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“Choose Your Weapon” by Hiatus Kaiyote was one of my favourite records to be a part of. They’re a hugely talented neo soul band from Melbourne where I’m from, and this was their major label debut – it’s a wild, imaginative album that takes inspiration from jazz, hip hop, R&B, electronic music, anime and more, often within the same song. The studio I was working out of at the time didn’t know why I needed a whole week to master it – even though the track listing says 18 tracks, there were enough musical ideas for over 50.
Other projects I’m especially proud of include my work with Los Campesinos! on their latest album “All Hell”, Closure in Moscow’s last two albums, and everything I’ve mixed for BIBI and Sampa the Great.
It’d also be remiss of me not to mention my studio, Carriage. Brought to life with fellow Melbourne musician and architect Zvi Belling (of the Public Opinion Afro Orchestra), it’s a production space in a train on top of a building designed for engineers, producers and artists who are location independent, work primarily on a laptop and want a better recording and monitoring environment, or creative inspiration. It’s a surreal place to step into and the music people create in there reflects that.
I would describe myself as a finisher. It’s difficult to have all the skills necessary to make an entire record and be a proficient artist and musician at the same time, even when technology helps to enable this further every year. For where it falls short or the artist doesn’t have the time or experience to get their music to where they want it to go, I’m there to fill in the gaps in their skillset and help create the record they hear in their head, whether that’s through writing, recording, playing, production, mixing, mastering, or any combination thereof.
Music has been a part of my life for as long as I can remember. I started by making primitive tracks with Cubase on the piano roll when I was 7. I then learned real piano, guitar, bass guitar and double bass, as well as wrote a lot of music in my teens, but eventually fell into engineering as I had a natural affinity for it. I grew up listening to artists like The Mars Volta, Aphex Twin and Radiohead, and I like to think I still carry that spirit into everything I do.
I can point to a few. Getting the chance to work out of Deluxe Mastering in my early twenties was a big one, I got to learn the ropes on the highest end mastering gear available at the time. You can’t unhear that.
Bob Ludwig is an idol of mine, it never ceases to amaze me how far ahead of the curve he was with his work. Rick Rubin is another, I think his ideas are profound. I can’t recommend his book The Creative Act enough. Everyone who reads it will get something out of it, regardless of whether they’re an artist or not.
A lot of what I’ve learned about music and creativity has actually come from reading books that had nothing to do with music or creativity. Human beings are the spirit of creation and art is just a vehicle for that, so there are universal ideas that come up repeatedly in all aspects of life that apply to everything. The real fun begins when you find parallels in seemingly uncorrelated disciplines.
I had an undiagnosed sleep disorder in my early to mid-twenties while my career was starting out. I say undiagnosed – I saw sleep experts and had one of those sleep studies where they attach electrodes all over your body and measure your physiological signs overnight, there just wasn’t really a diagnosis for what I had so much as I couldn’t sleep. I was once awake for nearly 100 hours, and on day 4, I was in the studio mastering a record when it started changing pitch as I was listening to it, like a psychological varispeed. At that point I decided I probably wasn’t doing anyone any favours and took the rest of the day off.
Nowadays I sleep mostly fine, but I make sure not to work past 9pm as much as possible and allow myself 2 hours to wind down before bed. It’s not talked about how detrimental old, windowless studios were to your circadian rhythm and overall health – 20th century studio designers optimized for acoustics, but not for living. I’m glad that in the 21st century we’ve gone back to makeshift creative spaces with bright colors, natural light and plants.
Don’t place any weight on expected outcomes. Music (and art) is a field of luck and timing, on average over a long career you’ll likely do well, but in practice there’ll be long periods of hard work with no return before something clicks. You have to love what you’re doing for the sake of doing it to be able to make it that far.
Since childhood. My dad had a small headphone collection in the house when I was young and I spent a lot of time on the computer listening to and making music with them, so I’m of the generation who were raised on headphones first before speakers.
Currently they’re my entire workflow until I settle down somewhere more permanent, having only been in America for a little while. I rent out other studios sometimes, but I love listening on headphones and I do the majority of my production, mixing and mastering on them. I created custom speaker impulse responses of my monitors back at Carriage for referencing which I primarily use for checking midrange balance and bass response, but mostly I trust what I’m hearing and know how it’ll translate everywhere.
I feel really fortunate to have discovered Audeze. I’d already been making music on headphones for most of my life, so when planar magnetic technology took a leap forward, I couldn’t have been in a better place for it. Instead of wrestling with room acoustics and speaker configurations, I was able to remove those variables entirely and focus on what I was listening to instead of what I was listening with. All that wouldn’t have been possible without Audeze. The frequency extension and transient response on their headphones are second to none, I hear every detail in every piece of music, and I have a consistent listening environment no matter where I am. I owe a large part of my (modest) career success to having them.
Some of my favourite records I’ve worked on lately with them include:
Hiatus Kaiyote – Love Heart Cheat Code
Los Campesinos! - All Hell (the first project worked on with my LCD-5 headphones)
BIBI – Derre
Haiku Hands – Pleasure Beast (mixed mostly on my LCD-X headphones while traveling in Italy, in between visiting Roman cathedrals and seeing the Statue of David)
Closure in Moscow – Soft Hell (a friend described them as “the B-52’s meets the Dillinger Escape Plan”)
I also recently got a chance to hear Audeze CRBN headphones for the first time and can’t wait to use them in the future. One of the best listening experiences I’ve had!
Artists may receive discounted Audeze product in exchange for interviews and opinions. Audeze does not solicit specific outcomes as part of any artist agreement.
