis, and then we can do all different types of stuff. As a sound college, it’s important we have different connectivity because one day a lecturer will come in with their own sound card and they need to use that. Then we have line inputs in the Anubis we can use. We have all these different needs, and the Anubis can handle all of them. That’s why we started using it. It’s very versatile. There aren’t that many network-based controllers out there.

“WE NEED TO EDUCATE OUR STUDENTS FOR WHAT THE INDUSTRY DEMANDS, AND RIGHT NOW THE FORMAT IS DOLBY.”

We also have another Anubis in our Dolby Atmos mastering suite, where it is used as a monitor controller. In this room our students work in Atmos for film, music and gaming. There is a home entertainment receiver outputting 7.1.4 analog into a converter and that is going to the network. Through this receiver we have an Xbox, and we can connect a computer and the students can work in Unity and the middleware Wwise in Atmos for gaming. We have a Mac Pro running Pro Tools and that goes to a converter and to the network, so through the Anubis they can choose to be listening to the system audio running through the virtual sound device, and they can listen to the output from the home entertainment receiver, which can be all kinds of different multimedia stuff decoded to Atmos or stereo. And then they can choose to hear signals from the Dolby render unit. Also, the Anubis is the calibration point of the whole system, so the people that did calibrate the speaker system used the Anubis for EQing, delaying, bass management and all this stuff. That is unique for a monitor controller - that it can do all of this straight out of the box.

How heavily does Atmos mixing feature in the programme?

Back in 2018 we decided to make our first immersive mix room. We knew it was going to become a big thing and we wanted our students to be educated in the newest technologies. It’s not like we don’t like other immersive formats, but we need to educate our students for what the industry demands, and right now the format is Dolby. Maybe one day it will be Sony 360 or Ambisonics, but right now it is Dolby that’s everywhere and we need to teach our students that. The way the Anubis is set up, the interface makes it easy for students to work with immersive like it was a stereo signal. There is no change in how they see it and work with it. Our students are born into the immersive age, so they don’t know how it was when we only had stereo. The feature sets that we thought were good 10 years ago are so outdated now, so not being able to solo or mute a speaker in an immersive format on a monitor controller is like, ‘how did you work like

that?’ There are some really interesting things going on there and the Anubis was one of the first to be able to do that. And the students can learn how to use it pretty fast. It’s also a complex system and you can do so much with it. It has so many features, so we do try to make sure they understand its full range of capabilities.

Is there anything about the Anubis that lends itself especially well to immersive projects?

Photographer: Emilie Levienaise-Farrouch

Words by COLBY R A

ECO-FRIENDLY AUDIO

UNPLUGGED BUG

Martin Audio recently teamed up with Belair Technology and The Bug Club to deliver the ultimate ecofriendly VW Pop-Up DJ Booth, as Headliner recently discovered…

Since 2013, The Bug Club has delivered hundreds of events from private parties, festivals, and brand activations to product launches,

carnivals, exhibitions and street parties. Their latest creation however, the Unplugged Bug, is a unique intersection of sonic experience and environmental responsibility.

The fiberglass-built vehicle itself is 30 per cent larger than a standard VW Camper and is designed to be a ‘festival friendly’ DJ booth. The custom-built Martin Audio sound

system runs entirely on renewables thanks to Belair’s rack mounted Power Tower – a clean and modern rechargeable battery-powered replacement for noisy and polluting generators. The Power Tower has been designed to deliver the perfect ‘off-grid’ solution with its easy-touse operation, silent running, and zero emissions.

Belair Technology was founded in 2019 with the goal of electrifying events previously powered by diesel generators. Its founder, John Baillie, grew up with a love of music and a passion for science, having for a time worked at CERN, the world’s largest particle accelerator.

“As an avid festival-goer, I noted how off-grid events are desperate for sustainable solutions, yet often have little option but to use polluting diesel generators,” says Baillie. “Working with Martin Audio and The Bug Club to deliver the Unplugged Bug is a

great step forward and I’m excited about what we can learn from its operation over the summer.”

The custom-built sound system, capable of entertaining crowds of up to 500 people, comprises two 15” three-way high performance loudspeakers, each pole-mounted to a double 15in direct radiating subwoofer, and controlled by a DX4.0.

Martin Audio managing director, Dom Harter, adds: “My personal love for both VW campervans and DJ culture led inevitably to the door of

the great people at The Bug Club. At the same time I had been introduced to John and his work on renewables, and it just all fitted into place. At Martin Audio, environmental sustainability is an important initiative, and this latest development will help explore new possibilities for us in the future.”

To complete the sustainability equation, The Unplugged Bug is designed as a trailer – meaning no engines required – and as a policy

all their carbon footprint is offset by planting trees. The Unplugged Bug can also be supplied with top quality DJs and equipment, pro lighting, disco balls, sound technicians and branding options. The Bug Club fleet can even offer bar services, with experienced mixologists.

With the summer season fast approaching, The Unplugged Bug looks to satisfy the needs of mobile discos, exhibitions, sporting events, and all manner of summer parties prioritizing environmental responsibility. It has already been booked for numerous events and will also be on show at Martin Audio’s upcoming Open Days taking place April 18-19 at their headquarters in High Wycombe, UK.

Summing up, Justin Rushmore, managing director of The Bug Club, says: “We were delighted to team up with Martin Audio and Belair on this initiative. It was clear from the outset there was a meeting of minds on the sustainability aspect of live events, and we believe we can gather key data and insight that can help to not only further improve these types of events but also scale up to bigger initiatives.” MARTIN-AUDIO.COM THEBUG.CLUB

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Words bYDAN GUM B EL

CAROLINE ROSE THE ART OF FORGETTING

On March 24, Caroline Rose released their new album The Art Of Forgetting, an emotive collection of songs detailing a tumultuous personal and professional period between it and the release of 2020’s Superstar. Headliner caught up with Rose for an insightful, in-depth chat about piecing oneself back together through music…

An intriguing juxtaposition exists between Caroline Rose’s new album The Art Of Forgetting and its predecessor Superstar . The former could be described as a concept album of sorts; a tale of a doomed pursuit of pop stardom played out across 11 tracks. From its linear narrative to its shiny production and cover shot of Rose looking like a lifeless plastic doll, it is a meticulously executed piece of work in which each and every element is seamlessly stitched together.

Fast forward three years to The Art Of Forgetting and once again Rose has constructed another record around its central character’s trials and tribulations. Yet what may appear to be a familiar proposition on the surface looks very different underneath.

“They’re both autobiographical,” Rose tells Headliner as we join them over Zoom, sat outside in a friend’s garden on a sunny spring Florida morning. “With Superstar I took a lot of creative license, but that whole time I was still actualising what I was going through. It was more in the way that you make a movie about someone’s life; there’s going to be truth to it but you’re stretching it. With this it’s different because I wasn’t planning on making an album, I was just writing songs about what I was feeling. The arc of the story didn’t really come until later, when I looked back on the year-and-a-half of writing I’d done and was like, this is me piecing myself back together, having really lost myself and any understanding of how to love myself… maybe I never knew how.”

In keeping with the cinematic analogy, if Superstar was a looselybased-on-true-events tragicomedy, then The Art Of Forgetting is more gritty, unflinching documentary. While previous releases have occasionally employed melodrama and wit to soften their more emotionally charged moments, Rose makes no such attempts to mask or obfuscate the trauma that anchors so many of these songs. There are pockets of humor and hope to be found, but they are less frequent, or perhaps less obvious, than before.

Photographer: Cristina Fisher

The album’s roots can be traced back almost to the point of Superstar’s release. Having seen plans for that album’s tour almost immediately derailed by the pandemic, Rose was dealt another blow in the form of a harrowing breakup. All of which was compounded by the fact she had to manage this time of personal and professional crisis in isolation.

“I released Superstar on March 6, 2020, and we got about four shows in before the whole thing got its head cut off,” Rose recalls, explaining the origins of The Art Of Forgetting . “It was such a bizarre time. There was a lot of grieving and so many big emotions happening all at once. I was grappling with all the shows being canceled and I’d worked so hard on this thing to try and get my career off the ground. We were looking at what we all thought was going to be our champagne year, with touring and

hopefully a nice relaxing break after that. That happened simultaneously with a break-up that was very difficult for me. And not to mention the collective worldwide grieving and loss of people’s lives and the millions of lives being affected. And then mix in a human rights crisis and you’ve got a fizzy bottle that’s ready to explode.”

“That was happening at a global level and a personal level for me,” they continue. “I had all of these intense feelings that needed to come out, and I had nowhere to go, nowhere to be, and there were no distractions. It was like, if you have nothing to do right now, you might as well start diving into some of the sources of this pain. That’s what the whole album was about, just trying to find anything to feel better. I had really lost myself in the process of making Superstar. And the whole storyline in Superstar ended up becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Looking back, it’s like, of course that’s how it ended. It’s bizarre.”

It’s testament to Rose’s artistry that they have been able to take the turmoil of the intervening years and create a record that places all of their experiences front and center without ever creaking under the weight of its subject matter. In fact, far from morose, The Art Of Forgetting is arguably the most vibrant, sonically rich, and musically eclectic set Rose has released yet. From one track to the next, it is an album that rolls and swells tonally, and narratively. Snippets of conversations between Rose and their parents appear in certain lyrics, while Jill Says is built around an exchange between Rose and their titular therapist. Meanwhile, a handful of voicemails from Rose’s ill grandmother are scattered throughout, adding further to the tenderness and intimacy that course through its 14 tracks.

“I HAD ALL OF THESE INTENSE FEELINGS THAT NEEDED TO COME OUT.”

Photographer: Cristina Fisher

“It’s documenting every moment I was feeling, every big thought I had,” says Rose. “And the beauty of making an album is that you can tell a story with it, and you can use all sorts of devices to tell that story. You have all this music, and you tell the story through the sequencing of it and any other flourishes you have in there - things like using my grandma’s voicemails and conversations with my family that are almost word-for-word what we talked about. They are these little grounding moments that capture that time.

“I like hearing people’s thoughts on how this album came together,” Rose smiles when Headliner asks if they had a specific vision for the record from the outset. “I learned a lot from the last record, as it was the first time I produced an album in its entirety. This time it was different in that I didn’t go into the studio and start writing for an album. I had all these songs, but they weren’t necessarily albumready. For example, there’s a song on the album called Tell Me What You Want , and I had a version, or versions, of it that I would play to my friends and family, and my dad is my fiercest critic. I played him the song and I had to rewrite it three times because he tore it apart. He’s

also really sweet when he does like something, so when you give him something and he says it’s really good you know he means it.”

After spending some time discussing the reactions of those closest to Rose upon hearing the record, our focus fixes on single Miami . A significant musical departure from the electro indie pop of Superstar , were there any surprised responses to such a raw outpouring of heartbreak?

“I don’t think there have been many reactions of people being surprised by it, which is maybe more surprising to me,” they laugh. “ Miami was a song that came quickly, and you don’t need a whole lot to feel the impact of it because it’s just raw emotion. It’s a bit like when teenagers first start a band and it’s just full of all these unbridled emotions. It’s like smashing three chords on the guitar and screaming, ‘I hate you mom, I hate you dad!’ There’s something so amazing about those songs because they are completely raw and completely honest, and I think of Miami as one of those songs.”

At the time of our chat, Rose is gearing up for a full international tour in support of The Art Of

Forgetting . It’s a prospect they are relishing but, in light of what transpired last time around, are not taking for granted.

“There are no guarantees, that was a big lesson for me last time,” Rose reflects. “These wrenches can get thrown in the mix that can stop your plans, but you can find something different to do instead. I’m more open minded to things now. At the end of the day, I went through this time, made an album about it that I’m really proud of, and that’s a big feat for me.”

That Rose has not only been able to overcome the circumstances that underpin The Art Of Forgetting but emerge with a record of such scope and creative dexterity is an achievement of which any artist should be proud. The evolution they have undergone in the space between albums has been profound. And in this stark articulation of personal experience, they may have produced their most universal and affecting work so far.

Photographer: Cristina Fisher

Photograph Credit: Michael Drummond

MAKING AN IMPRESSION

RÜFÜS DU SOL

Lighting designer Matt Smith (of Colourblind) again took advantage of GLP’s fixture versatility when plotting the scenography for the American leg of Rüfüs Du Sol’s tour, as Headliner recently discovered…

The Australian creative, and the band’s touring LD, used a selection of impression X5, JDC1 and impression X4 Bar 20 from the German company’s catalog, deploying them in mission-critical roles. All were sourced from Volt Lites in Los Angeles, where Smith is now partly based, and who have been supplying inventory to him since the band’s Live from Joshua Tree project back in 2019.

While the impression X5 took on key light duties, the JDC1 and Bars peppered the set with multiple complementary effects.

Sydney-based indie-dance trio Rüfüs Du Sol had been the first client that Colourblind founder Lyndon

Gare worked with when he and Smith began their collaboration back in 2014.

“I’ve been a big fan of GLP products for a long time and we have had a rich history using them on our tours with Rüfüs Du Sol since 2016,” he says. “We were one of the first tours in Australia to use the X4 Bar 20s along with a substantial number of X4 atoms and impression X4 Wash.”

Gare has followed the company’s journey right through to the latest impression X5 washlight, to which he was introduced by Matt Shimamoto at Volt Lites – the company that now services all their lighting and rigging requirements “with a level of service

and professionalism that’s second to none.”

“I loved them, and we immediately substituted all our usual LED wash fixtures,” he adds in reaction to the X5. “They are very bright, with a superversatile zoom range and fantastic colors. Although we use them as key lighting only on this show, I am intrigued to use them in the future in the full-pixel mode.”

Scaling the rig to accommodate both indoor and outdoor stages –with capacities ranging from 8,000 to 25,000 – he deployed 36 of the

impression X5s. He uses six fixtures on each flank as side lights, with six on the truss for key light (two for each band member). A further 12 are positioned underneath the risers to shoot through the perspex tops, with the remainder on the front truss for general stage wash purposes. This saw them successfully through a US itinerary highlighted by such iconic venues as Red Rocks, Hollywood Bowl and The Gorge before returning to their native Australia for their first headline tour since before the pandemic.

Smith had a specific reason for choosing the JDC1 as his marquee

hybrid strobe: “It’s the original and the best,” he says, “and I’ve always used the Key Light profile and MA3D model from fellow Australian Anthony Petruzio. It makes it super simple for a previs in MA3D and, to be honest, super simple for cloning when I don’t have them!”

He has purposed 51 in total – many as truss-mounted overheads – with further fixtures on the floor and three-per-side underneath the IMAG screens, all run in SPix (68 DMX channels) mode.

This has proved the ideal backdrop for the trio to show off their moves, with the dance music style being the perfect medium to animate the lighting, choreographing it accordingly. As Smith explains: “Creative director Alex ‘Katzki’ George and the band like to accent the music as much as possible with lighting and visuals, but at the same time we always want to keep it thoughtful and classy. A show needs peaks and dips and shouldn’t be ‘at 11’ all the time!”

GLP.DE/EN

“THE BAND LIKE TO ACCENT THE MUSIC WITH LIGHTING AND VISUALS, BUT WE ALSO WANT TO KEEP IT THOUGHTFUL AND CLASSY.”

Photograph Credit: Michael Drummond

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Words bY COLBY RA M YES

KEITH THOMAS TALES FROM NASHVILLE

Renowned Nashville producer and songwriter Keith Thomas chats to Headliner about some of his career highlights and long-standing working relationships, and reflects on how he co-wrote Don’t Cry with BeBe Winans, a track which is being used in the new Whitney Houston biopic Whitney Houston: I Wanna Dance With Somebody.

Born into a musical family in Conyers, Georgia, and growing up with a “hillbilly musician” father whose dream was to make it in the music business, the young Thomas was arguably destined to follow the same path. Playing multiple instruments at his local church services and making records from a young age, he later experimented with an acting scholarship, much to his father’s disapproval.

After eventually hitting the road with a Christian band on Word Records

for almost four years, Thomas tried his luck and sent two vocal demos to singer Rob Galbraith in Nashville. He soon found himself in Music City with the knowledge that Galbraith and co were starting a publishing company, and soon after that, was asked to be the first staff writer for Ronnie Milsap – one of country music’s most popular and influential performers of the ‘70s and ‘80s.

“Ronnie and Rob truly changed my life,” Thomas reflects fondly. “When Ronnie was on the road, I

was fortunate enough to be given free rein of his studio, Groundstar Laboratories, and would spend up to 15 hours a day learning how to produce in there.”

Thomas then moved to Word Records where he spent six years, writing and producing over 20 Number One records during his time at the company. It was at this stage, however, that he decided pop music was to be his calling.

“It’s a hard transition from Christian to pop,” he affirms. “I had been working with Amy Grant, as a programmer on her Lead Me On album, and we became really good friends. I’d written this song called Baby Baby , and when I ran the idea past her, she loved it. So she took it and finished it, and that became the song that actually launched my pop career.”

To date, Thomas has co-written a whole plethora of successful songs for Grant, and recently witnessed her receive the prestigious Kennedy Center Honor Award at the 2022 ceremony. Having established such a close friendship and working relationship with the artist over the years, this was a very special moment indeed for Thomas.

“I love this woman – we go way back, and seeing her in that situation

made me so happy for her and the path she’s taken,” he says. “I usually cry at the drop of a hat, so I was just sitting there bawling while thinking about the body of work we’ve created over the years. I tell everyone that Amy Grant is the quintessential artist. In 35 plus years working together, we have never had one cross word in the studio. She loves giving back to people, and really just has the biggest heart.”

Thomas has also had a longstanding working relationship with gospel brother and sister duo BeBe and CeCe Winans, almost acting as their third member at certain points over the years.

“I was introduced to BeBe and CeCe through Howard McCrary, who was a monster talent,” Thomas laments.

“When I was leaving Word, I asked BeBe if he would consider doing a

guest spot on my new solo record, and so we ended up writing a song together called It’s Only Natural for my 1986 album Kaleidoscope.”

Thomas ended up writing the duo’s first four or five records, and through their musical endeavors, went on to win a bunch of top accolades including a Grammy for Best Contemporary Soul Gospel Album in 1991. It was off the back of this relationship when Thomas was asked to produce Vanessa Williams in New York – marking the next chapter of his illustrious production career.

During his time with BeBe and Cece, Thomas co-wrote a track called Don’t Cry for the duo’s 1988 album Heaven, a song that recently made it onto the soundtrack for the new Whitney Houston biopic Whitney Houston: I Wanna Dance With Somebody, which premiered in December 2022. Thomas was indeed lucky enough to spend some time with the legendary singer before her death, and was happy to share details with Headliner:

“There’s one particular memory I have,” he explains. “BeBe and I used to have this little back and forth rapport, where he would do a lick and I would try to mimic him and pare it back, albeit badly. And so one night we were with Whitney in a limo going to the Grammys, and BeBe started doing just that. I started doing my bit and she just looked at me and said, ‘No, no, Keith, just don’t sing.’ BeBe’s obviously quite the singer, and there’s me trying to keep up with him. It was too funny, and is definitely one of the highlights of my career so far.

“ Don’t Cry is one of my favorite things that I cut on CeCe back in the day, and I know her and Whitney used to perform it when they would do shows together.”

Thomas continues. “Clive Davis was adamant that the song had to be

used for the end credits, and that’s basically how that came about. The version that’s being used however is one that I cut a long time ago, which I totally forgot about. When I saw the film I was crying like a baby of course. To hear that song played at the end was just amazing, and so emotional.”

As technology has changed over the years, so has Thomas’ creative process in the studio. Allegedly the first person in Nashville to have one of Sony’s then brand new PCM3348 digital tape machines, he would often write on piano or synth, and then proceed to programme drums. More recently, in what he describes as the “drag and drop era,” Thomas has been an ardent Logic user, and often likes to bring himself up to date with the latest pro audio software and plugins.

“I have a few tricks that I employ so that I don’t feel like I’m going to the same well every time,” he reveals. “Sometimes I’ll write on bass or guitar, and that makes me think completely differently. Sometimes it starts with a piano piece or a beat; I just try to keep things as fresh as I can. A big thing for me is making sure I listen to New Music Friday every week, so that I know what the people are listening to.

“I have a set of Neve mic pres that I use with a Sony C800-G, and that’s really my chain. Everything else is pretty much in the box unless I’m dealing with a country artist. I did a record for Tanya Tucker’s daughter the year before last – recorded in the studio with live players – and it was completely organic, just like the old days. That was a blast, and I have to say I do miss that energy and synergy in the studio that I can’t get when I’m just here by myself. Having input from everyone involved is amazing, and so I love doing it both ways.”

Right now, Thomas is excited about three of his ongoing projects – the first being his foray into VR and AI through the creation of free-touse music libraries for Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat.

“I’m also excited to be working with Sydney Palmieri, who is a young pop artist out of Nashville and a great little songwriter. Then I’m also working with Englebert Humperdinck’s granddaughter Olivia, who is a beast of a singer. Of all the artists I’ve worked with over my years, to me this one feels very special.”

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“TO HEAR THAT SONG [DON’T CRY] PLAYED AT THE END OF THE FILM WAS JUST AMAZING, AND SO EMOTIONAL.”

Case Study

FOCUSRITE PRO IN WAYSTATION STUDIOS

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

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

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