FEATURE
PRODUCER PROFILE
ANNA LAVERTY
After stints assisting UK producers Ben Hillier and Paul Epworth, Anna Laverty returned to Australia to bring her production chops home. Interview: Greg Walker
Even if you haven’t heard Australian producer/engineer Anna Laverty’s name, you most certainly know a good fistful of the records she has worked on. Originally from Western Australia and a graduate of WAAPA’s sound engineering course, Anna took her love of music production with her to London and put in the hard yards as an assistant engineer at Miloco Studios for 10 long and fruitful years. During this time she learnt her craft from producers Paul Epworth and Ben Hillier and played a big part in breakthrough albums for Florence and the Machine, Bloc Party and Depeche Mode, to name just a few. Returning to Australia Anna brought a massive skillset and a wonderful breadth of experience to bear in producing and engineering for a wide range of Aussie talent, including Meg Mac, The Peep AT 50
Tempel, Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, Paul Dempsey, Courtney Barnett and the East Brunswick Girls Choir. Anna’s recordings have a wonderful, largerthan-life immediacy to them while retaining a strong emphasis on the human elements of music making. She’s a consummate professional who’s carved out a fantastic career in a male-dominated industry through the time-honoured blend of talent and hard work while maintaining a downto-earth attitude to her craft. Anna took time out from renovating her farmhouse near Castlemaine in regional Victoria to meet up and talk to AT in Melbourne’s delightful Newmarket Studio. AudioTechnology: When did you first get bitten by the recording bug, and what was the moment when you decided
engineering and producing was the direction you wanted to take? Anna Laverty: I wanted to be a sound engineer from when I was about 15 years old, before that I just didn’t know what it was called, I just knew I liked anything electronic/technical and to do with music. My drama teacher in high school told me about a University in WA called WAAPA where they taught technical courses and I discovered the ‘Sound’ stream of that. It was perfect for me and I learnt all the basics of every type of sound engineering — radio, TV, film, studio, live, radio, etc. I knew I was into music so it was either live or studio for me. When it came down to it, Phil Spector and George Martin were my heroes and I knew really I wanted to be making records, even though the live experience of music is incredible.