Some personal highlights for me would be:

Avicii - Tim

I had worked several times with Tim before his untimely death. He was amazing to work with and I have always loved his artistry and his musical vision. To be approached by his estate to mix and complete his posthumous album was a real honour. To be trusted to see through a project like that and to be faithful to what I felt Tim’s vision was for that collection of songs was an unforgettable experience. They’re a fantastic set of songs and I think they sound amazing.

Kenya Grace – Strangers

Kenya is the real deal. She writes, produces, performs, engineers everything herself. In the pop world, so much music has multiple writers, producers and features, and ultimately songs can end up being made by committee. Along with everyone in the production side of things, you can have multiple labels and management teams involved…. there can be so many voices and opinions, and for me, that is not the best way to make art! On Kenya’s projects it really is just her and there is very minimal input from labels and management. To sit in a studio with just one person and strive for their singular vision is an absolute joy.

I had played piano and guitar from a young age and had been in bands all through my teens and University. At University, I ended up getting into live engineering and realised that I had an ear for it and really enjoyed dealing with artists. I started making electronic music during this time and whilst I loved the live side of things, the precision and detail of studio work appealed more to my brain, and I didn’t hugely want to travel and tour.

When I left University, I wrote to tonnes of studios and pestered them unitl I got a job as a copy engineer at a mastering studio. Growing up in the 80s and 90s, I was all about guitar music, absolutely loved Rage Against The Machine, Soundgarden, Sonic Youth, that kind of thing. I came into electronic music through crossover bands like Senser, Dreadzone, and so forth and from an engineering point of view, I absolutely loved the attention to detail and the sonics of electronic music.

As I got older, I just fell more and more in love with house music and made a conscious decision to focus on that for my career as it really appealed to the technical side of my brain. It just progressed for me sonically so quickly in a way that the rock stuff didn’t, and it felt like it was really pushing sonic boundaries, I loved that side of it.

The 90s Rave scene in the UK really turned me from a “rocker” to a lover of electronic music. Being part of that and then getting to work with so many of the artists that I’d loved from that time was insane. I ended up working with Frankie Knuckles, Kevin Saunderson, Paul Oakenfold, Erick Morillo, people that I had absolutely loved in my early 20s. I started working with Defected Records from early on (1999, in their first year of business) and have worked with them ever since.

Working so closely with Simon Dunmore for many years was a real eye opener, we used to mix (DJ mix) loads of albums together and I really learnt how to build a set (and a mix album) musically from Simon. Also making radio edits, Simon had an amazing ear for radio arrangements and how to turn a club track into a hit, I learnt so much from him. The opportunities that arose from that were incredible, I met so many clients through that label, doing DJ mixes for people like Paul and Erick led on to other work mastering for them and their record labels and so forth.

I met Steve Angello, through doing a guest mix for him that came out on Defected records, that led on to doing loads of stuff for his label “Size Records” and then ultimately getting involved with the Swedish House Mafia. They then ended up dominating the states in the early 2010s and EDM pretty much came out of the back of that, being involved with them opened up tonnes of opportunities for me in America with all the new electronic music coming out of there. I’ve been incredibly lucky with opportunities, so much of this industry is luck…. being in the right place at the right time, but then it’s about capitalising on that opportunity. Being reliable, trustworthy, doing a great job, hitting (often unrealistic) deadlines, all of that.

I got nominated for a Grammy for mixing “FISHER – Losing It” back in 2018 and when I was out in LA for it, I ran into someone called Anton Partridge. I’d worked with his labels (he used to work for Warner UK and had his own label Good Company). We’d never actually met but had chatted over the years on the phone and email. When I told him what I was up to currently (mixing the Avicii album, Sigala records and so forth) he couldn’t believe that I wasn’t represented and that I was doing everything on my own. The attitude of the business back then that I was this mastering engineer that “did a bit of mixing / stem-mastering on the side”. He suggested managing me and I accepted. He changed the industry’s perception of me and what I do. Took me from charging by the hour to fees and royalties. I am forever thankful to Anton for what he did, as that elevated my career enormously, opened loads of doors and really changed the industry’s perception of me.

Practice, practice, practice, listen to loads of music and be super critical of your own work… always strive to be better. Everyone nowadays can get hold of a laptop and some software, mess around with it, try stuff, make mistakes. Don’t obsess over gear, learn to get the most out of what you have, it’s not what you’ve got it’s how you use it.

We hear tonnes of people saying all the time how there are very few opportunities in the music business these days. Cass and I employ 4 other engineers at Wired Masters, last year we made one of them that has been with us for 10 years a partner in the business! We have never advertised for staff; we’ve never thought we needed staff. The guys have all come to us for work experience and then made themselves so invaluable that they ended up getting jobs, and then ultimately, we ended up building them studios!

There are always opportunities out there, but you often must make them yourself and when they arise, grab them with both hands. Be flexible and adapt. I wanted to be a mix engineer, but couldn’t get a job doing that, but there was an opening as a copy engineer at a mastering studio. I took it, worked hard, learnt a craft (which I loved) and threw myself into it. I started my own business, adapted that business as markets changed and ultimately ended up becoming a mixer. None of it was planned, I just took some risks, put myself out there and seized opportunities as they came my way.

In about 2016, Cass and I were looking for a way to show up distortion more. EDM was at its real height, and master levels were crazy. I’m happy to go to silly levels but still want to strive for openness and dynamics within that. We had amazing monitoring, but it didn’t always show up tiny bits of peak distortion (just for moments). Headphones were always quite good at that, but I had never liked using them. I didn’t like the feeling of them and had never really heard anything that I liked the sound of.

We thought we’d give it a go and we just got in tonnes of headphones and headphone amps to test. The Audeze LCD-2s were both Cass and my favourites out of everything we tested, they sounded kind of like the PMCs, but super close. We bought a pair each and they were initially just used for checking for distortion on masters and QC-ing for clicks etc. But the more I used them and learnt the nuances of them, the more I found myself leaning into them for other uses. I love them for vocal work and the forensic level they show up on things. Also, more and more people listen to music on headphones these days, so it became a really important check working with headphones. Width is so different in headphones to speakers, and now with songs so wide, it is important to know how the levels of those super wide sounds translate on headphones.

Getting more and more used to the LCD-2s over time meant I could actually trust mix decisions and creative decisions in them, they became more than just a QC / detail thing and became an additional perspective to sound in my room. 8 years later they are something that I totally rely upon and have become an integral part of my day-to-day workflow.

They bring me an additional perspective… it’s a simple as that. I don’t work in other studios, just in my room, so it’s not about travelling and having a continual reference point. I went through tonnes of headphones when I first picked them and they just complimented the BB5s and NS10s in a wonderful way. There wasn’t this freak out moment when you put them on, they sounded like the BB5s, but in headphone form.

I do loads of detailed de-clicking / artefact removal and denoising on sounds (especially vocals) and they just allow me to go really deep on that, especially if I have clients in the room and they’re chatting. I can just get on with work whilst they hang out.

Having the headphones on top of the other monitoring just gave me more certainty about delivering mixes. You don’t always have the luxury of running a mix, taking it home, listening in a car and all that, sometimes they have to go out that day, so the more different ways of hearing it, the better.

And my absolute last pass for QC is done on the LCD-2s. They show up distortion better than anything else. Sometimes we’re working to some pretty extreme levels in the electronic music world, and I’m constantly changing limiter release times throughout tracks on my masters. I love clipping stuff and keeping the release as short as possible. The headphones just show up that one moment where it breaks up a touch… I can automate a limiter for 1 beat, and it’s gone. I can’t always pick up on that on the speakers in the room.

Everything I do gets listened to many times on the Audeze headphones.