You were born in Canada?
The first ten years of my life were in Canada, in three different cities. My parents are British, but they met in Hong Kong and got married there. Then we moved to New Zealand, lived in a couple of different towns, until my parents moved to the Middle East when I was 15. At that point I moved to Auckland to go to a school. From age 6 to 13 years old I learned piano and then trumpet — I'd play in ensembles, orchestras, and all that. By the time I was 13 years old I was in the school brass band, wind band, concert band, jazz band, and symphony orchestra. I also played third trumpet in the municipal orchestra. I had band practice almost every lunchtime. Then puberty hit. I had the luxury of being in the zenith of grunge during my teenage years, so it was, "Oh world, you don't understand me!" I locked myself in my bedroom and started buying records. When I was 16 years old I sold my mountain bike to buy a little 4- track. I was buying a lot of underground American records, and by the time I was 17 years old I got into modern British electronic music.
Did you start playing in rock bands?
I started playing bass because I figured I could only play one string at a time — chords were going to be a bit hectic! I got annoyed with the guitar player who only wanted to play Metallica or Red Hot Chili Peppers. That's when I got a 4-track, a guitar, and a drum kit. I was playing everything and recording. I bought an Alesis QuadraVerb and I wound up spending a year with headphones on, turning the tape backwards, changing speeds and all that. On our school careers day a friend of mine asked his advisor about audio engineering, and she said, "There's a school in Parnell," a suburb of Auckland. I knew that I wanted to do production, but previously had no idea how to even begin.
So you went to a recording school?
Yeah, it was the SAE Institute in New Zealand, two nights a week for 18 months; I waited tables the other five days. I was in a music shop one day and a customer was asking the guy behind the counter about his studio. I hadn't heard about it, but I told him that I was doing an audio engineering course and asked if I could get involved. He gave me the engineer's number, and it was Chris Van Der Geer who's a significant fixture down there [in New Zealand]. He let me sit in on his sessions. I'd literally be in the corner observing, not even assisting or anything. It was great; I'd go to school and study in the abstract but then also see real world sessions with Chris, which completely opened my perspective. Chris was amazing and he patiently answered my dumb questions after sessions. I learned a lot about supporting artists by watching him. By the end of my course in New Zealand there was a local post-production company that needed someone to do radio dubs, and I got a temporary position. I'd have 40 different 1/4-inch tapes for the regional Toyota dealerships, for example. I'd splice them all together, do the leader, and then prep them for the courier. I met this composer who was renting a room there. He and his engineer were moving to their own place, so they took me along to assist. This was 1996, and they were working in Pro Tools — a 16-channel system.
Not many tracks!
Yeah. They would keep me busy by having me manually load audio sample CDs of a zillion different drum hits during the day, and then after hours I'd do Foley on their main rig. Proper "wax on, wax off" training. I'd used Pro Tools before at SAE to edit sections of songs together — I was trying to emulate [Smashing Pumpkins'] Siamese Dream by recording different sections of songs on tape with different drum kits, instruments, and mixes before sticking them back together. When I was 19 years old I moved to London and sent out 40 CVs [resumés]. I got a job in this little studio in Brixton, but it was actually well-equipped. It had a 48-channel Amek desk, a 24-track Studer, 48 tracks of ADAT and another 16-channel Pro Tools rig. I think the owner was bored. When he employed me he said, "Okay, you can make the tea." On the first day, Steven Severin from Siouxsie and the Banshees was producing a session; at 3 p.m. the owner shrugged and walked out. He didn't say anything. I was like, "Alright, I better do this."
Sounds like he was really bored!
Yeah! What was interesting about that place was that he was catering to a lot of people who had their own home setups, so he had to have all of these different formats because there were different sessions coming in. The technical differences were nothing compared to the stylistic differences, so I got to work on a ton of different things, from gospel to drum 'n' bass. I think being in that environment allowed me to be more open-minded. I took on a discipline to try to understand what each artist loved about their music, even if it didn't mesh with me personally. Eventually Guy Sigsworth was recommended to go work with me on the Pro Tools system there. He was looking for somewhere cheap to try out ideas, and we got on really well. I had consciously been trying to get proper "kung fu" on Pro Tools for a good while before he turned up, so I was ready. This was a couple of months before my 21st birthday, and I'd been there for a year.
That's the fast track!
By that point I'd been doing music for 14 years, as well as recording in one form or another for five! When I moved to London I wanted to assist at Strongroom or Abbey Road. None of the big studios would speak to me. Careers in the music industry are not a linear process. I loved living in Brixton for the vibe and culture, but after the initial rush I felt like I wasn't meeting anyone significant on a career level and was making no progress. But then that one person turns up and endorses you; suddenly all the doors open and off you go! Guy's manager ended up managing me as well, and within a month we did a session with U.N.K.L.E. [Tape Op #38] and we were working with Björk. I kept meeting people from there. I developed a long relationship with U.N.K.L.E. in particular. You know Neil McLellan, obviously?
Of course. He's written reviews for Tape Op.
I persuaded Guy that we should get a room at Strongroom. I met Neil when I was carrying our gear up the stairs. Strongroom has ten programming rooms and five commercial studios; they're a really significant hub of British music. I became roommates with the guys who ran the bar [there's a public bar and kitchen, as well as a studio]. Right after we moved in Digidesign released the MIXPlus Pro Tools system, and we got one of the first ones in England. That was years before in-the-box was a recognised term. Guy is incredibly forward-thinking; he had this mad concept of how he wanted to produce records. It was exciting because every single day we'd be trying to do things that hadn't been done before. It was great for me; instead of me turning up at Strongroom and having people go, "Oh, this is Damian. He's an assistant engineer," it was like, "This is some crazy fucking kid doing mad shit that we've never seen before." It made a bit more of a splash. As time went on more of the people I met would ask me to come in and try stuff on their sessions. Guy schooled me in tremendous depth about vocal production, which is something he learned from Trevor Horn [Tape Op #89], so I've always invested all my energy in getting the most out of every take before, during, and after the recording. Eventually word got out that I was good at performance enhancement. For quite a while I seemed to be either sorting out performances on pop and indie records, or doing crazy, experimental, underground stuff with Guy, U.N.K.L.E., Adam Freeland, and anyone else who was looking to try something left-of-centre.
Do you think your own vision of what recording could be was influenced by the possibilities you saw in Pro Tools?
Without a doubt. The fabric of space and time was there for the taking. In early '97, before I moved to London, Pro Tools did a little seminar where they talked about Pro Tools 4, where you could automate plug-ins. Whoa. That was also the first time I found out about the possibility of emulations. I was like, "Maybe one day I won't need a Neve. The possibilities here are huge." It was also when my tastes began to expand beyond guitar- bass-drums rock band music, though I still love that stuff. Because I was new I hadn't gotten stuck in the traditional mindset that is bashed into young engineers. When Guy and I first set up we decided to take a contrary approach, a high-tech punk DIY ethos, by keeping the setup very minimal but actually pushing the boundaries way beyond what was going on around us. Ergonomically I was sick of having people sitting behind me when I was working, as it made communication difficult. So I set up the computer against the back wall in the corner next to the couch, with the speakers at the far end of the room. We could all sit in a row, look at each other, and ask, "What do you think about that?" I loved the fact that there was almost no gear. Sitting there with my ideas and talking about what's going on, then being able to dive deeper into sounds than anyone could on a 96-channel SSL with two tape machines [was exhilarating]. I hadn't anticipated it, but it was exciting to do and it felt like no one else was doing it at the time. But, having said that, Strongroom was a phenomenal facility and I love their SSL and Neve rooms. As the years went on I wound up working at all the great studios in London with brilliant engineers and producers like Neil McLellan, Adrian Bushby, Tom Elmhirst, Mark "Spike" Stent, Jim Abbiss, Pascal Gabriel, and Cameron Craig.
They're engineering and you're running the Pro Tools system?
Exactly. When that first started happening we thought it was amazing to have a Pro Tools credit, because we knew what we could do in Pro Tools. Engineering or mixing doesn't sum it up. It was really the whole hub of where ideas would be captured, explored, and exploded. People started calling me a programmer, but I also got a lot of additional production credits. On some projects, and especially remixes, people would leave me to it. It was obviously limitless what I could do, though it depended on the context of the session. If it was more of a repair job, then I'd go in and repair it and help out the mixing — this was when majors were starting to sign bedroom productions, so there was a lot of shit to sort out in order to bring material up to scratch. Neil and I actually had an interesting way of working where I would be editing the multitrack while he was simultaneously mixing. I would always listen to what he was doing and I'd have a sense of when he needed to work on a different section. I'd always have music playing as I was editing, and he would be dialing in sounds as I was fixing the timing. By the time I'd finish chopping, he would finish the sonics. My ears were always in tune with him as he worked. I'd do all of the vocal ride automation for him in Pro Tools.
He'd be bringing parts in and out?
Yeah, exactly. He was into banging the 2-bus compressor with bass drums to get the whole mix bouncing, so all of my automation was like, "Every single bass drum hit — turn up the vocals!"
So it's counteracting the compression?
Yeah! The vocals sit there at the same level, but the mix as a whole goes, "Boom, boom." It's become a bit of a style. One thing I regret, especially working with Cameron Craig, who's a genius recording engineer, is that I'd be so busy on Pro Tools that I wouldn't get to hang out in the live room much to see what he was doing with his mics.
You didn't get out in the live room a lot?
Not as much as I would've liked. When I was working with U.N.K.L.E. there was this band South who signed to Mo' Wax. They had brilliant ideas, but were inexperienced players at the time, so I was doing a lot of corrective stuff. People were always waiting for me to finish sorting it out. That was still when studios had to hire in Pro Tools rigs; the whole culture of "chop shop" and giving it to the guy in the back room wasn't there. Thank god! Everyone was together, and my role was predominantly creative. But I had these corrective abilities to draw on, if need be.
How did you end up with management?
Guy wanted to work with me so his manager at the time took me on. Around that same time I also met a couple of other managers. Ros Earls, who runs 140dB Management and looks after Flood, Steve Osborne, and others was the first producer manager whom I'd met. She said, "Look, you have to go assist in a big studio for five years. I can't manage you otherwise. You have to know how to run an SSL." That was totally fair advice; but I wound up super busy and learned how to run an SSL anyway! Again, I'm grateful that I did get to spend my formative years in the studio system, because most of those rooms aren't in London anymore. Same thing happened in New York. That's the reality of it now.
We've caught the end of that era, in some ways.
Exactly. When I first started working at Strongroom I'd been writing them letters for about two years saying, "Please let me in the studio!" Some of their assistants were 30 or 31 years old, and they'd been there for seven years. Some of them were super-talented and quite a few of them had to stop, because there was no way to...
...feed your kids!
Yeah. I think the biggest change is the Internet. The fact that anyone can now get access to all of this information is amazing. I remember when I started there was Mix Magazine, and that was it. There was this view of our industry that was a "decreed from on-high" thing; those totally sterile studio shots where they looked like the bridge of the Enterprise. You and the Tape Op crew have done an amazing job of sharing information and opening up possibilities for people. While it's a shame not to have as many of the big facilities around, I much prefer things now because creativity can be shared and expressed by so many more people.
You've been called everything from a programmer, to a fixer, and sometimes a collaborator — all kinds of things.
Yeah, it was definitely like that back in the day. I also think it's hard to define what I do using many of the traditional labels. People tend to think of me in one narrow situation, depending on the context someone meets me in. A number of years ago it started to get frustrating, actually. When I was considering moving to Canada I had a meeting where my manager said, "Damian, you need to be either an engineer, a producer, a mixer, a writer, or a programmer." I like doing all of it, so we amicably parted ways. With Pro Tools I'd be doing a zillion and one things, ranging from recording, mixing, writing, and programming. But because I sat at the computer people would say, "Oh, you're the programmer!" When I worked with Björk, trying to define roles was a running joke, like, "What the hell is a 'producer' with the music that she makes?"
You can't tell her what she should be doing!
She's her own boss, and therefore [her own] producer. All of these roles are weird and outdated. I've always tried to take the approach of, "I'll help people as much as I can." That meant bringing in some scones and sweeping the floor when I first started off. Then it was punching in some vocals. Later it translated into making beats, then co-writing, producing, mixing, and on and on. I think of what a song needs to make it better, and then the artist and I work on it together.
Do you feel you've done more straight engineering over the years?
I always considered myself a creative engineer and think of engineering as my roots; the computer is a tool that I use because it's so powerful. It was baffling when people didn't think that I knew how to use a mixing desk or a tape machine — I'd been using them for years! I was like, "No, no, no. I've done a lot on tape!"
You've certainly worked with Björk quite a bit.
The last Björk project I did was Biophilia, and she wanted to have this whole ocean of sub- bass. When we were mixing, we were in a great little studio in Brooklyn called Atlantic Sound. She wanted the [Yamaha] NS-10s to sound like a different pair of speakers [in order] to project a pure sine-wave bass thing. Then there was music that was a couple octaves above it; she had the cool idea that if it was played on an iPad you'd only hear this top layer, but then if you put on headphones, you'd hear an entirely different thing. I was like, "Oh shit, physics!" She's always so interesting to work with, because she does not give a solitary shit about any rules or anything engineering-wise — aside from, "Stop compressing things." One of the things Björk used to give me a hard time about is that she'd feel that people were tweaking her records just for the hell of it. It's like, "I'm sitting in this chair and there are all these buttons. I might as well press them." She'd be like, "No, you don't have to!" But, at the same time, music doesn't mix itself! I think we had a healthy back and forth together.
When did you first start working together?
In 1999 when I was working with Guy Sigsworth. We kept in touch off and on through the years. Then, at the end of 2005, we started working together on everything after she'd had a long run with Valgeir Sigurðsson [Tape Op #85]. He's a real sweetheart. One of the first sessions I did with Björk was early on in Vespertine. Guy and I were set up in one room, with Valgeir and Mark Bell in another. It's interesting with her, because she wants to have someone present right from the start of writing an album, with a blank screen and an empty hard drive. She also likes working short days. That's probably where I got a bit too much time to start looking at gear online! When I first started to work in studios I thought, "Maybe one day I'll visit New York, L.A., or Nashville," then suddenly with her I'd be set up in a cabin by a lake in the most spectacular part of Iceland, or I'd be flying to Mali.
You could have the money to go anywhere, but she chose a very different environment.
