Headliner USA #3

ISSUE 03 / JANUARY 2021 HEADLINERMAGAZINE.NET UK £3.95 / USA $6.95 / CANADA $7.95

SUPPORTING THE CREATIVE COMMUNITY

MAGAZINE / 03

EMERGENCY TSUNAMI

NAV

GRYFFIN

FILMORE

THE NAKED & FAMOUS

ON PRODUCING NEW SINGLE SAFE WITH ME

TELLING HIS STORY ON ALBUM DEBUT

CREATIVE HEALING AND RECOVERY

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

— Mick Jagger

©2020 QSC, LLC. All rights reserved. QSC and the QSC logo are registered trademarks of QSC, LLC in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and other countries. Play Out Loud is a trademark of QSC, LLC. Artist: Printz Board. Photo by Mikel Darling.

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SUP P

IVE C EAT O CR

ING THE T R O

NITY MU M HEADLINER USA

03 It’s been an interesting and challenging start to 2021, but our cover star NAV - perhaps the hottest name in hip-hop and trap at the moment - has entered the year on a high. Having released both his third studio album Good Intentions and commercial mixtape Emergency Tsunami last year, NAV’s undeniable workrate and powerful attitude towards production and collaboration have served him well so far. And now he’s comfortable with his musical identity, that momentum looks set to continue.

We catch up with another producer and artist at the top of his game, Gryffin, about his latest single Safe With Me featuring the silky vocals of rising star Audrey Mika, and find out why The Naked & Famous’ new album Recover marks a cathartic reinvention and rebirth for the band, who say they are no longer hiding behind cryptic lyrics — or yeah yeah yeahs.

Meanwhile, country star Filmore, whose debut album chronicles the ups and downs of his life so far, explains why every track on State I’m In represents a moment in time that made him who he is.

Touring musician Frank Turner reveals how he’s been digging into music production from his shed, and shares why Sennheiser has been a game changer for him on stage, while Kendrick Lamar’s monitor engineer, Chris Lee, tells us what it’s like mixing shows for one of the biggest hip-hop acts on the planet.

Colby Ramsey Group Editor, Headliner

Also on the production and engineering side, we speak to Antonia Gauci, Damien Lewis, and Stint about their creative process and dive into the analog vs. digital debate with Tom Lord-Alge.

We head behind the scenes at iZotope, find out how business is going at L.A. Percussion Rentals, and discover how the sound for Netflix’s most-watched scripted miniseries, The Queen’s Gambit, was recorded using an arsenal of Lectrosonics gear.

In this month’s Spotlight section, we find out if JH Audio’s new Lola IEMs can replicate the sonic thrill of playing through a classic guitar cabinet, and reveal a number of new products designed to enhance creativity, including PreSonus’ Analog Effects Collection, Universal Audio’s UAFX pedals, and Waves’ Nx Ocean Way Nashville plugin.

We hope you enjoy the issue!

Cover photo: Prasanna ‘KYRO’ Pradhan of GoinGlobal

HEADLINERMAGAZINE.NET

20 / GALXARA 14/ THE NAKED & FAMOUS 08 / DAVID DAVIS

28 / FRANK TURNER

24 / SEAN SULLIVAN

34 / FILMORE

50 / STINT

38/ NAV

46 / KURTIS MANTRONIK

56 / CHRIS LAKE

64 / CHRIS LEE 60 / BEN BAPTIE

80 / TOM LORD-ALGE 70 / SAINT MOTEL

74 / DAMIEN LEWIS

94 / ANTONIA GAUCI

86 / GUY SEBASTIAN

90 / VENUE FOCUS

112 / SPOTLIGHT REVIEWS 100 / JAN OZVEREN

136 / THE QUEEN’S GAMBIT

104 / GRYFFIN

148 / JOSEPH STEPHENS 138/ PATRICK KIRST 146/ IZOTOPE

152 / LA PERCUSSION RENTALS

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DAVID DAVIS

The Long & Short Of It

ASPIRING HEADLINER

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ICE GUSTA AL

THE LONG & SHORT OF IT

DAVID DAVIS David Davis – Quincy Jones protégé and winner of NBC’s Songland – has accomplished things in his relatively short career that even the most optimistic singer-songwriters will not achieve in a lifetime of hustling, opening for John Legend and working with legendary producers RedOne (Lady Gaga, Nicki Minaj) and Ryan Tedder (One Republic, Beyonce).

Armed with this experience, a glass-half-full attitude and a song that just won’t quit, Davis is ready to show the world the real him.

For as long as he can recall, Davis has been fixed on a career in music.

Chicago-born and surrounded by seven siblings, he always found his way to a stage – nothing made him happier than belting out Motown classics or performing in church.

of my life in a very permanent way.”

“I was very much fixated from a young age on just creating music,” recalls an instantly likeable Davis, who speaks to Headliner from his L.A. home. “It wasn’t even about choosing a career, it was more about feeling like I found music, and that was it. I just knew that this was something that was going to be a part

“If you’re a singer it can really affect you, so I didn’t sing for a month and a half. I got through it and was like, ‘I need to sing as much as I possibly can!’

I got my voice back, was ready to go, and everything got locked down,” he shrugs.

Davis reveals that he contracted Covid-19 last year (making a full recovery), and is more thankful than ever for his voice, which he feared may have been damaged by the virus.

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In

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DAVID DAVIS

The Long & Short Of It

A self-described ‘pop-soul’ artist, Davis’ music not only highlights his impressive singing voice, but also his effortless songwriting capabilities. He perfected his piano and performance skills while studying in the nationally renowned Belmont University music program, drawing inspiration from the likes of Stevie Wonder, Donny Hathaway and India Arie. Racking up over 700 shows in the last three-anda-half years, understandably being home so much over the last year has been a bit of an adjustment: “I’m really, really missing performing,” he stresses. “My favorite part about performing is getting to bring people from all over the place together for that hour and a half and unite behind being joyful and singing about the human experience. This time period has been difficult because there is so much less of that, but I’m an eternal optimist.”

Davis’ voice, arrangements and productions have been featured on chart-topping records, commercials for major brands and networks, as well as across hundreds of stages internationally, including the 64th Primetime Emmy Awards Governors Ball, a London debut at Ronnie Scott’s Jazz Club, and a 73-show residency at the Quincy Jones’ club in Dubai.

And this wasn’t Davis’ only “pinch me” experience, as he has also been an opening act for John Legend and Jon Bellion, and has worked with legendary producers RedOne (Lady Gaga, Nicki Minaj) and Aaron HEADLINER USA

Sprinkle (One Republic). Taking it all in his positive stride, he sees each one of these milestones as “little victories,” adding that the best way to build and develop a craft is to get out there and just do it.

“When I left college and was doing my own act, I decided to call those people that I had worked with and said, ‘Hey, I have this new project; I’d love to come and open for you.

If you’re down, I will drive 10 hours overnight, show up, get paid very little, sing my three songs and get that experience in’. It started off pretty gruelling and it was definitely a hustle, but the love of music kept me in it.”

EVERYTHING IT TOOK TO GET TO YOU Davis was featured on NBC’s Songland last year, where his song Everything It Took To Get To You was chosen as the winner of the Ben Platt episode (securing an iTunes #1 spot on the New Pop Song Chart, #5 on the All Song Chart and #2 on the Pop Chart).

Conceived by David A. Stewart (formerly of the Eurythmics), Songland gives undiscovered songwriters a chance to create a hit while giving viewers a look at the creative process in action.

Contestants are selected to work with producers and a well-known recording artist to release a song.

Crucially, the show elevates the

traditional role of the songwriter in the process of creating music from ‘unpleasant secret,’ to being the celebrated ‘magic ingredient’.

“Songwriters are the backbone of the music industry,” agrees Davis.

“Without the idea, there is no artist or label or any of the things that go into creating a song. There is none of that without the original concept and the soul of the idea. On the show you get to see behind the curtain of the whole process in such a short amount of time.”

Working with one of his musical heroes – Ryan Tedder – as his producer, Davis made some subtle changes to the song to tailor it more to Platt: “The best part about working with Ryan and most of the people on the show is that you can tell that no matter the success that they’ve had, they’re still about the music and they’re still about creating the best song possible. There was no attitude or anything, it was just: ‘how do we get this thing to land? Let’s make the best song possible’. Ben did decide to change the title with one word; it went from Everything It Took To Get To You, to Everything I Did To Get To You because it connected to his experience more and made more sense for him to sing.”

ASPIRING HEADLINER

Does it feel strange to have someone else experience success with a song he wrote?

“I’m actually really proud of that and what he did with the song; he’s an amazing vocalist,” he answers sincerely. “It’s an artist’s dream to have someone that really empowers and inspires you singing one of your songs. It was awesome getting to hear his version of it and getting to hear his vocal on it. I also love singing that song because it’s really personal, so there’s room for me being amazed by what he’s able to do with it, and also knowing that my version is my story and that it brings me joy to sing as well.”

Whichever version of the song people are more familiar with, Davis has more than enough fan favorites of his own that he’s released over the last few years to keep his name in audiences’ minds due to his debut album release, The Long & Short Of It. Presumably catching the attention of Quincy Jones was the almost impossibly uplifting crowd pleaser, Little Mo’ Betta – which wouldn’t sound out of place as the lead track in a Pixar soundtrack and easily rivals Pharell Williams’ Happy. If you need three minutes of condensed positivity injected into your day, Headliner defies you to find a better feel-good song. (Is that your foot tapping despite yourself? Yes it is).

“Thanks,” he smiles humbly. “It’s one of my favorites on the album, and I’ve seen how it’s been taken on by so many other people in terms of TikTok, performing it in Dubai and hearing it translated into different languages and seeing it in commercials in Africa…” he trails off. “It’s one of those songs that doesn’t really seem to quit even though I put out other stuff. It’s so much fun to sing, and to see people respond to it every time it starts is the best feeling.”

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Admitting that he’s not a big TikToker (and yes I had to Google if that was even the right phrase), he’s not exactly sure how the song has taken off on the platform.

“I am kind of a fossil when it comes to social media,” he laughs. “I’m a little slow on that stuff. My family sent me a text message being like, ‘hey, do you know your song is getting a lot of views on TikTok?’ Listen, if you know TikTok, I would love to hear your opinion on that, because I’m very confused by it!”

His debut album is something of a labor of love, and saw Davis ditch the big name producers in favor of working with his friends in a small studio.

“I have worked with all these crazy producers that were amazing and all that stuff, but I really missed my music school friends, going to Nashville, sitting in the studio and just creating – just not having some of the red tape that comes with working with top 40 producers. I sat with my friends in a studio and with a co-producer buddy named Joe, and he and I worked for a week for 12 hours a day, just recording ideas and concepts. It was such a fun album to make and it was a really connected experience just being able to sit in the studio and feel the soul of it and run with that, instead of running with formulas for songwriting, which happens a lot when you’re doing pitches or writing on a deadline. My hope for putting that first album out was that people would hear my story.”

HEADLINERMAGAZINE.NET

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DAVID DAVIS

The Long & Short Of It

“Songwriters are the backbone of the music industry. Without the idea, there is no artist or label or any of the things that go into creating a song.”

Davis has certainly put in the hard work over the years to get where he is, and has worked with producers and artists that others would consider selling a kidney to get in a room with, so it’s no surprise that he has some wise advice for any aspiring singersongwriters out there:

love you. So don’t hide that; lean into that. I’d rather make it as me than someone else and always be confused about what I want or who I am. It’s quite the process, but once you learn to like yourself, I think you become unstoppable.”

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“I would tell anyone at the beginning of their career to stop at nothing, and to learn to love yourself and to be yourself. No matter if someone says they can help your career if you act like this, dress differently or act differently. The thing that makes you you is what’s going to make people HEADLINER USA

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THE NAKED AND FAMOUS

HEADLINER USA

Road To Recovery

ARTIST

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ROAD TO RECOVERY

THE NAKED AND FAMOUS Alisa Xayalith and Thom Powers have come a long way since The Naked and Famous’ debut album, Passive Me, Aggressive You shot to the top of the charts in 2010, spurred on by their platinum-selling song, Young Blood. Insisting that the surprise hit practically wrote itself, Xayalith’s “balls to the wall” vocals became the band’s signature sound. Ten years on, new album Recover marks a cathartic reinvention and rebirth for the band, who are no longer hiding behind cryptic lyrics – or yeah yeah yeahs.

Not only did The Naked and Famous’ breakthrough hit Young Blood go platinum, it also debuted at number one on the New Zealand singles chart and went on to feature in numerous films, TV programmes and commercials, samples, remixes, movie trailers, video game soundtracks, as well as serving as walk-in music at the UFC.

Comprised of Auckland natives Alisa Xayalith and Thom Powers, who both join Headliner on a call from their respective home studios in L.A (once a couple, they split after two EPs but their musical partnership remains firm as ever), The Naked and Famous are still amazed and “forever grateful” at the way that song changed their lives.

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THE NAKED AND FAMOUS

Road To Recovery

Powers says that the song is all the more special to them because of the way it practically wrote itself: “I like the saying, ‘it’s like a sneeze, it came out all at once!’ We put that song together while we were living at my parents’ house on the unemployment benefit. Alisa wanders into the studio / bedroom – the one room with all the belongings that we had in it – she sits down at the keyboard and she plays a version of the lead line, and then I just wrote this entire bit of music underneath that. The actual track as you hear it in its entirety was just written in one go and must have taken me about an hour.”

Xayalith took the track and wrote down some lyrics “pretty much A to B” and showed them to Powers, although she hadn’t come up with anything for the last line of the chorus yet, so just put down a few ‘yeah, yeah, yeahs’ in the meantime, which serendipitously ended up being the song’s most memorable hook. Having not written the bridge yet, Powers took that part.

“These happy accidents formed the way the band is identified,” says

Powers, who admits that even though it came together extremely quickly, he had an inkling that it was a special song: “Everyone around us was excited about it – and by everyone, I mean the band and the manager we had at the time – that’s probably about the extent of the opinions we canvassed for! It was a pretty pure overnight success story. Then when we got the song mixed, we were like, ‘okay, wow, this sounds giant’. We could tell that there was something really special about it, but with zero perception about what that was going to do for us. We had flip phones still, so we didn’t have the internet on them, and our perception of how big the industry was, how we could enter it, or the fact that there was this global industry… we were just

“Young Blood grew legs and ran off and joined the circus, so to speak. We had to race around following it!”

completely naive to that. All we could think about was the local scene, the local magazines and the local college radio station, and that was it. But this song grew legs and ran off and joined the circus, so to speak. We had to race around following it!”

600 million collective streams later, Xayalith says she still finds it “crazy” to be in a band that instantly garnered that level of success, particularly as this song pushed her way out of her comfort zone.

“The vocal style you hear on Young Blood has become such a trademark for our band. Previous to that, the songs we had written were very…” she trails off. “I was listening to a lot of Fiona Apple; I love that vocal tone. I was super inspired by her singing – very low, kind of jazzy. The day that we were writing melodies and lyrics for Young Blood, when I was singing them back to Tom I was kind of timid and my vocal was very contained. Tom was pushing me to sing louder and said I should just go for it, so I tried it. I felt like a total idiot! I thought I sounded stupid. But Tom said it didn’t sound stupid like this, so from that point on, that just became a trademark of the vocal of how I would sing and how people would identify our band. We were like, ‘we’ve got to do that again!’ So on Punching In A Dream my vocal parts are balls to the wall, anthemic, shouty and loud. That was a very integral moment for me as a vocalist.”

The recent release of the band’s latest album, Recover marks a cathartic reinvention and rebirth for the band, and sees The Naked and Famous stripping back down to the original core duo of Xayalith and Powers after a few lineup changes.

The largely autobiographical record is rooted in the idea of survival, and

HEADLINER USA

ARTIST

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of the very human process of self-preservation: of saving, choosing and celebrating oneself in a world inhabited by people constantly putting one another down.

Each song is carefully crafted, with messages ranging from straight up survival (Death), self-identity (Well-Rehearsed), resilience (Recover), mortality ((An)Aesthetic), and things that affect our lives in ways we can never anticipate (Sunseeker).

“Recover is about the duo, recovering ourselves, and our artistic vessel,” Powers explains. “The album is a statement of creative healing and a vehicle to plow forward into our own future. A pandemic and subsequent recession is not an ideal time to release an album, but perhaps Recover is the musical message some people might appreciate right now. The album was anything but easy to make – it was fought for,” he stresses. “It’s about healing and resilience. It’s an album about Alisa and I recovering ourselves both personally and artistically.”

Powers handles the production side of things, but isn’t precious about the kit he uses: “As an example, Young Blood was written with what you would now call a silly program called Reason – all the electronic sounds are coming out of Reason. Nobody uses it anymore, but that first album was the most successful thing we’ve ever done! So my view on gear is a bit convoluted.

I think the main point is, it doesn’t matter how you’re making it, but what matters is the outcome or how it sounds at the end of the day. If something sounds really cool and it’s really cheap, it doesn’t matter. You don’t have to spend a million dollars.”

Xayalith and Powers explain that single, Come As You Are is an ode to the importance of inclusivity.

Xayalith says it started out as a song about how everyone comes into a new relationship with history and baggage, but ultimately it became a song about accepting people for who they really are, and recognizing that everyone deserves love.

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THE NAKED AND FAMOUS

Road To Recovery

and for this latest one we had some co-writers and co-producers come on board. Tom and I were doing well writing together and getting by and doing what we do, but it got to a point that I refer to as ‘a default setting’. Tom and I have been working and writing together for the past decade, and we have this default setting when we are writing music where we traverse the same neural pathways in our brain: writing verses and choruses with the same melodic sensibility. I really noticed it and felt like we needed to evolve somehow; we were churning out the same old tricks, so we wanted to get some new perspectives and fresh ideas in the room to help bring something out of us that we wouldn’t normally naturally do.”

Powers nods, adding that Recover is a “more intelligible” record then their previous work: “Weirdly I think it’s a little bit easier to understand. The lyrical content of this album was very intentional, and on previous records, there was a lot more poetry and hiding behind lyrics.

Maybe that’s a generational thing,” he realizes.

“It became apparent to both Tom and I that there was a larger message behind the song,” Xayalith confirms.

“In the history of The Naked and Famous we’ve never really been super outspoken about our social and political views for fear of saying the wrong thing or not being informed enough. We’re both college dropouts, so we didn’t feel that we knew enough about the world to have an opinion on it. We got really timid about having any kind of outspoken opinions. We were just shy, naive and in our own worlds, and now that we’re older, it’s so important to be vocal about things.

“We really want to let our fans know that we are a safe space, and we wanted them to know what kinds of people were behind the music that HEADLINER USA

they were listening to. Come As You Are was our flag in the sand to tell everyone that we don’t mind where you’re from, we don’t mind what ethnic background you are, what the colour of your skin is – we welcome you. I love that our fans are able to know that about us.”

“We want our fans to know how important inclusivity is to us,” agrees Powers. “Whether you’re in the LGBTQ community or an immigrant or in any other marginalized group, this is a safe space for you.”

Xayalith acknowledges the shift in the duo’s songwriting: “We’ve got better as songwriters and musicians in general. For the last three records it was just the two of us,

“Personally, I grew up listening to things like Radiohead and The Smashing Pumpkins, and some of the lyrics are very cryptic and obscure.

I get the sense that sometimes even those singers didn’t really know what they were talking about; they were just writing poetry that moves them. I thought that there was this deep meaning behind everything and a puzzle to be figured out, and I’ve written lyrics like that myself, whereas on this album, I can explain every line. Everything’s very deliberate. There’s no hiding. There’s no disguising anything. It showcases us in a different light; it feels like The Naked and Famous, but it feels like a new The Naked and Famous.”

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GALXARA

HEADLINER USA

Cosmic Girl

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GALXARA

GUSTAF CE S LI

COSMIC GIRL

int e

EMERGING HEADLINER

“Don’t you know that my time’s like a million dollars, I could spend it anywhere,” sings rising star GALXARA in the opening line of her infectious debut single, Waste My Youth. Luckily for me, today she’s choosing to spend some of her time talking about the path to intergalactic pop domination.

Although her name and style evoke the heavens, GALXARA (pronounced ‘gal-ex-arra’) hails from far humbler roots. Born in Miami and growing up in Florida with her Nicaraguan mother and American father – both of whom were constantly blending the styles and genres of music of both backgrounds – a young GALXARA took an interest in music early on. She says she began singing as soon as she could speak, and took up piano at age seven.

“I 100% was that child,” she admits with a chuckle whilst she sips her morning coffee. “I always said, ‘there’s no plan B’ – and still to this day, there is no plan B because I didn’t go to college.

I actually don’t know anything else besides music, so this is gonna have to be the thing for me! Still to this day, there’s nothing else I want to do; I was just like, ‘get me on the stage; that’s all that matters’. As soon as I got on there, it was another world and I was a different person. That’s what I love, besides creating music – performing is really where my heart is.”

After many years of competing in small, local talent competitions, she finally caught the eye of an A&R at Atlantic Records. As she recalls, she had only been writing original songs

for about a year prior to that and realized very quickly the importance of being a songwriter and having the ability to write her own music.

“I’ve always been very opinionated,” she shares, “and I’ve never done something I don’t want to do to please someone else – that’s the type of person I am. I always knew that I wanted to be an artist and I wanted to write and sing my own songs. But I never realized how much I needed to write my own songs…” she trails off. “I don’t think I would have been able to continue on this journey with somebody else writing my music for me and me having no say in it. I don’t think I’d be able to stay sane doing that.”

GALXARA “worked her butt off” every day to become a better songwriter, which is something she’s super grateful for now.

A magnificent Marina and the Diamonds–Lady Gaga hybrid, GALXARA’s go hard or go home vocals are as bold as her hair, and have been shaped by boundary-pushing greats of the past – notably Freddie Mercury, who she became obsessed with as a child.

“I remember hearing Somebody To Love when I was about seven,” she recalls. “That song stuck out for me: the melodies, the chanting, the stacks and the harmonies – it was amazing.

They were ahead of their time.

Lyrically and melodically they were writing stuff that could have totally been out today and still would be huge because it’s just downright, good songwriting. Those lyrics touch you, and that’s something you can’t deny. I want to be able to create that kind of feeling.”

“It’s very important for an artist to be able to write for themselves, to have their own mind and have their own thoughts and opinions, and not just go along with whatever anyone says.

I think the essence of a true artist is somebody who speaks the truth. True artists are not afraid to do what their heart desires.”

HEADLINERMAGAZINE.NET

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GALXARA

Cosmic Girl

WASTE MY YOUTH GALXARA had her chance to do so on her bold debut single, Waste My Youth – a soaring track that evokes the sounds of Queen and David Bowie, with shades of Lorde and Lady Gaga thrown in for good measure.

“I often try to remind myself that I won’t be this young forever,” she notes of her debut. “It’s such a cliché, but you really are only young once, so whatever or whoever you choose to waste your youth on, do it with no fear. Have no regrets. Don’t waste time on things that are petty or negative. Be happy and appreciate the love and life around you. People will always have assumptions, but Waste My Youth isn’t about me spending my time on any one specific person, it’s about every moment I’ve spent and will one day spend feeling unregretfully fearless.”

Her debut effort was just a hint of what’s to come from GALXARA, who in her artistry brings with her an interest in all things celestial, futuristic and vast. She’s interested in unanswerable questions and the possibilities of something limitless, going off writing love songs early on: “When I was younger, I knew I didn’t want to write about love – I was so against it,” she shares. I was in a relationship at that time from 15 to pretty much 19 years old, and I can tell you, it wasn’t the healthiest relationship, but I didn’t know any different because I was young. There were things that I didn’t want to admit or come to terms with, and I definitely didn’t want to do it in front of strangers in a studio booth!

So I just completely blocked that side out and I wrote about empowering people and things that I could talk about.”

HEADLINER USA

Now in a happy and healthy relationship, things couldn’t be more different for the young singer: “It’s just so funny because right now, all I want to do is write about love; all I want to do is write about this person, the way that she makes me feel, the fact that I’m so happy, and how proud I am to be with her. I’m in a very happy place with my writing and I think I’ve grown a lot.”

2020 ballad, Loving Nobody was a perfect vehicle for GALXARA’s new willingness to open up a bit more, and it’s one of the most honest, real and emotional songs she has ever written.

“All I know is I just want people to hear this song and not only experience, but welcome all the heartbreaking, raw and deep emotions like I did when I wrote it because it comes from a very real place in my heart. It’s not an anti love song,” she points out, “it’s just saying I am loving nobody – there’s nobody for me to love, which is such an honest thing. That song came from a really real place because the person that I was with – as many times as we said, I love you, it didn’t feel like love. Writing the song was me releasing all those emotions that I had. I would listen to this song, and I would cry, man. I came to realize that this song was coming from the deepest part of my heart, and I just didn’t know it.”

EMERGING HEADLINER

What’s clear is GALXARA wants to create music that surges with confidence, and that tells her listeners to be themselves no matter what. Her songs are bold, because she herself is bold.

“I definitely do look up to other artists that do that. I’m still writing songs about female empowerment and empowering people. I want to use my platform for a good reason, or for a good purpose, like telling people that no matter what they think, or no matter what anyone says, you are beautiful, you are strong, and you have the power to change the world.”

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I can’t help but believe every empowering word. Coming back down to earth, GALXARA is ultimately a young woman who delivers everything straight from the heart.

“Although GALXARA is fantastical, she’s still me,” she insists.

“She’s not a character. Instead, she’s the person I choose to be.”

GALXARA.COM

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SEAN SULLIVAN

Live And Kicking

LIVE AND KICKING

Joining Headliner from his studio in Cleveland, Ohio which he fondly refers to as “the lab”, Sean ‘Sully’ HEADLINER USA

y

Front of house engineer Sean Sullivan — often better known simply as Sully — has worked with some of the biggest names in music over the course of his career, including Red Hot Chili Peppers, Rihanna, Beck and Justin Timberlake to name just a few.

Having been in the live touring business for 35 years, Sully has streamlined his workflow to a tee, and he couldn’t have done it without the ingenuity of d&b audiotechnik rigs.

Sullivan admits that life has been quite boring compared to his normal routine of early mornings, buses and airport transfers.

That being said, he’s finding lots of things to keep him busy, including the odd live stream event with bands and working in the lab; mixing records for some friends and clients. And while he’s not known as a studio engineer, Sully is grateful to have this piecemeal work keeping him productive.

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Something he’s particularly enjoying at the moment, and that has been keeping him focused, is hosting online training sessions: “I have all my gears dialled into a little video switcher, and I can show any screen of my rig and give advice on how to tune PAs,” explains Sully.

“When I was young trying to learn how to do this stuff I would have killed for the capabilities that we have nowadays, to learn from people that have been doing it their whole lives and working with the big acts.

“And so for me to be able to share that back nowadays and help people out; I love it. It keeps us talking about audio and it’s just a good way to pass the time and try to make a few bucks.

We’re just doing what we can at the moment.”

Sully grew up within a very musical family. His father had an extensive record collection filled with classic rock records from late ‘60s and ‘70s bands, and he would sit around with his three brothers listening to the legendary sounds of Black Sabbath and Led Zeppelin.

As a captain of the local fire department, Sully’s father instilled in his sons a strong sense of work ethic, yet was also adamant that they should find jobs that they really love.

“My two older brothers were musicians playing in bands and I

dabbled in a little bit of guitar and drums because it was in the house,” Sully recalls. “I just got stuck being the guy that drags all the gear around and sets everything up because I was the youngest and I wanted to hang out. I took it really seriously and my dad encouraged me to pursue it. I didn’t know it was touring at the time, but being involved with bands and doing shows was always what I wanted to do.”

Sully soon learned that he could earn a decent buck working at local clubs with his brothers’ bands, and with a small push in the right direction at just 15-years-old, that’s exactly what he did, grabbing the opportunity by the horns.

Luckily enough, Eighth Day Sound was based locally to Sully in Ohio, and he quickly found himself working for the global sound reinforcement company, initially as the “shop guy, sweeping floors and pulling cables out of cable trunks when they came back from gigs,” he remembers with a smile.

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working at Eighth Day for eight or nine years, and I was on tour mixing front of house from there on out.”

In August 2020, Clair Global acquired Eighth Day in a move that saw two of the biggest touring sound companies come together in a significant deal for the live events industry.

“With all the moves Clair has made in the last couple of years, they’re just getting stronger and bigger and better,” Sully adds. “Although Eighth Day was always my normal go-to just because I grew up there and I’ve got history with them, I’ve loved Clair Brothers for years and have also toured with them on and off.

“I love d&b rigs and the ethics of Clair Brothers, with the family orientation of everything being small and local.

I think it’s the greatest thing ever that Eighth Day and Clair have now joined forces - it’s going to be good for me for sure.”

By the age of 21 Sully was busy on tour flying PA systems and miking stages: “Anytime anybody needed an engineer I’d be the first one to put my hand up, and because I took it so seriously and had a pretty decent grasp at it, people started asking for my phone number. I ended up

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D&B For the most part, d&b audiotechnik is Sully’s first choice when it comes to PA rigs, eclipsing the competition with its R1 Remote Control, ArrayCalc and ArrayProcessing software.

“Everybody can make a killer line array of boxes with high power capabilities and glues that don’t melt when you beat the crap out of them, but when it comes to getting the design of the PA together quickly, tuning it virtually while the guys are pulling it up into the ceiling, and then checking your work once it’s on, it’s got to be d&b,” affirms Sully. “On some of these gigantic pop tours, nobody cares if you need time to get your act together; on a Rihanna tour for example, I may get just half an hour to get the rig working.

“With d&b, I know I can have the thing ready before that half hour is up; I’m sitting here with my laptop up in the seats, I’m watching the guys pull a rig up, and because I was a system engineer at Eighth Day for years, I just know what I want and what to expect.”

As one would expect, Sully’s approach to setting up and tuning d&b rigs is very streamlined these days: “With ArrayCalc, whatever kind of rig you’re touring with you’ll know whether to put up a smaller rig if you’re in a smaller venue etc. - It’s really about getting the room drawn well or already having a well drawn room; that’s really what matters.

“With ArrayCalc and a good room drawing, there’s none of that second guessing.

You build it and as long as your crew’s pinning it together, you pull it up, put lasers on it, trim it and make sure it’s pointing where you want, and you’re laughing.

There’s no messing around with it, and so the approach is extremely streamlined with anybody’s PA really, although I feel d&b is the slickest…”

It’s also paramount of course to make sure the rig sounds the same, or at least very similar at every position in the venue: “I’ll walk the room every day and put a virtual soundcheck on - usually the most annoying song of the show that the rest of the crew hate!” he laughs. “A system engineer will take a tablet and we’ll walk around the room together. If we can do that in half an hour with the least amount of pink noise involved then great, because who doesn’t hate pink noise? It’s like torture!

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“I’ll walk the room every day and put a virtual soundcheck on - usually the most annoying song of the show that the rest of the crew hate!”

“The cool thing about d&b is that it’s just so accurate in terms of time alignment. There’s been tours where I haven’t even pulled a single time alignment mic out. Don’t get me wrong, that can be done with any PA, but I just like how easily and fast it can be done with the J, GSL or KSL Series my favorites.”

Sully advises that the best thing to keep in mind is knowing your gear well enough to be proficient with it: “Just pick the best stuff for you and get really good at it so that you can be quick and get the best results, because results are all that matter. The desk is a tool; the lights on it, the colours it makes and the cool things it does nobody gives a shit about that. Just be fast and good at it, and pick the sources and tools that make your day go easier.”

being well, he should be back out on the road doing rehearsals in April or May, “which would be amazing.

“I didn’t always get the greatest tours in the world, I just took whatever came my way for years,” Sully admits. “But now at this point in my career I can pick and choose the gigs I get, and that makes them more amazing - In fact there hasn’t been a single bad one.

“It’s like what people say about sex and pizza. Even bad sex is still sex and bad pizza is still pizza! With tours it’s the same thing. Even with crappy tours, you’re still putting concerts on for a living. I just always try to have a good time no matter what, and really enjoy it.”

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For Sully, every one of the tours he’s been a part of have been memorable: “Doing what we do is such an amazing gift,” he says. “And now more than ever, people are really realizing that they probably took concerts for granted before Covid came around.

I think many are really appreciating how amazing concerts are and what music brings to people’s lives.”

Last year, Sully was in rehearsals on tour with Rage Against The Machine when Covid-19 arrived and shut everything down. That tour is rescheduled for summer 2021, so all

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FRANK TURNER

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Life Off The Road

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FRANK TURNER Like all touring artists that suddenly found themselves spending the majority of their time at home, Frank Turner realized that he needed to find something new to occupy his time. Turner tells Headliner how he’s been digging into music production from his shed, and shares why Sennheiser has been a game changer for him on stage.

“At the beginning of lockdown, like everybody, I thought, ‘well, it’s time to be creative, because there’s no distractions, and then after a while, you realize that a global pandemic is quite the distraction in itself,” begins Frank Turner, who catches up with Headliner from his UK home, or possibly his shed.

“I’ve been through phases of being very creative as a writer. I’ve been learning to be a producer, an engineer and a mixer during this period of time. But then there’s also been times where I’ve been completely sort of paralysed, so it swings around.”

Turner admits that with so much time spent at home over the last year, he is guilty of what he calls the “curse of the lockdown song”, although he adds that many of these will never see the light of day.

“It’s funny how quickly things date; I was looking back the other day at some lyrics that I wrote in April

or May last year, and it sounds like they were written 100 years ago now. I wanted to learn more about the technical side of things because I wanted to use my time productively and learn a new skill.

But it was also because I realized quite quickly that structure and routine is quite important to me and to my mental health.”

Contrary to stereotypes and cliches, life on the road is actually pretty structured, shares Turner.

“I wake up in the morning and my tour manager gives me a day sheet that tells me what I’m doing pretty much every minute of the day. I find that useful in terms of getting things done, and at the beginning of lockdown, it felt like the day after you get back from tour when you generally sit around and watch Netflix in your pants, but kind of forever – and you can’t live like that forever. I realized pretty early on that what I needed was a project, structure and a routine. So I started HEADLINERMAGAZINE.NET

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an entire song in my head. That’s interesting to me – if I come up with an idea for a verse, like a riff and a beat and maybe a vocal, I can knock out a sketch of that so quickly on Logic and then start toying with where it could go whilst actually hearing what I’ve come up with so far, rather than it just being a sound in my head. You can do it so quickly these days that it goes beyond purely technological and becomes quite creative.”

Turner is particularly proud of his drum mic collection housed in his shed-turned-studio, which includes a Sennheiser e 902, e 904 drum mics, an e 914 instrument mic, and an MD 441 U for his snare. putting aside hours of the day to get things done and to try and move forward.”

Turner has been a vocal advocate of #WeMakeEvents, an international movement to highlight that the live events sector urgently needs support from local governments to survive the Covid-19 crisis.

In 2020, Turner performed a weekly show from his home on his Facebook and YouTube channels to raise money for independent grassroot music venues that were forced to temporarily close due to the pandemic. Some of his shows were held specifically to raise money for his band, touring crew and his publishing label.

“I’ve said so many times – when people say things like ‘it doesn’t fit in with my album plan’ – stuff your album plan; if you don’t have a crew, you don’t have an album plan. For me, I’m painfully aware of how much my crew do when given a run of things, and then also how completely stuffed they’ve been by what’s going on right now. If you make your living as a live crew person, it’s just like somebody found the off switch for your life. These are people I live with in a dormitory on wheels for 10 months HEADLINER USA

“We live in an age now where there is a symbiosis between technology and creativity.”

of the year. I sleep half a meter away from my production manager and my guitar tech; there’s no hierarchy there – they’re my best friends, they’re my family. So when #WeMakeEvents started coming together, it seemed to be the least I could do to contribute.”

ONE MAN AND HIS SHED Keeping his promise to himself about having a structure to his days has led Turner to appreciate music technology all the more, which has seen him retreating to his shed (he’s been converting it into a studio space), where he’s particularly enjoyed digging into Logic and Universal Audio’s plugins, audio interfaces and preamp/A-D converters.

“We live in an age now where there is a symbiosis between technology and creativity, where if I come up with half an idea, I don’t have to finish writing

And he’s not just using Sennheiser gear in the studio – on stage he uses their mics and in-ear packs after switching over from wedges, which he says he did at first to save his voice. He upgraded to Sennheiser’s high-spec Digital 6000 wireless system just before the start of his nine-date UK tour in support of his album, No Man’s Land.

“My touring schedule has a reputation for being thorough, shall we say. There was a point in time when we were really doing the grunt work in the USA, where every day we were in a 400-person packed club, which can have any different collection of wedges – they might be brilliant, they might be awful. We couldn’t afford to carry wedges, so after a time I got into the in-ears thing. My whole band is now using in-ears, and we run our own digital monitoring board and carry all our own mics and cables and all the rest of it. So in theory, our stage setup sounds the same every day. Of course, any crew people reading this will know that theory and practice are very different things! But it’s a really good setup, and it also saves everybody’s hearing, which is a thing worth considering when you’re playing in a loud rock and roll band and like me, will be shortly entering my 40s!”

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Turner is honest about his choice to go with Sennheiser in-ears and vocal mics; his front of house engineer, Luke Buckbee calls the shots when it comes to all things tech:

kind of durability that you need for a live rock and roll show that’s on the move, but also fantastic audio quality.

We also use Sennheiser G3 packs on the guitars as well.”

for his books, The Road Beneath My Feet and Try This At Home: Adventures In Songwriting. He says the fact he’s written two books makes him feel like he can call himself a proper author:

“In my opinion, he’s the best in the business. He’s in charge with everything that we all do on stage, and we defer to his judgement. I use a SKM 6000 digital vocal mic [with a Neumann KK 205 capsule head], which first of all, is wireless, which is great. As time has gone by and I play bigger places – and I do play guitar live – there are definitely moments where I’ll take the mic off the stand and go for a wander, whether that’s all the way across the stage or down into the crowd. So it’s great to have that wireless ability.

Turner reflects on how much wireless technology has changed over the last decade:

“One book could be an accident, but two makes me feel comfortable with using the word author. The thing that’s funny about it is that most people will put out a book and it sells steadily and it will be in that bestseller chart for a period of time. But for me, the majority of people that are going to buy my book are going to be fans of music, and they’re all going to do it right in the beginning. So I tend to go right in the bestseller charts for one week and then disappear,” he chuckles.

“Sennheiser gear is fantastic,” he furthers, “and being able to add that extra edge of having a Neumann capsule is the perfect combo, and being my vocal mic, it’s a really important part of the sound. It has the HEADLINER USA

“10 years ago, wireless technology was still at a point where there was a degree of tone-sucking going on, if you know what I mean,” he recalls. “I feel like that problem has been surmounted

by Sennheiser, so that’s not a problem that I experience. When I play an electric guitar I run into a Kemper rack, which again, my sound guy is very pleased about. But most of the time I play an acoustic guitar on stage running through my wireless pack, and my FOH house guy is very pleased with the sound. So everybody wins.”

A man of many talents, Turner is a twotime Sunday Times bestselling author

FRANK-TURNER.COM EN-UK.SENNHEISER.COM #WEMAKEEVENTS

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State I’m In

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Singer-songwriter Filmore was destined to be a country star, or at least that’s what he decides during this interview. He certainly put everything on red to make it as an artist – and a savvy one at that – selling his beloved Jeep in order to move to Nashville and have enough money to retain control of his masters. His debut album chronicles the ups and downs of his life so far; he explains why every track on State I’m In represents a moment in time that made him who he is.

“It’s really weird here at the moment,” says a laid back Filmore, commenting on an eerily quiet Nashville. “There’s never no music here, so right now Nashville doesn’t feel like Nashville at all. It’s been a shell shock for me because I’ve been touring for the last five years pretty heavily, so I’m kind of relearning how to live at home.”

Raised in Wildwood, Missouri, Filmore’s musical inclinations were shaped by a variety of sounds, cultures and musical eras; from his Colombian mother’s salsa music to his father’s ‘80s favorites like John Mellencamp and Def Leppard.

“All of the radio stations in Missouri play country, so my entire upbringing was around country music – outside of my parents influences and obviously the internet,” he notes. “It’s been cool to test the waters for country music in the way that I do it. My sound just came together and led to this path of country music. It’s been a long, crazy journey. I grew up playing sports and everything like that, but music was just always there…” he trails off. “I’m gonna go with destiny! I was destined to do this,” he decides.

Call it destiny or playing hooky, Filmore realised that he could earn extra recess time in fifth grade if he joined

the choir. It turned out it wasn’t the extra play time that would inspire a young Filmore – he remained in the choir throughout high school and after graduation enrolled at the University of Missouri where he majored in vocal performance and business.

that I kept control of my songs, so that I could not only make money, but get the money back from my Jeep that I sold to live!” he laughs. “I wanted to be able to make a living doing this, stay on the road, tour, and be able to pay for the bus and the band and everything.”

On the weekends he would play with his band, making extra cash and gaining popularity regionally.

After completing his studies, Filmore decided to make the jump and move to Nashville to make it as a solo artist, selling his Jeep in order to have enough money to retain control of his masters (he still doesn’t have a car today, although presumably for very different reasons).

Filmore has been in Nashville since 2011, and in the last couple of years he’s hit something of a groove, creatively – although he’s not a huge fan of his earlier songs.

“I realized early on that there are these record deals going around where they take all this ownership of you, and then they basically can just squash your career if they don’t want to work with you anymore; they have so much control. Having that much control over an artist hinders the creative experience. I think some of the best artists are the ones that are slightly polarizing and that really try to push the envelope, and sometimes record labels will stop you from doing that.

“I think the first songs I wrote were pretty bad,” he laughs. “I think that’s just a part of writing songs. There’s good and bad days, but I know who I am as an artist and a writer now, so just having that confidence has really helped shape my songwriting.

When you’re on stage and you see people respond to your music that you’ve written, it really opens your eyes to what songs work and which ones don’t.”

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State I’m In

“I REALIZED EARLY ON THAT THERE ARE THESE RECORD DEALS GOING AROUND WHERE THEY TAKE ALL THIS OWNERSHIP OF YOU, AND THEN THEY BASICALLY CAN JUST SQUASH YOUR CAREER IF THEY DON’T WANT TO WORK WITH YOU ANYMORE; THEY HAVE SO MUCH CONTROL.”

SLOWER Filmore went on to independently release several EPs including 2016’s Proof, but it was the release of banjo-led summer anthem Slower in 2018 that ironically sped things up for him. The song was his big breakout moment, garnering more than 26 million streams, not to mention catching the attention of Nashville’s Curb Records, who swiftly signed him up.

do anything’. My goal is to put out a song every single time that I personally think could blow up in some form or some way. But some songs are bigger than others,” he shrugs.

Nothing but confident in his songwriting abilities, Filmore thinks that each song he puts out has the potential to be huge, but even he was taken aback by the way this one snowballed.

“I will say that there was a feeling that day in that room, though. Also, there’s a lot of timing that comes with a song... it just hit at the right time, so there’s a lot of luck, but also hard work that goes into this. A lot of stars aligned in that way and it gave me leverage to sign a deal and still retain control of who I am as an artist. I have so much to thank for that song.”

“I never put a song out and think, ‘Oh, this is just another song to put out, but it’s probably not gonna

Filmore’s highly anticipated debut album, State I’m In was released in late 2020. The 18-song project

HEADLINER USA

chronicles a chapter of his life filled with changes, including his engagement to long-time girlfriend Paige (they married in October 2020), planning a fall wedding, and seeing his worldwide fan base continue to grow amidst a global pandemic.

“It’s all the chapters and the ups and downs since I left Missouri and moved to Nashville, and then my experiences in Nashville,” he explains. So the title track is a state of mind, but it can also be thought of in terms of locations. Every single song has a latitude, longitude or coordinates attached to it, and that tells you the story of why I wrote that song. That’s the whole purpose of this album – telling my story.”

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Each song on the album has a place in Filmore’s heart, but he admits that one of his favorites is the freeing, going-it-alone track, Nothing’s Better.

He is confident that people listening to State I’m In from start to finish will know who Filmore the artist is by the end.

“I just have never written a song like it before; I don’t even know how to explain it. The style of the song in general is something I’ve never put out before, so that’s what excites me about it. I also think it will relate to a lot of people, especially today, because it’s basically a song about breaking up with anything in your life that’s brought you down.”

“It is exactly who I am,” he asserts. “This and my music from now on will just continue to tell you who I am, and I’m gonna keep evolving as a human, like we all do.

People change and go through different things in life, so I’m just going to keep telling my story and hoping it relates to my fans. But this album is exactly who I am today.”

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He suddenly remembers that he wrote fan favorite, Other Girl about his wife: “To this day that is one of my favorite songs I’ve ever written, not only personally, but because of how people have reacted to it so far, and continue to do so. Maybe I’m biassed about my wife,” he acknowledges. “But when you find that perfect person in your life and you write a song about it, it’s hard for it not to be your favorite song!”

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NAV

Emergency Tsunami

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Canadian rapper, singer, songwriter and producer NAV’s wavy singrap flow and mesmerizing trap beats have seen him amass a collection of chart-topping hits in a relatively short time period. Hailing from humble beginnings, the Toronto native’s high-profile connections have helped propel his career forward, and he’s now sitting on a pile of successful projects through collaborating with many of the industry’s top names. 2020 was an equally massive year for Nav, topping the Billboard 200 with his third studio album, the feature-heavy Good Intentions, and closing out the year by teaming up with Wheezy on the Emergency Tsunami mixtape. It’s been a rollercoaster to say the least; Headliner recently checked in to see how he’s enjoying the ride...

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NAV

Emergency Tsunami

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COVER STORY

Born Navraj Goraya in Toronto, the now 31-year old Nav had his first taste of fame when reality TV star Kylie Jenner posted a Snapchat video of herself singing along to his song Myself, yet this was by no means the catalyst for the superstar rep that he’s since secured. Having steadily built a large following through a string of SoundCloud releases, beginning in 2015 with Take Me Simple, he had long been ready for the big time.

Fast forward to 2021, and Nav has established himself as one of the most sought-after producers and artists in the trap game.

Everyone needs a little time off now and again though, and he joins Headliner for a chat just before taking a well-earned trip to Turks and Caicos.

“When it comes to the lockdown these days, my manager [and cofounder of record label XO] Cash built a studio in his guest house, so I can go over there whenever I want to get some stuff done and just play basketball in the backyard,” he begins. “Things are slower, and it’s given me time to think about a whole bunch of things that I didn’t before.”

Nav is clearly appreciating the downtime that, like many others, he has suddenly been thrust into, although it’s a far cry from the hectic start he had as a recording engineer and producer.

Growing up listening to the likes of Nas, 50 Cent and The Diplomats, Nav spent most of his high school days experimenting with production and making beats for friends, and soon turned his hand to engineering in order to make a quick buck.

“There’s not that many studios in Toronto and you’ve got to start at

the bottom - it really was all about beats for me at the start,” he shares.

“My uncle was a singer in India and he had a little studio where I used to go watch him record. Indian music is made very professionally; if there’s even a little scratch in their voice they’ll redo the whole thing, so that was how I learned to cut tapes together.

“So when it came to me making beats for local artists in Toronto, I’d try to be super flexible and responsive, and I knew how to add FX to make shit sound good, so everyone all of a sudden wanted to record with me. I was making $300 or $400 a week off of that which was amazing for me at the time, so I just kept it moving.”

But it wasn’t all plain sailing from this point. It took some ups and downs; a few fallouts, a couple of “regular” jobs and quitting music for a whole year before things really took off again.

KEEPING IT TRILL It was several events that occured early in Nav’s career that widened his profile exponentially. A beat that he produced with fellow Toronto producer Daxz ended up getting used for Drake’s Back to Back, a diss track that the God’s Plan star dropped in July 2015 at the height of his beef with Meek Mill. Although Nav didn’t take much credit for it at the time, the song would go on to earn a Grammy nomination for Best Rap Performance in 2016 and hit No. 21 on the Billboard Hot 100.

Then in January 2016, Nav’s track Take Me Simple featured on Drake’s OVO Sound Radio on Beats 1, and later that year he appeared on hiphop star Travis Scott’s single Beibs in the Trap. He soon found himself

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signed to XO, the Canadian record label co-founded by the Weeknd, marking his next big step to the top.

And despite all this, he tries his best to stay grounded: “I’m pretty much the same person now,” he admits. “I’m just more comfortable knowing that there’s money in my account. Other than that I still live the same way I lived back then. Now I just have more free time, and I’m doing more exercise I guess!”

After reaching Canadian and US chart peaks with mixtapes NAV and the Metro Boomin collaboration Perfect Timing, Nav issued his official studio debut, Reckless in 2018. He topped the Canadian Albums Chart and the Billboard 200 the next year with Bad Habits, and did the same in 2020 with Good Intentions, but he wasn’t ready to slow down just yet.

His latest mixtape Emergency Tsunami — entirely produced by longtime collaborator Wheezy — was released in November 2020 and features some of the biggest names in trap including Gunna, Travis Scott, Lil Baby and Lil Keed: “It came together naturally because we’d both been growing so much as artists and producers,” he reveals. “The momentum from Turks [another trap-heavy anthem on which he teamed up with Wheezy, Gunna and Travis Scott] made us feel like we should just do a whole album with that new sound.

“Turks was big, but my highlight of 2020 was definitely Lemonade. I didn’t expect the song to be that big at all; I knew it was a good song, but the songs that I think are the best ones aren’t usually the ones that do well! That was really one that caught me off guard.

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NAV

Emergency Tsunami

One time Obama posted his songs of the year and I said to myself, ‘I don’t know how but I’m gonna make that list’.

It’s not the kind of thing that gets you any money, it was just one of those things where I wanted to reach that person’s awareness, so when I saw Lemonade was on his 2020 list, that was crazy.”

More recently, Nav’s track Young Wheezy featuring Gunna has been blowing up online. The pair’s rapping styles and flows blend well with the minimal yet dark, gothic beat provided by Wheezy, and the track has got an awesome video to boot, with visuals directed and shot by Spike Jordan in a cemetery and mausoleum on the outskirts of L.A. The video focuses on a group of kids who are so eager to see Nav, Gunna and Travis Scott (who makes a short cameo) play in concert that they hack off other people’s limbs to use as their tickets. Nav raps, “cost an arm and a

HEADLINER USA

leg just to see me perform”, and he certainly proves it at this haunted house party.

“The cool thing is all of the CGI that they added,” says Nav. “During that scene where I’m on the stairs, when I looked to my left and right, there was a pile of arms and legs that was not even a foot high. In the actual video they’re up to the roof - I don’t even know how they did that stuff and I’m not gonna lie, I thought it looked really impressive.

“I enjoy working with Gunna. We bounce back and forth a lot when we’re in the studio, and when it comes to producers I really like working with Wheezy and Rex Kudo, and making beats with Metro [Boomin] is always fun.”

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BEATS & BARS

COVER STORY

To achieve his sound, Nav uses what might be viewed as a relatively simple setup; a MacBook Pro and large MIDI interface for his keyboards, along with an eight-input UAD Apollo: “All the MIDI is plugged in at the same time so that if I want to change notes to send them back to the keyboard, I can just record it back,” he explains. “I always try to be friends with engineers and get to know them because I used to be one myself. Some rappers be sleeping on that, and don’t even talk to the engineer in the room. I learned a lot from my close friend Pro Logic [the producer, not the software] who I collaborated with on Good Intentions, and now my beat-making setup is just seamless.”

Having used FL Studio for a number of years while working with other producers, Nav feels like working in Logic has become a lot more versatile for a melody-based producer such as himself.

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Emergency Tsunami

“IT’S NOT ALWAYS ABOUT THE MONEY - I JUST WANT TO MAKE A PROJECT SOUND THE BEST IT CAN BE AND GET MY HANDS DIRTY ON THE PRODUCTION AT THE SAME TIME.”

“I think my approach depends on the project,” he reveals. “On the last project with Wheezy we went through maybe 30 or 40 beats and picked the ones we liked. At that point I’ll usually make a mumble, find a pocket of a good melody and flow, and then start filling in words bar by bar.

“When it comes to my new stuff like when I’m working on the beats and the melody, I’ll keep changing the key until the notes and my vocal range fits, then I’ll move on to drums and the rest - it’s a whole different process.”

Having learned from many of his peers who are also at the top of their game, Nav now likes to get a bit more experimental with his workflow: “Luckily because of who I am now I get to be in rooms with some of the biggest producers,” he grins. “I sometimes go to Rick Rubin’s place where everyone’s playing every instrument at the same time into Pro Tools, and everyone’s making the beat together. I’m seeing all kinds of different processes across the board, and I’ve learned from all those things and applied it to what I know. As a result I’m hearing the evolution of my own sound, so it’s a blessing that I get to be around all these people like Rex Kudo and Mustard etc.

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“When I did my first project it was a no brainer that it was gonna be self produced, and then when I collaborated with Metro naturally my sound changed. The next thing after that was Reckless; it was a time when things in my personal life didn’t feel balanced and I think that showed in my music - I wasn’t really happy with that album and I feel like others weren’t either. After that I went on a bit of a spiritual journey and tried to refocus, and with the next album I stayed in the studio every day and mastered everything properly and it went Number One.” The rest is history as they say, and Nav admits that he now feels like he knows where he’s at with himself, and his musical identity: “It’s not always about the money - I just want to make a project sound the best it can be and get my hands dirty on the production at the same time.”

Despite his origins as an engineer and producer, Nav is no stranger to performing live.

“I would have been on tour a lot last year, and don’t think I would’ve had time to sit down…” he trails off. “I like the money from touring of course, but I’m really grateful for this time that we’ve had to just chill. Because I know that when things are back to normal I’ll be reminiscing about this time so I just want to enjoy it right now while we can. The biggest question is, when will there be the next mosh pit?”

Nav adds that while he likes collaborating with artists from different genres, he’ll always enjoy working with anything melodic: “You’ll never really get a beat out of me where the bass drum is just playing one note throughout the whole song. There has to be melodic movement; like that tension and release with the chords - I really care about that, more than I care about what the drums are doing. I’d love to do some R&B work for artists when I start focusing on just producing again, because I have a lot of stuff like that in my bag.

“At the moment I feel like I’m back in 2015, just making beats in my mom’s house and doing that whole process over again,” he laughs. “Back then I had a system where I used to work out, make some beats, try to record a little bit here and there - that’s where I’m at right now. It’s a blessing to be bored, because I remember when I had no time and no money to be bored. It’s the kind of thing that makes me start feeling grateful...I’m basically back in mom’s house with millions of dollars!”

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KURTIS MANTRONIK

Bathtub Beats

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Totally instrumental in the formation of the sounds we know now as hip-hop and trap, and then going on to become the go-to guy for remixes (Duran Duran, Shirley Bassey, *NSYNC and a whole host of other artists will attest to that), it’s safe to say that Kurtis Mantronik has left quite a mark on the world of music. Headliner catches up with the former leader, DJ, and keyboardist in the influential ‘80s hip-hop and electro-funk group Mantronix – responsible for productions that helped shape the rap / hip-hop formula, including King Of The Beats and Fresh Is The Word.

With Mantronik’s career being so fascinating, I can’t resist going from the start, and addressing the truth in the rumour that he began by making beats in his bathtub as a kid:

Mantronik is undoubtedly a worldly man, having been born in Jamaica, and settling in New York City after a brief spell in Canada. He lived in London for several years, but is speaking to Headliner today from his current home of South Africa, on a day that is “sunny but chilly.”

“Remember the apartment is very small and only has half a bedroom; the headphones would make a sort of a clicky noise from the beats and that would disturb her. So that’s how I ended up in the bathroom. So to get comfortable, I would just put a towel in the bathtub, bring my equipment and headphones and sit in there and start rocking beats. And then that wouldn’t disturb her. I would do that for two or three hours until I was tired and then just go to my room and go to sleep.”

Mantronik explains the reason for changing continents: “I lived in London for about 11 years, and I met my wife,” he says. “She worked in London, and she’s from South Africa. I think we just had enough of the cold weather and I had visited South Africa a few times over the years. And I thought it was a beautiful country. So we just decided one day to pack up and move here.”

Conversation turns to life in London, and the gradual change Mantronik witnessed while he was there: “I got to the UK in 2001 or 2002,” he reminisces. “I saw a transition over the years; things really started to change.

Liberty X had just remade Got To Have Your Love. I’m the writer on that, so the royalties were pouring in, plus I was also DJing all over the place. So I wasn’t short of cash at the time. But then London started really becoming expensive.”

“Me and my mother lived in Manhattan,” he says. “It was on 73rd in Columbus. She had a small flat and it was only a one-bedroom — I was up all night and I wanted to make music.

And I had very limited equipment, I think it was like a Doctor Beat drum machine or something like that. But I was fascinated by beat making. I wasn’t able to plug my beatbox into my mother’s stereo, so I had to use headphones.

Mantronik soon found work as an in-store DJ in the city, where he would fatefully meet Haitian-born, Brooklynbased emcee MC Tee, with whom he would form Mantronix. The duo started making rap music and were met with great resistance to their sound from record labels, unable to predict how unstoppably popular the sound would become.

“That’s when I knew that music was the thing I needed to do, because that was my way of expressing my emotion. Dance just wasn’t doing that for me anymore, so I made a very, very difficult decision to leave. I am forever grateful that I made that tough decision. In the end it was the best decision of my life.” Mantronik

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is careful to point out that “at this point, rap was in its infancy. Still very, very much underground. We had labels tell us they didn’t want to have anything to do with it. They said ‘it’s garbage and rap is not happening’.

We went in the studio anyway, and that was my first experience with an 808 drum machine. At the time,

they were very expensive. And that was my first release with Fresh Is The Word.”

And the rest, as they say, is history, with the song quickly becoming a significant club hit.

Mantronix would release more songs to great success, not only in commercial terms, but also the fact that their influence can still be heard today — Mantronik helped popularize the ‘Amen Break’ sample heard ubiquitously across the genre, with King Of The Beats being one of the first songs to use it (and that song has since been sampled almost as many times as the Amen Break itself).

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KURTIS MANTRONIK

Bathtub Beats

“I would just put a towel in the bathtub, bring my equipment and headphones and sit in there and start rocking beats!”

We agree that Mantronik is in fact one of the original ‘remixers’ in the game since remixes became a thing, and he even suspects he might hold a record for the most completed remixes ever. So with that in mind, it would be remiss to not ask about his personal favorite projects from his history of reworking existing songs.

“One of my favorites was with Shirley Bassey remixing Goldfinger. And then I had Steve Reich; I got to be so creative for that one. Duran Duran of course. I’m actually drawing a blank now because there’ve been so many!”

We turn to the studio side of the conversation, and fascinatingly, Mantronik is very much digital and in the box these days, having started in the analog days but becoming fed up with constantly plugging in and unplugging different and expensive equipment.

“I’m in the box now and loving it,” he says. “I have the Waves StudioRack — I sort of stack things together HEADLINER USA

because one plugin doesn’t actually quite do it for me.

Waves, of course, has been around a long time and the StudioRack has been a big help.

“I’ve got the Sennheiser HD 650s. They’re old but I absolutely love them. And then I just use several boom boxes around the house: Harman Kardon, and I also have JBL. I tune the sound I’m working on because my kids play mastered material when they play songs, so I can sort of extrapolate what the mastering engineer has done to what I need to do. I play them on different systems, so it’s not one fixed set of speakers. Then I get the mastering engineer to fix all my mistakes..!”

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STINT

The Process

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THE PROCESS

STINT Canadian record producer and songwriter Stint — mostly known for producing the likes of Gallant, MØ, Demi Lovato, NAO, Zara Larsson and more — recently sat down for a chat with Headliner to discuss how he’s been keeping himself busy during quarantine, why Nine Inch Nails’ Trent Reznor has served as a massive influence, and how he uses oeksound’s soothe2 plugin on vocals.

“It’s a bright and sunny morning here and I’m sipping coffee, so I’m happy as a clam,” says Stint with a grin as he joins Headliner from his studio in L.A. Originally from Victoria in British Columbia, and born Ajay Bhattacharyya, Stint first started producing records in 2013, eventually

moving to the West Coast around three years ago with his now wife.

Like many since the start of the pandemic, Stint has been doing a lot more sessions over Zoom, and has in fact found himself collaborating a lot more with other producers, trading files and ideas and making beats to send out to artists.

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“It took a lot of getting used to, I think mainly because most of my luck in getting songs placed with artists came from developing a relationship with them, and collaborating with them in the room,” he admits. “I’m a people pleaser, so if I’m in the room with someone I’ll bend over backwards and won’t stop stressing until I feel like they’re happy.

“So sending things out to people is a lot harder for me, because I just feel like I’m shooting in the dark, and that was really challenging.”

Despite this sentiment, he’s experienced some silver lining instances that have come up with certain artists he’s collaborated with in the past, one of which being with singer-songwriter, producer and internet sensation Joji: “We ended up finishing some stuff together recently over text - I haven’t spoken to him in person for something like two years which I find crazy. We were just sending each other notes and files back and forth.”

Stint was obsessed with geek culture from a young age, and always dreamed of being a comic book artist until one of his friends got a guitar for their birthday. Then the brother of said friend got a drum set, and after spending some time “noodling around” in the basement, Stint had discovered his passion, and was hooked from that point onwards.

However after finding little fortune as a drummer in a number of bands, he realized that he could no longer rely on other people for his success.

He decided to join a sound design program at a nearby film school in Vancouver, and immerse himself in the complex world of video game sound design.

HEADLINER USA

“I’m still really passionate about the video game world, but a weird side effect of learning how to do that stuff was that I started to understand how audio signal processing worked and DAWs worked and synthesis worked, and I was noodling with Ableton on the side for fun.”

From there, things started to snowball, and he soon found himself working in music production.

“I think for anyone working in any kind of audio field, you just follow the work, so I kind of got led back into music,” he says. “And I’m really happy I did because I love what I do and I’m really passionate about it. There’s this cool catch where I don’t feel limited and I don’t feel bored yet - there’s just so much stuff to work on in so many different genres, and this seems to be

“After the Grammy nomination I was like, ‘OK, now I can call myself a producer.’”

one of the only jobs where you can really bunny hop between them.

“There wasn’t ever really a Hollywood-esque ‘I made it’ moment for me. I definitely tripped and fell into some crazy opportunities really early on, albeit in quite a loose way.

I started working with one artist who was really plugged into the high level writer-producer scene in L.A., and I started making some contacts just by being with him in sessions.”

After just three or four months in L.A., Stint was working on songs by the likes of Lana Del Rey, and although this work started to eventually drop

off, it was through this experience that he discovered management, and things started getting real.

“They represented a lot of producers that I looked up to at the time,” he recalls. “From that point I started getting into rooms with a lot of other producers on their roster. One in particular who I was working with three days a week was John Hill, who is still a good friend. 2017 was probably the most productive year I’ve had as far as big career boosts go.”

It was during that time that Stint worked on Portugal. The Man’s album Woodstock, Demi Lovato’s Tell Me You Love Me, and AlunaGeorge’s second studio album I Remember, which earned him some lasting friendships. On the other two days when he wasn’t with Hill, he was working with singer-songwriter Gallant, forming a friendship and musical partnership that has continued to prove particularly fruitful.

It was for Gallant’s debut album Ology that he received his first Grammy nod; the record was nominated for Best Urban Contemporary Album at the 2017 awards.

“After the Grammy nomination I was like, ‘Okay, now I can call myself a producer,’” he chuckles. “After that I started getting offers to get in the studio with a bunch of different people.”

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IN THE MIX While he confesses that he’s had his gearhead moments, Stint says he often prefers to do his research in the first instance so that he can figure out his taste when it comes to a particular piece of gear, buy it, and then keep it at the same setting for that rapid recallability factor. And while most of his work is done in the box with plugins, he does have a few nice bits of outboard gear knocking around his studio: “I have the Moog Voyager, a Sequential Prophet XL that I got last year which I really like, a Mellotron reissue from 2012, and a Korg MS-20 Mini. I used the Neumann TLM 103 for years, which is a great mic for vocals, and I would run that through an Avalon VT-737sp tube channel strip, which I still have. Although I upgraded a couple of years ago in a big way to a Telefunken C13.”

As far as plugins go, Stint is a big fan of oeksound’s soothe2, and he’s been using it on projects for quite some time now.

“I’ve used soothe a lot on vocals, and even just on some groups to spectrum carve out these little niche frequencies,” he elaborates. “I love broad strokes and I love colouring overall sound when there’s a bunch of layers in there. I love seeing what a plugin can do to the whole group or the whole bus, and soothe’s been awesome for that for me.

“I’ve got spiff as well, but soothe has been a lot easier to dip in at certain points. I just like the responsiveness and subtlety of it, and having the dry/wet is really nice for me because usually, if I’m just using a straight up EQ, I’m always trying to scoop out little resonances just to make everything seem a lot more cohesive and glued. It’s just very adaptive and responsive when those little resonances peak up. Soothe will catch them, but at the same time it’s not super aggressive and you’re not going to lose that frequency.”

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The Process

it. It’s still very much him, but we’ve kind of been pulling stuff from early aughts R&B records that he grew up on and just absolutely knows front to back and adores - like early Usher stuff and all the old Timbaland productions.

“It’s been a real cool challenge to bring that to the forefront of his sound. Vocally he’s doing stuff that blows my mind; he’s always had a very prominent falsetto, and that’s been one of the big selling points for his lead, but the backgrounds on these records - they just feel like old Mariah Carey songs, like the details and the dynamics in them.

It’s freaking crazy to me. I’ve never heard him do stuff like that and I’m so excited for everyone to hear it.”

INSTAGRAM.COM/STINT__ OEKSOUND.COM

Stint finds himself using soothe across most projects these days: “While vocals is the main thing I use it for, I’ve also used it when recording some live drums. I just have a hi-hat and a snare and a cymbal in my room, and the hi-hat has this horrible overtone, so I always use it on that to scoop out anything offensive in the drum busses.”

When he was growing up, Stint was a massive Nine Inch Nails fan, “for completely normal teen angsty reasons,” and thought that sonically, they were always brilliant.

“I’ve just grown more and more appreciative of how realized and deep their stuff is from a production standpoint,” he adds. “Trent Reznor’s HEADLINER USA

career as a whole has probably been the single biggest influence to me. I think that it’s really cool how he’s been able to evolve and iterate and kind of age gracefully, and just be okay with leaving stuff behind.

His transition into soundtracks is something I can definitely see myself doing in 10 years or so.”

Stint has already been back working with Gallant on his new material, including on his latest single Comeback, the first song from his upcoming Neptune project.

“I’m really excited for that, because we went in pretty deep last year,” he says excitedly. “To oversee that whole project we brought in some great musician friends of ours, and there’s some other cool features on

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The Man With The Answer

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CHRIS LAKE With a career almost touching 20 years, Chris Lake has secured a Grammy Award nomination, survived the explosion of EDM and amassed an enormous discography that includes several chart-topping hits. And in a time where people desperately want answers, his EP with fellow house music legend Armand van Helden might just provide that for people.

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Norwich-born but Los Angeles-based, Lake recently uploaded a video to his Instagram feed of that electric moment all DJs know: you’re behind the decks, the beat drops after a long buildup, and a gigantic crowd duly lose their minds. The caption reads: ‘dear gigs, we miss you.’ I ask him how he’s been coping without that unbelievable high of performing that must be tricky to go such a long time without.

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“Yeah, it’s definitely a challenge,” he says. “And it’s a really important part of what we do (as DJs). We make music for people to dance to, first and foremost. Being able to get that live feedback from people, I feel it’s helped make my music better over the years and more relevant. Especially compared to when I first started making music in my bedroom and I wasn’t really getting the road test, and I

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“DANCE CULTURE REPRESENTS INCLUSIVENESS. IT’S ALWAYS FELT TO ME THAT CLUBS ARE WHERE YOU GO TO NOT BE JUDGED AND EXPRESS YOUR INNER FREAK.”

didn’t really know how people dance to it, you know?”

crazy talented. I want to keep doing what I love and focus on my own uniqueness.

I discuss with Lake how dance music saw its biggest commercial moment in the early 2010s, as EDM suddenly replaced pop and rock as the most popular and mainstream sound. But with Lake accurately describing that time as a “bubble,” I mention that so many EDM artists did not make it out of that bubble, whereas Lake’s career has gone from strength to strength. I ask what he feels has kept him going so successfully.

“I think that has really helped my longevity. And I’ve also had really good people around me. I’ve been very lucky to work with some great people who are completely honest with me about what they think. I let them hear everything and I am quite picky to a point of what I actually end up releasing. I make a lot of music, but I don’t necessarily release a lot of music now.”

“I’ve learned how to identify what I think I’m good at myself, and use it in the best way possible,” he answers.

“It’s probably the main thing that I am proud of because it’s not like I think I’m

I ask Lake what it’s like to be releasing music that would absolutely thrive in nightclubs, and what purpose he feels the music serves when the dancefloors are closed to the public.

“It feels like it’s a different purpose when releasing music during a global pandemic,” he says. “Especially when one of the biggest outlets for this music doesn’t exist right now. But it is weird sending music to DJs who are just giving their opinions on the music, but they can’t actually give you feedback on how it sounds in a club because they can’t play in clubs!

“However, I find people enjoying listening to my music in many settings.

It’s not just completely dancefloor orientated. It might feel like first and foremost it does belong in a club but people seem to enjoy listening to it in other places.”

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The Man With The Answer

I mention that, while clubs are closed, that can’t change the fact that dance music songs often carry a vital message of unity and togetherness, which are as important now as ever.

“I completely agree,” he says. “Dance culture represents inclusiveness.

It’s always felt to me that clubs are where you go to not be judged and express your inner freak. For the most part, the dance scene has always been so open and tolerant for me.”

Speaking eloquently, Lake is in great health both physically and mentally.

He explains that it’s been a key part of his career longevity and it’s down to “pretty clean living, looking after myself — I haven’t had any booze for over 10 years now. These are things that have helped not only my career but also to get me through the absolute fuckery of 2020.”

December saw Lake release the hugely positive vibes of EP The Answer with the legend that is Armand Van Helden. Of the experience, Lake tells me that

HEADLINER USA

“Armand is a fantastic producer. I’ve got so much time for him. I’m really proud of this music and glad to be getting people to dance anywhere and everywhere but the club. But most of all, even though we wrote this last year, the lyrics ‘can’t we see we’ve got to live together, can’t we see love is the answer’ – they just couldn’t have come out at a more appropriate time.”

Lake also has found a beautiful answer for the planet and the ecological disaster we’re facing, in working with One Percent For The Planet, an organisation who work with businesses and individuals to pledge one percent of their income to environmental causes (so far resulting in $270 million raised).

“I give a shit about the planet,” he says. “For a lot of people, sustainability is an afterthought. Me and my team have been discussing for a long time so many approaches like reducing plastic use at the shows, and making travel to the shows and the shows themselves as sustainable

as possible. I’m often playing to a younger audience, so there’s a huge educational opportunity there.”

And as the conversation gets techy, Lake tells me that van Helden has such a simple setup: “He’s one of the best producers I’ve ever worked with, and yet his studio is so underwhelming. Just a computer plugged into some un-spectacular speakers. But we were working on Ableton and just had so much fun. But if you want to know about my studio, I’m working with a UAD Apollo for my soundcard, and my speakers are the Focal Twins with the sub, which are fantastic! [smiles]” CHRIS-LAKE.COM

Book Of Genesys

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BEN BAPTIE

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PRODUCER

Mix engineer and record producer Ben Baptie has engineered records for some massive names in music, from Adele and Mark Ronson to U2, Rufus Wainwright, and many more.

Having also worked at some of the most renowned recording studios in the business, including Electric Lady and London’s Metropolis, Baptie knows exactly what he needs from his gear, which is why he’s recently set up his own mixing studio built around a Neve Genesys console...

Fortunately, Baptie has been flat out in the studio of late, something he has become very much accustomed to during his time working as a mix engineer and producer.

Keeping him busy have been some singles for singer-songwriter Moses Sumney, a handful of different album projects, and an hour-long ambient piece for the Calm app, which he mixed in his very own brand new studio.

Housed within the Pony Studios complex at London Fields, Baptie made the decision to build his own mixing room after acquiring an impressive haul of audio gear, and so with the coronavirus pandemic and subsequent lockdown influencing the decision, he decided to take the leap.

Previously, Baptie was based out of Strongroom Studios — a reputable independent music community and recording studio in East London’s Hackney area — for around five years.

“When I was there I would always use Studio 1, which is their new VR room,” Baptie begins. “The Neve VR is the board that I actually learned on as an assistant, so when I moved back from New York and went freelance I was just looking for any VR room in London. Strongroom

Studio 1 was actually the first room I tried.”

Baptie first started his audio engineering journey at Metropolis — another of London’s famous studios — as assistant to Tom Elmhirst (Amy Winehouse, Adele, David Bowie, Lady Gaga), before jetting off with Elmhirst to the US, but more on that later...

Gear-wise, Baptie has only ever really mixed on Neve consoles, and finds it easy to build habits around them: “I’ve recorded on a bunch of different boards, but for the mixing side I’m just so used to the Neve desks,” he admits. “Watching and learning from someone like Tom who knew his way around the board so well was always quite inspiring. The openness of the Neve sound is the biggest thing for me.

With the VR you really have to be aware of how it’s behaving, but once you get that sweet spot on the mix bus it’s incredible.

“The boards have these amazing surgical mix EQs that are very musical, so they’re perfect for vocal string stuff where you can just really notch out those horrible resonances without taking that much of the life away.”

When the first UK lockdown hit in March 2020, Baptie suddenly became very aware that his whole career and livelihood was based out of rooms that he had no control over.

“For me it was about having a proper mix room rather than a production space,” he points out.

“Actually spending the money on acoustic treatment and getting it built properly and putting in a console, and having everything at

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the standard that I was used to when working out of these amazing studios.”

He spent a few months designing it with his assistant, and quickly decided it would all be based around a Neve Genesys console.

The board naturally serves as the centrepiece — along with Antelope Audio Orion interfaces for 64 I/O — but Baptie also has a nice collection of outboard gear to populate his

new mix room, including a TubeTech CL 1B compressor, a couple of UAD 1176s, a Neve 33609, a Pultec EQ, an Eventide H3000 harmonizer, a pair of Neve 1081 mic preamps, and more.

“I’ve actually bought some old racked up Neve VR channels, so I can still have that character,” he adds. “Then I’ve also got a half inch machine, a bunch of tape delays, synths and drum machines. It’s definitely a mix room, but now I’ve got a lot more instruments available to me as well in here.

“We’ve really tied it all together so that normalling is super easy and the mixing is almost immediate, because I’m always coming out onto the board. It’s a very quick workflow in here, and really anything is possible!”

For Baptie, the main thing that took getting used to was trying to adapt his workflow on the Genesys. Having always worked on a VR60, suddenly only having 24 large faders initially HEADLINERMAGAZINE.NET

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Book Of Genesys

appeared to pose a challenge, yet having an inline board meant that in reality, he didn’t have to change much: “The control plugin that runs alongside the Genesys is kind of insane with what it can do; just being able to control the whole board from inside Pro Tools,” he enthuses.

“Because of the way that productions are going now — and also just because it’s the way I’ve always liked to mix — I tend to automate EQs a lot.

“I kind of miss the characteristics of the VR EQ when I’m doing things in the box, but now I can just automate the EQs on the board in Pro Tools so I still retain that characteristic to an extent. It’s just so powerful, being able to automate on compressors, or going into the last chorus opening up the compression a bit so the whole mix opens out. It’s huge being able to do that with analog equipment.”

Baptie also points out that the recall ability on the Genesys “is insane, and very genuinely blows my mind every day. When you’re loading up a session and the controller plugin kicks in, the whole board just automatically recalls - it’s so refreshing to be able to do that especially across a whole album project, and it saves so much time.”

When he starts mixing a project, Baptie tries to have everything heard — with every single fader up — within half an hour or so, and from there works purely off instinct and gut reaction; getting the vocal in and then building the remaining elements of the mix around that.

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He is a firm believer that mixing is a creative process as opposed to a technical one, and that while it’s important to understand the technical aspects, they should always be applied creatively: “I’m trying to make my own job fun!” he laughs. “One big thing that I definitely learned from Tom is the gain staging aspect of mixing, in terms of how hot you mix each fader on the console compared to the mix bus, and then the mix bus level back into Pro Tools. If you can line up those relative sections, the mix will come alive without you really needing to do very much, and the mix bus on the Genesys is just huge.”

It was in fact at New York City’s legendary Electric Lady Studios where Baptie was really subjected to trial by fire.

When Tom Elmhirst made the decision to move across the Atlantic, he invited Baptie along to continue their fruitful musical partnership, and there’s no way he was ever going to turn down such an opportunity.

They moved into Electric Lady’s Studio C, and quickly made it their own: “We had a big live room that Tom never had at Metropolis,” Baptie recalls. “He had his VR room and then in the live room we had a small setup whereby we could just record bands if we needed to. For four and a half years, all I did was work non-stop, and Tom was mixing some insane records during that time.

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“WITH THE VR YOU REALLY HAVE TO BE AWARE OF HOW IT’S BEHAVING, BUT ONCE YOU GET THAT SWEET SPOT ON THE MIX BUS IT’S INCREDIBLE.”

“We were in this insanely legendary room where they did D’Angelo’s Voodoo album, which is probably one of the greatest records ever made. The sound of that room is just incredible, and it does seem like a bit of a blur at times. Having that opportunity to be with Tom when he made that first jump to America; I felt very, very lucky to be there. But I also had to work like a madman to keep up. So I did do my bit - it wasn’t all just luck!”

Baptie has many memories from his time in NYC (not all of them good!), and he says it was a magical experience to be working at such an esteemed musical institution.

As I speak to him about his tenure, it almost seems as if he’s only just absorbing the experience now, all these years later. With some incredible names on his list of credits from that time, it’s very clear that he was putting a shift in.

“I think the craziest time I ever had there was when we were doing an Arcade Fire record,” he laments.

“James Murphy was producing the record and the band were around all the time, with Tom mixing it.

Their Reflector album was just so massive and I learned so much... the members of Arcade Fire are all incredibly gifted engineers and producers in their own right, so to

have them there all the time was pretty insane.

“By the end of it, I had an ear infection and couldn’t hear out of one ear...I was so stressed that, when I was sleeping, I was chewing so could barely move my jaw. I wasn’t allowed a day off, which I’m pretty sure is technically legal, but whatever!” he laughs with a flicker of pain in his voice. “It was amazing to just be around something like that; to see a machine like that work. Maybe I’ve still got a little bit of PTSD!” INSTAGRAM.COM/BENBAPTIE AMS-NEVE.COM

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CHRIS LEE

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To Mix A Butterfly

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CHRIS LEE Having experienced and worked in live sound environments from a very young age, it’s no surprise that monitor engineer Christopher Lee has found himself mixing shows for one of the biggest hip-hop acts on the planet, Kendrick Lamar. Here he talks about mastering his craft, life on the road, and why he’ll never be without his trusty DiGiCo SD7 console.

Initially finding himself at a loose end when the pandemic hit, Christopher Lee is now back up and running, and managing to keep himself busy with a number of soundstage-centric audio projects.

His last live show with an audience was at Cross Festival in San Diego on March 7 2020. After that, all of his shows got cancelled which made for a pretty quiet couple of months, yet halfway through the year as the situation developed, Lee found

the work starting to pick up again, and since August he says it’s been a nonstop rollercoaster - something for which he feels incredibly thankful and blessed.

Born and raised in L.A., Lee is perhaps best known for his work as monitor engineer for Jennifer Lopez, SZA, and arguably one of the world’s hottest hip-hop stars, Kendrick Lamar, whose live shows are truly electric both visually and audibly.

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When he returned home from that final festival gig last year, he knew exactly where to turn: “I’ve worked a lot in the church game so I managed to get some gigs doing that, as well as working with a couple of artists that were doing some televised in-home things, going round and setting up a system for them in their house,” he reveals. “And then back in August and September is when the live streaming really went ballistic for artists using soundstages, filming and broadcasting their performances for the late night or early mornings shows that started coming back.”

So what’s it like to be mixing in these kinds of environments, compared to the huge stadiums and arenas that he’s used to?

“It’s been good to see colleagues and people that I’ve toured with in these situations,” he replies. “A lot of these soundstages have created warehouses with LED walls and you just bring in your gear and set up - It’s kind of like doing a TV show every day!

“I’m getting poked in the nose every day with Covid tests and constantly having my temperature taken...but besides that it’s good. Things definitely aren’t the same, but I’m thankful to be working and actually being able to interact with people.”

Lee was fortunate enough to grow up working in live sound; in fact you could argue that it’s something he’s been destined to do from the start. He attended a very progressive church where touring engineers were actually members of the congregation, and was tinkering with fairly elaborate audio setups from as young as eightyears-old; wrapping cables, cleaning microphones, and learning about all things audio as far as houses of worship are concerned.

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“I was thrown in at the deep end I guess, but they say if you can mix in church, you can mix anywhere,” he chuckles. “We had some pretty prominent musicians coming through the doors. Sheila E. was a member of the church and many big time musicians would come and play there,

so for me it was a great schooling to learn the ins and outs from a young age, and then to have amazing mentors who I could shadow at local events at the Hollywood Bowl or the Greek Theatre. I knew from there that this was exactly what I wanted to do.”

In the early 2000s, Lee started working for sound companies mixing shows at a number of big venues in L.A., and through word of mouth his proficiency as a sound engineer soon spread.

Working with Kendrick Lamar initially came about following a phone call with one of Lee’s good friends and fellow live engineer Kyle Hamilton in 2014. He told Lee that Kendrick was looking for a monitor guy who could quickly come down to CenterStaging, a rehearsal facility in southern California, and the rest is history.

Kendrick’s live shows are as spectacular as they are intimate, so there’s usually a number of different aspects of the performance for Lee to consider when he’s in full swing on monitor duty: “For me it’s about listening to what the room is doing; listening to the PA and how it’s hung, observing where the line arrays are cutting off and

where my audience mics are,” he tells me. “Kendrick likes a dynamic mix; he likes to hear the crowd and feel that participation, and he also likes to hear all the live musicians. It’s not a typical hip-hop gig...there are musicians and sometimes full orchestras playing every single part in the band.”

Lee has been using DiGiCo consoles since the very first moment he started mixing monitors. After receiving a call from his mentor in 2002, he was summoned to the Universal Amphitheatre — where he was working at the time — to check out a new desk that was, rather interestingly, in the basement…

“I get down to the basement and we’re staring at this D1 with all its lights and three screens and huge meter bridge, desperately trying to work out how to patch in the audio!” he laughs.

“It was love at first sight.

“Nowadays it’s always an SD7 for me because of the channel counts and bus counts, and because I’m sometimes having to put 30 mixes through it. Last year was my first tour using the Quantum processing with Jennifer Lopez, and after that I knew there was no going back.”

The SD7 enhances Lee’s workflow to no end, with its plethora of features and configuration options: “When you’re doing in-ears, wedges, side-fills and a bunch of different mixes for band members, lighting, pyro etc. - everybody wants a specific EQ, and so I often find myself duplicating a lot of channels to give that dynamic that each person is looking for in their mix,” he explains.

“I can set an option so that my master screen tells me exactly what’s happening and who each channel is going to for that particular mix, or EQ, or compression - whatever it is, it shows right up as soon as I solo it.

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“The two fader banks on the SD7 master screen are a lifesaver; it really helps to be able to see all those channels and therefore immediately react when people are asking for things. I’ve got enough faders in front of me to hit a particular mix when required and make changes on the fly very quickly.”

When it comes to mixing a Kendrick Lamar show, Lee says that he always starts with the band - it’s important to make sure they’re positioned correctly, dialled in properly, and can actually feel the show’s energy at side-stage with their own personal subs.

“Every day is a different experience on a Kendrick tour, because of course the footprint often changes,” he points out. “It’s absolutely imperative that I’m using an SD7 for that kind of show though. Being able to give everything its own space with the stereo channel width and just being able to move things around in the mix without completely butchering everything is definitely key. Using the tube

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emulators and multiband compression on the console, and having that available on every single channel is like night and day. Being able to create that warm sound on the guitar for example - I can just dial that in and make that happen on the fly.

“For Kendrick, there’s a huge amount of snapshots for all of his songs. We would go into these crazy transitions where everybody has to hear what’s happening and I’m having to create intricate settings with nice time releases so that everyone is hitting their cues - the SD7 provides real flexibility in that sense. I’ll also probably have about 18 different talkback mics, and so being able to mix all of those and create destinations for each musician, each MD, each lighting and automation person, pyro etc. so that they can hear and talk to each other over intercom is essential. I haven’t been able to do that on anything but the SD7; it just makes it all easy.”

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To Mix A Butterfly

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“I’VE GOT ENOUGH FADERS IN FRONT OF ME TO HIT A PARTICULAR MIX WHEN REQUIRED AND MAKE CHANGES ON THE FLY VERY QUICKLY.”

Despite managing to keep himself busy, Lee admits that he’s definitely missing live touring, and says that he hasn’t been at home for this long in years. He’s particularly been enjoying the time he’s had to spend with his family, as he would often miss his daughter’s birthday whilst out on the road.

With nothing set in stone on his schedule for 2021, Lee believes it won’t be until the end of the year when he starts mixing live shows again:

give a nice little virtual fist bump to their colleagues,” he concludes.

“Everybody’s got to keep the faith and remain positive in spite of everything that’s going on. I think I’m a testament to that - I’m thankful everyday for what happens and try to share that attitude with everyone else out there.”

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“Hopefully everybody is going to get the opportunity to get back out soon and touch these desks and HEADLINERMAGAZINE.NET

A Good Song Never Dies

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SAINT MOTEL There’s an elephant in the room.

That elephant is the absurdly catchy 2014 gold-certified single, My Type. You know it – trust me you do. The song has been featured in numerous films, Volkswagen, Uber and Now TV commercials, and appeared on the FIFA 15 and Pro Evolution Soccer 2016 soundtracks.

In 2019, Saint Motel launched their HEADLINER USA

most ambitious undertaking yet, unveiling Part 1 of a three-album concept. Lead vocalist A/J Jackson explains why the band want to be known for more than ‘that song from that advert’, and why The Original Motion Picture Soundtrack: Part 2 sees them inching ever closer to their very own Hollywood ending.

“It’s funny because we love touring in the UK, and we have somewhat of a fan base there that are awesome and passionate. I think a lot of it is actually due to FIFA...we get a lot of soccer fans actually,” realises A/J, lead vocalist in Saint Motel. (I can only imagine the pints sent flying when My Type’s ‘DA DA DA DA DA DA DA DAAA horn part kicks in).

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The quartet – comprising A/J, Aaron Sharp (guitar), Dak Lerdamornpong (bass), and Greg Erwin (drums) – had been on the L.A. circuit for a while prior to their big break, and had experienced some pretty rough experiences within the music industry along the way, but were steadily building up an underground fan base by doing “crazy concerts at every dodgy bar we could”.

A little bit of airplay followed, but not much, and the labels wouldn’t turn their heads. They were getting more love overseas. The band decided to play some shows across the pond, and My Type got picked up for a prominent whiskey campaign.

“At that point, we were definitely living true to the struggling musician lifestyle,” A/J recalls. “While we were

there, we played as many shows as we could, and eventually Parlophone took a chance on that song.”

Born in Israel, Saharai and Kadosh went to the same school and met through their shared love of music.

“We decided to do some music together, and that was it from that moment! It’s been 17 years – I’ve known my partner half of my life!” he realizes.

Sharp has a knack for predicting a hit, and said he would eat his hat if My Type didn’t blow up.

“He is a good gauge for me,” A/J smiles. “He’s said that a few times, so he’s a good barometer. The song started getting played on Radio 6 in the UK and some BBC director tweeted something really kind

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about the song. We have a weird relationship with the UK because we were there for a long time, and everything moved so fast for us there that I feel that people know the song, but they don’t know the band.

That makes me kind of sad, because people know it through adverts – definitely no complaints as far as that has allowed us to be a band and people know it in some way! – but they don’t know it in the same way that people do in the US, Mexico, and some places in Europe.

“People in the UK know it mostly through adverts, which is kind of a shame to me because people don’t get to know more about the band and that we had 10 years of music coming out and are still doing stuff.”

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A Good Song Never Dies

“IN THE EARLY DAYS WRITING SONGS, I WAS MUCH MORE ESCAPIST. WE ALL HAD SHITTY PART TIME JOBS AND WE WERE REHEARSING IN A DARK, DUNGEON-LIKE SPACE.”

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ARTIST

The group initially came together at film school – their movie background being evident in their cinematic music videos and The Original Motion Picture Soundtrack album trilogy concept.

The band most recently released the second instalment of their three-part album, The Original Motion Picture Soundtrack: Part 2.

“Pretty early on with this album, the idea of releasing in three parts seemed to make sense,” A/J shares. “Initially that was because there was a large part of the music that had a certain kind of feeling, and then another part that felt like the complete opposite. So we had this idea of a hot, cold mixture, and then that extended into the thinking of how the album sleeves would fold into each other.”

Sharp was reading a magazine article about a movie soundtrack on a plane on the way to a gig, and suggested that something like that would make a good name for an album.

“Instantly, it was like, ‘That feels like that’s a perfect evolution from film school, and it is the next step up in that world’.”

PREACH Capturing the same uplifting and hooky horn-led energy of My Type, Preach is a standout single on The Original Motion Picture Soundtrack: Part 2. The music video was directed by A/J himself and longtime collaborator Mario Contini, and stars A/J performing choreographed dance moves alongside the LA Roller Girls.

“This song was done with my friend Sam, and it was kind of just done for fun,” he admits. “I remember initially it was just kind of an experiment – this was definitely not supposed to be on the final version! I’m singing the verse in this weird way where I was channelling Prince, and Sam really liked it. I’m still coming to terms with it,” he laughs.

“But that is why it sounds slightly

different. It’s almost unrecognizable to my usual singing style, but it was never really meant in a serious way. I like trying to sing as different characters sometimes, and this one was definitely different.”

A/J says that his songwriting style has changed since the band’s debut album, Voyeur in 2012, and a lot of that stems from their circumstances: “Just where I’m at as a human being as opposed to where I was 10 years ago is slightly different. In the early days writing songs, I was much more escapist. We all had shitty part time jobs and we were rehearsing in a dark, dungeon-like space. I think writing music that would have been sad and introspective probably would have led to the entire band’s suicides,” he jokes.

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tying it into the movies, Saint Motel were releasing parts one and two in individual film canister CDs. When the final chapter is released, all three parts will go into one case.

“Although they are coming out separately, and unfortunately, very far away from each other as far as parts go – they are designed to be one album. There are film score transitions between the songs that we work with a composer to create, and there’s a cohesiveness to them. Just like any movie storyline, you have a three-act structure, which will allow us to put music out in these parts. It just made sense.”

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“So instead, it was writing music that was fun and we would play every night as a way to say something that was a break from the monotony of the rest of our daily experience. It changed in some capacity after we found some version of success, and since we were able to do this full time.

On our very first EP we worked with a producer who really got in my head that every song needs a reason for existing, and I still feel that every song needs a reason for existence.”

All trilogies need a part three; can A/J share when they might be releasing this?

“I’m just happy that part two is out at this point,” he answers. “I don’t even want to jinx it with part three, because we were hoping to get part two out earlier and it just wasn’t possible. So if I even say something right now about part three, I’m sure it’s gonna be wildly off! But saying that, as soon as possible really, because this is designed to be one album in three parts.”

When part three does come out, A/J says it will be on vinyl. Further HEADLINERMAGAZINE.NET

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DAMIEN LEWIS HEADLINER USA

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Producer, mixer and engineer Damien Lewis - who earned his first Grammy nomination alongside long time mentor Phil Tan for Katy Perry’s Teenage Dream - can often be found producing and engineering some of the most demanding sessions in L.A. Continuing the legacy of his father, a renowned live rock and roll engineer, Lewis has worked with the biggest names in music including Rihanna, Katy Perry, Janelle Monae, Beyonce, Mariah Carey, Justin Bieber, Timbaland and many more using his arsenal of Waves plugins, which he admits he cannot live without.

Not many people can say they’ve had as cool a musical upbringing as Damien Lewis. Born and raised during Detroit’s famed rock and roll era in the early ‘80s, he grew up around many legendary bands like Foghat and Blue Oyster Cult, who his father worked with at the time.

“When Foghat was in town they’d drop me off at school on the tour bus, and I think at one stage I introduced my first grade teacher to

Neil Diamond, because I remember seeing a signed photo on her desk the next day,” he recalls.

It’s safe to say that Lewis had an easy ride at school that year, but it wasn’t always plain sailing. Lewis spent his formative years in music in Atlanta working for mix engineer and mentor Phil Tan, and soon after moved to L.A., where he has resided for the last eight years.

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It’s been “gangbusters” for Lewis ever since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, with many touring musicians who are stuck in L.A. dying to get into the studio. He counts himself very lucky to have stayed busy with work throughout: “I think I got a whole album to mix pretty much the day lockdown happened, and it’s been on since then,” he reveals. “And hopefully there’s some good that comes out of this for a lot of the road musicians and personnel crew too that have unfortunately lost work because of this.”

Strangely enough, Lewis didn’t get into the studio and music production game until his father unexpectedly passed away in 2001, when he inherited a TAC Scorpion mixing console along with a haul of DBX compressors.

A humble touring drummer at the time, Lewis immediately decided to learn how to use all of his new found gear, so he acquired a tape machine and started recording at home in a bid to fully immerse himself in music production.

“I was in a couple of blues bands and we were always on the road, doing around 250 to 300 nights a year,” he remembers. “We had all this recording equipment as this was before Pro Tools, so things were a bit more difficult than just popping open a laptop and I just started getting into that side of it more and more. You can hit a glass ceiling being a sideman in a blues band working every single night, and after a series of mishaps with guys on the road who I was close with, the writing was on the wall that my future was in production, and that’s more where my passion was leaning towards.”

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Lewis reveals that when the first Covid lockdown happened back in spring 2020, and things started to ease up, a chance call from Skrillex threw him straight back into the boiling pot: “We did about three or four weeks up at Shangri La — Rick Rubin’s studio in Malibu — and that was a really special moment in time because we had the studio locked out 24/7. Literally anybody and everybody would show up, from Thundercat and Corbin to Nav and Swae Lee. We had the vintage Neve console in there, and all the instruments were mic’d up ready to go so whoever walked in the door would just pick up an instrument and start playing. We would record for hours and hours and then grab the best sections and start to loop it up and make arrangements and overdub on top of that.

“We probably worked on three or four different albums during those couple of weeks, which is absolutely insane, but it’s yet to be seen what albums are coming out of that project. Then I went straight from that into the new Justin Timberlake album.”

It was another chance meeting many years before that presented Lewis with his break in the industry: “Of course you have to be prepared for certain situations, but sometimes the lightning just needs to strike at the right time,” he says. “I was already a pretty established engineer running a studio in Atlanta, and my wife was doing set design for television commercials. Her partner was Phil Tan’s wife, and one day she came home and told me about him. We went over and had lunch with Phil and his wife a couple of times, and he was super nice and gracious from the start. I wanted the job as his assistant really badly, but of course it was a coveted position that was occupied at the time, so I just stayed in touch and built a relationship with him.

“Eventually after a couple years of nurturing that relationship, he called one day to offer me a session and soon after asked me to be his assistant. It was a lot of passion and persistence on my part. Phil’s a fantastic guy and it was lovely to work for him, so him and his wife remain close friends of ours.”

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“I LOOK AT PLUGINS LIKE COLOR ON A PALETTE; I DON’T REALLY CARE WHAT IT IS, BUT I KNOW WHAT EACH ONE DOES REALLY WELL.”

It was in fact with Phil Tan whom Lewis earned his first Grammy nomination for Katy Perry’s Teenage Dream. Since then the accolades have rolled in, and his contributions in engineering can now be found on 15 Grammy-nominated songs or albums, five of which have actually won a Grammy. He has also been HEADLINER USA

heavily involved with the Recording Academy itself over the years, serving on the Grammy board in Atlanta and San Francisco as well as the R&B Nomination Review and National Advocacy Committees.

“It’s an important accolade, but it’s not the be-all and end-all in music,”

he says. “There are tons of artists that never win an award and never get recognized on that level, so it’s by no means the barometer of if you’re good or not, but it is very cool to get recognized for anything in this business when we’re used to getting told no a lot.”

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Lewis has been an ardent user of Waves since the very beginning, and recalls the first ever time he got his hands on a set of plugins: “I was mixing an album on ADATs because they’re eight tracks a piece, and it was impossible to keep four of them running at the same time. I was halfway through an album and was getting so frustrated, so I thought ‘that’s it, I’m going to buy a Mac and Pro Tools,’ neither of which I’d used before! I ended up buying a new cheese grater with Pro Tools and a gold bundle, so that was the very first set of plugins I had.

Nowadays, Lewis knows exactly what tools he needs to get each job done: “I’ve always been an R-Vox user because it just does that thing where it pushes the vocal right up in your face. H-Delay is always there, and I’ve also got back into R-Comp recently because there’s often times when I just want a super clean compressor. It does a really good job of adding a little bit of compression but not changing the sound at all, and they’ve come out with a new white skin which is cool. I kind of get bored with stuff; you’re working in Pro Tools for 10 hours a day, every day, and sometimes it’s cool to have something new and fun with a new GUI. “I look at plugins like color on a pallet; I don’t really care what it is, but I know what each one does really well,” he adds. “They all have this certain place for me, so if I’m looking for a specific thing I know exactly where to find it. Doubler is always there; MetaFlanger’s always there; R-Verb is always there. The C4 Pop Vocal setting is an absolute classic, and that’s on every single background vocal group ever. There are plugins and presets within Waves that have just become iconic, and would be

really difficult to live without at this point in the game.”

Lewis reveals how he’s used a lot of doubling effects on Timberlake’s latest record, as well as “all of the useful mechanical stuff like REQ doing simple cuts and boosts and filters.

“CLA effects can pop up every now and then, and I’ve actually kind of got back into the Waves JJP stuff; I forgot how awesome it is on the synth group and the strings group and stuff like that.”

Recently, Lewis actually built a pretty cool 808 signal processing chain for studio recording - a complicated series of FX chains “where you can just use your macro knobs and have a lot of different processes happening at once,” he explains. “There’s some Abbey Road saturation in there which is awesome, along with Submarine which is just great for when you need that extra low subharmonic that isn’t in the track at all. Then some Smack Attack for the top end, and you’re in business.”

Lewis has no shame in admitting that he’s somewhat obsessive about plugins. No doubt a guru of the craft, he loves to collect, learn and use them to their full potential, so is constantly watching videos online and looking at forums to see when new stuff comes out.

“YouTube is an incredible resource for this, and it’s amazing to be able to go to a website and just see some of the most brilliant people out there showing you everything that they do,” he remarks. “A couple of little tricks from every one along the way, and then I make my own and pass those out too, and so the circle keeps going.”

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Lewis says that knowing what you have, and knowing how to get something out of it is super important: “I do a lot of sound design on the fly, and I work with a lot of producers who sometimes just give me something and be like, ‘make it cool’. That can be overwhelming, because you can look at your plugin list and think, ‘Oh my god I have 20 reverb plugins’.

“I’ve actually got to work on a lot of my solo stuff lately which is cool. My partner and I have been making music together since high school, and my whole life has been making other people’s records so it’s actually really cool to be able to go out and do our thing. We’re called Lewis & Ford; we’lI go out to Joshua Tree and get a house for a week and write and record out there and catch a vibe. A lot of that stuff is coming soon which is exciting.”

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TOM LORD-ALGE

Roll With It

ROLL WITH IT

HEADLINER USA

“It’s really Chris’ fault,” opens Tom Lord-Alge, speaking about his fivetime Grammy-award winning mix engineer brother Chris Lord-Alge.

“A friend of my mom got Chris a job as a kind of gofer at a studio in New Jersey, which ended up becoming The Sugarhill Gang studio. Chris worked there for a couple of years and he worked on some of those early

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Tom Lord-Alge has mixed records for U2, The Rolling Stones, P!nk, Peter Gabriel, Dave Matthews Band, Blink-182, Avril Lavigne, Sum 41, Manic Street Preachers, and Marilyn Manson. Headliner catches up with the legendary mixer at his home in Miami, where he reflects on his start in the industry, his Grammy wins, analog vs. digital, and chicken salad.

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Sugarhill Gang records. I actually think that he got fired from working there, because they caught him using the studio,” he chuckles.

After this, Tom tagged along with his older brother’s band, who were playing a few local gigs. Despite only being 15, Tom ended up doing the lights for one of the shows, but his

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real interest lay in audio. He carried on working in lighting even after Chris left to take a job at a studio in New York. One fateful day, the sound technician didn’t show up.

“The band was like, ‘you’re gonna do the sound tonight’. I must have done a good job because the next night they were like, ‘you’re our new sound man!’”

After doing this for about five years, Tom left to join Chris in the studio, where he assisted him on sessions.

“I’d be assisting him in a session and he’d be in the middle of a vocal take.

He walked out of the room, and I’m like, ‘fuck it!’ and I just jumped right in the seat and picked it up. One thing led to another and I assisted Chris for a couple of months, and then I started to take his recording gigs when he started to focus on mixing.”

Fast forward 12 months and Chris was hired to mix Steve Winwood’s Grammy winning album Back in the High Life, while Tom handled production.

“I did eight months on that record and when it was time to mix it, they said ‘we really like what you’re doing and we want you to mix it’. Chris was like, ‘go for it, bro’.”

The rest is history. Tom went on to engineer Winwood’s follow up, Roll With It in addition to co-producing its number one hit song, Higher Love. He then left Unique Recording to work as a freelance engineer and mixer, and to this date has mixed records for U2, Simple Minds, The Rolling Stones, P!nk, Peter Gabriel, OMD, Sarah McLachlan, Dave Matthews Band, blink-182, Avril Lavigne, Hanson, Sum 41, Live, Manic Street Preachers, Story of the Year and Marilyn Manson, among many, many others.

Tom received two Grammy Awards for his work on Back in the High Life and Roll With It, both winning in the ‘Best Engineered Recording – Non-Classical’ category. There’s no rivalry between the brothers (including Jeff Lord-Alge, also a successful engineer and mixer),

but he admits that it must have hurt a little for Chris to see him walk away with the Grammys.

“I’m all about helping with the Lord-Alge brand, because I benefit from it. So it’s never that kind of competition. But I do the Winwood album, and Chris was all thumbs up about it, so I know that it was a tough one for him when I won, because he gave me the gig. Back then, that was the only Grammy a recording engineer could win – ‘Best Engineered Recording’. And then just just to kind of smack him around a little bit, two years later, I won it again! This is for all those times you beat me up!” he laughs.

Crash Test Dummies’ God Shuffled His Feet, featuring their hit Mmm Mmm Mmm Mmm. Shortly thereafter he mixed Live’s multi-platinum Throwing Copper, which to date has sold over eight million copies in the US. “Throwing Copper...I got 20 years of work out of that one,” he says. “That album really resonated amongst the musical community all over the world, and musicians and my peers really embraced that record.”

Tom’s turning point as a mixing engineer was in 1993 after mixing HEADLINERMAGAZINE.NET

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Roll With It

“BACK IN THE DAY, WE WERE THE KEEPERS OF THE GROOVE AND THE MASTERS OF THE EQUIPMENT, AND NOWADAYS ANYBODY WITH A LAPTOP AND SOME CREATIVE JUICES CAN PUT SOMETHING TOGETHER.”

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COMPRESSION Tom and Chris are known for crafting their mix with an abundant use of dynamic compression for molding mixes that play well on small speakers and FM radio, thus somewhat contributing to the loudness war.

“Yeah,” he smiles. “That was during the time that Chris and I had wars over who could make the loudest snare drum. As for compression, I just remember that the more compression I put on, the better things started to sound. At first I would just really start to mangle the stereo bus, and it immediately sounded like it was on the radio. I really dug that and my clients really enjoyed that. Then I started mangling the individual instruments, and then just kissing the bus compressor, and again, we came up with a different result, which was still acceptable. It was simple and it just makes it sound better. If I was recording something – and remember this is back in the analog days – that I wanted to sound as close to being finished without having anything on playback…” he trails off. “If you’re doing what you’re doing today with analog, you would have nothing but tape hiss – you had to record things very bright, and you wanted to record them as close to the final sound as you could.”

Tom can’t help but feel nostalgic for the analog days, when there was a novelty and precision required when you knew that you only had a certain amount of choices.

“There’s something about that, that I really miss,” he acknowledges.

“But having said that, I don’t miss analog! I jumped right on to digital.

I bought two 3348 48-track digital tape machines by Sony when they came out, and then I bought the 24-bit version – the fucking machine was 250 grand! I still have it. I love that machine, because it allowed me to take the analog tapes and transfer them to digital. Then, when you were mixing 48-track analog, it sucked – it was no picnic. If you wanted to rewind 20 seconds, it was a nightmare because you actually had to rewind 30 seconds because it needed about five or 10 seconds for the tapes to lock up. So it was worth the money!”

to Phil Collins – his drum sound was my template, so the fact that I’m mixing something by P.C was a big deal to me. And we’re friends. There was a second of silence because I didn’t know how he was gonna react.

But he goes, ‘yeah, you’re right. I think I did. Let me just do it again’. And he did, and he killed it.”

Although that’s not to say he wouldn’t put the work in and tweak something to perfection if needed:

“I’ve worked on this exact console for over 20 years, and almost everything that I’ve mixed for 20 something years was done on this console. I love the damn thing. So that’s what I do when I have some downtime. I’m either maintaining the console, which again, doesn’t require a lot of maintenance, or setting up for a project. I love doing maintenance on my console. It’s just a gem.”

“Exactly, these guys are professional musicians, so I would always say, ‘let’s set up and just cut it again; what’s the big deal?’ You can’t make chicken salad...well, you can...I’m the king of it! If you make chicken salad out of chicken shit, there’s always going to be a compromise.”

These days, his pride and joy is his 1993 SSL 4000 G+ 72 input console, which he is thrilled to report is still in “perfect nick”. He’s had it in his Miami home for around six years (“If there was a time to have a studio in your house, this is the time! I did the right thing when I put this studio into my house”) – buying it from South Beach Studios.”

This reminds him of mixing a track for Phil Collins over a decade ago: “The track came in, I listened to it, and I had a conversation with Phil. He said ‘what do you think?’ And I go, ‘honestly Phil, it sounds like you dialled in your drum performance’. I grew up listening HEADLINERMAGAZINE.NET

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Tom reveals that he’s currently working on a remix of Higher Love, just because he can: “I’m looking forward to when the pandemic is over – I’ll have lots of wonderful gems and versions of wonderful gems. I have channels one to 23 and back of Higher Love, so I’m trying to find 25 to 47. But in the meantime, I’m gonna do a modern mix of it, just because it’s fun to go back and revisit some of those old ones.”

How does Tom see the music production industry changing over the next decade?

“I see the role of a mixing engineer dwindling away,” he answers. “There are guys that are making records at home, and they’re making great sounding records. I hope that’s not the case, personally, because it’s my job. Back in the day, we were the keepers of the groove and the masters of the equipment, and nowadays anybody with a laptop and some creative juices can put something together.

I’m all for that – anything that helps people to make music and helps the creative juices to come out, I’m all about.”

Tom is also keeping himself busy in his home studio mixing a couple of tracks for a band called Camino, as well as some of his archived stuff from the ‘90s.

“Because I have to stay in my house, I say to my friends, jokingly, ‘the only time I ever leave the house is pretty much just to go get supplies or get some food’. I’ll stock up – especially if I’m in the middle of a project; sometimes I’ll go five or six days without even leaving the house!”

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OWN THE ROOM www.digico.biz DiGiCo UK Ltd. Unit 10 Silverglade Business Park, Leatherhead Road Chessington, Surrey KT9 2QL. Tel: +44 (0) 1372 845600

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GUY SEBASTIAN

Speaking The Truth

SPEAKING THE TRUTH GUSTAF CE S LI

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Winning the first Australian Idol in 2003 and having just released his ninth studio album, it’s been quite the ride for Guy Sebastian. The nicest man in pop reveals why he is no longer interested in people-pleasing, and that T.R.U.T.H is his best work yet. And despite recently blowing his entire home studio budget, he informs us that he just had to get his hands on a pair of Genelec monitors.

Like many people, Sebastian hadn’t even heard of Wuhan until, well, you know. Of all places, that’s exactly where he found himself for a music festival in November 2019, just before the coronavirus that caused the Covid-19 pandemic was first discovered there.

“I put up this post on Instagram which was one of those posts that did not age very well at all,” he cringes. “I said something like: ‘What a beautiful city with beautiful people. And God did I eat some interesting things, but more on that later…’ Yeeeeah, so that really, really didn’t age well. To think of that, to now, and what the world’s been through is mind blowing.”

Sebastian is in Sydney, Australia – a country which has had a relatively good grip over controlling the spread of the virus when compared to other first world countries.

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ARTIST

“Yeah, look, what’s a good analogy?

It’s almost like when you’re…” he trails off laughing at himself. “Oh, gosh, this is a terrible analogy...but it’s like when you’re in a happy relationship, and one of your very good friends is in a really crappy time in their relationship, and you don’t want to be all lovey dovey in front of them. We’re pretty lucky because we’re an island nation, so we were able to lock off from the rest of the world and deal with the issue.”

Shutting out the outside world and retreating to the safety of his home studio (“it’s one of those studios that’s a room within a room within a room”), Sebastian has been kept well and truly occupied with perfecting his ninth studio album, T.R.U.T.H, which debuted at number one in Australia on the ARIA Albums Chart, making it his ninth Top Ten charting album.

He’s also the only Australian male artist in Australian chart history to achieve six number one singles, and he’s a bloody nice bloke too – not that everyone agrees.

“I think when you come from a beautiful family like the one that I’ve come from where there’s so much love, you never prepare yourself for the fact that there’s going to be people that just hate you! It’s weird when you’re a public person because you’ve got fans that love you, will fight for you and support you, and then there’s all the people that don’t really care and that will take you or leave you. Then there’s this little sect that absolutely despises you, and you’re not prepared for it, because...who’s prepared for that?

‘I’m very fortunate in the sense that I’m not that divisive as a person or an artist so I hopefully don’t have that many people that hate me [Headliner imagines that anyone that has met or spoken to him will find it physically impossible to dislike him].

But if you spend this energy trying to please these few people on Twitter or whatever it is, you spend your energy going, ‘please like me! I’m a pretty good bloke if you got to know me!’ And then you realize you’ve spent all this time on them. There’s

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created to open up more about his life and the things that he’s been through. Recent single, Standing With You was penned just before the Covid-19-related travel bans came into effect, and – understandably – he was feeling anxious about the state of the world.

Scrolling through Instagram in the back of an Uber on the way to the writing session at The Village Studios in L.A., he happened upon a post written by his cousin detailing his battle with depression, reminding him that beyond this pandemic, people are already fighting their own mental health battles.

all these people that were way more deserving of that energy. In life, we spend so much energy on that tiny minority that we want to prove wrong, as opposed to the people that already believe in us as we are.”

This reminds him of a time that this really hit home: “It was a big lesson for me because I remember a fan wrote to me and I burst into tears after reading his message. He said that he’d sent me tons of messages on Facebook, and that he saw that I’d responded to this clown that had a crack at me who had never messaged me before. Yet this fan never got a response from me. I just burst into tears; I felt like such a fool. That is something that I apply to a lot of different things, because you’re never going to please everybody in your business. Even in a songwriting session, for example, I would never want to offend somebody, but I’ve got to be strong and I’ve got to look at the ultimate goal. That’s given me a bit of strength to not be a people-pleaser.”

Headliner tries to resist the urge to like him and moves onto his new album, T.R.U.T.H, which Sebastian

“It stopped me in my tracks because I’m close with my cousin, but I had no idea that he was going through what he was going through. He posted it to help other people, and so it shifted my whole focus for the day. I really wanted to write something because even back then it was starting to bubble as far as people’s anxiousness and fears about isolation. All those sorts of things don’t provide a great experience and environment for a lot of people who are already suffering, so I wanted to write a song that was going to let a lot of people know that they’re not doing this battle alone.”

Sebastian co-wrote Standing With You with Jamie Hartman, whose songwriting credits include Rag’n’Bone Man’s Human and Lewis Capaldi’s Hold Me While You Wait.

“When I got to the end of singing it for the first time, we both started to cry in the studio – and it’s not something that happens often in sessions that we just randomly cry! I think we just realized at the end of the song that we had created something special. It was a healing moment for us as well, and my goodness, since releasing it in Australia and in other places around the world, I’ve received so many HEADLINERMAGAZINE.NET

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messages saying how the song helps people. So it’s really fulfilling as a songwriter to have that happen.”

Sebastian won Australian Idol in 2003, securing a spot on the show with his audition song, Ribbon In The Sky by Stevie Wonder – despite one of the judges telling him he looked like crap.

“Can you imagine if they said that now? It was a different time! Yeah Dicko said I looked like crap, but they also said I had the best voice that they had heard,” he chuckles.

“It was a chunk of life ago, but to be honest, I still can’t believe it.

One would think that it would sink in, but I still have many moments where I just go, ‘What am I doing?

How is this me?’ I always describe it as though I’m running alongside myself going, ‘What are you doing?

How is this my life? Is this actually happening?’”

IN THE STUDIO A longtime fan of Genelec monitors, Sebastian recently invested in a pair of 8341A monitors for his John Sayers-designed home studio, adding to his existing pair of 1034B main monitors.

“I’m very involved with production, and I have a really great flow with how I write and how I produce.

Unless I’m working with a producer in a session, I’ll produce a track, I’ll do all my own vocals and I’ll record some of the instruments. Anything I’m able to record, I’ll put down to flesh out the structure, and then I’ll hand that over to somebody who’s a way better producer than me!”

Sebastian first bought a pair of secondhand Genelecs (or ‘Gennys’, as he calls them) when it was all he could afford.

“Genelecs always pack a punch; they’re renowned as being a really HEADLINER USA

clear and punchy monitor. My studio is so acoustically tuned and beautiful, and I had some other monitors then which weren’t great, so they really stuck out in the studio. The minute I got the 8341A monitors in here, it was next level. The stereo imaging and my mixes became a lot better straight away. After I do a mix I always do a ‘car listen’ afterwards, and it’s always way better than what I was doing before. Before, I always thought it was much of a muchness and you just get used to what you use, but I will say having great monitors has made a big difference to me.”

Why the 8341As? “To be honest, I was looking at buying them firstly for aesthetic reasons,” he says sheepishly. “They just look ridiculous because they’re white; they’re so beautiful. My studio theme is black and white, so I was looking at white monitors and these popped up. I thought, ‘Oh good, I can go for some Gennys!’ But I had just built my studio and I’d blown out my budget.

But once I heard them, I just had to get them. They’re actually quite small compared to what I had – I had these huge monitors – but these are just as loud and are very good!”

Nine albums down, does Sebastian think his songwriting has evolved much over the years?

“Oh, absolutely, I think everyones does,” he answers. “As a writer, you’ve got to be comfortable with looking back on some of the songs you’ve written and realising that they’re a stamp in time. I’ve said and written some terrible stuff! I’ve rhymed KFC with GFC – as in: global financial crisis,” he laughs. “I’ve written some really naff stuff, but it’s all about growing. A big thing I’ve changed is sitting down to write a song because I’m trying to write a song that fits something, like being good for radio. I don’t do that anymore, I just sit down to write what I’m feeling and what’s relevant to my own life, or relevant to how I’m feeling about something that someone else is going through close to me.”

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When it came to approaching his new album, it was all about the melodies for Sebastian: “It’s soulful, and I’ve never put as much into the vocal production as I have on this. I just really wanted to capture moments, and I feel like the melodies on this album really enable my voice to shine more than it’s ever been able to. This is a very honest album and it’s a very good reflection of who I am – an unashamed and unencumbered version of me. I’m in a really comfortable place in my life where I don’t feel like I have any need for approval or any messages that I have to force out. I’m in

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a place where I feel really comfortable talking about life and it seems to be coming out in the music. It’s definitely the most proud of any work I’ve ever done in my life. It’s my favorite album that I’ve ever made, and I’m always honest with that sort of stuff.”

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VENUE FOCUS

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Win Some, Toulouse Some

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NETWORKED An Optocore/BroaMan fiber network is at the heart of the new MEETT Toulouse Exhibition & Conference Centre, with GB4D carrying out a complex multi-node installation to satisfy multiple user demands.

“MEETT is not an architectural intervention, but an urban machine.

Both monumental in its scale and subtle in its overall impact, it will be a new gateway to Toulouse,” state the architects responsible for the striking new MEETT Toulouse Exhibition & Conference Centre in Toulouse, France.

area of 25,000m², and is capable of hosting a wide variety of events.

A big statement indeed for this ambitious project, which is not only about architecture, but also about infrastructure, urbanism, landscape and public space. The 155,000m² exhibition and convention center is positioned in between the city and the countryside, connecting urbanized plots to the south – mainly dedicated to aeronautics, including Airbus’s airport hangar – to an agricultural landscape to the north.

At the heart of the centre is an Optocore/BroaMan fiber network, which was installed by Optocore’s long-term partner, Gilles Bouvard’s company GB4D, in close collaboration with the scenography company Ducks Scèno, headquartered in VilleurbanneLyon, under the direction of Aldo De Souza.

The third largest facility in France (outside Paris) it boasts a 40,000m² modular exhibition hall, a main street that opens into an outdoor

The new center needed a fiber network that was as impressive as the building itself, and would have to be a complex network that required the capacity to transmit sound, video, lighting and even IT.

The Bouvard team worked alongside Grégory Aldéa, head of audiovisual projects at Ducks Scéno, on behalf of the MEETT consortium, Toulouse Métropole and GL Events.

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ports (combined main connections which carry all signals on a duplex fiber) to the router on the 39 available connection points (three per room).

“I CHALLENGE ANYONE TO SET UP AN ETHERNET-BASED OR IP NETWORK, AND HAVE IT BE AS EASY AND FAST AS OURS TO OPERATE, WITHOUT HAVING TO BE A COMPUTER SCIENTIST!”

ENGINEERING CHALLENGES “We conducted an in-depth study of possible future equipment, both upstream and downstream of our network,” explains Bouvard. “During the development phase, neither the scenographer nor I were aware of the audio-visual equipment that would be installed in the complex, so we made a possible hypothesis based purely on the plans.”

MEETT itself is divided in three parallel bands, based around a row of modular exhibition halls to the north of the complex. In its complete form the space is massive – 500m long and 80 to 100m wide.

The separate convention center and multi-function event hall are at the south wing with a reception area to the center of the concourse, also boasting a multi-storey car park for 3,000 cars. With such distances and wide-spread areas, the choice of a fiber network to transport all video, audio and data signals was obvious.

The convention center’s 12 modular rooms are all equipped with fiber optics, along with a large hall, in which another convention room can accommodate around 3,500 people (seated), while a second room can host exhibitions or other needs. At its maximum, the Convention Hall can HEADLINER USA

hold around 7,000-8,000 people – showing the advantage of modularity.

Fiber optic points are stationed throughout the convention center, and each modular meeting room is equipped with three quad fiber connection points.

For the management of these 12 rooms, a seminar rooms node has been equipped with a BroaMan Route66 Video Router (40 in / 40 out), where 26/26 connect via CWDM multiplexer to fiber stageboxes in specific rooms, while 14/14 allow fiber video connections between routers in the seminar rooms node and convention room.

Bouvard explains the rationale: “The CWDM video makes it possible to have two Video In and two Video Out per modular room (the 26in and 26out video config corresponds to the 13 rooms in the original plan). The 14 optical strand-to-strand video streams allows full duplex in / out with the Convention Room node.”

The fiber points are cabled on singlemode quad fibers, dispatched to the router by a WDM frame. The latter is supplied from a manual fiber patch which allows connection of 13 COM

In the Convention Room, network distribution is via 24 quad fiber connection points.

In the room node a BroaMan Route66 Video Router (38 in / 38 out) provides 24in / 24out CWDM video for fiber stageboxes and the 14 full duplex in / out SDI fiber video share streams with the seminar rooms node, with a WDM frame facilitating various connection points.

“Each node is additionally equipped with a Optocore AutoRouter15 for the seminar rooms and an Optocore AutoRouter10 for the Convention Hall to complete the Optocore loop,” confirms Bouvard.

In order to function in all the different spaces, 10 mobile racks have each been plugged with a BroaMan Mux22-IVT/MADI 4 SDI in / 4 SDI out, with four MADI fiber ports for audio, and an Optocore X6R-TP-8MI/8LO (two ports of 16AES, four DMX RS422 port, LAN Base 10/100).

Each rack can be connected by a Quad fiber to any connection point in the building, both for seminar rooms and the convention center.

It had been necessary to have a full Optocore backbone for audio and BroaMan for video and fiber routing to avoid latency issues, according to Bouvard.

“This fantastic system allows you to have any audio control surface in the network,” he enthuses. “In addition, given the complexity of the place, I challenge anyone to set up an Ethernet-based or IP network, and have it be as easy and fast as ours to operate, without having to be a computer scientist!”

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The sound reinforcement is an L-Acoustics KARA system with the new P1 processor, while the installed mixing consoles are Soundcraft Vi1000s with MADI cards. The choice relates to the fact that they can have 96 inputs in the network with a remote gain. There are 80 Optocore preamps on site.

“All sound consoles can be connected to the network without any problem, most of them, including Soundcraft, could control Optocore preamps directly from the desk,” Bouvard points out.

“The challenge today is to provide solutions to satisfy all user demands, and the transport of different IP and Ethernet-based protocols. Five years ago it was complicated, but thanks to BroaMan today we have the tools. Together we develop devices to transport and route data streams carrying different protocols such as AVB, Dante, AES67 or video NDI, IP – very simply and with no bandwidth limit.”

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Upon completion, the GB4D team, Bouvard and François Lund undertook a thorough installation check and set up user training with installation monitoring, including technicians from the SNEF audiovisual company, Ludovic Miama and Maxime Hiez, operations technicians of MEETT / GL Events in Toulouse, and Josselin Mansuy and Christophe Temoin, sound and video managers of GL Events Audiovisuel, who provided third-party equipment.

With sound and lighting already in place, due to Covid-19 the video equipment phase will now form part of a second capital budget in early 2021.

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ANTONIA GAUCI

If You Build It, They Will Come

HEADLINER USA

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Sydney-based engineer, mixer, producer and artist, Antonia Gauci cut her teeth at Sydney’s legendary BigJesusBurger Studios and Studios 301 before taking a leap of faith and going freelance. She shares some key advice she’s learnt along the way, and why she’s never looked back.

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PRODUCER

Gauci is very precise, joining Headliner for a phone interview from Sydney at 18.11 exactly.

a small, local newspaper that she happened to see when she was at school.

“I’ve got a very small home setup here, but I can still go to my studio which I’m lucky I can still visit,” she says warmly. “It means I can still maintain some kind of sanity and work through everything at the moment!”

“On the back was an advert for The Australian Institute of Music to study recording music, composition, musical theatre and artist management. It just seemed interesting so I thought I would apply, even though I knew literally nothing at all about it! I got accepted and then I just kept going from there by picking up things and learning from people along the way.”

Gauci got her start at Sydney’s BigJesusBurger Studios and Studios 301, assisting for industry heavyweights including Scott Horscroft (The Presets, Birds of Tokyo), Eric J Dubowsky (Chet Faker, Flume, Odesza) and engineering for Kevin Shirley and Cold Chisel.

It turns out what inspired her to pursue a career in the studio was

At the same time, Gauci built on her skills and independent network, working with the cream of Sydney’s emerging artists. She now works out of her own room at Golden

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Retriever Studios in Marrickville, making it a hub for the community of artists and producers she has established. Gauci admits that going freelance was “absolutely terrifying,” but well worth the leap of faith.

“Someone said: ‘if you build it, they will come’. So I found somewhere to work out of, I put a laptop in it, and then I just told people, ‘I’m doing this now, so hit me up, let’s do something, let’s record’. I just got people in here, and one thing led to another and now I’m fully reliant on freelance stuff, which is quite an incredible thing after leaving a properly paid position.”

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Gauci has made it a priority to feed that knowledge back into her musical community, becoming a mentor to aspiring artists and music professionals through the New Age Noise and All Girl Electronic programs in Sydney, as well as running mixing workshops for Electronic Music Conference, Music NSW and Music SA. Gauci is well aware of the low statistics when it comes to females working in the studio, but doesn’t refer to herself as “a female producer or engineer” – she just wants to be known for her work.

“I definitely do champion women and those who just want to have a go at this, because it can be absolutely incredible as a career,” she stresses. “It’s important to show people that it is possible; I think that only 2% of engineers and producers are female or femaleidentifying, and that definitely needs to be not such a low number.”

Her hard work paid off after years of grafting, and her credits include working with artists such as Kesha, Lil’ Yachty, What So Not, Troye Sivan, DMAs, Vallis Alps, Japanese Wallpaper, Body Type, alongside a growing client list of Australia’s most promising acts.

PRAYING Gauci was there for the writing session between Ryan Lewis and Ben Abraham for Kesha’s emotional 2017 comeback single, Praying – engineering some of the track which was then taken overseas and worked on further. She’s not 100% certain on all the specific things they kept from that day, but she knows for a fact that they kept the choir that she recorded.

“It was so incredible,” she recalls. “Working with Ryan and Ben was great. I got to see them do their thing – everyone writes music the same kind of way, so to watch them have doubts and breakthroughs and all that kind of stuff was so cool. I felt really proud after that session because I had just started full time engineering at the studio. When you get

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a little notch under your belt, you think, ‘Yes, I can do this. This is awesome’.”

A year and a half later, Gauci ran into Abraham on the street, who told her the song was finally coming out.

“That was really cool because I didn’t hear about it for ages. It’s always nice when I can tell my parents, ‘I did this’, and they say, ‘I actually know what that is!’ Because half the time they have no idea what I’m doing,” she laughs.

As many producers and engineers will know, it’s commonplace to have a project shelved for a while before it sees the light of day, which she shares is the case for a Black Eyed Peas record she worked on with will.i.am, as well as another session with Abraham for a Macklemore track.

“Unfortunately that’s just how it is sometimes...ideas change, music changes,” she shrugs good naturedly. “The Black Eyed Peas session was one of the first things I assisted on when I joined the 301 family. It’s always so cool when you get to be in the room and see how people do stuff, because you get this sense of reassurance that you’re on the right path.”

Gauci notes that even though they were in a multi-million dollar studio at the time, she saw that sometimes keeping it simple yielded the most effective results: “The band would come in and Will would send them voice memos, and then they would build stuff off his voice memos. Later he’d come in and track the vocals, so I saw that you can cut records and do production around stuff like that. It’s not impossible.

Everyone has access to an iPhone or some kind of voice memo recording type of thing.”

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If You Build It, They Will Come

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Gauci’s DAW of choice is Pro Tools, and for outboard she wouldn’t be without her two Neve 1073s: “They just sound so incredible,” she enthuses. “There’s the option to saturate things by turning up the input, and you can play with EQ – it’s so easy to work with. If you put anything through them they sound incredible, and it just makes my job easier. I’d be lost without them and they are so much more spectacular than I ever could have imagined. I don’t buy stuff unless I’m 100% sure. I love to buy one thing that I know that I will never sell and that’s also a good all rounder for everything that I need to do.”

H-Delay plugin for Gauci’s master bus, which she’s been trying out since.

“If I need a pretty standard delay, the H-Delay has always got me covered for whatever I need. I love getting in and automating that feedback on it just to ramp up into sections here and there. It’s become my go-to, although I also use the CLA-76 compressor on everything all the time.”

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“Definitely do whatever you can, even if it’s a small thing like using GarageBand and recording through the laptop microphone – you can still create something that’s interesting and unique. Just jumping in is the best thing; don’t hesitate on it,” she smiles.

ANTONIAGAUCI.COM AUDIO-TECHNICA.COM WAVES.COM AMS-NEVE.COM

When it comes to giving advice to aspiring engineers and producers, Gauci says to stop putting it off and make the leap, and to use whatever gear you can get access to:

When speaking to fellow producer Marta Salogni, talk turned to plugins.

Salogni recommended Waves’

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JAN OZVEREN Charlie Puth, Shakira, Jennifer Hudson, Frank Ocean, Corinne Bailey Rae, Alejandro Sanz…these are just some of the names associated with guitarist/ producer Jan Ozveren. He provides an insight into recording guitars for Puth’s hit single, Attention, winging it on stage with Jessie J, and how the lockdown period led him to a new Celestion discovery.

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PRODUCER

As with many producers, Ozveren has spent the majority of the last year in the studio making the most of the time indoors. He joins Headliner from his Revere Sound studio in Glassell Park, California, where he’s been keeping occupied with sessions, writing, and coming up with ideas for his own content.

This led him to touring globally with Shakira, Charlie Puth, Jennifer Hudson, Frank Ocean, Nicole Scherzinger, Jessie J and Tamar Braxton, among many others.

Ozveren has been working with Puth lately – it’s his distinctive guitar playing you can hear on the singer’s huge hit, Attention.

While living in London he joined the touring band for urban composer Nitin Sawhney, and after a run of festival dates with virtuoso percussionist Trilok Gurtu, he formed the touring band for multi-platinum artist Corinne Bailey Rae. He appeared on every recording and promo slot with her until late 2007, including a set with John Legend at Live Earth Wembley Stadium.

“That was a really cool thing to happen. I recorded the live guitars that are on that recording in my studio, so that was a really nice feeling to know that the stuff that I was putting out from my studio was good enough to be on a song that big. It was one of those things that you didn’t see coming, from my perspective, at least.

“Working with Corinne Bailey Rae was amazing,” he recalls. “It was everything that I wanted at the time. I wanted to work in America and craft a show with an artist that I respected. I met her manager and he said he had a bunch of songs for this fantastic new singer. I heard them and I thought, ‘wow, this is just gonna take off!’ And sure enough, we did a performance on Jools Holland where it was just me and her, and then it just snowballed from there. Eventually we did a double bill tour with John Legend, and that was an eye-opener to see how they shape their two hour show.”

“His style is quite demanding when it comes to guitar,’ he shares. “For a lot of his recordings, it’s the only live element that he hasn’t played himself because he does a lot of programming, he plays all the keys, and he does all these amazing stacked vocal arrangements. The extra element that he pulls in is the guitar, but he doesn’t want it to be too guitarey – it serves as a rhythmic aspect to the production.

So you have to play it really tight and disciplined.”

Ozveren then toured Europe with electronica diva Róisín Murphy until the following year when he relocated to L.A. In 2009, he was called to join Spanish superstar Alejandro Sanz on his Paraíso world tour. The band appeared with Alicia Keys at The Latin Grammys and stayed on the road until mid 2011, performing to over 900,000 fans.

“When I moved to America, it was ironic because I ended up getting called to do work with Alejandro Sanz who is, of course, based in Spain,” he chuckles. “So that was a bit of an immediate departure. But then when I got back I had the time to really nurture my relationships, both on a musical and social level in L.A.”

For Attention, Puth sent Ozveren the married stems and told him to give him “the kitchen sink” so he could cherry pick from it.

“So I just did it like I would do any other session, and then a couple of weeks later he sent me the finished product. I was like, ‘oh my god, this is amazing!’ It wasn’t like we knew it was gonna be huge, it just came out of nowhere,” he shrugs.

NOBODY’S PERFECT Ozveren has earned numerous notable TV credits, including Saturday Night Live, Later…with Jools Holland and live broadcasts with BASSic Black Ent. Head over to YouTube and you can see Ozveren

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rocking out with Jessie J on The Ellen DeGeneres Show to Nobody’s Perfect.

“That was definitely a mucky take on that song! When we did that show we were supposed to only play Price Tag, and then out of nowhere they said ‘we’re going to do another song’. I think we’d only rehearsed Nobody’s Perfect a couple of times, so we had to wing it. The sound was a bit questionable in our monitoring, so we were winging it with a song that we hadn’t played very much and we couldn’t hear very well. I remember coming off and being a little bit flustered, and the engineer on Ellen – he’s a really sweet guy called Terry – he said, ‘that was such a great guitar tone you had’. Then I spoke to the MD after the show, who’d gone into Terry’s booth to listen to the recording, and he came back saying it was perfect, so I was relieved! We were going for blood on that recording, because there’s no choice...there’s nothing else you can do in that circumstance!”

Ozveren has an excellent memory when it comes to all things guitar, and knows he used his usual Marshall JCM2000 guitar amp into a 4x12 with Celestion Vintage 30s for that performance.

“I use Greenbacks too, which give a more traditional rock sound where the lows are quite loose and the highs are a little more papery.

Whereas the Vintage 30 has a tighter low end, and there’s a slight bump in the upper mids. Celestion speakers are the only speakers that can translate how I hear the guitar in my head; all the speakers I use are Celestion, by the way.”

For guitars, his go-tos are a selection of custom Fender Stratocasters and Telecasters – each with slightly different configurations depending on what he needs. He’s also got a healthy collection of Gibson Les Pauls (amongst other models) and a few from Gretsch thrown in for good measure.

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“I think I’ve always been at peace with the idea that the guitar itself is a very vintage instrument, no matter how futuristic it gets today.”

“When you’re talking about the career of playing as a session guitar player, versatility is king,” he points out.

Ozveren spent some of last year working on tracks for Spanish singer, Cepeda, who rose to fame on La Voz (Spanish for The Voice), and Spanish talent show, Operación Triunfo.

“He’s a great singer and he loves these big, developed rock and roll guitar-layered productions. A producer sent the stems over and then lockdown happened, so I suddenly had the luxury of having HEADLINER USA

a few weeks to really delve into these songs rather than having to knock them out in about four or five days, which you normally would do.

Whenever we get these extended periods of time, I always try and capitalize on it to get better at what I do.”

He found himself experimenting with a Celestion 65 Creamback, which he’d never used before.

“I’ve been using a G12H30 for many years for my Fender platform – and I love them – but what I’ve been

looking for is something with a little bit more sparkle on the top end. I was also looking for something where the low end would behave in the same way as a Vintage 30, which is tighter.

So I tried these Creambacks and I put one in my 4x12, which is combined with a bunch of Vintage 30s, and then I put another Creamback in a 1x12, and it just spoke to me immediately and became my new favorite speaker. It’s what I use now if I’m going for a cleaner or atmospheric sound on guitar.”

PRODUCER

Ozveren says that to him, there’s something inherently old school about a guitar – even in a modern context – which is a thought process that extends to his speaker choices: “I think I’ve always been at peace with the idea that the guitar itself is a very vintage instrument, no matter how futuristic it gets today. It has this deep history which I always want to allude to when I’m playing.

So when it comes to speaker choices, choosing something that is born out of a vintage voicing is just a continuation of that. With

a Vintage 30, you don’t want the highs to be too sparkly because there’s a lot of distortion information coming down, so that’s why the upper mid bump serves you well.

Whereas when you’re using more of a vintage sound, that’s where that woody, bloomy, papery sound comes into play, which I really like.

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minute. Technology changes a lot over 20 years, but I’ve stuck with what I started with,” he smiles.

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“A lot of this is subjective; obviously we’re talking about a creative thing here. But I definitely like the vintage sound. It’s really just what works for you. I’m probably quite old school because I’ve been doing this for a HEADLINERMAGAZINE.NET

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Safe With Me

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Safe With Me

GRYFFIN Producer, songwriter, and DJ Dan Griffith makes emotional dance-pop under the moniker Gryffin, blending organic and electronic instrumentation to create a fusion of melodic house and future bass tracks. At the end of 2020 he released his latest single Safe With Me featuring the vocals of rising star Audrey Mika, so Headliner just had to catch up with the SF native to find out how this stunning collaboration came about.

While he can usually be found residing in L.A., Gryffin has recently been taking a break from city life during the pandemic, finding refuge in Palm Springs where he’s been taking up golf lessons and focusing on new music.

His moments of productivity and creativity have been ebbing and flowing of late, and while the lack of routine has kept him on his toes, he currently feels like he’s living in the movie Groundhog Day. He’s not the only one...

“I’ve definitely been grinding through it and I’m happy with what I’ve been able to create, but I’d be lying if I said there weren’t some real tough stretches,” he starts. “I almost didn’t realize how hard I was going on the live side for the last two or three years; I’ve only really just been able to pause and reflect on everything and appreciate it properly.

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“Some days I’d have a 1am to 3:30am Vegas DJ set and then have to get straight on a plane to be at a music festival the next day, and I would be dragging because I was so tired, but I’ll never take that for granted ever again...I’ve really learned to cherish how awesome the times were and hopefully the times will be once once we get through this.”

Gryffin had been playing piano since a young age, but never really got into the classical side of things, instead opting to pick up a Fender Strat during his high school days and mess around in rock bands with friends. It wasn’t until he hit college however that his taste turned to dance music — and the likes of Skrillex and Swedish House Mafia — which has quite clearly had the biggest influence on the music he creates today.

“I was studying electrical engineering, but to be honest I hated it and was no good at it, so in the libraries I would just look at how to produce electronic music on YouTube,” he recalls. “I downloaded Ableton, and that’s pretty much how the Gryffin project really started.”

These days, he can usually get most projects done in his converted garage studio at his house in Venice, often hanging with other writers there and catching vibes in the backyard, although to mix down, track vocals or finish off a project he prefers to hit up a recording studio in nearby Hollywood or Santa Monica.

Ableton is still his DAW of choice, and as an electronic music producer his setup is relatively minimal, with most of his workflow being done in the box: “I can just direct line in my guitars and I’ve got a Dave Smith Prophet now that I’ve been doing some analog

HEADLINER USA

synth with, but if I’m in a nice studio that has all that analog gear I make sure to try and take advantage of it, because some of the richness and warmth of those sounds I sometimes just can’t emulate with software,” he confesses.

“In terms of synth plugins, Serum has been my go-to for a while now, and then I also use u-he Diva, which is a bit of a CPU hog on my computer sometimes... but the sound I get from it is incredible. I like all the FabFilter and Soundtoys stuff, and Sylenth is one I used for a long time but maybe not so much now.

Spectrasonics Omnisphere I use a lot, as well as a bass engine contact plugin called Substance, which I’m loving at the moment.”

MAKING WAVES Gryffin’s first taste of musical prowess saw him making hugely popular remixes of songs by pop acts like Tove Lo and Maroon 5 which, little did he know, would serve as his big break into the world of production.

One of his first projects to catch a lot of attention was a dance remix of Ellie Goulding’s Burn: “I think I was just googling free studio acapellas and that track was one of the first to come up,” he remembers. “I flipped it into this kind of deep house remix with a guitar in there, and my mindset at the time was if my friends like the music enough to play it at college house parties, then that’s peak success for me.”

He uploaded the remix to Soundcloud and sent it to a handful of music blogs, upon which the plays started to rack up. It wasn’t long before Ellie Goulding’s team from Universal Music reached out asking him to make an official remix: “All of a sudden I’m in college doing these official remixes for record labels, so that Ellie Goulding one definitely opened some doors for me.”

It was soon after this that Gryffin started working on his own original material. He’s since collaborated with a number of top electronic and pop acts including AlunaGeorge, Aloe Blacc, and Carly Rae Jepsen,

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“TO HAVE ALL MY FAVORITE TRACKS FROM THE LAST FEW YEARS BUNDLED TOGETHER IN ALBUM FORM WAS JUST REALLY REWARDING, AND IT’S SOMETHING I’M REALLY PROUD OF.”

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Safe With Me

scoring over a dozen charting hits, many of which were included on his 2019 full-length debut album, Gravity.

“To have all my favorite tracks from the last few years bundled together in album form was just really rewarding, and it’s something I’m really proud of,” he says with a smile.

At the end of 2020, Gryffin dropped the infectious dance-pop track Safe With Me, on which he teamed up with up-and-coming bedroompop musician Audrey Mika. The track features messages of love, safety and stability; themes that have proved wildly appealing against the backdrop of the pandemic.

“I first got put onto her [Audrey] by someone on my team,” he divulges.

“Andrew Jackson is one of the writers that was originally part of the track — he’s an amazing writer — so when their camp sent it over I was immediately interested. I loved the song but at the time it was quite different. I just saw so much potential with it, so I started working on it a lot and got it to a good place when the pandemic first hit.

HEADLINER USA

PRODUCER

The track quickly came together thereafter: “We linked up and did a couple of sessions in L.A. to go through it, make a few changes, and ensure that her artistry was really heard on the song. It was a really great experience working with her - she’s insanely talented, and we’ve also put out an acoustic version of Safe With Me which makes you even further appreciate how good her voice is. It’s on another level.

“I listened to some of Audrey’s tracks and just thought her voice was insane, so I sent it to her team on a whim and got feedback within an hour or two saying they loved it and want to be on the record. She did a one-take scratch demo with the beat and sent it over, and after that I just needed to get in the studio with her. The first time I heard her voice I knew she was perfect for the song.”

“With the dance production of the original, there’s so many different elements in there and it’s very hyped and energetic, but when it’s stripped back you can really hear the nice little intricacies of just how good her voice is.”

Whether it’s a beat, lyric, vocal topline or melody within the production, Gryffin highlights the importance of identifying something that feels special that you want to hear over and over again within a song.

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“Once you feel that connection, and get the feeling that it’s something special, then you just have to run with that instinct and start building around it,” he offers. “Focus on something that you feel is special and different, and that really resonates with you on an emotional level, and then when you find that spark, really try and build something around it. Every song’s journey is completely different; literally every song on that Gravity album even had a totally different creation process.”

While it hasn’t officially been announced yet, Gryffin has been busy working on his next album, so it’s yet to be seen if his next project will be as feature-heavy as the last. He excitedly tells me that he’s going to be releasing some singles throughout the first half of 2021, with plans to drop the big project during the second half of the year.

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Safe With Me

“I’m staying optimistic about 2021, and I’m starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel for the first time. I’m just waiting to see what happens because I don’t want to rush the process,” he teases. “There are some really cool artists that I’m excited about featuring and some awesome producer collabs; one I can mention is with British electronic duo Snakehips.

“I’m very excited to show people my new music, which I think is actually slightly different from Gravity in a way. But

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for me personally as an artist, it feels like a really healthy evolution of sound, and I’m super excited to show people where I’m going with it.”

GRYFFINOFFICIAL.COM

YOU AIN’T SEEN NOTHING YET merging.com/anubis

Merging Technologies SA, Le Verney 4, CH-1070, Puidoux, Switzerland T +41 21 946 0444 E anubis@merging.com W merging.com

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JH AUDIO LOLA Today, for the first time, I will be putting my full guitar rig not through a PA system, a pair of studio monitors, or guitar cab... I’ll be working my way through rock and roll riffs and reverbladen melodies in somewhat more of a closed-off environment – through a pair of JH Audio’s Lola in-ear monitors. Slash is a big fan - but can these IEMs really replicate the sonics, guts, and thrill of playing through a classic guitar cabinet?

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SPOTLIGHT

Lola is one of JH Audio’s more recent pieces, and was designed with guitarists in mind – founder, Jerry Harvey, actually worked quite closely with Guns ‘N Roses guitar hero, Slash, on putting this piece together – and if you can convince a guy who’s relied on gargantuan stacks of Marshalls for half a lifetime when touring the world that a pair of earphones would be a better option – well, you’ve got to be onto something.

I’ve played occasional shows with IEMs in – admittedly not this quality of earpiece, as technology has evolved enormously in this field since the mid-noughties, when I used to gig – but I never really got on with them as a guitarist/vocalist.

I’d wear one ear in - still a common thing to do with IEMs - which I think helped keep me in tune, but playing in a rock band, I found I missed the sound of the stage and the tone of the guitar unless I dropped at least one ear out; and that’s probably why today, so many guitar bands still opt to have their amps roaring and stage wedges pumping. Who doesn’t want volume, vibe and energy when they’re performing?

I’m not on stage today – only my own soap box – but I have decided to see what these Lolas can do, and I’m going to be putting my custom ‘70s Vintera Telecaster through its paces from clean tones to some

proper high gain stuff. I’m also ‘with band’ – I’ve got a great rhythm section recorded who will be joining me in my ears, and I’m raring to go.

Sat comfortably in my fancy studio chair (but with guitar strap attached, should I feel the need to launch into performer mode), this is the full chain: Tele into Vox head, DI out into Strymon Big Sky, stereo out of the Strymon into a Merging Anubis, then into my ears via one of the Anubis’ headphone amplifiers. The Anubis is, of course, a very high-end audio interface, and can do pretty much anything in terms of audio application – but the reason for using this unit today is its incredibly transparent, high quality headphone amplifiers. If you’ve been fortunate enough to visit JH Audio and listen to their products – which I have – then you’ll know that when demoing the piece for you, one of the team will likely hand you a hi-res audio player with a series of albums on in tandem with the IEMs so you can get as good a sound as possible. They don’t want you to listen to Spotify (thankfully!), put it that way. The signal from the Anubis is basically unbeatable, so we’re definitely going to get an accurate sonic representation here.

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reverbs are really something in the Lolas. After enjoying that experience for a while, going back and forth from cleans to crunch to heavier distortions, I bypass the reverb and start to play with the core tone of the Vox. I notice immediately that the action happens in the midrange with this piece, which makes full sense, as most guitars without middle aren’t going to be up to very much. I’m also noticing that as I dial in more bass into Lola via its 4-pin Moon Audio cable, it’s getting more exciting. There’s also a really interesting sensation when I turn down the treble on the Vox – initially to see how just low I can go, to be honest (and the answer is, very) but once it’s the whole way down, with the middle at around three o’clock and bass at five o’clock, and as I flick the pickup from neck to bridge, there is this sudden bitey thickness with a gutsy compressed sound that I instantly love. It’s like a fuzz but with more clarity – and I’ve never heard the Tele achieve this (probably because I would never ordinarily choose these settings).

The guitar is providing the bite, so I bring in the band in – they’re creating a 4/4 groove at 91BPM and begin playing along.

I start throwing some musical shapes via the crunch channel and without band for now, and the stereo width of the Strymon’s HEADLINERMAGAZINE.NET

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JH AUDIO LOLA

It Might Get Loud

“DUE TO ITS ARCHITECTURE AND SONIC ACCURACY, LOLA IS NOT ONLY A GREAT STAGE IEM, IT’S THE PERFECT TOOL TO TRACK AND SUBMIX GUITARS IN THE STUDIO...”

At this point, I genuinely find myself standing up playing.

Make of that what you will! There is a little extra sub on the kick and the bass guitar to add that vibe (perhaps something I’d ask for from my monitor engineer in the unlikely event I’ll ever have one of those), and what I notice very quickly is that this tone is cutting through the mix; I’m hearing the bass with perfect clarity locked in with the kick drum but the guitar remains right in my face. And again, it’s because the mids are working so well for me. I continue to make a number of small adjustments to the tone, and bring the Strymon in and out on occasion for a fantastically wide sound.

I realize about 15 minutes in that this actually feels like a band rehearsal – and I haven’t had one of those for a long time..!

An hour later, I’ve layered four different guitar parts over a chorus, tweaking the tone a little differently for each one.

I briefly switch to a pair of reference headphones to hear ‘the mix’ so to speak. The guitars are too loud (surprise, surprise!) but wow, they sound ballsy! Now, I’m not suggesting you should mix a multitrack on Lolas (though, never say never – I know a two-time Grammy-winning producer who finalized a mix on a plane using a custom set of JH Roxannes – true story) - but in terms of referencing tone, it’s a big fat yes. To confirm my findings, I lose the ears altogether and bring in my Genelec studio monitors with paired sub and listen back.

After mixing the levels for a few minutes – no EQ, just levels – I’m pretty astounded at what I’m listening to.

It’s the guitar sound that is absolutely banging, and I reckon it’s for a few reasons: first, I played these guitars loud, so was able to get right into it (and the playing seems better as a result). Second, I’ve never listened so intricately and up close and personal to a guitar tone, because normally I’m a meter from my monitors listening at a lowish SPL, or at a gig, you’re likely to be standing some distance from your cabinet nine times out of 10; here, I couldn’t be more in the zone with the instrument, and the Lola’s universal fit doesn’t HEADLINER USA

feel a million miles away from a custom. And third, I’m able to take full control of the amp’s tone because of Lola’s hybrid design, extraordinary drivers and the +15dB of additional bass.

I genuinely haven’t heard my guitar sound like this before, and as a result, I’m finding it more inspiring – and fun - to play.

As many producers will tell you, working from a mono speaker during a mix can be a great way to balance things out, and find out what’s popping and what’s not - and what I’m thinking after what is now half a day wearing Lola in my ears is that due to its architecture and sonic accuracy, it’s not only a great piece to wear on stage for all the reasons mentioned above, but it could be the perfect tool to not only track in the studio rather than traditional headphones, but also to balance or even sub-mix your guitars. So many times, after selecting my tone via my Vox, I’ll add a little high mid to a crunchy guitar, or a couple of dB around 14kHz on a clean guitar to make sure the reverb’s cutting through - and I’m not saying using Lola has eliminated the need for that process completely, but what is crystal clear to me is that Lola inspired not only my playing, but improved the source sound dramatically at tracking stage, which takes so much stress out of the production process.

Now all I have to do is work out how to get ‘house set’ removed from this rather delightful metal JH casing that Lola arrived in, so I can plead total ignorance when the JH guys ask me to send their product back. Now, where’s that chisel?

JHAUDIO.COM

Using amp modellers or IRs? Then check out the revolutionary new Celestion F12-X200. It’s the first and only guitar speaker to combine the Full Range performance your modelling amp requires with the Live Response you need to feel connected to the music. Find out more at celestion.com

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UNIVERSAL AUDIO

UAFX Range

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SPOTLIGHT

Universal Audio has unveiled its first line of effects pedals, the UAFX range, featuring sonically authentic emulations of classic reverb, delay and modulation circuits.

dry-through, stereo/dual mono operation, true bypass with silent switching, additional downloadable effects from the UAD algorithm team, and more.

The results of an exhaustive multiyear R&D effort, UAFX Golden Reverberator, Starlight Echo Station and Astra Modulation Machine bring dual-processor architecture to the effects pedal market, delivering three distinct vintage sounds per pedal, complete with UA analog design and build quality.

It’s worth noting that switchable true/ buffered bypass will be available via UAFX Control software in Spring 2021.

Hallmark UAFX features include intuitive preset/live modes, analog

From the dense sound of ‘50s studio plates, to tube-driven spring reverb of classic ‘60s guitar amps and endless algorithmic wonder of vintage digital reverbs, Golden Reverberator packs decades of iconic reverb sounds into a single, beautifully-crafted stompbox.

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Spring 65, Plate 140, and Hall 224 effects, each with available modulation, offer a palette of vintage reverb textures.

Borrowing from UA’s expertise in analog emulation, the manufacturer says the Starlight Echo Station offers “the finest classic delay effects ever captured in a stompbox”.

Featuring three delay types — Tape EP-III, Analogue DMM, and Precision — capturing iconic hardware of the past 60 years, Starlight offers additional settings for tape wear, modulation, and preamp colour for endless inspiring tones.

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UNIVERSAL AUDIO

HEADLINER USA

UAFX Range

SPOTLIGHT

Astra Modulation Machine is a complete sonic workstation. From spacey studio flanger tones of the ‘70s, to gritty bucket-brigade chorus, and luscious opto tube tremolo, Astra puts three perfectlyemulated modulation sounds at a user’s feet.

Chorus Brigade, Flanger DBLR, and Trem 65 settings — with secondary modes for Vibrato, Doubling, and more — combine for an abundance of tasteful tweaking.

Key features across the range include “landmark” reverb, delay, and modulation pedals featuring dual-processor UAFX engine, simple live and preset modes for instant recall of user’s favorite sounds, additional downloadable effects by the UAD algorithm team, and true or buffered bypass with trails (Golden, Starlight), plus silent switching.

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The UAFX pedals will be available in Spring 2021 with an estimated street price of $399 / £290 each.

UAUDIO.COM

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Energy Panner

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SOUND PARTICLES 3D audio software company Sound Particles is introducing a different approach to panning with the release of a new plugin – the Energy Panner.

The plugin uses the intensity of a sound to control its movement automatically, providing sound professionals with a tool that combines dynamics with

spatial definition to modify and enhance mix elements, sound effects and much more.

From traditional stereo to ambisonics, from 5.1 to binaural, the plugin enables artists to add automatic movement to their content without much effort or manual automation.

“Most people associate Sound Particles software with audio post production, but we’ve wanted to create music tools for some time now,” explains Nuno Fonseca, founder and CEO of Sound Particles.

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Energy Panner

“Space is still one dimension that is not fully explored by musicians, and we hope that Energy Panner can help everyone (both music and audio post professionals) to make things more interesting in this field. And this is only the first step on a very interesting roadmap that we have set in this area.”

A randomization option outputs new results each time it is clicked, and using absolute control, Energy Panner brings users all the options they need to have complete control over how the sounds are moving in a panoramic field.

Meanwhile, attack and release timings options control how fast users want that movement to happen.

Key features include stereo, surround, ambisonics, immersive and binaural outputs, while dynamic movement lets the user easily set how the sounds move – from custom points – between speaker positions or to specific directions.

Energy Panner is available now through the Sound Particles store and supports AAX (native), VST, VST3, AU and AUv3.

Sidechain allows users to use external signals to control the effect of the plugin instead of using the track’s sound, while the visualization dome option tracks every movement the sounds are making through the main component of the plugin’s UI.

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Analog Effects Collection

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PreSonus has released five retroinspired effects with the Analog Effects Collection, comprising Analog Delay, Analog Chorus, Red Light Distortion, Rotor and Tricomp.

Formerly only available in Studio One Professional and Artist, these plugins are now available via

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PreSonus Hub in VST3, AU, and AAX format.

Analog Delay is a classic emulation plugin of an analog BBD delay, known for its ability to create a warm delay sound that can range from subtle modulation, to spiralling down a psychedelic rabbit hole. It also features a State-

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Space Modeled Drive control to add analog grit to your sound for even more tonal sculpting.

Analog Chorus is a one- to three-voice chorus processor with optional LFO delay-time modulation and stereo-width control. It offers a wide range of effects, from subtle to extreme,

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REVEAL with its roots in ‘70s-era analog guitar pedals and studio effects processors.

horns and a bass woofer that excels at adding a sense of motion and unique tonal character.

The Red Light Distortion is an analog-distortion emulator with six selectable distortion models plus two EQ controls, a Mix control, and independent Drive and Distortion controls to let you to design a unique, signature distortion.

Each speaker’s rotation can be set to a range of speeds, with realistic braking and acceleration effects when changing speeds.

State-Space Modeling technology provides authentic tube emulation for extra warmth and character. and music engineering.

Rotor is a rotary-speaker emulation plugin that simulates the sound of a tube-powered amplifier with independently rotating high-mid

and ratio settings, plus a relative control for the low and high bands and switchable Attack and Release controls to finalize a mix or add punch to frequency-rich signals.

The secret weapon for Studio One mix engineers the world over, Tricomp also features State-Space Modeled Saturation control to add analog grit to your sound for even more tonal sculpting.

Rounding out the collection is Tricomp, a three-band compressor plug-in with automatic threshold

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PRESONUS

Analog Effects Collection

The Analog Effects Collection joins the growing complement of PreSonus signature plugins including Ampire, Fat Channel XT, Channel Strip Collection and VU Meter.

Analog Delay, Analog Chorus, Red Light Distortion, Rotor and Tricomp are available for purchase individually on the PreSonus Shop for $19.95 each, or in a cost-saving, five plugin collection bundle for $79.95.

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PreSonus Sphere members and Studio One 5 Professional users will receive a complimentary license for each plugin in VST3/AU/AAX formats.

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WAVES

NX Ocean Way Nashville

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WAVES Waves has released the Nx Ocean Way Nashville plugin, which is optimized to replicate the acoustics and monitoring system of the Ocean Way Nashville control rooms over any pair of studio headphones – allowing users to create better mixes, anywhere, anytime.

Ocean Way Nashville’s studio control rooms are regarded as the pinnacle of acoustic design and studio monitoring – an audiophile sound engineer’s dream, if you will. Designed from the ground up by Ocean Way founder Allen Sides, the studios were painstakingly planned and built to meet his vision of the ultimate recording, mixing and monitoring environment.

Supervised and fine-tuned by Sides himself, the Nx Ocean Way plugin recreates the studio’s acoustics and famed HR1/HR5 monitors, in immersive spatial audio, over any headphones.

anytime, using their favorite reference headphones. According to Waves, mixes monitored on headphones through the Nx Ocean Way Nashville plugin are more likely to translate accurately to multiple audio systems and platforms – without the issues that often plague mixes created on headphones.

The plugin is designed to deliver faithful representations of the control room’s finely tuned acoustics, as experienced through the Allen Sides-designed Ocean Way Audio HR1 and HR5 farfield and near-field monitors.

With Nx Ocean Way Nashville, users can create better mixes, anywhere, HEADLINERMAGAZINE.NET

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NX Ocean Way Nashville

With Nx Ocean Way Nashville inserted on the master bus of a session, the user has the ultimate acoustic reference environment over any headphone model, allowing them to better judge mix depth, panning, reverb amount, low-end response and more – all the aspects of a mix that are normally so difficult to assess on headphones.

Nx Ocean Way Nashville is powered

by Waves’ Nx technology for immersive spatial audio. Waves’ Nx uses channel crosstalk, interaural delays (ITD), filters (ILD), early reflections and head motion tracking to replicate the immersive experience of hearing audio in the real world.

All these are coupled with precision measurements of the acoustic

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response at the original Ocean Way control rooms to deliver a faithful three-dimensional ‘out-ofhead’ representation of the original experience.

Developed by Waves Audio in collaboration with Ocean Way Nashville Studios at Belmont University and Ocean Way Audio, Nx Ocean Way Nashville represents a technological breakthrough in accurate 3D spatial audio modeling of a real acoustic environment.

Importantly, Nx Ocean Way Nashville supports head tracking – via a webcam or the dedicated Waves Nx Head Tracker Bluetooth device – for enhanced realism of the immersive 3D effect.

“With Ocean Way, it was always about the sound,” comments Sides.

“In all the studios we built over the years, the single most important thing was the monitor systems. What this plugin gives you is the space to create a better mix. You can put on a set of headphones, and it sounds like you’re sitting in this amazing control room, with an amazing set of speakers in front of you.

“This is a phenomenally accurate reproduction of what we created at Ocean Way Nashville – a remarkable replication of what it sounds like to sit in my studio control room. I think it’s a valuable asset to anyone trying to define what a truly great mix is. It simply makes the mixing job easier.”

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WHAT’S THE VERDICT? Young Guru, mixing engineer and producer for Jay Z, Alicia Keys, Beyoncé and Meek Mill: “The Ocean Way Nashville plugin sounds incredible.

The necessity of checking a mix in headphones has become increasingly important – so the ability to have access to world-class rooms over headphones is groundbreaking.”

Jacquire King, producer and mixer for Kings of Leon, James Bay, Tom Waits and Niall Horan: “The Waves Nx Ocean Way system is a real asset for getting the feel of a speaker environment while working in a headphone-only situation. I really find it helpful when working remotely outside my studio.”

Lu Diaz, mixing engineer and producer for DJ Khaled, Pitbull, Beyoncé and Jay Z:

“I find the Nx Ocean Way plugin to be a wonderful addition to my arsenal of mixing reference tools, for exactly this purpose. The level of accurate threedimensional detail and nuance I can hear with it, on my usual pair of mixing headphones, is astonishing.”

Richard Chycki, guitarist and engineer with credits including Dream Theater, Aerosmith and Rush: “I’ve wanted a plugin that emulates my favorite mix environments via headphones for some time. Nx Ocean Way Nashville is a great recreation of the experience of sitting in the sweet spot at that venerable facility. And with the head tracking, head movements are translated into an even more realistic listening experience.”

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“I always listen to my mixes on headphones before I finish a mix. Waves and Ocean Way just took that to another dimension. Nx Ocean Way Nashville gives me another perspective on my mixes and a super-solid reference on my headphones.”

Alan Meyerson, scoring and mixing engineer for Dunkirk, Wonder Woman, Jumanji and Thor: Ragnarok: “I mix film scores that are rich with complex layers of instrumentation, so translation is everything: the details of the mix must translate perfectly to other systems.

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TV & FILM

Recording The Queen’s Gambit

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Who could have predicted that a TV show focusing on a woman playing chess for seven episodes would go on to become Netflix’s most-watched scripted miniseries, whilst single handedly rekindling worldwide interest in the board game?

The Queen’s Gambit surprised us all, serving up an unexpectedly riveting portrayal of the life of Beth Harmon, an orphaned chess prodigy on her rise to the top of the chess world while struggling with drug and alcohol dependency.

The show has been praised for its rich cinematography, fabulous costumes, top-class acting and excellent soundtrack – but let’s not forget about the all important sound, which was mostly captured on set thanks to Berlinbased sound mixer, Roland Winke, and his arsenal of Lectrosonics gear.

Prior to this, he has worked on 2016’s A Hologram for the King starring Tom Hanks, the 2011 spy thriller Hanna with Cate Blanchett and Saoirse Ronan, the sci-fi epic Cloud Atlas, and even the 2004 historical drama Downfall, which

spawned the well-known ‘Hitler Reacts’ parodies on YouTube.

When it came to The Queen’s Gambit, even Winke admits that he had his doubts about how gripping a show could be focusing so closely on chess games: “Six, seven hours about chess?” he laughs. “But then if you read the script, there’s much more to it. It’s about the story of the people behind the chess board.”

To capture the globe-trotting matches in breathtaking venues, Winke relied on his Lectrosonics Digital Hybrid Wireless rig, comprised of SMB and SMDB transmitters and HMa plugon transmitters for boom mics, plus UCR411a receivers and a Venue2 modular field receiver.

“I like to capture as much sound as I can from as many places as I can,” he says. “The chess clock, the pieces on the board, the ambience of the room, the sound of Beth’s shoes as she walks into a hotel or chess match for the first time. To make the viewing experience immersive, we wanted to record as much of this on set as possible as the basis for the post production.”

For this, he used a Decca tree miking technique with three omnidirectional mics and the HMa transmitters.

“This show was one of the first where I used the Decca tree system for room ambience,” he shares. “I tried to get as much sound as possible from the Decca tree for a scene where some children were in the house, and we have a lot of room ambience.”

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Recording The Queen’s Gambit

“THE FIRST THING I NOTICED WAS THAT LECTROSONICS WAS MUCH SIMPLER TO USE. THE SOUND WAS MUCH CLEARER, AND IT WAS NO PROBLEM TO HAVE 100 FEET OR MORE BETWEEN THE ACTOR AND THE AUDIO CART.”

Winke says that the actors like working with Lectrosonics too, particularly the compact SMB and SSM transmitters: “They are so small and light, you go in in the morning, and bam!

Then maybe you’ll change the battery after five hours. One of the important things is in between takes when they go to the green room or something like that, they can put the transmitter in sleep mode, and they can do what they want. They can speak, and nobody can hear it, then when they come back to set, they take it off sleep mode. That’s perfect.”

Recording as much sound on set as possible is a key method of Winke’s.

“Maybe that’s my philosophy,” he smiles. “I’m a sound-catcher – the dialogue is the main thing. You can use Lectrosonics to capture the sound of the chess clock by having it very close. The main thing is to record the sound on location.”

Winke’s initial move to Lectrosonics was initially driven by a familiar problem: shrinking frequency spectrum.

“About 10 years ago, we started having the same problem in Europe HEADLINER USA

that the U.S. has had over the past couple of years,” he explains.

use two transmitters at different gain levels.”

“Cell phone carriers started occupying a lot of the upper UHF spectrum we were accustomed to using. So, I started looking for a new system, and I wanted the best. It had to be small, the audio quality had to be as good as using a cable, and it had to be able to run on batteries so I could take it anywhere. I talked to folks at the German company Ambient Recording, GmbH, which makes the Lockit sync boxes for time code.

There are a lot of Lectrosonics users on their staff, and they provided some of my first recommendations.”

On The Queen’s Gambit, Lectrosonics’ channel isolation and tracking filters allowed Winke to set up discrete systems for actors’ dialog and ambient sounds:

Winke, who was wrapping Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance at the time, noticed an immediate improvement, even using the Lectrosonics offerings of a decade ago.

In spite of seldom changing frequencies, Winke reports almost never hearing any sort of interference.

“The first thing I noticed was that Lectrosonics was much simpler to use. The sound was much clearer, and it was no problem to have 100 feet or more between the actor and the audio cart. The headroom was also higher than anything I’d ever used before, allowing me to capture actors who could be both very loud and very quiet, without having to

“The actors have lav mics and either SMB or SMDB transmitters, received by my Venue system. In addition to the Decca trees, there were always two or three booms, fitted with Sennheiser MKH mics. All these mics used the HMa, paired with the UCR411a. There was absolutely no overlap or crosstalk between the two systems.”

“I often settle on frequency blocks 24, 25 and 26, which are equivalent to European TV channels and on the Lectrosonics schedule,” he says. “It is very rare that I have to change a transmitter’s settings; for 10 years, I basically show up at the location and it works. I should knock on wood!”

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Recording The Queen’s Gambit

Consistency of performance is ultimately what has kept Winke with Lectrosonics: “When you’re dealing with a lot of actors, a lot of directors, and a lot of improvisation, you need a system that just works. I’m not one of those people who buys new equipment every two years just to have the latest technology. My purchases are driven by real production needs to do things better, and that is what Lectrosonics helps me do. I say, never change a system that works!”

One scene that Winke is particularly proud of takes place at an orphanage, where children are watching a film on a projector: “We captured this noise from the projector, which was this old, reeling sound that they could work with in post production. That is one of my basic things: to capture as much sound as possible to help post production, and the editors.”

Another standout scene for Winke is when he captured the on-set audio of children singing: “The idea was to record singing children and to use this audio for a flashback – lots of the kids were German HEADLINER USA

and they worked with a dialogue coach to learn English songs but with American pronunciation. We shot it live and I recorded it all, so when Beth comes back to the orphanage years later as a young woman, you hear the music. It sounds like it is everywhere in the room, and that’s fantastic.”

Was Winke one of the 62 million households that tuned in during the show’s first 28 days of release? Absolutely.

“It was fantastic; it’s so interesting! You want to see the next part. I told some friends of mine about the show, and three days later one of them told me he had watched the whole thing already! He was watching it every night until 2am. It’s different because it’s not an action show, there’s no fighting, no guns – it’s only a story, and it’s fantastic.”

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PATRICK KIRST

Many Small Steps To Hollywood

Many Small Steps To Hollywood

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Netflix’s The Kissing Booth is one of those films with a strong rewatch factor — in fact, the streaming titan reported it has one of the highest rates for being streamed a second time that they’ve ever seen. The teenflick got a sequel, The Kissing Booth 2, which achieved similar success.

A third film has been confirmed. However, when films see this kind of success, the original score composers are often the unsung heroes of the project. Unless you’re a John Williams or a Hans Zimmer, the music is often not mentioned as much as it deserves to be. Headliner seeks to change that by speaking to The Kissing Booth’s composer, German-born Patrick Kirst.

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PATRICK KIRST

COMPOSER

“With Ennio Morricone gone, we’ve lost one of the absolute greats,” Kirst says. Indeed, the passing of Morricone last year is undoubtedly the loss of one of the most influential and prolific composers ever seen.

“I would say he’s easily in the top three for me. What he’s brought to cinema is ingenious. His sensibilities are so modern, yet still so emotional. He gets straight to our hearts but in such an original and modern way. Completely timeless.”

Kirst’s break came in the form of joining the music team for topgrossing films such as The Proposal (Sandra Bullock and Ryan Reynolds), The Ugly Truth (Katherine Heigl and Gerard Butler), Sex and the City: The Movie, and Mr. Magorium’s Wonder Emporium (Dustin Hoffman and Natalie Portman). But his desire to write music for Hollywood came much earlier while at school in Germany, growing up in the ‘golden era’ of film. In particular, the many Steven Spielberg/John Williams collaborations sparking his dreams, of course meaning titles such as E.T, Jurassic Park, and Raiders of the Lost Ark.

“If you try to copy John Williams, you will probably fail,” Kirst says. “He is on his own planet. It feels like we live on Earth, and John Williams lives, well, I don’t know where! We can’t reach him, so why even try. I think we just have to follow our own path and our own voice. There’s many examples of these game changers, like what Bernard Herrmann did for the Hitchcock films, Jerry Goldsmith on Alien, Chinatown and those films. They have also revolutionized film music as we know it today. And then Hans Zimmer comes along in the ‘80s and does it all over again; perhaps more minimalistic and simplistic but with a lot of sophistication and sound design with the modern synthesizer technologies.

It’s really helped shape this landscape as we know it today.”

Being presented with a brief history of contemporary film music by Kirst really shows how well-versed he is in his industry, and one can imagine his excitement at a young age as he discovered John Williams. Indeed, he was writing incidental music for the theater plays at his school by the age of 15.

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Then, as an adult, Kirst took what could almost now be referred to as the ‘old-school’ approach — moving to California to pursue both his studies and his dream. With the dawn of the internet, we now see so many film composers in different parts of the world. Kirst, however, knew he specifically wanted success in Hollywood, and to be networking with the creatives who lived there. “I’ve always believed in the philosophy of taking lots of small steps over time to reach my goals,” he adds. “I never expected to be famous overnight.”

As the conversation inevitably turns to the huge success of Netflix’s The Kissing Booth and its sequel, Kirst says “based on the views and the clicks so far, I’m hopeful that this sequel will be as popular as the first film. I’m sure the fans will love it. It’s really cool to have been the composer for one of the most successful Netflix originals ever.”

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“OF COURSE, THERE ARE QUIRKIER MOMENTS WHICH CALL FOR AN INSTRUMENT LIKE A GUITAR. BUT IF IT’S A TRUE EMOTIONAL MOMENT, WE BOTH THOUGHT ‘WHY NOT?’ WHEN IT CAME TO USING A FULL ORCHESTRA ON THIS MOVIE.”

The first film follows Elle, a quirky, lateblooming teenager whose budding romance with high school senior and bad boy Noah (Elordi) puts her lifelong friendship with Noah’s younger brother Lee (Courtney) in jeopardy. The sequel sees these characters navigating Harvard and their high school senior years.

“Vince (Marcello, director) comes from musical theater,” Kirst says. “So he sees a conversation as a musical thing, with all the beats and melodies and the voice. So we were approaching these scenes maybe differently than other romantic comedies. Vince won’t shy away from emotion. He’s after an honesty that does lend itself to a symphonic orchestra. Of course, there are the quirkier moments which call for an instrument like a guitar. But if it’s a true emotional moment, we both thought ‘why not?’ when it came to using a full orchestra on this movie. He was more than happy for me to add a big orchestral flourish on a romantic scene, which was great.”

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It’s wonderful to hear that Kirst was able to work with a full orchestra of musicians for the film. I enquire as to whether he uses any orchestral software, such as Spitfire Audio for his demos beforehand.

“I do use Spitfire,” he says. “Strings, woodwinds, I always use Spitfire. It was a wonderful experience to record the orchestral score in Sofia, Bulgaria, but Spitfire is of course so useful at the initial start of the process. I’ll often sit there with my assistant, finessing these controller messages, modulation expressions, tweaking every note, chord and velocity. This is what Spitfire offers.

“For my soundcard, I’ve gone for a German company: the RME UFX. It’s a little beast! The routing capabilities are quite sensational. I’ve used RME for so, so long now. I’ve tried many soundcards, but I can make do with my Mac and my RME — it works perfectly, as I’m not working on Star Wars or anything like that where I need the full orchestra all of the time. My plugins are

the usual suspects — all the Soundtoys stuff, I’m a big FabFilter guy, which I really love. I love the UAD plugins.

A lot of Kontakt libraries. Arturia has a beautiful filter suite, which is really creative. Their synth collection is great and made it into some of The Kissing Booth. When you embed that into guitars and organic sounds, it sounds great. Zebra synths are great also!”

Kirst’s combination of old Moog synthesizers and symphony orchestras with these digital products is one of the things that make him so adept in his field — a contemporary composer who draws on the warm, fuzzy glow of the bygone, golden era of Hollywood while staying remarkably current. Be sure to check out his music and, assuming you have a Netflix account, you know what to do.

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Paving The Way: iZotope

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PAVING THE WAY: IZOTOPE

JONATHAN BAILEY Audio technology company iZotope has been creating groundbreaking software and plugins for mixing, mastering, restoration and more for the last two decades. Headliner recently caught up with the Cambridge, Massachusetts-based firm’s Chief Technology Officer, Jonathan Bailey to find out how they’ve been coping through the pandemic, how they set themselves apart from the competition, and what to expect next from the world of music tech.

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BEHIND THE BRAND

Technologist, musician and iZotope CTO Jonathan Bailey joins Headliner on a Zoom call from “slightly chilly Brooklyn” at the start of January as he approaches his 10-year anniversary at the company.

Like most businesses, iZotope has been working on a strictly remote basis throughout the pandemic, something that’s not too unfamiliar for Bailey most of his tenure at the company has seen him working in this way. That being said, his team have had to make some adjustments over the past eight or nine months: “I actually joined when the company was much smaller, when we opened a little development office in New York City,” Bailey begins. “We’ve continued to grow and have mostly concentrated that growth in the Boston area.” iZotope was founded in 2001, so it was already around 10 years old when Bailey joined. With product development, research and product management under his purview at the company, he is extremely well versed in creating unique offerings for its customers, the markets it pursues, along with the features and functionality that go into each carefully curated iZotope product.

“We feel that we differentiate ourselves by the strength of the core technology that we deliver on the products; essentially what they can do and what the algorithms are,” he says. “And so in order to feed that innovation engine, we have a dedicated advanced research team at the company.”

It was only after Bailey completed his degree at Berklee College of Music in his late 20s when he started to understand how to build the types of products that iZotope prides itself on today: “I had some experience at smaller companies prior to joining iZotope which was only about 25 people when I arrived, and we’re just shy of 200 now, so it’s grown a tremendous amount since I’ve been with the business.”

As Bailey puts it, the current pandemic has been a “tale of two different cities”. For some businesses it has been catastrophic, while others have not only weathered the storm but thrived as a result. As a music technology provider, iZotope has been fortunate enough to fall into the latter category, tracking anonymous analytics and product development roadmaps to very clearly see where usage of its products spike when lockdowns are enforced.

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The biggest change for iZotope throughout this period has in fact been a psychological one: “From an economic standpoint, we didn’t really do much to change our plans; we continued on the path that we’re on,” shares Bailey. “The main change for the team was to learn how to work differently, especially for those having to juggle parenting. So creating a little bit of space for folks to navigate life quickly became our top priority as an executive team and amongst the peer group - trying some creative ways to be flexible and accommodating.” iZotope’s R&D team consists of 4045 engineers covering a range of disciplines, from software engineering to manual and automated testing.

The teams are organized into different product lines, with one focused on iZotope’s music production-oriented products like Ozone, Neutron and VocalSynth.

The usage of RX — perhaps the company’s most versatile, widely used product — on the other hand is evenly split between music and other audio applications such as post production for film and TV.

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Paving The Way: iZotope

SUITE TOOTH Representing iZotope’s core business, and what is referred to internally as the “Suites” business, Bailey proceeds to give me a rundown of these flagship products’ essential features: “Ozone is primarily a mastering plugin and mastering product, and we call its main interface ‘the mothership’ because it has a whole bunch of capabilities,” explains Bailey. “There’s dynamics processing, EQ, a harmonic exciter, and other spectral processing within it, as well as some connective tissue capabilities that allow it to talk to some of our other products.

“The primary use case for Ozone is mastering however, and it really represents the cornerstone of the company. The very first product that iZotope made was something called Vinyl - essentially a vinyl sound filter emulator product that was released in 2001.

We actually released Vinyl again in 2020 after rescanning it, fixing the bugs and making some extra touches, but it was soon after the original release of Vinyl that Ozone arrived on the scene, enabling people to do mastering themselves.”

So if Ozone in music production is your master bus plugin, then Neutron is your channel strip or mix bus plugin. Interestingly, the evolution from its predecessor Alloy into the Neutron we see today marks iZotope’s first foray into using machine learning in its product line: “It was the first product that we shipped a neural network in, with the ability to label the incoming audio signal by its instrument type and use that to suggest presets or configuration settings for all of the processors based on the canon of mixing pedagogy,” Bailey adds. “That’s a capability called the Track Assistant, and we think it really does signal a pretty fundamental shift for our industry and what we thought was capable in the arena of signal processing.

“We still invest a lot as a company in what I call traditional DSP, but neural networks represent an ability to be able to work with varied and unique media content. We’ve put a lot of effort into exploring what we can HEADLINER USA

do with that, and we’re excited about what we’ve discovered.”

Then there is RX, a utility knife for audio restoration, repair, and overall editing capabilities. It’s sweet spot lies in its ability to remove unwanted noise within an audio signal, whether that be in the form of an electrical hum from a noisy circuit, wind or background noise from location recording, or simply a record with too much reverb.

“RX allows you to extract the most important signal from a recording and use that in some other context,” says Bailey. “For example in one of the recent RX releases, we included a capability that allows you to unmix a four-part musical mixture, so if you wanted to separate the vocal or drum sound from a musical recording, the Music Rebalance feature allows you to do that.”

Meanwhile, iZotope also launched its first consumer electronics hardware product around three years ago in the form of an all-in-one device called the Spire Studio, a product aimed at musicians who have an appetite for making high quality recordings of their performances, but aren’t necessarily familiar with how to use digital audio workstations.

Bailey says it’s within this part of the business where iZotope is targeting “pure musicians”: “A lot of the same powerful technology that underpins our desktop products actually shows up in that product line, which is hardware mobile application,” he reveals.

“There’s a cloud back end as well that we’ve been working on for the past couple of years, which does some of the magic behind the scenes.

“When we recently focused on usage analytics, a lot of the use cases and new functionality in the application were leaning more towards vocal production and top lining within hip-hop and rap. That’s an area where we’ve seen the app start to pop, because we’ve put some intention behind that, although over the coming months we’ll be redirecting our development efforts at other types of instrumentation and musical use cases for Spire.”

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Paving The Way: iZotope

SHARE AND SHARE ALIKE

The research team is perhaps one of the more unique things about how iZotope is organized, as it’s quite unusual for a company of only 200 people to have such an advanced group of minds within it.

The team currently consists of six people, all of whom have PhDs, and who have a 50% allocation of their time to work on what Bailey calls “autonomous self directed research, which is a fancy way of saying whatever they want they’re way smarter than me! They are responsible for creating the enabling technology that actually gets fed into our products.”

One of iZotope’s core values is supporting education and learning, something that struck Bailey the most when he joined the company 10 years ago: “I’ve been in other environments where people are a little bit more protective around what they know, and are less likely to share that knowledge,” he remarks. “That is not iZotope at all; we uphold a very open teaching and sharing culture.”

For example, iZotope has released guides for mastering or audio restoration and repair, containing examples that use its products. Yet as Bailey explains, these techniques HEADLINER USA

are extensible to and can be used in the exact same way as any other product: “Education and teaching is a value that cuts right through to the DNA of the company, and really even comes from my boss, the co-founder and CEO Mark Ethier,” Bailey adds. “It’s very much his personality, and we see that reflected throughout the company both internally and also in how we market ourselves and our products.”

When it comes to present and future trends within music technology, Bailey says it seems inevitable that the industry needs to transition from becoming less reliant on offline desktop computers to creating more capabilities around the cloud and more mobile ways of working - a transformation that most other industries experienced around a decade ago.

“Our goal as a company is to enable people to be in a creative headspace, and to minimize the amount of time they’re spending focusing on technical work to allow them to focus on the creative side,” says Bailey. “That’s part of a macro trend that we’re seeing in audio and music production.

“I’ll sometimes say to my team to inspire them a little bit, ‘we’re trying to make these super exciting innovative bits of gear that others will want to emulate 50 years from now,’ so that’s how we approach things from a product design philosophy perspective.

The other thing iZotope is very much interested in doing is solving problems that once seemed unsolvable: “We invest a lot in thinking about design and visualization, and how users can get relevant information around the work that they’re doing with the right level of expressive control over it. We take as much inspiration from things like the world of video games and other software applications as we do from anything that’s happening in music tech.

“I think I speak for the rest of my team when I say how honored and blessed we feel to be able to work in a space that we all care so much about, and that we’re so passionate about.”

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Composing Gemstones

Composing Gemstones

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Could anything be better preparation for a global pandemic that puts society on hold than the profession of film composing? There are many horror stories, perhaps the most famous of which being James Cameron’s Aliens in 1986, where several filming delays led to composer James Horner having to compose and record cues for the film overnight with the film’s theatrical release just weeks away. Headliner got chatting with composer Joseph Stephens, who has scored HBO’s The Righteous Gemstones and Mindy Kaling’s Never Have I Ever, to see if the relentless life of a film scorer might serve as emotional preparation for being placed in quarantine.

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“I’ve definitely been in situations where I’ve had to work all night, or suddenly make last-minute changes in the wee hours,” Stephens says.

“Especially when projects pile up on top of each other. I don’t actually mind those situations that much, I kind of enjoy the stress of it! I feel like I do well under that pressure, at least in my mind. Sometimes I triple up on jobs, and when the deadlines overlap, things can get a bit hairy.”

pen a country-western style theme song for the series. “I work with these guys a lot, so I knew what I was in for in terms of the score side of it,” he says. “But at first, the song was just referenced as being in the backstory of the show. So we didn’t even know if we were going to hear

You might think Stephens would much prefer a smoother process, considering his website bio mentions his love of tending to his hot pepper garden at his home.

“That’s very relaxing,” he says. “If I’m in a meeting on the phone, I’ll often be out there pulling weeds and doing the jobs that need doing out there. It’s raining right now, otherwise, I’d probably be gardening right now!”

Stephens entered the world of film “through a band I was in (named Pyramid) that had connections to some film school buddies — we made a film together around 2005.

The director wanted our band to do the music. That certainly wasn’t a paid job, but it got our feet into the door. The filmmakers then brought me along for a lot of other projects, which led to more contacts and more work. I’m just glad I stayed in touch with talented people like Danny McBride (Pineapple Express, This Is The End). I didn’t come from a classical background or anything like that, I just played in bands.”

Stephens’ music on one particular show has become very popular indeed, on HBO’s The Righteous Gemstones, which his friend Danny McBride is the creator and star of.

Stephens was not only asked to write the original score, but also to

the song. But as we were writing, it became a reality, and Danny tasked me with coming up with this thing.

It was daunting at first, knowing that kids were going to sing it and that it needed to sound vintage and sixties!”

Stephens’ efforts clearly paid off, with a resulting campaign from fans of the show to get the song onto Spotify so they could listen to the song, Misbehavin’, in their spare time. “Once that episode aired, there was definitely a swell online around it, it went semi-viral. Me, Danny (McBride) and other people around the show would get loads of emails about it. So we were super excited to get it out there and we did quickly get a digital release organised. That was very exciting for us, to see the song catch on in the way we hoped it would.”

Stephens also recently worked on Never Have I Ever, created by Mindy Kaling and Lang Fisher for Netflix.

He’s not really putting a foot wrong, getting commissions from both HBO and arguably the biggest name in streaming. The show explores the

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complicated life of a first-generation Indian American teenage girl, inspired by Kaling’s own childhood.

“The show was really breezy, one of the easiest ones I’ve done,” Stephens says. “They basically let me do whatever I wanted to do! It certainly isn’t racy or dark, like some of the projects I’ve worked on. It needed to have a lot of energy, so I made a bunch of fun, electronic music.”

With the fast-paced nature of his work, Stephens is wary to keep a healthy ratio between digital and analogue gear in his studio so he can be flexible in his work, despite being a confessed analogue lover. So with that in mind, enter orchestral sample library Spitfire Audio: “I use their London Contemporary Orchestra stuff a lot,” he says. “And then all their standard stuff like the Albion Orchestra — I switch back and forth with it to find what feels right on a project. If I’m doing anything orchestral or needing big, cinematic drums, I’ll probably be using Spitfire.

“I use Omnisphere a lot for software synths, and my monitor speakers are a pair of Focals. My go-to synths are a lot of the classics like the Prophet and the Oberheim. I just got a Moog 32 last week. I have the Junos, Rolands, Korgs, you name it.

It’s interesting because a lot of the software synths like Arturia do sound great, but then I’ll hear the presets and sounds on other people’s tracks and then want to avoid it! I think they are great to the kind of held pad sounds, but I’ll invariably add hardware synths, or I have a tonne of guitar pedals too so I’ll play some guitar in, just so it isn’t all straight out the box. But sometimes with deadlines, it’s hard to not go there.

So quarantine has been a good opportunity to explore my synthesizer setups.”

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Composing Gemstones

“I’ve definitely been in situations where I’ve had to work all night, or suddenly make last-minute changes in the wee hours. I kind of enjoy the stress of it!”

It’s a good thing Stephens does enjoy a crunch deadline period, as we end with discussing a look at the post-lockdown period of his work.

the end of 2019, but then the virus hit and everything got turned upside down. So it looks like it’s all coming back at once!”

“I’m definitely going to have a stack of deadlines, when projects that were on hold kick up again.

Everything had actually been set up in a nice, staggered way for me at

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LAPERCUSSION RENTALS

BEHIND THE BRAND

L.A. Percussion Rentals is the best kept secret in Hollywood. Serving the L.A. area and beyond, husband and wife team Abby and Dan Savell have been supplying the movie and music industry with their eclectic collection of professional percussion instruments since 2005.

Need the exact Emil Richards rub rods used in the DeLorean reveal in Back to the Future? The flapamba or glock tree used in Frozen song, Fixer Upper? How about the glass marimba used for a prominent motif in The Bourne Supremacy?

They’ve got you covered.

Abby and Dan are both percussionists by trade, and when they married they discovered that they were both big time hoarders when it came to eclectic sounds. So much so that between them they had enough of a percussion collection to rent out to the thriving local creative community.

Unbeknownst to them, this was to be the beginning of L.A. Percussion Rentals, which would go on to be the place to rent out high-end orchestral percussion, drums, ethnic and eclectic percussion instruments for orchestra staging for recordings, live performances, props, movies and tours in L.A. and beyond.

“We tend to be a hub for a lot of percussion, including all of this really crazy, eclectic gear,” says Abby. “When it comes to acoustic instruments and percussion, it’s like cheese – they get better with age.

Well, a lot of them do. Sometimes people are looking for a vintage, novelty chromatic instrument from the early 1900s, and they can get that here.”

That reminds Dan of the time they were asked for a very specific set of chromatically tuned bell plates for a project, which had to be tuned to the exact octave and pitch required by the client.

“Abby’s brother, who’s a rocket scientist, helped me figure out the six variables, and we got really good at it! But perhaps it doesn’t make sense for a single orchestra to have a chromatic set of bell plates

that might get used a couple of instances per year. Instead they can use a central place like us that has everything available. We have a lot of rare instruments, which is how we’ve found our little footprint here.”

Serving the thriving L.A. creative scene (although the last year has been quieter for obvious reasons), the Savells cater for orchestras, studio recordings, bands, pop and rock groups, live shows and more, and seem to have an instrument for every scenario – no matter how unique the requirement. Ultimately, L.A. Percussion Rentals thrives on ambition: “We all like that ambition, and that’s what drives us when we get commissioned to do something,” Dan confirms. “One of the things that we like about our company is that we’re involved in a lot of groups that have a lot of creative ambition.”

“Definitely,” agrees Abby. “One of the things that’s been very interesting for anyone involved in any level of production of music nowadays is that the digital world continues to bring an infinite amount of possibilities in terms of processing audio, no matter what the origin of the audio is. We’re always hearing about all of these new plugins being released, and it’s a constant cascade of these types of things. However, I would say that there’s also been a rediscovery of exploring acoustic possibilities as well.”

Dan elaborates, pointing out that a lot of composers doing film scoring or composing modern, classical music are combining the types of instruments that L.A. Percussion Rentals stocks with digital effects to create more unique sounds.

“It’s the same with people working on the studio side of things, or sound designers from gaming companies; they’re using a lot of effects and plugins, but they are still always looking for a new, unique source to start at, which is where our unique collection comes in. Just having a different source point is a real jumping off point for them creatively.

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The end product may sound nothing like the instrument or item we have, but it’s just a new palette for them to start their creativity from.”

EMIL RICHARDS A jewel in L.A. Percussion Rentals’ musical crown is the late Emil Richards’ collection of instruments.

Richards was a respected vibraphonist and percussionist who played the bongos on the Mission Impossible TV show theme and the xylophone on the opening theme of The Simpsons, and it’s his iconic finger snaps you can hear in The Addams Family theme. And if that isn’t enough to impress, he also accompanied George Harrison on tour and recorded with Frank Sinatra, Frank Zappa, Doris Day, Judy Garland, Nelson Riddle, Steely Dan and Sarah Vaughan.

In 1962, Richards went on a worldwide tour with Sinatra to raise money for poor children, which increased his fascination with ethnic percussion instruments. He went on to collect over 350 instruments, and it was his wish that when he entered into semi retirement that they continue to be played and remain together as much as possible. He gave 65 instruments to the Percussive Arts Society museum in Oklahoma, and a sizable part of his collection was sold to L.A. Percussion Rentals.

Their Emil Richards Collection includes common percussion, and more unusual instruments such as a flapamba, boobams, a glass and stone marimba, taiko drums, gong drums and rub rods. It is L.A Percussion Rentals’ pride and joy: “It’s estimated that he played on over 2,000 film and TV scores, and that’s not even counting the endless amounts of regular albums,” Abby points out.

“He used to fly with Frank Sinatra on a private jet, so they just collected whatever instruments they wanted and didn’t have to really worry about customs or anything like that.

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We have about 70 of the instruments that he was really well known for here, and so many of these have been used in film and TV scores and other albums as well. I’m so honored to have that, and I’m so honored that he called us.”

The Savells are very discreet, and (quite rightly) will not reveal the details of any recent or ongoing projects that are under wraps, but they feel that any that are 10 years old or more are probably safe to talk about now. Big Back to the Future fans (“our kids are in the middle of watching it for about the 17th time on Netflix,” says Dan), they point out that Emil Richards’ rub rods (which they now own) were used in The Karate Kid, Beetlejuice, Lethal Weapon and the reveal of the DeLorean in Back to the Future.

“To me, that is super cool,” Abby enthuses. “I love the fact that I can hear those in Back to the Future and in a couple of other places as well.

They have this ethereal quality that is like a cross between sound design and music, which is super awesome. I love the fact that I can play them with the soundtrack and it sounds exactly the same in person – they barely did anything to them. When you hear HEADLINER USA

some of those instruments in the most classic songs and scores, it’s kind of mind boggling.”

Other customers of theirs include Hans Zimmer, who composed the music for Guy Ritchie’s 2009 film, Sherlock Homes using Emil Richards’ cimbalom, a hammered dulcimer which was made by Venczel József Schunda in the late 1800s.

“Hans sent his team around to try and find the sound that he was after. They were FaceTiming with him and he was like, ‘Yep, that’s the one; that’s exactly what I’m after!’” remembers Abby.

Another time, a caravan of Disney employees descended on their warehouse searching for musical inspiration for a little known film – 2013’s Frozen.

“That was an interesting one because we were thinking they’re gonna want a lot of ice- sounding instruments, but in reality, that wasn’t the case,” reveals Abby. “It was like this huge field trip, and they were just having a blast.”

The pandemic has been tough for L.A. Percussion Rentals, no question

– with most productions and projects that fall into the category of ‘the arts’ having to shut down, but they are staying positive and have adapted to the times by showing customers their collections over Zoom and are holding regular online workshops for composers.

“I’ve never rented so many plexiglass drum shields!” says Dan. “We had to buy a lot more, which is not easy to come by now because everybody in every industry uses it. It’s strange how that has become the high ticket item.”

They have also embraced opportunities presented through streaming services: “When everything was shut down, Netflix and the other streaming services were booming,” notes Dan. “They had to finish up what they had shot, so we saw what we could do to help with things needing to be recorded. Things kind of opened up on that side.”

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“WHEN YOU HEAR SOME OF THOSE INSTRUMENTS IN THE MOST CLASSIC SONGS AND SCORES, IT’S KIND OF MIND BOGGLING.”

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“There’s so much bubbling under the surface right now, creatively, that I am hoping that whenever productions do happen, that they’ll have some new energy in them as well,” says Abby. “I’m not saying the energy wasn’t good before, but I am really looking forward to seeing the kind of ideas that have come out of this time.

When people are able to do things in person again and collaborate, when it comes to sounds and composers and sound design, I think we’re going to be

HEADLINER USA

headed down a road of even more revitalization in that area.”

L.A. Percussion Rentals is patiently waiting until the industry opens up again, and it will be ready with its wonderfully weird selection of instruments when the time comes, whether that be for film work, studio bands, or YouTube stars.

“One person that worked with us recently was a TikTok star, and I asked

our son what that was about,” admits Dan with a chuckle. “The company is actually more forward than I guess I am! It’s like being a kid in a candy store for musicians coming in here. I usually give a warning: if you’re gonna come and visit, plan for extra time!”

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