SoundOn is TikTok’s all-in one platform for music creators
Paul Watson CEO
Keith Watson Chairman
Rian Zoll-Kahn COO
Alice Gustafson Editor-in-Chief
Adam Protz Deputy Editor
Liz Wilkinson
Content and Communications Manager
Rick Dickerson
Reviews Editor
Marc Henshall Head of Digital
Grace Mcguigan
Artist Relations Manager
Rae Gray Head of Design
June proved to be a defining month across the music industry. The month kicked off with artist and producer Timbaland on the receiving end of some serious backlash from musicmakers after announcing his new AIfocused entertainment venture, Stage Zero, whose first artist is AI creation, TaTa. Slightly ominously, he describes the AI character as “the first artist of a new generation,’ calling ‘A-Pop’ “the next cultural evolution.”
In response to the criticism, Timbaland insisted he still values and will work with real artists, and, speaking directly to music-makers, clarified that he doesn’t train AI off of artists’ music. Given that Timbaland previously partnered with AI music generator Suno, which has been sued by major record companies for training their systems using the majors’ recordings without permission, it’s hard to have faith in Timbaland’s promise to value real creators.
It remains to be seen how the UK government plans to approach the issue of AI and copyright, but one thing’s for sure – the issue is not going away, and all the while, AI systems are being leaned on more and more, constantly learning, and everevolving…
At the end of the month, 200,000 music lovers hauled their tents over
to a sweltering Worthy Farm for Glastonbury, eager to experience one of the biggest festivals in the world before the local community, organisers and land take a wellearned break in 2026. Acts like Olivia Rodrigo, Charlie XCX, Doechii, Raye, Fatboy Slim, Pulp, Rod Stewart, Biffy Clyro, The Prodigy, Scissor Sisters and Neil Young drew huge crowds, while secret sets (some more well kept than others) came from Lewis Capaldi, Pulp, Lorde, and HAIM.
On that note, the UK music scene is officially thriving. UK Music just released a report that details how acts like Taylor Swift, Charli XCX, Bruce Springsteen, Sam Fender and Dua Lipa helped attract a record 23.5 million music tourists to concerts and festivals in the UK in 2024 – up 23% on 2023’s 19.2 million.
Proving that together, we are stronger, June was also a big month for acquisitions and partnerships. The Adam Hall Group announced a strategic partnership with Powersoft; karaoke technology company Singa and Warner Music Group entered into a deal to redefine the karaoke streaming experience; Fever acquired ticketing firm, DICE; Sound Devices acquired in-ear monitoring developer and manufacturer, JH Audio; Sony Music Publishing acquired Hipgnosis Songs Group LLC, including cuts
in songs and publishing shares for Sabrina Carpenter‘s Taste, Espresso, and Feather, Ordinary by Alex Warren and Lose Control by Teddy Swims; and Warner Music Finland bought the catalogue of independent record company Skorpioni.
This issue brings you an exclusive interview with Peter Freedman on The Freedman Group’s very own recent acquisition of Lectrosonics. Our June cover star is Eurovision winner JJ, who shares the origins of his popera song, Wasted Love; Max Aruj and Alfie Godfrey delve into scoring Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning; The Ting Tings talk about life after That’s Not My Name and new album, Home; BBC 6 Music’s Deb Grant and Nathan Shepherd provide a behind the scenes look at presenting at Glastonbury 2025; and Headliner jets off to IMS in Ibiza to interview Africori’s Adam Tiran on Africa’s dance music takeover.
Plus, we bring you the latest from the worlds of studio, live sound, install, sound production, TV and film composers, and the most exciting emerging artists.
Enjoy!
Alice Gustafson Editor-in-Chief
By Alice Gustafson
By Adam Protz
By Alice Gustafson
62 DEB GRANT & NATHAN SHEPHERD
Making the BBC Glastonbury magic happen
68 MARK FAWCETT ON TRUSTING OVATION FOR LIVE SHOWS
74 GARAGE 59 IN POLE POSITION WITH RIEDEL
76 L-ACOUSTICS SHINES ON DELAURENTIS’ IMMERSIVE ALBUM, MUSICALISM
82 KUPPEL’S COMEBACK: A LEGENDARY VENUE REBORN WITH CODA
86 ADAM HALL GROUP PARTNERS WITH POWERSOFT
88 THE SOUND OF THE BOSS: BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN’S LIVE CREW REVEAL ALL
94 SSL LAUNCHES ORACLE ANALOGUE STUDIO CONSOLE
98
EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW: Peter Freedman on Lectrosonics acquisition
104 FINNISH NATIONAL OPERA AND BALLET DISCOVER DREAM AUDIO
106 INDUSTRY INSIGHT: MIKE DIAS Why execs need to be the calmest people in the room
Words
CONQUERING THE WORLD OF TV SYNC
EMPARA MI
After coming back from a confidence-destroying major label experience, Empara Mi is a cinematic pop artist whose music has been heard in Transformers, The Traitors, Fortnite, and Our Planet. She also provided vocals for the drum and bass hit Freedom by Sub Focus and Wilkinson. With her new singles, I Can’t and Masochist getting big Radio 1 plays and millions of views on YouTube, her life as a now independent music artist is taking a very exciting turn.
Born and raised on the Isle of Guernsey, Empara Mi is now based in London while splitting some of her time back by the beach. On the fact that her career has been largely defined by so many of her songs landing in big TV shows and trailers, she says, “I didn’t quite get into it to go that way, but accidentally, in a
fantastic way, that’s been the way my music has found its place. I love super cinematic sounds. So it lends itself to that world quite nicely. It’s a great way for people to actually discover me.
“I’m lightly adding the word composer to what I’m doing at the moment. I’ve just been brought on to a new series
to help compose the music. I won’t say the name yet, otherwise I’ll get thrown off it! I just love that my music is cinematic enough that it ends up in these amazing programmes that I’m already watching.”
Empara Mi arrived via her 2016 single Wanderlust. It introduced the world to her big, soulful vocals, more often than not layered with a choir of her own backing vocals, almost on an operatic scale. A year later, she would be collaborating with UK star Kojey Radical on Spoon, where her cinematic pop world met Radical’s hip hop lyricism.
Unsurprising for someone of her ambition, Empara Mi was keen to spread her wings beyond the Channel Islands and be based somewhere where she could make all-important music connections.
“I begged my parents to let me leave, which is terrible,” she says. “But I wanted to go away and see if people in the real world do this as well, and be around like-minded people. So I left at 15 and went to a school that did quite a lot of music, and to please my parents, I did a history degree, which is not exactly what I wanted to do. But two weeks after I finished, I was straight in there, trying to meet people in the industry. I got my first ‘in’ through the genius who owns Rinse. He brought me in to do some writing sessions, and then he showed my music to people at some majors. I ended up signing to RCA, which, in hindsight, was not the best decision. I made an album that we didn’t end up releasing. I released one introductory track with them.”
While such an experience is very rough, to the point where many artists might even quit entirely — the label even took her to the BRIT Awards and told her she’d be winning awards within a year — for Empara Mi, it was a valuable learning experience that set her on the independent path she finds herself on now.
“I ACCIDENTALLY BUILT A COMMUNITY OF PITCHING FOR SYNC OPPORTUNITIES.”
“I learned a lot about the industry during that time. I started my own label, Spinning Circle, moved all my stuff out of that deal into my label, and that’s pretty much where the sync stuff started. And then that’s when supervisors started messaging me, and they seemed to think Spinning Circle must have more artists than just this random person. They were asking me, ‘Have you got jazz music? What else have you got on the roster?’
HEADLINER MAGAZINE
“And I was like, ‘Oh, this is interesting. They think I’m more than one person.’ I knew there were lots of producers and artists who had stayed independent, who I knew owned their own masters. So I started putting them forward for little sync opportunities. I accidentally built a little community of us pitching for these opportunities for sync stuff. And that is essentially why I’m able to do anything now, because of those opportunities that came from those TV programmes which used my music.”
And just to give an idea of how well that has gone for her, Empara Mi’s songs have been heard in Netflix
hits such as Ginny & Georgia and Behind Her Eyes. The syncs have also landed her in Transformers, The Traitors, Fortnite, Riviera, and Dynasty, alongside global campaigns for Apple. In 2024, she lent her vocals to Our Planet II and Mammals, which saw her collaborating with Coldplay. She also covered God’s Gonna Cut You Down for the Eddie Redmayne hit show, Day of the Jackal.
But the TV music is only one part of the Empara Mi story. 2025 has been a very busy year of single releases for her, with her singles so far garnering millions of YouTube views for her
cinematic music videos, and 10s of thousands of streams. First up was I Can’t, receiving generous airplay from BBC Radio 1.
In the video, we see her standing in the sea, dressed in black and trying to lower herself into the water, but the dancers who surround her hold her up. And it turns out that, despite working on shows like Our Planet II, she isn’t fond of the water at all.
“My relationship with the ocean is terrible. I have the worst phobia of the sea. Which is why it’s so weird that I did my music video, the first one of this album, in the sea. But it’s one of those where I’m trying to fight my fears. There is something incredible about watching the sea, just not being in the sea. The song is about grief, which is why I’m wearing black. My parents don’t follow me on social media, and they asked me how it’s all going. So it was nice telling them my first release from this album’s already on Radio One.”
She followed this up with Masochist, which also found its way onto the Radio One playlist. It’s another great showcase of the Empara Mi sound: pop with a certain Adele scale and swagger, combined with strings, and the mystical and cinematic-sounding production that makes it her own. She has, once again, matched the ambition of the song with a very slick
On whether she tailors some of her songs specifically with the sync world in mind, she says, “For this one, I definitely did. It was 100% for this song. I did it with a guy called Paul White. So we went to a studio and did the backing together. We were playing his synthesisers in real life. So that was fun. And then I went home, and I realised it feels like a Bond-esque song. So I put on the Casino Royale trailer on mute and just wrote again and again over it. So when I listened back to my lyrics and the feeling of it, I am basically Daniel Craig,” she laughs. “And that’s why I did this very dramatic music video with the swords and everything. I wanted to be some sort of warrior hero/villain type character.”
When asked what the phrase Play Out Loud means to her, Empara Mi says, “I would say connection.
“I’m the most excited to actually connect to people in real life, playing out loud to people.”
And with the just-released, sensual single On Call For You out now and exploring Empara Mi’s hip-hop side, everything is set up wonderfully for the upcoming release of her new album, Monsters & Masochists. Go and check out her new singles now, before your favourite TV show plays them to you first.
music video, which has also shot up to over one million views on YouTube.
EMPARA MI Conquering
sync
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Credit: © EBU/Sarah Louise Bennett
D S BYALICE GUSTAFSON
FROMPOPERA TO BRAT
EUROVISION WINNER JJ ON HOW CHARLI XCX INSPIRED ‘WASTED LOVE’
Austrian singer-songwriter, JJ, is celebrating a lot of firsts in 2025. After impressing viewers and judges alike with his staggering soprano range, he secured the combined vote and jury vote at The Eurovision Song Contest, winning the competition with his debut single, Wasted Love. He also became the first Eurovision winner of Southeast Asian descent, and is the first solo Eurovision winner born in the 2000s. He shares the origins of the Eurovision-winning popera song that’s impossible to sing along to.
“That will be haunting me my entire life,” laughs a softly-spoken JJ from Warner London’s office, where he’s doing promo for Wasted Love Despite having just experienced the joys of central London traffic firsthand, he’s riding high after his Eurovision win, and his enthusiasm and gratitude are palpable. Although he’s nothing but a joy to speak to, what’s haunting him is the very last operatic note of his already vocally challenging debut single.
“Luckily, my opera training kicks in because my classical singing teacher always told me, ‘If you were able to
sing a note once, you will always be able to sing it.’ If you have a healthy technique, then you will always be able to sing the same note at any time. That’s what I had in my head. I was thinking, ‘You sang this note 50 times in the studio when we were recording it, you’ll be able to do it again.’ Having that in my mind helped me relax my voice more to be able to reach that high note without having to force my way through. I’m pretty happy that my teacher told me that, or else I would have been stressing so much.”
JJ (real name Johannes Pietsch) was born in Vienna, but spent the majority of his childhood in Dubai before moving back to Austria with his family in 2016. His father is an Austrian IT specialist, and his mother is a cook from the Philippines. JJ inherited his dad’s love of opera and classical music, while his mum introduced him to the biggest pop divas through karaoke parties. If you know anything about Filipinos, they don’t play when it comes to karaoke.
“Exactly,” nods JJ, recalling the first song he learned for a family karaoke night. “It was Because Of You by Kelly Clarkson, which is very insane for a six-year-old to learn,” he laughs. He might be Gen Z, but his musical taste is pure Millennial.
“We’d all be performing songs by the ‘90s divas – Mariah, Whitney, Celine – that was mainly the music that I listened to growing up. Then my dad showed us classical music, especially Bach and Beethoven, although he can’t sing at all,” he points out goodnaturedly, “which is hilarious, but I love the enthusiasm when he tries
to sing. He just wanted to teach us about Austrian culture, so there were long weekends listening to classical music, but it made me start to like classical. Growing up in Dubai was a place with multiple cultures and different backgrounds, so my mum was really determined to bring us up with Filipino culture, and my dad was the same with Austrian culture. I’m so grateful that I got the chance to grow up listening to both musical worlds because they’re different, yet not so different.”
Growing up in Dubai, a pre-teen having an interest in opera was unusual, to say the least. While his friends obsessed over the latest pop release, JJ found himself transfixed by Der Hölle Rache, a coloratura soprano aria sung by the Queen of the Night from Mozart’s opera, The Magic Flute “Yeah, it was a huge difference [from my friends],” he acknowledges. “The Queen of the Night aria is where she sings really, really high. I thought it was really impressive how a human voice could produce such sounds. After going through puberty, I realised that I still had a high singing voice. I love to
imitate voices and sounds, so I thought that would be a cool party trick, to imitate a soprano.
But then I started to like it so much, and I saw that people were impressed by what I could do, that I thought, ‘Why not make it a profession?’”
A countertenor with a distinctive voice that can reach soprano heights is bound to get anyone noticed, so it’s no surprise that before Eurovision, JJ had already made a name for himself in the classical music world. He attended the Music and Arts University of the City of Vienna after attending the opera school of the Vienna State Opera, and has performed at the Vienna State Opera numerous times.
2020 saw him audition for The Voice UK after missing the deadline for The Voice of Germany. He advanced to the knockout stages with the help of his coach, will.i.am. The following year, he took part in the fifth season of the Austrian show, Starmania, where he made it to the first final show.
After his landmark Eurovision win, JJ joins the ranks of Eurovision legends, marking a new chapter in his promising and still very young career. After the song’s victory in the contest, Wasted Love enjoyed commercial success in numerous countries, peaking at number one in its native Austria and Greece, within the top five in Lithuania and Switzerland, and the top 10 in five additional countries. Many artists release singles for a long time before gaining traction, so it’s still sinking in for JJ that his debut single connected so powerfully to an audience of more than 160 million.
“It’s crazy to have my debut single be a part of something so huge, and then winning Eurovision with it is just the craziest feeling ever,” he shares, genuinely sounding like he’s still in the ‘pinch-me’ stage. “I can’t describe it. I have a lot of friends who are in music, and they have had a different experience just building themselves up, so having this with my debut single is the craziest experience of my life. I’m so grateful for everybody who’s been behind this entire project, and I’m so happy about how it turned out.”
Wasted Love was written by JJ alongside Teodora Špirić and Thomas Thurner, with production handled by Thurner, Pele Loriano, and Wojciech Kostrzewa. The lyrics describe JJ’s personal experiences with unrequited love and his conflicting feelings
between pain and beauty. JJ was in a safe pair of hands with Špirić, who was one of the co-writers of Austria’s 2023 Eurovision entry, Who the Hell Is Edgar? by Teya and Salena.
“I texted Teodora and I said, ‘Hey, I had a rough experience, and I want to write a song for Eurovision. Could you help me?’ She said to come by the studio, and the song was born in Berlin, just with the producer, the songwriter and I. It was pretty hard in the beginning because I had to tell her exactly what happened,” he discloses. I had to relive the experience, and it was pretty tough to go back, but it was a therapeutic studio session, and I started to move on from that situation. I had let everything out when recording the song. I’m glad that I could move on with my life and close that chapter in my story.
“After we were done recording it, we listened through the entire song, and she said, ‘Guys, you don’t understand. We just created something beautiful. We have to hand it in for Eurovision.’ That’s how the entire process began. It was pure magic.”
JJ makes it clear that he’s proud to be a voice for the queer community in Austria, and shares that the breakupinspired track has helped other people process their own heartbreak. He reflects on the way Wasted Love is resonating as an emotional anthem for others, especially in the context
of representing LGBTQ+ visibility and acceptance.“ I wanted to tell my story and have people resonate with it and help them get through a rough situation,” he says sincerely. “To hear that people are moving on from a situation through my song, or that it’s helping them gain confidence to get out of a situation is so heartwarming because it feels so nice to hear that I helped people just by talking about my own story, especially in regards to helping anyone in the queer community that might be going through the same situation that I did. It touches my heart to hear that I’ve helped people move on.”
The song isn’t all operatic ballad, however, as towards the end, a surprising, frantic techno segment lurches into the track to take it home to its dizzying soprano-note finale.
Combined with the live visuals – shot in black and white, JJ clings to a boat amid stormy seas, ominous clouds rolling behind – it’s a perfect blend of emotional rawness and theatrics, with a side of EDM. He reveals that he, too, had a Brat summer last year. “I love Charli XCX,” he enthuses. “That’s where the EDM techno inspiration came from, so that did influence it a lot. We went into the studio, but we all had no idea how we would blend the two genres,” he confesses.
Credit: © EBU/Alma
Bengtsson
“Teodora and Thomas had no idea how to do something classically, and this was my very first time in a studio setting, so I had no idea how we would do it either! So we just let our creative minds flow. We knew we wanted to switch up something different from what we already had, and then Thomas came up with the idea of adding EDM or techno into the track. He created something really quickly while we had a bathroom break, and that was what you could hear in the song. I’m very happy that he insisted on putting that in,” he smiles, adding that his favourite vocal divas influenced the song too. “The breathy parts of my song are mainly inspired by Ariana Grande and Mariah Carey, and classically, Maria Callas.”
On becoming the first Eurovision winner of Southeast Asian descent, JJ feels nothing but pride. “That was the most amazing feeling ever, because being half Filipino, that’s always going to be a part of me, and I’m so happy that I
get to bring this side of me with me wherever I go. I want to make Southeast Asia proud and the Philippines especially proud, and to bring my culture with me. I brought my Austrian culture with me, too,” he points out, “which is classical singing.
“But having my Filipino heritage with me was an amazing feeling, and to showcase that on such a huge platform. My uncles, aunties and my cousins all still live in the Philippines, from my mum’s side, and it was so nice to see that the entire Philippines was rooting for me, especially considering that for them, this is something new. They don’t really watch Eurovision – it’s not a thing in Southeast Asia,” he explains. “But once they heard that a Filipino was representing Austria at Eurovision, they thought, ‘We have to watch it!’ So they had a huge public viewing at the main square, which was so amazing.”
The last Austrian to win Eurovision was Conchita Wurst in 2014, who secured a victory with Rise Like a Phoenix. JJ has since paired up with Wurst on a Rise Like A Phoenix x Wasted Love mashup. He marvels at how things have come full circle:
“It’s so crazy to think about being one of the three Eurovision winners from Austria,” he admits, shaking his head in disbelief. “That’s so insane. She’s an icon in Austria. Having done the mashup with Conchita holds a very special place in my heart, because 2014 was the first time I watched Eurovision with my family, and that was when Conchita won. So witnessing that for the first time, and then being at Eurovision, and then winning – to have her support is such a full circle moment. I will never forget this for my entire life. I’m so happy that I had her support from day one and that she was willing to pass on the throne to me.”
JJ is still new enough into his career to still be reading the comments under his videos (and to honestly answer Headliner’s question about anything people would be
surprised to learn about him: he uses an app called Poop Map – Google it), although at a glance, they are refreshingly complimentary. Perhaps even the fiercest of keyboard warriors know they couldn’t hit a C 6 to save their life.
Check Reddit for the eagle-(eared?) fan who spotted that JJ’s final high note is the same pitch as the sound of the B-Series trains in his city – the transition is seamless.
Headliner shares a few favourites with JJ: “The ending is like Beethoven on steroids. It’s a piece of art,” – “Oh, my God, that’s so cute,” he says, delighted. “I love Beethoven on steroids. That’s wild!”, and, “So this guy just came with his first single and won Eurovision in the first attempt. Iconic,” – “That’s so, so sweet. I do love to read comments,” he admits.
“THE ENTIRE PHILIPPINES WAS ROOTING FOR ME, AND THEY DON’T REALLY WATCH EUROVISION – IT’S NOT A THING IN SOUTHEAST ASIA.”
“It’s crazy because I was one of those people always commenting under someone’s post, being like, ‘Oh my God, such a diva! Amazing performance!’ – and now people are writing that about me…” he trails off in amazement. “How the roles reverse! To be in the spotlight is something that I’ve always been dreaming of, but never thought that I would achieve. My life right now is such a beautiful time that I will always cherish. I’m so happy that I get to do this.”
In terms of new music, JJ wants Wasted Love to have its time in the spotlight before he moves on to release more material, but reassures Headliner that his
operatic sound will be front and centre. “I’m going to be heading right back into the studio to record new music,” he nods. “I’m going to keep my operatic sound because I want to take my musical beginnings with me throughout this entire journey. I’m excited to experiment in the studio with my little team and to see what works. I can’t wait to release new music and then hopefully go on tour as well. I’ll let Wasted Love have its deserved hype, of course, but once it feels right, I’ll be bringing out new music.”
In terms of releasing a Eurovision song fans can’t do anything but murder in karaoke, JJ is nothing but complimentary about any versions
of his songs he’s heard. “I’ve seen a lot of TikToks of people singing Wasted Love , which was such an amazing honour because it warms my heart to see everyone singing it so passionately and with so much joy,” he smiles.
“I see a lot of people commenting under their own videos saying, ‘It’s not that good, but I still tried,’ and I’m like, ‘No, thank you!’ No matter how it sounds, I’m so happy to see people showing me their rendition of my song.”
Credit:
© EBU/Alma Bengtsson
BEHIND A EUROVISION-WINNING STRATEGY
Franz Pleterski, General Manager of Warner Music Austria and President of the IFPI Austria, explains the label’s Eurovision-winning strategy.
From the moment Wasted Love was first pitched internally, what was the initial reaction at Warner Music Central Europe? Did you know you were working with something that could be a Eurovision winner?
At Warner Music, we’ve built up quite a bit of experience with the Eurovision Song Contest. This was our fourth consecutive year working closely with Austria’s national broadcaster ORF on the ESC. ORF selects the song and artist, but we’re closely involved in the process and have gained deep insights into how to develop talent for this stage. When we first heard Wasted Love in autumn 2024, we immediately felt that both the song and the artist were truly special. We saw great potential from day one, especially given the combination of the track, JJ’s unique artistry and our learnings from past Eurovision experiences to make it a success.
Launching a completely new artist on one of the world’s most competitive music stages is a massive gamble. What were the key challenges in building trust and visibility for JJ from zero, seeing as this was his debut single?
JJ had some recognition in Austria, but Eurovision meant stepping onto the biggest stage in Europe. The biggest challenge was building credibility – fast. With no previous releases, everything had to rely on the strength of the song, JJ’s presence, and a focused narrative that helped audiences connect with him instantly. And all of that had to happen across borders, in a very short time.
Given there was no back catalogue, no previous singles, and no safety net, how did you develop a full artist identity and story for JJ around just one track?
The most important thing is a clear plan. We didn’t see it as a limitation but rather as an opportunity. Our belief in both the song and JJ was, and still is, so strong that it became our driving force. Plus, we benefit from a strong internal Eurovision network within Warner Music Group
“THE VISION IS CLEAR: JJ IS HERE TO STAY.”
globally. We exchanged knowledge and supported each other, and that really paid off. The key was building JJ as a persona, not just a performer. While popera as a genre isn’t new, the way JJ blends operatic technique with contemporary pop is truly unique. His experience performing at the Vienna State Opera gave him a strong foundation. This crossover between classical training and pop sensibility became central to his positioning.
JJ’s win was historic for Austria. What was Warner’s overarching strategy in positioning JJ as not just a contestant, but a serious contender on the global stage?
Austria has now won Eurovision three times, which is remarkable for a market of its size. The last win was Conchita Wurst, so this was a major moment.
We shaped JJ’s image around the concept of ‘The Voice of Modern Elegance’. He’s a popera artist with a strong pop focus. Visually and musically, the campaign was unified around this vision. JJ and the team were aligned from the start, and the next steps are already in motion. We’re building on the Eurovision momentum with upcoming
releases, including genre-crossing remixes like the one from DJ and producer Cyril, signed to Spinnin’ Records, to broaden his reach across new audiences.
We positioned JJ as more than just the voice behind Wasted Love. His unique blend of opera and pop (popera) allowed us to tell a story that connects Austria’s classical heritage with a fresh, modern edge. The key narrative was that JJ wasn’t just performing a song. He’s redefining tradition and opening up classical music to a new generation across Europe.
How important was JJ’s national identity in shaping the campaign? Did you lean into Austrian cultural themes or take a more pan-European approach?
Austria’s classical music heritage definitely played a role in the campaign. JJ is deeply connected to it and represents that authentically. So yes, we integrated those elements, but in a modern, accessible way that resonated across Europe.
Was there a viral component to JJ’s rise in terms of TikTok, Reels, or fan reaction videos? How did the Warner team respond to and fuel that momentum?
It was part of our strategy from the beginning. We closely monitor what’s working, what gains traction, and where to double down. Social media, especially short-form content, is a crucial element in engaging fans and amplifying JJ’s presence beyond traditional Eurovision circles.
Winning Eurovision can sometimes be a blessing and a burden. How is Warner Music positioning JJ to build a long-term career post-contest and avoid being typecast as just a Eurovision act?
We see Eurovision as a fantastic platform. A launchpad, not a limitation. JJ brought joy to millions, and that connection is a strong foundation. Now, together with him and his management team at Manifester Music, we’re building for the long term. The artist camp around him is incredibly strong. They are doing great work, and Teya, who has Eurovision experience herself, is also part of the team. The vision is clear: JJ is here to stay.
JJ is a new name for many outside Austria. What were the key narratives you wanted to communicate about him as an artist, not just as a performer of Wasted Love, but as a cultural voice? INSTA: @JOHANNESJJPIETSCH wmg.com
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SCORING THE HOLDOVERS AND ON SWIFT HORSES
MARK ORTON
WORDS BYALICE
Mark Orton isn’t your typical Hollywood composer. A classically trained multi-instrumentalist with roots in the avant-garde and Americana, (and a founding member of the experimental acoustic ensemble Tin Hat,) Orton brings a textured, intimate sensibility to his film scores. In this interview, Orton reflects on crafting the nostalgic yet emotionally grounded score for The Holdovers, designed to feel like it was made in 1970 – right down to its mono sound mix and vintage instrumentation – and more recent work on On Swift Horses, using soft pianos, bowed vibraphones, and early surf guitar textures to portray themes of forbidden relationships, internal longing, and post-war disillusionment.
You composed the score for The Holdovers, which was a must-see film of 2023. It was named one of the top 10 films of 2023 by the National Board of Review and the American Film Institute, and among many others, it was nominated for Best Picture at the Oscars. Did you have a sense that the film would resonate with people this well?
I’ll be honest and say I really wasn’t. It’s the kind of film that’s getting made less and less these days. With so much stuff being recycled in Hollywood, or within these various superhero universes it’s a different kind of movie. It has this brilliant, nostalgic feel to it. So that’s one thing, I knew it would stand out.
The director, Alexander Payne has always been drawn to films of the ’70s, and classic cinema more broadly.
The intellectual idea behind this film wasn’t just that it was set in 1970, but that it felt like a film that had actually been released in 1970. We went to some pretty serious lengths to achieve that, even down to the sound. The soundtrack itself was actually in mono, and when you see the film in a theatre, it’s in mono, because in 1970, that’s what the sound was. So now, in the days of Dolby Atmos, it was a very different set of marching orders for me. Part of the job was also bringing myself into that 1970 world. As a musician and someone who’s been collecting amps and electric guitars from that era since I was in fourth grade, and with my older brothers and sisters growing up in that world –and idolising some of that sound – it was fun to put that hat on.
The film is steeped in a 1970s New England winter atmosphere. It’s nostalgic yet emotionally raw. How did you use music to evoke that setting and period without falling into pastiche?
The soundtrack in that film has three different sides to it that, over time, coalesce into one. It follows the arc of the story, which starts, in some ways, like a classic college or school drama-comedy, where it’s more focused on the kids, and it’s Christmas time. So part of the score was based around that Christmassy sound, though without getting too kitsch with it. I ended up with about a dozen different sleigh bells, each with slightly different pitches and resonances, that I used throughout. Some were quite fancy orchestral sleigh bells, and others were simpler, like a single little bell, the sort you’d hear from a sad Salvation Army person on the corner.
I was going after that kind of sound at the same time as the more dramatic part of the story started to unfold. That called for a different palette altogether. It’s not that I was trying to create some kind of museum piece, I didn’t want to replicate a 1970s score exactly, but I was making choices that at least wouldn’t betray that era. They were neutral enough, in terms of instrumentation, that they didn’t push against the period.
Then there was other material where I had a full band in the studio –musicians who were well-versed in the style of that era – and we went after those sounds. Rather than just using source cues, we created scores.
They landed somewhere between source music and score. Some of the montages and scenes were played by a band with a horn section in the mould of something like Carole King, or even Cat Stevens. So in that way, they blended with the rest of the soundtrack, the source songs and the score, and helped build a cohesive sound throughout the film.
On Swift Horses explores themes of desire, rebellion, and postwar America. Where did you start in terms of how you wanted the score to sound, and how did these themes influence your approach to composing the score?
With this one, Daniel Minahan, the director, and I got together early on. I was brought in early enough that I was working off a script at first. I wrote a suite of pieces to start getting the sound of the film out there and to start the conversation, even before I saw any picture. In this case, I wrote a couple dozen pieces early on. I wanted to explore a few different aspects of what I’d been reading because there is definite drama in it. It’s set in post-war America, and it includes themes around the American Dream – this idea of moving west, buying a home, getting married, and
living that idealised 1950s life. But there’s also a lot pushing against that at the same time.
Two of the main characters are getting into gambling in different ways, risking money, and in some cases, themselves, with cheating scandals. And even bigger than that is the fact that they’re taking really significant sexual risks because the two main characters are involved in same-sex relationships at a time when that was a jailable offence. It was illegal in most places. So there’s this strong mix of risk, excitement, and drama all wrapped together.
This is different from what I was talking about with The Holdovers, where we were going after a specific era sonically – we weren’t as concerned with that here. I’d say it was more important that the sound reflected the characters, the drama, and the unspoken tension that came with these kinds of risky, same-sex relationships. There was also just the sense of desire, the butterflies in the stomach. So much of it was based on feelings, the emotional undercurrents of the characters That’s where I started, musically.
Credit: Sony Pictures
Let’s delve into those themes surrounding the complex love triangle and characters navigating forbidden relationships. Are there distinct musical themes or textures you used to differentiate their inner worlds or to connect them?
I’ll give away the tiniest bit of the film, in that it starts with what people now call a throuple. Essentially, there’s a young woman who’s engaged to a man who has just returned from the war, and then his brother is also on the scene, visiting the woman
– Daisy Edgar-Jones’s character, Muriel. She is really taken with Jacob Elordi’s character. There’s a mix of genuine physical attraction, but also a soulmate feeling between them.
Even though they separate and are apart for much of the film, living their lives in different places, she’s still replicating a lot of what he’s doing.
She has these phone calls with him, and he becomes something of a mentor to her, particularly in terms of gambling. With that in mind, I wrote distinct themes for each of the
characters, but they had a related quality. What I tried to do over time was have those themes gradually come together musically, just as the characters come together in terms of their arcs. There are shared textures and sounds that unify them. Likewise, with the romantic or love themes, they often work as mirrors, or musical reflections, of one another.
Credit:
Sony Pictures
Were there any silent or nearly silent scenes where the score had to carry the full emotional weight? How did you approach scoring those moments?
Yes. I think especially over the last 20 years, we’ve moved towards overscoring. I see so many films now that are just wall-to-wall music. Honestly, I think the biggest problem with that is it becomes just another given element, something that loses its power. The more it’s used, the more it becomes a kind of background –just wallpaper, essentially. So that’s definitely something I’m very conscious of. Especially in a film like this, where the characters have rich inner lives and there’s a lot of unspoken emotion happening. That stillness and reflection are a part of each of their journeys, narratively. I thought a lot about that – about the balance between score and silence. And along with that, the balance of stillness within the music itself. So there are plenty of moments where the director was certainly drawn to the more thematic and lyrical side of my writing, which really resonated with him, but I also made sure there was plenty of space and room for the characters to breathe. That meant not just having rousing melodies running throughout, but instead making more textural and open scoring choices too.
Did you use recurring motifs throughout the film? If so, can you point to a moment where a previously introduced musical idea reappears with new meaning or impact?
I do have some main themes running through it, and they develop over time. As the characters interact with one another, the themes shift. I try to have them shift subtly, so they reflect the characters changing. I’m most drawn – in all films, really – to themes that can take on the story in some way. I’m fascinated by how a theme can evolve with the narrative over time. How one theme, which might have been written for a particular character, can later be varied in such a way that it works for a different character. That really interests me. If you imagine the theme
Credit: Sony Pictures
as a prism I’m holding in my hand, I’m turning it to see how the light reflects off it in different ways. I love how a theme can behave like that. That’s something I explored here again.
The two main characters are connected, even though they’re living 1,000 miles apart, following similar trajectories. So I was figuring out ways for the music to mirror that – to have their stories echo one another in sound.
At Camp Watertown, your studio, you not only compose but also mix many of your scores on Genelec monitors. When did you first discover them?
I was working at the Knitting Factory’s studio, which had Genelec monitors in the early ‘90s, so we’re going back a bit. Later on, when I moved to the West Coast and started my own thing in San Francisco, one of my first major investments was a pair of Genelec 1030s, and eventually a subwoofer, and built up from
there. I still have them to this day. They’ve held up incredibly well all these years – decades! They’ve been fantastic. They were the most natural-sounding monitors I’d heard –particularly for acoustic and orchestral instrumentation, which are central to my work. The level of detail they provide is exceptional. Now, years later, I’ve expanded to a much larger system. I’ve got the 8351s, a big sub, the whole setup. But still, the way my mixes translate to the outside world when I work on Genelecs, there’s really nothing that compares. For the kind of music I do, I haven’t found anything else that comes close.
JOAN HEARTBODYMINDSOUL
Arkansas-based alt pop duo, joan, are known for crafting expansive pop music and have spent the past few years steadily releasing new music, touring and building an incredibly passionate fanbase of joanlyfans. From their debut EP portra, to their debut album, superglue, the band has amassed over 150 million global streams to date, boasting over one million monthly listeners across streaming platforms. With each release, joan continues to push the boundaries of their sound, building on their unique ability to create heartfelt, infectious pop music. Headliner catches up with joan (Alan Benjamin Thomas and Steven Rutherford), who reflect on how they met, their unusual band name, and reveal why their latest releases are their most ‘joan’ songs so far.
How did you meet and when did you form a musical duo?
SR: We both were in separate bands, and we’re in Little Rock Arkansas. There’s not a huge music scene here. We ended up playing a bunch of shows together, so we met that way. We went to the same college, but at different times, and knew of each other. I knew that we both were doing music, and I was coming out of school and wanted to do music full time. Alan had been doing music full time already, so we got together to try to write for film and TV doing sync stuff. That first day, we wrote what ended up being our first single, take me on , and it was like literal magic. We had been looking for that spark, and it hadn’t quite got there with other bands. We were just like, ‘I think this is the band we need to be.’ It’s been full time joan since then.
AT: We first started writing in late 2016, and then in January or February of 2017 we soft released a song on SoundCloud, and that got us some early attention. This was when SoundCloud was a little bit more of an A&R ground for discovery, which maybe it still is, but back then it felt definitely more so. We got our team together after that, and that was the catalyst.
joan is an interesting band name. Why joan, and why the lower case spelling?
SR: Well, the lowercase J is because we do everything lowercase, mainly because I text in lowercase. Then whenever me and Alan met and started texting, we both realised that
we both do that. It’s pure laziness, but it felt like a cool thing. It felt like an extension of us, that we’re just texting our buds, and it felt like the personality for the songs we were making. Alan didn’t love it at first, but it lent itself to a really cool ‘90s design. What was your reservation with it, Alan?
AT: The feminine name was very reminiscent of harder core bands in America, like Norma Jean and bands like that. I didn’t want people to associate our soft boy pop music with heavy guitars, but then he showed me a design he made and it was just joan, lowercase. I was like, ‘This looks like a Seventeen magazine cover from 1995,’ and I was like, ‘That makes total sense.’ Then it just clicked.
You don’t see many people named Joan these days either…
AT: It’s a pretty old name. We’re trying to win the SEO war on Google too. There’s Joan Jett and the newest Golden Bachelor was called Joan. We’re fighting an uphill battle, but we’ll get there!
Where does all the joan music happen?
SR: We both have houses, and since joan started, we’ve been working out of our bedroom studios, basically. So we decided, instead of a bedroom studio in our house, why not buy another house and make a bedroom studio? So as joan, we got a house for studio-specific stuff. It’s nice to have because we both have kids, and trying to record a vocal with kids screaming in the back is impossible. It’s not a conducive acoustic environment!
Your recent single, heartbodymindsoul is the first track from your new era of music. Did you purposefully decide to make something that sounded very different?
AT: Yeah, we did. We do have a grand vision for this next batch of songs. Neither of us are synesthetic and see colours, but if you had to force a colour on this, we see this whole next batch as being darker – not darker content or lyrically dark, necessarily – but like eyes, heartbodymindsoul is a pop song, and it’s about, ‘You can have every part of my being – that’s how devoted I am to you’. We decided to go a little more melancholy with chords and production elements, but it’s still infectious. It’s still catching you like an earworm. You still want to listen to it 1,000 times. It’s a darker vibe, and that is one theme of the new stuff.
We’re always really excited about whatever is the freshest thing, what gets us really excited and makes our hair stand up on our arms, and heartbodymindsoul was that. So we were like, ‘Why don’t we just give everybody a big left turn?’ What they probably are expecting from joan is not heartbodymindsoul.
We were doing that as a first offering for the next thing too. I don’t mean this in a braggadocious way, but it’s hard to contain our brains on where we can take stuff. The spectrum is pretty wide for us. So we’re like, ‘Why don’t we just play with it and not get too locked in on a sound?’
You said that your single, eyes , is the most joan song ever. How so?
SR: Production elements-wise, the drums, the vocals and the keys are all run through a very specific reverb that makes it feel the ‘80s – we went vintage on a lot of the sound choices. We tend to gravitate toward vintage sounds. There’s an era between the mid ‘70s to mid ‘90s where synths were at their peak. Every synth felt like they were figuring out a new tech, whereas now it feels like we have every sound and every possibility, and I have no idea where they could possibly take it next. I’ll eat my words, I’m sure. It’s an exciting time, and we gravitate toward that era of sounds because there’s a warmth and a nostalgia to it. We try to inject that, and this song has that, even down to the song structure. We love songs that tell a story from top to bottom and that have a narrative. There’s an epic ending to it, and it tells a story. There’s a little bit of cheekiness in there too whenever we say that ‘It’s the most joan song ever,’ because a lot of people, for better or for worse, depending on when they jumped on the joan train, love our ballads. So it was a little bit cheeky, just being like, ‘Okay, this is more of a ballad, and it has sax in it. What else could you want?’
You write and produce all your own music in the studio you built in Little Rock, where you’re using an AKG P220 Mic, K240 MKII headphones and a pair of JBL 305P MKII powered studio monitors. How do these fit in with your workflow and create that signature joan sound?
AT: The JBLs are a smaller-form nearfield monitor, and they provide us with an amazing, listening environment that we can test things out on. We’ll even go, ‘Hey, let me try this on the way home in the car and make sure that it’s translating in the same way’. The beauty of the JBLs is they give a different smaller form EQ, so I can test it out and go, ‘Okay, this is what it sounds like on these smaller form studio monitors’. And they’re pretty flat too, which is nice, because the flatter the response, the better sound we’re going to have and it’s going to translate everywhere. We’ve been really happy with them. My dad has a little studio at his house, and he’s got a bigger set of JBLs, and they were the first monitors that came with some sort of room correction. I just remember that was the first legit pair of monitors that I was in front of that weren’t little computer monitors. I was like, ‘Oh, this is what good ones sound like,’ and, ‘this is what music is supposed to sound like.’ So I’ve had a cool relationship with JBL my whole life, even starting when I was younger and learning how to produce songs, period.
SR: Also the AKG mic is very cool. In the last year, we have extended our mic locker. We used to have a mic or two because we were doing most things in bedroom studios. We didn’t have the space to do a full drum kit. So what’s cool about this mic is it can be a vocal mic, we can use it
as a room mic, or we can use it to get mono overhead.
AT: Exactly. Just the other day, I used it as a near room mic, so 15 feet away, just getting the room sound, and it’s super clear. It feels awesome. It’s a great texture to have, especially for drums in terms of the amount of clarity you have from it. Also we’ve got the AKG headphones and they’re semi open, and what’s nice about them is we can be playing and in the session, and over here working on synth world, and you’re able to hear it so that it feels like you’re in both worlds at the same time. Just having the semi open thing is really nice – to feel like you’re still in the room a little bit, and be able to properly hear things, is great. If you mix on these, there’s a vast difference in quality in terms of what you are actually hearing.
Do you have any future music plans? Is another joan album on the way…?
SR: Yes to both! We’ve got this new era of music. We’re working on it, and it will be an album. We have a vision for it, and we’re tightening up that vision and getting more and more songs in the pile. We did the proper album thing on the last album – we did the whole campaign around it and we had a blast doing that. It felt really cool to check that off our list to be like, ‘We did the normal album campaign thing,’ but for this one, for some reason, we wanted people to be as involved as we were creating the album. heartbodymindsoul was the first song we finished for the album, because we knew that we wanted that one to be first. It was the same with eyes – we knew we wanted that one to be second.
AT: Yeah, we’ve done the normal album thing, and this time we wanted to bring people along and finish music that we were really stoked about and that we also knew would be part of the project. Literally this week, we’ve been back in the studio working on what the album will be. There are no announcements as far as dates or anything, but we will have a lot of new music coming out. We’re very excited about what’s to come…
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SCORING
MAX ARUJ & ALFIE GODFREY
Tom Cruise clinging to the wing of an in-flight biplane with no CGI, and a gut-wrenching sunken submarine sequence in the depths of the Bering Sea – these are just two of the music scoring tasks Max Aruj and Alfie Godfrey were tasked with for what may be the final Mission: Impossible film. Having worked together as assistants to film composer veteran Lorne Balfe for several years, Max Aruj and Alfie Godfrey had their biggest career breakthrough yet on The Final Reckoning. They speak to Headliner about the huge undertaking of scoring the film, creating the music for its two jaw-dropping set pieces, and how Cubase proved vital to it all.
Los Angeles-based Aruj secured his career in film scoring via the tried and true method of initially assisting established composers, starting out at Hans Zimmer’s Remote Control Studios. Starting out making coffee, he was eventually paired up with one of Hollywood’s most in-demand composers, Lorne Balfe, who worked on the previous two Mission: Impossible films and recommended Aruj and Godfrey for this instalment.
Aruj would assist on films and television, including Top Gun: Maverick, Mission: ImpossibleFallout, Black Widow, and The Crown, before going solo and working on Assassin’s Creed Valhalla: Wrath of the Druids, Crawl, Lansky, and The Ice Road
Growing up in West London, Godfrey makes up the British half of this pair of composers. As it’s his first interview with Headliner, the crucial first question is how he got into music and film scoring.
“I didn’t really know where to put my energy as a musician until I went on a school trip one day and met Harry Gregson-Williams,” he recalls. “He showed me around his studio and the project files for Shrek and Team America, and all these amazing films that I loved at that time. I did a course at UCLA in film scoring. I heard about this five-week internship at Remote Control Productions, and later on, I met Lorne Balfe, who is our mentor.”
You can’t get a better example of the chameleon life of a film composer than Godfrey going from working on the Brit flick Marching Powder starring Danny Dyer, to the latest episode in
the Mission: Impossible franchise. “It’s a completely different film in every way if you’re comparing it to Mission: Impossible,” Godfrey says. “It’s a onehour, 25-minute film, and the music was to enhance the comedy.”
It’s no exaggeration to say that being asked to write the music for Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for both these composers, and one that will almost certainly elevate each of their careers to the next level. Touted as Tom Cruise’s final outing as the rogue agent Ethan Hunt, he and the IMF (Impossible Missions Force) must race around the globe to prevent the Entity, a malevolent artificial intelligence, from wreaking catastrophe on humanity.
It brings back the ensemble cast of Hayley Atwell, Ving Rhames, Simon Pegg, Pom Klementieff, and Angela Bassett, and is one of the most expensive films ever made, being somewhere in the region of $400 million. Add to the mix the fact that director Christopher McQuarrie and Cruise planned two of the most daring set pieces ever put to screen, with the actor risking life and limb once again, you can imagine the nerves Aruj and Godfrey were feeling when taking this project on.
“I had heard that from the head of music at Paramount that Christopher McQuarrie wanted to meet,” says Aruj. “After a series of chats and interviews and writing a pitch, I found out that Alfie and I would be scoring. It was so exciting and also scary. Lorne, our former boss, had recommended us both. I’m not sure I’ll ever feel that level of nervousness and excitement again, because now, having done the movie after the fact, I know that it is possible for me to do.”
Credit: 2025 Paramount Pictures
Besides the weight coming from the Mission: Impossible name itself, and knowing how beloved this franchise is, there’s also knowing you’re following on from the long list of composers to score these films. Danny Elfman, Hans Zimmer and Lisa Gerrard, Michael Giacchino, and more. “When your to-do list starts to pile up you don’t need to be thinking about who came before you, because that’ll just make you more stressed,” Aruj says. Even before Covid, many composers would work remotely, but Aruj was relocated to London for 12 months to work in the same room as Godfrey, and in the same office building as McQuarrie and the post-production army, making the magic happen.
And they have managed, despite the bewildering workload (the soundtrack album is over two hours long), to put a brilliant and individual stamp on this franchise. As Cruise listens to the
trademark, ‘Your mission, should you choose to accept it’ order, Aruj and Godfrey provide this moment with some gorgeously ambient cinematic music (heard in Another Sunrise and This Is Where You Leave Me on the album), setting the tone with the kind of goosebumps only unforgettable sound in film can create.
A very different musical task they faced involves a giant Russian submarine. In one of the two, ‘Why on Earth did he want to put himself through that?’ setpieces of the film, Cruise has to retrieve something from a sunken submarine, and it was down to Aruj and Godfrey to conjure up the necessary levels of claustrophobia and dread.
“I think it was very clear to McQ (McQuarrie), this would not be violins and trumpets,” Godfrey says. “He showed us the space bass, which is
this instrument that looks like a giant marimba made in a scrap yard. You bow it and strike it, and it has this deep resonance. That was going to be the world for this part of the score; is it sound, or is it music? It’s a testament to the ambition of McQ and Tom, because those sets and the risks that Tom took to shoot the film are crazy.”
As if Cruise putting himself in a submarine filled with freezing cold water of his own free will isn’t mad enough, The Final Reckoning’s other set piece sees him clinging on to an in-flight biplane. Knowing that next to no CGI was used in either set piece, it’s truly breathtaking stuff that can only be fully appreciated on the biggest cinema screen possible. McQuarrie and Cruise’s dedication to honouring the cinema experience is deeply admirable, to say the least.
“THE PLANE SCENE WAS BY FAR THE MOST CHALLENGING BIT OF THE SCORE. WHEN WE FIRST WATCHED THE FOUR-HOUR CUT WITH NO MUSIC, WE THOUGHT, ‘WHAT COULD WE POSSIBLY WRITE THAT WOULD MATCH THIS?’”
“The plane scene was by far the most challenging bit of the score, and also the part I’m most proud of,” says Aruj. “When we first watched the four-hour cut with no music, we thought, ‘What could we possibly write that would match this?’ For about six months, we did not have a lot of music in that scene. The instinct is to write really fast music with lots of percussion and lots of fast notes. But it didn’t work, because when you’re in the sky and trying to hear lots of fast notes, it oddly makes the planes feel slow. When we see Tom Cruise running on land, having fast notes worked very well, with this kind of kinetic energy. We needed melodies and chords that supported the deep drama and danger of it all, and a lot of the time, that was having trumpets up higher and having a dissonance between the bass note and the top line. That took months.”
With the two composers together in a room the entire time they worked on the film, it was vital that they were using the same DAW to make the process as streamlined and painless as possible. Thankfully, they are both long-term users of Steinberg’s Cubase for their scoring work, taking the lead from former mentor, Balfe.
“In this score and a lot of symphonic scores, MIDI editing and writing orchestral music is paramount,” Aruj says. “When we get to the period of orchestration and recording the music, it’s already neatly done on Cubase. Of course, there are a few errors here and there, but in general, there should be very few questions when the conductor is on the stand and we’re in the booth. There needs to be no debate; every minute counts. I’ve been using Cubase for 15 years now. I was using Logic before, but once I got the job with Lorne, I had to switch on day one. Once you start learning it, it’s pretty easy to use. It’s pretty impressive how quickly you can get into the flow of things, and we’re expected to write fully orchestrated and programmed pieces within a day. Our skills need to be at that level and at that speed to be able to give the director a symphonic piece within a few hours.”
“We both started on Cubase with Lorne,” confirms Godfrey. “It enables us to work as fast as we can think. There’s no barrier, nothing is stopping us. It’s our muscle memory, and we can control it at our will to a very deep extent. I don’t indulge in the age-old conversation of what’s
better: Logic or Cubase, or this and that. The answer is always that the best DAW is the one you use and are best at using. That said, Cubase is very good at MIDI editing in complex ways, done with simple commands. It’s very good for huge templates that we really rely on. It’s the modern way of making these films. You have to lean on the programming a lot to have a very clear intention of what you’re trying to do. And as Max said, there’s no doubt of a dynamic. There’s no doubt of a timbre. When we get to the recording, it’s very clear. We spend a lot of time in Cubase making sure it’s very, very clear.”
If you’ve not seen The Final Reckoning yet, hopefully the preceding paragraphs have done enough to convince you that this is not a film to watch at home, but on the biggest cinema screen you can find, with the highest spec speakers booming out Godfrey and Aruj’s brilliant score for this Ethan Hunt outing. The original score album is out now; stick it on and you can almost imagine doing a trapeze act on an aeroplane yourself.
maxaruj.com
BENSON BOONE
“WITH THE NEW QUANTUM PROCESSING, I’VE GOT A LOT MORE ‘FLAVOUR’ TO WORK WITH.”
In just a few short years, Benson Boone has gone from a brief stint on American Idol and his first charttopping single to opening for Taylor Swift at London’s Wembley Stadium, and performing on the main stage at Coachella 2025. He’s just released his highly-anticipated second album, American Heart, and is currently playing the summer festival circuit, followed by arena shows across the US and Europe, including Madison Square Garden, with DiGiCo Quantum338 consoles supplied by Clair Global at front-of-house and monitors.
Joey Diehl, Boone’s FOH mixer since early 2024, is a longtime DiGiCo fan,
and has been using the Quantum338 since it was released during the pandemic. “At the time, I was with Special Event Services, doing a lot of streaming shows. It’s one of my favourite consoles I’ve ever used,” he says. “It feels very modern and up-todate with current requirements, with the things that people are looking for and what sounds good now – and it keeps getting better.”
Carter Luckett, who has mixed monitors with Boone since August 2024, is another DiGiCo aficionado, using them at both monitors and FOH over recent years. “I toured heavily on the Quantum225, then upgraded to the Quantum338 a couple of years
ago,” he reports. “For monitors, it’s hard to use anything else because of the functionality and the speed with which you’re able to get around the desk and get mixes pulled up quickly and accurately. Quantum desks have really changed the way I work, and with the new Quantum processing, I’ve got a lot more ‘flavour’ to work with, building on the already robust, consistent DiGiCo infrastructure. It’s my preferred workflow.”
Coachella was a highlight of this year’s tour dates so far, not least because Queen guitarist Brian May joined Boone for his rendition of Bohemian Rhapsody. Luckett had to stay alert as the high level of movement on stage by Boone didn’t favour the use of wedges, put out exclusively for May. With both artists operating in the same space, Luckett expertly merged the two environments together.
“Obviously, we didn’t want any squeals or squawks, so I would ride his mic in and out based on where he was on stage to keep his vocal from feeding back,” he says. “But it worked out.”
While Diehl uses some outboard gear, he’s equally happy relying on DiGiCo’s onboard Mustard and Spice Rack processing when there’s not enough real estate for racks at FOH. “Give me 30 minutes and a pair of headphones and I’ll be set because I love everything on the DiGiCo. Even with outboard, I still use the EQ on the desk. The way that you can send things and build out files is very close to what I would do at home in a studio, so it’s given me the ability to have that studio process on the road.”
Diehl continues, “The best thing for me are the macros and how the snapshots work. I don’t think any other console has yet got close to how powerful the snapshots on the DiGiCo can be. It can do anything, and it can do it really well. I do some crazy stuff; there are songs where I have 20-something snapshots. I am doing such minutiae in these snapshots, but it makes a massive difference.”
It took a lot of programming, he says, but his efforts are matched by the musicians, who have worked hard to replicate Boone’s recordings. “Our MD is amazingly critical and famously very detail-orientated. Lately, we’ve been landing the actual record in playback; I’ll go back and forth between my mix and the record. By the end of the song, I can press play and say, ‘OK, this sounds like the record.’ And it’s all saved to the snapshots,” and driven by the show’s timecode.
“I have a couple of outboard analogue pieces,” Luckett reveals, together with a hardware reverb, “just to polish Benson’s vocal and give it a little saturation to set it apart. It’s an extra sauce to add to Benson’s mix to make him feel comfortable in his own space. He’s the star of the show, so we’ve got a solid band mix, then his vocal just floats right on top of it. That chain, paired up with what’s inside the DiGiCo for the rest of the band, really complement each other.”
Elaborating on the musicians’ inear mixes, he says, “The keys player is our band leader, so he wants to hear each musician equally to keep tabs on everything that’s being played. He wants to hear an honest representation of what each player is creating. That’s where the DiGiCo helps – it’s really easy to get good, clean sounds that replicate what each player is actually playing, not colouring the sound, and without having to scoop ‘mud.’ But when you want to add some flavour, you have Mustard and Spice Rack, which give me a nice, almost front-of-house
mix for my artist, while maintaining these clean, honest mixes for the players – or even give a fun little mix to somebody who wants to hear the record, or some version of it.”
As for the rest of the band, he continues, “I’ve got one player who wants a really dry mix that’s mostly her on guitar, no reverb on anything. The bass player wants more of a record feel, where he gets Benson’s reverb and a little more treatment and compression to round things out and help glue everything together. The drummer is similar to the guitar player, where he wants a fairly dry mix – but he mostly wants click and drums, like most drummers.”
This next leg of the tour passes through North America and Europe, before ending up in the Middle East in December, and offers few breaks, the pair say. “If it wasn’t a DiGiCo console and it wasn’t Clair Global, I swear it would be impossible, logistically. As much as I love other production companies and other consoles, this is how it has to be to get it done,” Diehl
comments. Luckett agrees: “You can get a DiGiCo anywhere in the world, and even if it’s not the exact same console, you can convert the file. It’s the only way for us to get through some of these shows.”
That said, Diehl and Luckett recently spent some time at Clair Global’s HQ in Lititz, Pennsylvania, getting familiar with the new DiGiCo Quantum852. They are looking forward to adopting the new console when they have the opportunity, likely this Autumn, during production rehearsals for the arena tour. “It feels very familiar, but it also has loads of new features. It’ll be fun to figure out exactly what new implementations you can do with it,” Luckett says. Diehl adds, “I sat down and made a file, and it only took me a few hours, so I could do a show on the Quantum852 right now!”
DIGICO.BIZ
WORDS BY ADAM
COMING HOME
THETINGTINGS
Following the stratospheric success of their debut single That’s Not My Name in 2008, indie duo The Ting Tings have been committed to using that platform to reinvent themselves and put songwriting first with each new album. New album Home sees a big shift into music inspired by Fleetwood Mac, The Eagles, and Toto, with Jules De Martino no longer just behind the drum kit and joining Katie White as co-frontman. The duo talk to Headliner about almost starting anew with a different band name for their new sound, their most recent record, and why they could never resent the success of their breakthrough debut single.
Having tried their hand in prior bands, Katie White and Jules De Martino met when the latter was visiting Manchester, quickly bonding over a shared love of UK trip-hoppers Portishead. Before long, their first musical venture together as Dear Eskiimo was underway, signing with Mercury Records. An unwanted change of management caused that first project to end prematurely.
White continued to work as a barmaid at the Islington Mill in Salford, while De Martino worked as a producer for artists in the building’s studio space. The pair began to draw inspiration
from the various contemporary sounds coming from the artists making music at the Mill, forming the basis for The Ting Tings. White named the band after the name of her Chinese colleague at a shop. Upon deeper exploration, they discovered one of the name’s meanings was ‘sound of innovation on an open mind.’
The newly created duo began writing songs and performing regularly at the Islington Mill — their third performance was mentioned by XFM, and the likes of Rick Rubin began asking for tickets. The unstoppable That’s Not My Name was the band’s first single, originally
released with a small, local label, and they soon found themselves being played on British radio and even performing at Glastonbury 2007.
Following a UK tour and appearance on Later... with Jools Holland, The Ting Tings signed to Columbia Records.
That’s Not My Name was re-released as part of their debut album We Started Nothing, topping the UK single and album charts respectively, and their success was assured.
White and De Martino join the Zoom call from their warmer Spanish island home of Ibiza. Looking back, White feels the continued success of their trademark song is because it felt and still feels distinct from the other indie rock of the 2000s, during the genre’s most successful commercial moment.
“Weirdly, we didn’t fully fit into it,” she says. “I remember NME jumped on what we were doing, and we did this big NME tour. But you could feel it –that we didn’t fully fit. We came from an artist community in Manchester that was very DIY, indie, and artpop. But we always seemed to write songs that had some kind of pop sensibility to them, especially back then. We were just in our own weird little lane. And I think now that’s why That’s Not My Name is on a Starbucks commercial, and it’s just been on a big Netflix film that’s number one on Netflix at the moment. Those songs on that first album keep getting
constantly used. Everyone calls them evergreen now, and I think it’s because you don’t associate them too much with that indie period.”
Not only did That’s Not My Name top the UK singles chart, it fought off Rihanna, Madonna, and will.i.am to do so. The track stood out from the indie crowd of the time with its sparse instrumentation, with White just singing over De Martino’s drum beat until the guitar joins in the chorus. The incredibly catchy, repeated refrain of the song’s title helped the track spread like wildfire. And while the song sent the duo to stardom and three years of non-stop touring, you sometimes wonder how a group feels about such a song years later. Radiohead practically refuse to play Creep live, while Nirvana would often perform Smells Like Teen Spirit sarcastically.
“No, there’s no resentment,” De Martino says. “We’re delighted. We’re
very lucky. We’ve got a career still, we’re making records, and we’re on our fifth album. It’s wonderful for a band to be able to do that. Some bands can’t get there. Arguments happen, and things change. We’re very thankful that the first record set us up – we got to see the world.”
The Ting Tings then toured that first album pretty relentlessly for three years, and their lives were completely non-stop. It’s a fascinating juxtaposition to where we find them now, with a slow-living lifestyle in Ibiza, which is known as a relaxed, bohemian retreat for creatives for most of the year, outside of party season. They do still tour occasionally, but much more selectively and without the need to stop in every big city around the world.
“For starters, we have a daughter,” White says. “She’s four, and you have to change the way you are when you have a child. But also, we’re just so in love with songwriting. We want to get old and still make music, and this feels like the right route for us. It definitely wasn’t that before, flying every day and trying to think about what’s the best transition to doing a video that will make it relevant and cool. We definitely let go of that. And with this new record, it was so lovely to write. It was a complete joy.”
The best part of two decades later, The Ting Ting’s new, independently-released album is a far cry from the punky, pop-leaning indie of their whirlwind 2008 and beyond. The pair’s recent obsession with the ‘70s sounds of Fleetwood Mac and The Eagles is worn very proudly on their sleeves. The album opens with its second single, Good People Do Bad Things, and if someone were to tell you the guitar was recorded by Lindsey Buckingham and the backing vocals were Stevie Nicks and Christine McVie, you might not bat an eyelid.
“We were in London at the time, and we had just become a family,” De Martino says. “We had kind of given up the idea of going out and touring or trying to be anything. So we built this really nice, small studio, with lots of live instruments around. We had two bass guitars, five electric guitars, some really good analogue outboard gear, a drum kit, the usual stuff. And we just dropped the laptop and all the digital technology, all the bits we used to use to start layering stuff. And at that point, you start immediately sounding like all the famous bands that we’d never stopped listening to: Bread, Supertramp, Steely Dan, Toto. We then hunted around for some cool musicians, and we put a rehearsal together with these new songs. And it was just mind-blowing. These people play with 10CC and ELO, and some of the greatest bands ever. We played them our songs, and they said ‘we’d love to do this.’”
White then reveals that, with such a major change of sound, there was a serious discussion about a new band name. Did they almost kill The Ting Tings?
“Our old manager around us at the time said we should call it De Martino and White. And we felt that as well. So we called ourselves that for a while, but eventually thought, ‘Why are we not calling it The Ting Tings?’ Because if we want to do it independently, it’s so hard to push anything through. Spotify is
mainly owned by the majors, and it’s very hard to get on playlists and all that. We thought, ‘Why don’t we use The Ting Tings, when we’re proud of what we’ve done?’
If you’re flicking through a feed on TikTok and something related to The Ting Tings comes up, if you’ve had any connection with our music in the past, there’s going to be some recognition. But I like the fact that we did go down the De Martino and White route whilst making the album, because it just helped to lift that weight off us.”
The other big talking point of Home is that this is the album where De Martino steps forward from the drum kit to take on much more of a co-frontman role, a big step outside of his comfort zone. In the breakthrough days of the band, he would play drums, trigger some electronic parts, and do a few backing vocals here and there. Dreaming is one of the album’s moments where his vocals are absolutely key to the song, in the Fleetwood Mac tradition of different singers taking a more leading role in different songs.
De Martino explains what a big hurdle this was to get over, saying, “I’m comfortable in the studio as a vocalist. I’m not frightened of it. But it’s a different thing going onto stage, whatever the size, that’s where my fear starts to get hold of me. I’m petrified of standing in front of an audience. Sitting behind a drum kit or stack of keyboards,
it’s much easier with sunglasses on. Katie was really convinced it would be fine.
“We went to London, played our first show for this new music. It was about 700 capacity, and I had a massive breakdown. I was backstage and I had to go for a walk down the high street to breathe. I was trying to conjure up an excuse why the gig had to be cancelled. For the first four songs, I was just rigid and I couldn’t move. Then we did a second show, and that was a lot better. Now I’m really excited about it, and the show will just keep developing from here on.”
Home , this big, creative shift from the powerhouse duo, is out now. An August performance in Portugal is coming up, followed by a big headline show at EartH, London in late September; a fascinating opportunity to not only hear these new songs with the band they have put together, but also to hear how the old songs sound reworked with the West Coast magic sprinkled on them.
“We hope that the songs will do a lot of the work,” White says. “Because we’ve really concentrated on the songwriting, and we feel like, as songwriters, this is something that will last us forever.”
SONIC VISION
JAZZCLUB KARLSRUHE
Credit: Florian Gundert, Schoeps
Since its founding in the 1960s, Jazzclub Karlsruhe has become a cornerstone of Germany’s cultural scene. With legendary performances by artists such as Albert Mangelsdorff and Dexter Gordon, the club has secured a lasting place in the jazz world and continues to serve as a vital platform for the genre in all its diversity. The journey to this point was not without challenges: after years of searching and several temporary venues, the club finally found a permanent home in the heart of Karlsruhe. In its new location, the club now leverages cutting-edge technology to deliver exceptional sound quality and an unforgettable auditory experience. Headliner discovers how the venue’s new Lawo console allows guests to experience music in its purest acoustic form.
The club’s latest technical upgrade features a 16-fader Lawo mc²36 audio mixing console and microphones from Schoeps –two brands renowned for their pioneering contributions to audio technology. Together, they bring the club’s sonic vision to life. Niklas König, chairman of the Jazzclub and artistic director of the local band Soulcafé, explains the decision:
“The Jazzclub stands for quality and tradition. When we host artists, we aim to provide not only an outstanding stage but also the best possible sound experience for our audience. The Lawo mc²36 offers the ideal combination of compact design and powerful performance – crucial for our limited technical space. Its slim profile integrates
seamlessly into the venue without compromising audio quality.”
The Lawo mc²36, equipped with A_UHD Core technology, delivers high performance in a compact format. It features 384 processing channels at 48/96 kHz, supports up to 864 I/O channels, and includes local I/Os, native RAVENNA/AES67 IP connectivity, and point-to-point stage box integration.
The built-in Waves SuperRack plug-in integration enables detailed sound processing.
Credit: Florian Gundert, Schoeps
“At Soulcafé concerts, we often use up to 32 channels from the stage, mixing them for PA and monitor paths, along with dedicated playout and multitrack recording paths. The mc²36 handles this effortlessly. We can use up to 16 aux and 16 playout paths while recording each source discreetly,” König explains. “This setup equips us perfectly for PA, in-ear monitoring, and high-quality recordings.”
The mc²36’s intuitive user interface ensures efficient control of the sound parameters and a smooth workflow.
“Its design allows even freelance technicians to quickly get up to speed,” König emphasises. “This is essential for us, as we frequently work with different engineers but still aim to maintain a consistently high standard. The touchscreen interface and clearly structured workflow enable fast familiarisation and reliable operation during live performances.”
Another key element of the club’s sound is its use of Schoeps microphones, internationally acclaimed for their outstanding audio fidelity.
“Our microphones authentically and precisely capture the natural sound of instruments,” adds Florian Gundert, marketing manager at Schoeps. “Their transparent off-axis response gives sound engineers maximum flexibility in the mix – an advantage for both intimate acoustic setups and louder, more crowded stages.”
At Jazzclub Karlsruhe, microphones from the modular Colette series are used, typically paired with the CMC 1 miniature amplifier and the MK 4 cardioid capsule. Depending on production needs, they are positioned as drum overheads, on the grand piano, or in front of wind instruments. In combination with the Lawo mc²36, the
Schoeps microphones reveal their full sonic potential –benefiting both performers and audiences.
“The subtle nuances our microphones capture are preserved throughout the high-quality signal chain,” Gundert notes. “This ensures exceptional clarity and dynamic range in both PA sound and recordings.”
This precision also enhances in-ear monitoring. “The clarity of the in-ear mix is remarkable,” König adds. “It allows our musicians to focus entirely on their performance, thanks to a perfectly balanced sound image in their ears.”
Even at higher volumes, the seamlessly integrated PA system delivers crystal-clear sound. Still, the club often opts for subtle miking techniques. “With a jazz trio, for instance, we lightly mic the instruments to complement the natural room acoustics and optimise the sound balance for the audience – without altering the direct sound character or introducing noticeable amplification,” König explains.
The integration of Lawo and Schoeps technologies demonstrates how Jazzclub Karlsruhe harmonises tradition with innovation to deliver the ultimate musical experience. The high-resolution audio setup supports the club’s cultural mission: to highlight the authenticity and emotional depth of jazz.
“Our guests come here to experience music in its purest acoustic form,” König concludes. “With finely tuned room acoustics and premium signal processing, we ensure that every artistic detail and dynamic nuance reaches the audience with clarity and balance.”
Credit: Simon Kropp, Event Rookie
HIGH POWER, HYBRID SOURCE SOUND REINFORCEMENT
Shaping the Future by Celebrating our Past
Three decades on and NEXO Alpha systems are still thrilling live music audiences and clubbers with their characteristic power and presence. Now we’ve drawn on the spirit of that ‘90s classic to create Alpha +, a ‘three-box’ FOH system that combines the benefits of line source coupling with the easy deployment of point source speakers.
Stacked on a mid-sized festival stage or installed in a club, it’s all Alpha, reimagined for the modern age.
nexo-sa.com
drow s by alice gustafson
AFRICA’S DANCE MUSIC TAKEOVER
AFRICORI
Headliner touched down in Ibiza for this year’s International Music Summit (IMS), diving headfirst into three high-energy days (and nights) packed with insights, beats, and the ideas shaping the future of electronic music.
The headline stat from IMS 2024? The global electronic music industry grew by 6%, hitting a massive $12.9 billion valuation. Genres like Afro House, Drum & Bass, and Minimal/ Deep Tech are no longer niche –they’re rapidly rising, with all signs suggesting they’re on track to become the next wave of mainstream sounds. Africa’s electronic and dance music scene, in particular, is bursting with energy and innovation. From the hypnotic rhythms of Amapiano to the deep pulse of Afro House, the continent’s sonic output is as diverse as it is dynamic. Africori – recently acquired by Warner Music Group –has been instrumental in spotlighting this creativity, especially within the electronic and dance spaces.
One standout session at IMS, titled ‘Africa Is Not A Country – The Growth Of Electronic Music Across The Continent’, tackled these themes head-on. Adam Tiran, Director of Operations at Africori, joined the panel to shed light on the continent’s rich and varied electronic music landscape. Before the panel discussion and the Africori rooftop showcase, Headliner grabbed a coffee with Tiran to discuss the global hunger for African dance music, how genres like Amapiano and Afro House are no longer niche, and how African artists are finally being recognised as part of global genres like pop, R&B, and electronic – not just boxed in as “African music”.
Africori has played a huge role in shaping Africa’s music landscape, especially in the dance and electronic space. From your perspective, what makes Africa such a rich breeding ground for unique dance sounds right now?
It’s a big question. It’s impossible to ignore it. It is everywhere you move in South Africa. There’s so many reasons why dance is so important on the continent. It’s a form of language, essentially. It’s a form of history. Dance has always been a huge part of African music generally. And now, we’re seeing the dominance of dance music in its different forms. You’ve got the Amapiano space, which has been doing really well for the last few years, locally and internationally. Then there’s the Afro House space, which is coming up and making a big re-entry into the international market. It’s culturally so important. But at the same time, it’s been something that has developed through a lot of genres over the years. Amapiano is a reinterpretation of Kwaito, which was born in the ‘90s in post apartheid South Africa, which itself was inspired by house music from the US and Italy, slowed down, with local vernacular raps on top of it. Music is all cyclical, but in
terms of the way that people vibe, it’s dance, rhythm and percussion, and particularly in South Africa, there’s a lot of soul. All of that feeds into a beautiful fusion. There are constantly new genres being created. It’s extremely innovative. It’s special.
Since Warner Music Group’s full acquisition of Africori this year, what new opportunities have opened up for African artists on the global stage?
Since we started working with Warner Music, there’ve been many new opportunities that we’ve started to step into. One of the biggest benefits has been interacting with the international teams. We have been working extremely closely with the emerging markets team, which Africa has typically fallen under. But more than that, Warner Music understands the global context of trying to take music from emerging spaces and putting it into the broader international market. That’s been fruitful. We had this dream of taking African music to the world, and before Warner Music, we were doing it by ourselves. Amapiano has been having, and is continuing to have, a moment. There is a global appetite for what is coming from Africa, and a general recognition
that there is so much talent on the continent, whether it’s in the dance music world or if it’s R&B. I’ve been with Africori from the beginning, and for the longest time, our mission was to give African music the respect and recognition that it deserves on the global stage. Now I feel like we’re in a place where we are breaking out of it being just ‘African music’, and it’s now just dance music, or it’s R&B, or hip hop. Personally, that’s really important, because the categorisations are a little bit loaded.
How so?
It’s two-pronged. It’s definitely national pride, or international pride, that makes us say, ‘This is African music, this is our culture.’ It’s also a bit of a resistance to something being blocked before, but it feels like it’s starting to get unlocked now.
If you look at Burna Boy, who’s a global star now, or Tyla, they were originally put in that African box, until they managed to establish themselves on the global stage and are considered popstars.
Africa’s electronic and dance scene is so diverse, from Amapiano and Afro House and beyond. Which movements or micro-genres do you feel are pushing boundaries and shaping the future right now?
Afro House is the key thing to look at. We’ve been talking about Amapiano a lot the last few years, and have had some moments internationally. Afro House is starting to contest it. Some of our biggest records this year in South Africa have been from that sound. It’s great to see these emerging genres competing with each other in different spaces, but also fusing into one. Afro House is
a fascinating, longer-running genre than Amapiano, but it’s now in its second phase. I find that exciting, because usually when a genre comes back again, it means the infrastructure and the foundations of it were formed enough for it to reemerge. In South Africa right now, if you step into a club, you’ll hear Amapiano and 3-Step Afro House all under the same banner – all fusing into one another. That is kind of unheard of. There’s a lot of innovation going on in the genres; it’s incredibly fertile. They are categorised and quite clearly are defined cultures; however, they are all merging as well.
How important is it for you to ensure African dance music retains its cultural identity as it scales globally?
I feel strongly that it should always have some kind of local engagement, but it is a real sign of respect and growth when the world starts to coopt a sound. There’s so much historical reasoning as to why Africans would be more protective of their sounds than others, because before, things were not given the recognition they deserved. So, they’re highly protective, especially in South Africa. I believe you have to be the one to take your culture to the world. You can’t just wait for it to come to you.
Platforms like TikTok have been a huge amplifier for African tracks, especially dance-led ones. How have you seen social platforms shape the way African artists break into international markets?
Certainly, the way that the songs break is on TikTok. With Amapiano, it’s been the number one driver. For Afro House, it’s not quite as much. Amapiano is more dance-driven as it’s tied into dance challenges and culture. TikTok has been key for that. Especially during COVID, some key dance challenges popped up and took over, and that is a way for them to enter new markets, because dance is a form of internationalisation; it’s a way of connecting with the music. You might not understand the lyrics, but you get the movement. Afro House is a little different. The way tracks are picked up typically is more down to live shows, and seeing DJ sets and those performances of crowds in Tulum of 15,000 people. There are things that you need to translate to the broader international market. For Afro House, the palette is a little bit more diverse in terms of where it can grow. You can do it through IG. You can do it through PR. You can do it through shows.
Why are events like the Africori showcase held during IMS important as part of Warner Music’s wider strategy?
It’s a collaborative project that is a continuation of a remix project
that we did with Warner Music, where we were taking classic house music records and having them remixed into Amapiano by South African artists. We worked closely with Armada Records on that, and we got to a point where we felt we really wanted to bring those two worlds together. This collaborative event with Homecoming, Africori and Warner Music is a way for these artists to connect with the island.
Comment from Sfarzo Rtee, a DJ who performed at the Africori showcase at The Standard in Ibiza:
Working with Africori has been an incredible experience – the team are deeply passionate about amplifying
African music on the world stage, and it’s a really collaborative relationship. Their support has been instrumental in bringing my music to new audiences, and this IMS show was a big moment for me.
African and specifically South African electronic music is more fertile and more active than ever right now –whether it’s Amapiano, Afro house or 3-Step, you can’t deny us any more.
Credit: BBC Radio
6 Music and Darren Skene
GLASTONBURY 2025
DEB GRANT & NATHAN SHEPHERD BBC 6 MUSIC AT
The Glastonbury Festival of Contemporary Arts recently welcomed an eye-watering 200,000 or so people across the 1,500 acres of Worthy Farm. And the only thing as gargantuan as this green metropolis of a festival is the BBC’s comprehensive and all-encompassing television and radio coverage of Glasto; BBC One, Two, and the free iPlayer streaming service provide live sets across the festival’s weekend and a number of its main stages, including the Pyramid, Other, West Holts, and Woodsies stages.
Taking a venerable army of a production crew to achieve this feat, a sizable host of the BBC’s top radio and television presenting talent descends upon Somerset each year. As soon as a live set ends, the coverage will cut back to the presenters, discussing what they’ve just seen, the rumours flying around the festival, and also interviewing the lineup’s artists and hosting exclusive live sessions.
Two vital cogs in the marathon presenting wheel are Deb Grant and Nathan Shepherd. Having spent two years presenting BBC 6 Music’s New Music Fix show with Tom Ravenscroft, Grant has recently been joined by new co-host Nathan Shepherd. This also means the pair had the golden ticket to Glastonbury 2025. Grant and Shepherd chat to Headliner about Glastonbury this year.
Deb, could you tell us about growing up in Dublin, getting into music, and how it all led you to broadcasting?
Grant: Growing up in Dublin was great. I left when I was 19, but the opportunities I had to immerse myself in music were pretty good. There were some great record shops in Dublin, which are still around. There was a brilliant pirate radio station that I used to listen to obsessively, which set the template for what I went on to do later. I was particularly obsessed with forcing the music that I liked onto other people, making mixed CDs for the common room at school and monopolising the car stereo and all of that.
I think it felt a bit ‘in the sky’ to imagine myself as a broadcaster. I’d been DJing since I was a young teenager, playing records, and I continued doing that when I moved to London. I came to London to study music, and then I got swept up working office jobs and DJing on the side. I didn’t start the radio thing until I was in my late 20s, and even then, it was only a very casual thing. I’m not
quite sure how this happened, but I’m very happy that it did.
And how about you, Nathan; could you tell us about your journey into BBC 6 Music?
Shepherd: I grew up in Stockport –still there! Same house, I’ve not fled the nest yet. Growing up, my mum and dad would play absolutely everything. I think I was about nine and I asked my dad, very bravely, ‘Dad, could you buy me a guitar, because I no longer want to play football?’ I think he was happy because he didn’t want to drive me at seven in the morning on a Sunday to football games. I think the turning point for me is as a family, we’d always watch Jools Holland, and I saw Arctic Monkeys when they first played there.
From then on, I knew that I wanted to be a musician or get into music. I was in bands, and I did a bit of music in college. The radio thing came about after I started doing mashups of songs on TikTok during lockdown. They blew up a little bit. And that’s how I came onto 6 Music’s radar. I
“I TRIED TO GET GLASTONBURY TICKETS AND NEVER GOT THEM. APPARENTLY, THE WAY TO GET IN IS TO BE A PRESENTER ON 6 MUSIC!”
started doing the Indie Forever show in 2023, and I’d never been on the radio before. So it’s a bit of a mad journey. But I’m very thankful.
Some who are less familiar with the 6 Music playlist might think indie is the main genre the station plays, but it actually plays an enormous variety of genres. With that in mind, could you tell us a bit about the Indie Forever show?
Shepherd: 6 Music is a mad world of everything. But Indie Forever hones in on that classic noughties indie. The strap line at one point was: ‘solid gold, upbeat indie bangers.’ But it spans further as well: ‘80s, ‘90s, just celebrating indie music, indie musicians, and playing great tunes on a Friday night, nine to 11 pm.
Deb, you’ve only just welcomed Nathan onto the show as your new co-host. How has that been, and can you tell us a bit about the show?
Grant: It feels like Nathan’s been on the show forever. He’s such a great communicator and broadcaster. He’s so passionate about music, and he’s coming at it from a musician’s perspective, too.
The show feels like such a big responsibility: to be that conduit for bringing new music into the station, introducing new artists to the listeners and to the rest of the network, potentially for those artists to get picked up and put on playlists.
For them to be an artist who we’re supporting throughout their whole journey. We play weird, experimental, electronic music, avant-garde stuff, jazz, country and folk, pop, hyper pop, and guitar music as well.
What does Glastonbury festival mean to you both?
Grant: I remember my sister going when she was 17. She came back and was telling me all her stories
about the adventure she had at Glastonbury, and how she kissed two different boys in one day. I was 15 and like, ‘Oh my god!’ It just seemed like a fantasy land for anyone who cares about music.
This year was my third time going, and my third time with the BBC. Not to labour the point, but it really is a pinch yourself kind of thing because
you have access to all this incredible music. At 6 Music, we are a big family, but we’re ships in the night often because we’re all on different schedules. Glastonbury is one of those opportunities where we all just get to come together and hang out and appreciate this incredible festival.
Shepherd: I’m the same as Deb. I applied so many times. I tried to get
tickets and never got them. My mates went in 2016 and I was so jealous. I applied with my band to try and play. And apparently, the way to get in is to be a presenter on 6 Music.
It’s such a magical place. There’s definitely something either in the water or in the grass. Maybe it’s in the dust. It’s very dusty.
Credit: BBC Radio 6 Music and Darren Skene
What does the week look like for you as presenters? Is it a case of trying to see the acts you want to see while also doing lots of presenting for 6 Music?
Grant: The whole point of us being there is that you need to reflect what’s happening at the festival on air for people who aren’t there. You can’t have too strict an agenda of the artists that you want to see, because inevitably you get swept along in the crowd into some tent that you didn’t realise existed.
I have anxiety dreams all week at Glastonbury that I won’t make it back
to the studio in time. We definitely need to make sure that we’re not just focused on the technical side of things, and that we’re actually out there having the experience of being at Glastonbury, so we can talk about it on air.
And how about the New Music Fix show at Glasto in particular?
Grant: We put some live sets to air, and generally bands who are playing Glastonbury who’ve maybe come through the pipeline of the show. Not that we’re taking responsibility for the success of certain bands, but I think we’re definitely going to try and focus
on putting people on air who are acts that will be familiar to regular listeners of the show. Because that’s always really exciting, especially if you played a band’s debut single, and now they’re playing Glastonbury.
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OVATION TREADS THE BOARDS
MARK FAWCETT
With 20 years’ experience in the recording industry, Mark Fawcett is a sound and recording engineer who has established himself as one of the most in-demand classical music specialists in the UK. He has worked with symphony orchestras and world-renowned musicians, and has become something of a specialist in the world of theatre production work. Fawcett explains how Merging Technologies’ Ovation is essential to his theatre work, shares his first impressions of Ovation 11, and why he always chooses Ovation over other audio sequencer solutions.
For your work as a live sound engineer and sound designer, you work closely with Merging Technologies’ Ovation software. Could you tell us a bit about how you use it and how it makes life easier for you?
I have been a long-term user of Merging Technologies Pyramix, and so I find Ovation very intuitive to use. Setting up cue interactions is fantastic – all bases are covered in the menus. It really is a question of if you can dream it, you can make Ovation do it. I always try to make operating a show as simple as possible, so work spent in the design stage pays great dividends on the road.
How essential is a reliable show sequencer like Ovation to your role in theatre production, and what specific tasks does it streamline for you during a live performance?
Ovation is absolutely paramount; it literally runs the show. I have never found anything I need to achieve that Ovation cannot either automate, or at least take on the heavy lifting of. The choice between these two routes is down to how interactive I need to be with the actors.
Can you share a specific instance where Ovation’s sequencing capabilities played a critical role in the success of a challenging or high-stakes performance?
This is a simple thing, and perhaps it’s because I’m a bit old school, but in complex shows with a large channel count it sometimes makes sense to run the Ovation mixer alongside a standalone mixer (I use DiGiCo SD series desks). In these instances I have been able to create MIDI cues in my Ovation sequence to fire snapshots on an SD, turning on and off radios, switching to different mixes for songs, etc. This is a really powerful combination, especially as the MIDI cue itself can be triggered by other cues (and at marker points within cues) using Ovation’s comprehensive interaction rules. In complicated shows with multiple radios, you do not want an actor/vocalist going on stage with a muted mic, or leaving stage with a live mic. You can find yourself in a situation where you have an awful lot to do during short scene transitions, and so can easily get things wrong. But not with a bit of preparation and programming. The point about controlling everything
from a cue sequence is that if you press the space bar at the right time (which can vary quite a lot between performances), then the rest falls into place. You have to be ‘in’ the performance and following the script, not fiddling with menus and windows.
How do you find Ovation for those heated moments of troubleshooting in a live scenario?
The thing with Ovation is that you can see directly under the hood. Some may feel that it is not as pretty as other audio sequencer solutions, but we are doing this as a job, right? We need to see and understand what is going on and how cues are interacting. With Ovation, you really can. Which means if something needs changing at the last minute, or if something is not working as anticipated, you can quickly see why. Just check out the comprehensive cue properties window.
What are the standout features of Ovation 11 that make it particularly suited for demanding theatrical performances, such as opera and large-scale productions?
All professional theatre is demanding, no matter how big the production. You can’t afford for things to go wrong, especially if you want to keep getting work. The integration of Ovation with the Pyramix DAW is fantastic and provides a super smooth workflow from SFX creation to playout in theatres.
When bringing sound to a theatre, if a director wants a change made to the sound design, they want to hear it asap, and actors too will be relying on becoming familiar with any changes for their blocking and timing; they have to commit everything to memory, so delays in the process can be stressful and costly. Changes need to be made fast and to a standard whereby they can be signed off.
The integration between Ovation and Pyramix sounds incredibly efficient. Can you talk about how the ‘export to Pyramix and back’ workflow saves you time and improves cue editing during tight rehearsal schedules?
In fairness, a lot of the kind of edits that may be required by the director at the production stage can be
achieved within Ovation: fades, trimming, looping and adding effects, etc. However, more subtle and refined results can be had by taking a brief excursion to Pyramix, and Merging makes this very easy to do. Just have both programs running and hit ‘Edit in Pyramix’, then do what you want in Pyramix and hit ‘Publish in Ovation’ – it replaces the old cue,
which is in itself a time saver, though you can set it to create a new one if you like. Of course you can also load the Pyramix project you originally created the cue in and make edits there, and then publish to Ovation.
The new Ovation 11 boasts a redesigned interface and customisable features like the integrated mixer. How do these enhancements improve your workflow when managing audio cues and playback during live performances?
Configuration changes can now be made very easily and directly from the mixer, so long as you are not in show mode.
You can have mixer channels set up to separately control atmospheres, pre-recorded dialogue (I have to do this a lot), SFX, music, and live mics. Each can require different treatment and level changes on the fly. If you are in a different venue every night you need to be flexible.
Being able to load VST and VS3 plugins directly into Ovation is a powerful feature. How has that expanded your creative or technical options during live productions?
One really great thing is you can load up VS3 plugins to a channel whilst a cue is already running without any artefacts or audio interruptions –even on a native system. This means audio issues can be fixed during a show, and you can use your favourite plugins to do so!
For theatre productions, precision timing and automation are critical. How does Ovation 11 address these needs, particularly in terms of cue management, timecode accuracy, and integration with automation systems?
For my work, I tend to cue lights and sound separately with their respective GO buttons. However, if a dramatic section is accompanied by a backing track, an evolving atmosphere, or a timed cue stack, I have found it makes sense to start a timecode generator (unique to that cue) to chase the lights to.
This is extremely easy to set up – you can also display a timecode window on screen so that everyone in tech can see that it is running.
You’ve worked with both Ovation and QLab; what are the key differences that make Ovation your go-to choice for theatre productions?
QLab doesn’t even have a mixer! I know a lot of people work exclusively with QLab and create wonderful theatre, but I feel they would do well to check out the Merging workflow, especially if they come from an audio background; they will feel right at home. The sophistication of cue interaction on QLab simply doesn’t come close to that of Ovation, but that doesn’t mean Ovation makes it hard. Personally I think it’s easier because the use of language is unambiguous. And of course it is possible to have multiple interactions. And what if things go wrong and you need to move around the cue list? Again the interaction rules can come to the rescue because these can be created to encompass various preimagined scenarios.
Like, “if this is happening, don’t do this, or only do this, or don’t stop this atmosphere,” – a direct consequence of being able to program multiple interactions. This is what it takes to design a show with security, so that the audience doesn’t know something unexpected has happened.
One standout feature of Ovation is that it functions as a live mixer. How important is that flexibility in your theatre work, and how does it compare with what QLab offers in that area?
The mixer is one of the great things about the Ovation, particularly
if using a low-latency MassCore machine — it’s just the same as the Pyramix mixer, and you can use all the plugins you love.
Obviously, it’s a good idea to use the super-efficient VS3 versions so as not to introduce too much additional latency to live mics – mics that can be enabled in the cue list.
QLab mixing facilities are super basic, it simply offers a matrix – you can add FX – but be prepared to watch your latency go up, and if live mixing mics, this is not really tenable. Ovation MassCore is on another level: choose your plugins with a bit of caution and you will still have negligible latency. I said earlier that on complex shows (with large bands/string sections, etc) I like to combine Ovation with a standalone desk, but some of my shows are pretty simple and control room space at a premium.
In these instances I would definitely mix everything with Ovation, and if appropriate at a super high sample rate, and furthermore, avoid using the in-house console/matrix.
You can set up all your audience zones (with delays expressed in metres or ms) and EQs directly in the Ovation mixer. Brilliant.
CARLOS RODGARMAN GRAMMY-NOMINATED ENGINEER & NEVE GENESYS G3D OWNER
“I don’t think you can describe the Neve Sound. You just feel it. It’s the dimension, the size… the more you add to a mix, the bigger it sounds.”
GARAGE59
Riedel Communications recently partnered with U.K.-based endurance GT team Garage 59 to deliver a fully integrated communications solution that is already playing a key role in the team’s phenomenal start to the 2025 racing season. Leveraging Riedel’s Bolero wireless intercom system in combination with the RiFace radio interface for seamless race control, Garage 59 has gained a new level of clarity, reliability, and scalability in its trackside operations, where it provides crucial support across the team’s GT World Challenge Europe and International GT Open campaigns. Headliner makes a pit stop to investigate…
Formed ahead of the new season, this partnership has helped the team to hit the ground running.
Garage 59 is fielding three cars in 2025 and has already delivered a string of strong results across both race series, reaffirming the team’s status as a serious contender in the world of GT racing.
“This partnership with Garage 59 is an exciting step forward as we expand
our motorsports presence in the U.K.,” says Nacho Lee, programme manager global events, Riedel Communications.
“It’s also a powerful example of the close cooperation between Riedel’s Product and Managed Technology divisions. By working together, we’re delivering a fully integrated solution that meets the high demands of endurance racing.”
Originally introduced to Bolero through Riedel’s Product Division, Garage 59 transitioned to a more comprehensive system with Riedel’s Managed Technology Division (MT) providing radio infrastructure and dry hire services for major events such as the 24-hour races at Nürburgring and Spa. The team also benefits from MTexclusive helmet kits and a custombuilt Riedel rack integrating Bolero, StageLink, and RiFace units — boosting in-race coordination and efficiency.
“We needed a communications solution that matched the pace and precision of our team, and Riedel delivered on all fronts,” explains Andrew Kirkaldy, team principal, Garage 59. “The clarity, reliability, and adaptability of the system have
become a real competitive advantage for us this season.”
Riedel Communications will continue to support Garage 59 throughout the 2025 season, with plans for further initiatives to spotlight the team’s progress and the cutting-edge communications technologies enabling it. As part of the collaboration, Riedel branding is now featured on Garage 59’s McLaren race cars, reinforcing the visibility of this partnership on and off the track.
“Garage 59 is a premium team with a dynamic setup and strong ambitions,” adds Lee. “We’re proud that our technology – and the dedication of our MT technicians – is helping them unlock their full potential on track, and we’re already looking forward to deepening our cooperation in the future.”
RIEDEL.NET
Credit: Gaite Lyrique LIVE 360°
DELAURENTIS IMMERSIVE SYNESTHETIC ALBUM ‘MUSICALISM’
French electronic artist DeLaurentis has released Musicalism, a new full-length album that translates her synesthetic experiences – a phenomenon that causes sensory crossovers, such as tasting colours or feeling sounds into an immersive audio journey.
The project was mixed by Hervé Déjardin, head of audio innovation at Radio France, using L-ISA Studio spatial audio mixing tools from L-Acoustics. Déjardin also cocomposed White Opening, the album’s opening track, and the pair have launched a live immersive audio-visual show scheduled to tour France and Great Britain in 2025.
The collaboration began when Déjardin and DeLaurentis met at Radio France’s Le Cube, an experimental audio lab at the broadcaster’s Paris headquarters. Discovering shared musical
inspirations – including Bach, Ryuichi Sakamoto, Jay-Jay Johanson, with whom DeLaurentis has collaborated many times, and Jean-Michel Jarre, with whom Déjardin has worked –they found creative common ground that led to their partnership.
“DeLaurentis knew my work with Jean-Michel Jarre and wanted me to create the immersive mixes,” Déjardin explains. “But she was equally drawn to my sound design capabilities, which became essential to realising her vision.”
“For me, music and innovation
are intrinsically linked,” explains DeLaurentis. “I’ve had the opportunity to work with IRCAM and Sony CSL on AI-based tools, and I had always dreamed of collaborating with Radio France – especially on electroacoustic music. That’s why meeting Hervé was the starting point of the album.”
Musicalism takes its title from a 1930s French artistic movement where painters translated sounds into visual art to evoke specific emotional responses, a concept that resonates deeply with DeLaurentis’s own synesthetic experiences. To bring
this concept to life, Déjardin and DeLaurentis began by creating an extensive library of sounds associated with visual art: the scratch of brushes on canvas, the texture of palette knives, the ambient sounds of an artist’s studio.
DeLaurentis invited Déjardin to her recording studio in the south
of France, where together, they recorded the sonic universe of a painter’s studio.
“We wanted to capture the sonic essence of the creative process itself,” explains Déjardin.
The material was then edited, mixed, and shaped into a library of
artistic sounds that DeLaurentis was able to use throughout the album’s production. Their collaboration deepened when DeLaurentis suggested they co-compose White Opening. Conceived as an electroacoustic piece that gradually evolves into electronic music, the track represents an entry into the painter’s sonic universe.
Credit: Gaite Lyrique
LIVE 360°
“We tried to capture that sensation of beginning a new work, facing a blank canvas full of possibilities,” explains Déjardin. DeLaurentis describes the piece as “a sort of blank canvas of all possibilities” that opens each of her performances. Through this track, they also discovered how spatial composition was particularly enhanced by the presence of electroacoustic sounds, which added depth and texture to the experience.
DeLaurentis conceived Musicalism as
a “spatialised auditory experience” from its inception, producing it in Dolby Atmos while simultaneously developing a 360-degree live experience in partnership with Radio France, La Générale de Production, and France Télévisions.
Working in Le Cube’s 12.0.6 loudspeaker configuration, Déjardin leverages L-ISA Studio to manage up to 96 audio objects before rendering the spatial mix into Nuendo with the Atmos monitoring plugin. This
workflow allows him to maintain both L-ISA object mode and Atmos object mode within the same project, enabling seamless reference between 7.1.4, 5.1.4, and binaural formats.
“I constantly monitor through the Atmos renderer because it simulates the audience experience,” Déjardin notes.
“If the mix works in 5.1, I know the 12.0.4 version will translate beautifully.”
Credit: Dominique
“I CAN DESIGN AN ALBUM MIX AND TRANSLATE IT DIRECTLY TO LIVE PERFORMANCE USING THE SAME TOOLSET. THAT CONTINUITY IS CRUCIAL FOR MAINTAINING ARTISTIC VISION ACROSS FORMATS.”
Déjardin’s relationship with L-Acoustics extends beyond using their tools; he actively contributes to product development through ongoing dialogue with the company.
“As a composer and engineer, I can communicate specific needs for functionality, and they listen. That collaborative approach is invaluable.”
He particularly values L-ISA’s stability during extended studio sessions and its seamless translation from studio to live performance.
“I can design an album mix and translate it directly to live performance using the same toolset. That continuity is crucial for maintaining artistic vision across formats.”
With nearly two decades of experience in immersive audio, Déjardin views spatial sound as more than a technical advance. “It’s truly a new art form. The creative universe available in immersive formats offers possibilities that
continue to inspire me after 20 years. Each project reveals new potential.”
DeLaurentis discovered spatial audio mixing with L-ISA, and it was a revolution in her artistic approach. “I tend to orchestrate my musical productions extensively, and for years I was frustrated by having to make compromises in my stereo mixes,” explains DeLaurentis. “With spatial sound, there is no longer a hierarchy of sounds, ornamentations and appoggiaturas are just as important as the main melodies. All elements of the score coexist harmoniously.”
As Musicalism tours throughout 2025, it demonstrates how innovative technology can serve artistic vision, creating experiences where audiences don’t simply hear music but step inside DeLaurentis’ synesthetic world where sound and colour converge.
A LEGENDARY
VENUE REBORN
KUPPEL’S COMEBACK
From 1994 to 2016, the Kuppel (Dome) in Basel wasn’t just a venue – it was a cultural icon. Housed in a quirky wooden structure originally built for a gardening show, the Kuppel became a beloved hotspot for music lovers, drawing both national and international acts to its stage. Though the building was only ever meant to be temporary – perched on public land with no long-term promise – it carved out a lasting place in the hearts of its visitors. When the city finally ordered its demolition, the public response was loud and clear: the Kuppel meant too much to too many. A trust committee was formed to preserve its legacy, and after eight years of anticipation, the dream was revived. The new Kuppel rose once again – a tribute to its legendary past and a fresh stage for the future. Headliner finds out how CODA Audio breathed new life into the muchloved music venue.
Architects Vécsey Schmidt designed the new venue and worked closely with the Basel office of global AV consultant, Walters-Storyk Design Group (WSDG), which was appointed as the project’s acoustic engineering specialist. A high priority was placed on the total acoustic insulation of the venue owing to its location in a residential area. The collaboration between architect and acoustic specialist was a great success. WSDG specified a CODA Audio system for the venue’s concert stage, which is located on the first floor beneath the dome after which the venue is named.
“The process began back in 2020/2021 when the Covid pandemic had severely impacted the industry, and trade shows were simply not viable,” recalls Matthias Dietrich from CODA Audio’s Swiss distributor, Schallwerk.
“We reconfigured our warehouse as a showroom and invited clients and potential clients to comprehensive demonstrations of CODA’s systems, allowing them to experience every detail of what was on offer.
The team from WSDG expressed an interest in CODA Audio and came in for a demo with a view to specifying it for the new Kuppel project. They clearly liked what they heard and saw, and CODA ended up on the tender.
The powerful yet lightweight and compact system was perfect for what was quite a challenging space.”
“KUPPEL’S NEW INCARNATION IS ONCE AGAIN THE EMBODIMENT OF BASEL’S VIBRANT MUSIC SCENE.”
AV consultant and integrator Auviso of Emmen, was engaged to install the system, which was designed by WSDG around CODA Audio’s APS three-way arrayable point source loudspeakers. The choice of an arrayable point source best suited the compact round shape of the 600 capacity concert room.
The main system at the front of the hall comprised flown clusters of three CODA Audio APS (2 x 10”) and a single APS-SUB (18”) per side, with an additional HOPS 8T (high output point source) flown per side as stage fills, and five SCN-F (15”) bass extensions on the floor under the stage.
At the rear of the room above the bar, the team installed two N-APS 2-way arrayable point source units and a single N-SUB (15”) per side. This supplementary system is primarily used for surround effects in gigs, or as a part of a four-point set up for DJs.
A further three N-APS were deployed as balcony delays with 6 x CUE TWO triaxial 15” wedges used for stage
monitoring. The system is powered by CODA Audio 6 x LINUS 12C 4 channel DSP amplifiers.
“The system design in the concert space is excellent,” enthuses Dietrich. “The flown APS clusters and sub combined with the floor subs give a very nice, even low-end coverage, and the CUE TWO wedges are an excellent fit.
CODA Audio loudspeakers were also chosen for the ground floor bar, where six CODA Audio D8 2-way 8” coaxial installation loudspeakers are complemented by a pair of ultra-compact U12 12” subwoofers.
“Kuppel’s new incarnation is once again the embodiment of Basel’s vibrant music scene and we are very proud to have played a part in bringing it to life with CODA Audio at its heart,” he beams.
ADAM
Photo credit: Olivia Brytz
“TOGETHER, WE ARE SETTING A NEW STANDARD IN PERFORMANCE, CONSISTENCY, AND TRUST FOR OUR CUSTOMERS WORLDWIDE.”
The Adam Hall Group has announced a strategic partnership with Powersoft. With immediate effect, the German manufacturer of event technology will be utilising the amplification and processing technology of the Italian pro audio manufacturer in selected LD Systems amplifiers. The partnership starts with the new ADA series 4-channel DSP touring amplifiers with DANTE integration.
The LD Systems ADA series, comprising the ADA 8 K4 and ADA 12 K4 models, is optimised to offer maximum power, precise sound and highest reliability for professional touring and installation applications.
For the first time ever, these touring amplifiers marry LD Systems’ sonic accuracy with Powersoft’s energyefficient Class-D topology, advanced DSP and network control. Thanks to its two Dante ports and ArmoníaPlus integration, the ADA series can be seamlessly integrated into networks.
This holistic approach simplifies system design and guarantees consistent, high-quality results across a wide range of applications.
Leveraging Powersoft’s advanced technologies, the ADA series is engineered to offer adaptive voltage management with Powersoft’s patented Power Factor Correction for universal mains operation, exceptionally low idle consumption below 15W, and a built-in library of linear-phase FIR presets.
DANTE and AES67 networking, together with Wi-Fi access through Powersoft’s ArmoníaPlus allow realtime health monitoring, zoning and grouping from any device, while a Speaker Lock auto-setup routine makes configuration fool-proof.
“We are proud to announce our new partnership with one of the world’s leading amplifier manufacturers,” says Viktor Wiesner, senior product manager, pro audio of Adam Hall Group. “This strategic collaboration marks a significant milestone in our mission to deliver uncompromising
professional loudspeaker solutions. We chose this renowned brand for their unmatched reliability, global market leadership, and robust supply chain. Together, we are setting a new standard in performance, consistency, and trust for our customers worldwide.”
“I’m excited to embark on this strategic alliance with the Adam Hall Group,” adds Luca Lastrucci, CEO of Powersoft. “Partnering with such a respected global player underscores the value of our continual innovation and positions Powersoft as the goto technology partner for crafting high-performance amplification and signal-processing platforms.”
Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band
Credit: Sam Hooper
BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN AND THE E STREET BAND WORDS BY PAUL
THE SOUND OF THE BOSS
When it comes to live music, few experiences rival the spectacle of a Bruce Springsteen concert. The raw energy, the communal vibe, the sheer scale - these are the things that define an E Street Band show. But, as with any great performance, none of it would be possible without the dedicated crew working tirelessly behind the scenes, ensuring every note, every beat, and every word lands just right with the audience. From the intricate audio setups to the quick-thinking engineers, the backstage team that supports the E Street Band is just as integral to the show as the performers themselves. Headliner takes a peek behind the curtain to meet the crew that makes it all happen.
At the heart of the E Street Band’s live sound is a team that’s not only highly professional but deeply connected. Matt Fitzgerald, Troy Milner, Monty Carlo, John Cooper, and Brandon Schuette have spent years working together, each playing a vital role in shaping the band’s live audio experience. They know better than most that live sound isn’t just about cranking up the volume or tweaking a few knobs. It’s about creating an environment where the band’s music can breathe, thrive, and connect with the audience.
In the world of monitors, Fitzgerald works closely with fellow engineers Milner and Carlo. Together, they are responsible for balancing the stage sound, ensuring every performer gets the perfect mix to suit their needs. This isn’t just a technical taskit’s an art form.
“We divide the responsibilities based on what’s most important in each section of the stage,” Fitzgerald explains. “Troy handles Max’s drums, Monty takes care of the downstage crew, and I’m in charge of vocals and percussion.”
This separation allows each engineer to focus on specific aspects of the show, ensuring precision and quick adjustments on the fly.
Monty Carlo, who’s been with the E Street Band since 1992, has the crucial role of downmix engineer. He’s responsible for creating the sonic map of the stage, ensuring Springsteen himself hears every sound with clarity. “Bruce wants to hear everything,” Carlo explains. “He needs to hear the horns, the percussion, the vocals - positioned as if they were physically on stage.”
With years of experience under his belt, Carlo is committed to capturing the raw, unfiltered energy of a live performance.
“We’re not trying to make a record,” he says. “This is a live band, and that’s the vibe I aim for.”
For Schuette, serving as both systems engineer and audio crew chief, shaping that sonic space begins with the system design. Schuette’s job is to make sure that the sound reaches every seat in the venue, no matter where the audience is. The Springsteen show is a major Clair Global production; and Schuette is a true advocate for Clair’s Cohesion speaker line, which he says provides a natural, true-to-stage sound.
The system helps Springsteen’s voice and the band’s instruments feel as though they’re emanating directly from the stage, not just through
the PA, he explains: “Bruce sounds incredibly natural through Cohesion; even as I’m listening to different parts of the system, my attention is always drawn to the stage. It’s true reinforcement of what’s happening on stage - not just loud music blaring through speakers.”
Schuette’s dedication to ensuring the sound system never overpowers the live energy of the performance is evident in his work. “I want every seat in the house to feel like they’re at the front,” he declares.
The Cohesion system itself consists of 84 CO12s, 40 CO10s, and 24 CP218 subs, all designed to deliver Springsteen’s music with the clarity and authenticity fans expect.
Schuette is also quick to praise Clair for its all-encompassing supportwhether during pre-tour prep or just troubleshooting on the go.
“With all the support we get from the shop, I can’t imagine an easier setup,” Schuette says. “Whether it’s in Lititz or Aesch, we’ve been set up for success every time we go out. And when problems inevitably arise, the shop is always there to help us out.”
Credit: Sam Hooper
Behind every engineer’s work is an impressive array of technology designed to make their job easier and more precise. One of the key players in this setup is the DiGiCo Quantum 7, used by both Fitzgerald and Carlo to handle the enormous volume of inputs and outputs required for a show of this scale.
Fitzgerald’s role as the vocal and percussion monitor engineer demands he manage multiple channels of vocal reverb and slap delay - sometimes up to six of each, depending on the night.
“For all the vocalists I work with, I need six reverbs and six slap delays,” he says, describing the challenge of keeping each element clear within the mix. “The Quantum 7’s reliability allows me to juggle these complex demands while ensuring the vocals sound crisp and balanced.”
For Carlo, the DiGiCo Quantum SD7 has been a cornerstone of his role as downmix engineer since 2012. Its flexibility and scalability make it the perfect tool for managing the nearly two dozen musicians on stage. “The Quantum SD7 is still the most flexible, scalable option we’ve got,” Carlo insists. “Consistency is everything, and with this console, we know we’re always in good hands.”
The team also uses Wysicom wireless transmitters to ensure flexibility during international tours, especially when RF interference can pose a problem. “Wysicom’s system is more flexible than anything else out there,” Carlo says, underscoring the importance of having a reliable wireless system on the road. Alongside Wysicom, the team uses JH Audio IEMs, along with Clair CM22 and CM14 wedges.
While the monitor engineers ensure the band are locked in, John Cooper looks after FOH. Cooper, who has worked with the E Street Band for years, plays an important role in balancing the show for thousands
of fans across the venue. Cooper’s approach is defined by his deep understanding of Springsteen’s music.
“When it comes to Bruce, it’s all about energy,” he says. “The sound has to reflect the power of the performance and the emotion of the song. It’s not just about clarity - it’s about creating a sound that envelopes the audience and connects them with the music.”
Cooper uses an Avid S6L console, which he prefers for large-scale shows due to its easy integration.
“The Avid S6L gives me a level of control and flexibility that works perfectly for large performances,” Cooper explains. “It lets me adjust levels quickly, tweak EQs on the fly, and manage multiple outputs seamlessly.”
Credit: Sam Hooper
“THE QUANTUM 7’S RELIABILITY ALLOWS ME TO JUGGLE THESE COMPLEX DEMANDS WHILE ENSURING THE VOCALS SOUND CRISP AND BALANCED.”
Cooper emphasises the importance of his working relationship with the rest of the team. “We’re a unit. We’re all on the same page; we communicate constantly.”
This constant communication ensures that the FOH sound complements the carefully crafted mixes from the monitor world. While Schuette fine-tunes the system, Fitzgerald and Carlo adjust on-stage mixes, and Cooper ensures everything comes together for the audience. While the technology is critical, the true heart of the operation lies in the relationships between the crew members. The constant chemistry and communication between Fitzgerald, Milner, Carlo, Cooper, and Schuette keep the show running smoothly every night.
Schuette, as audio crew chief, knows that a wellfunctioning team is essential to a successful show. “I love to see people grow,” he says, describing how crew members evolve from newcomers to seasoned professionals over a tour. “By the end of it, load-ins and load-outs happen without a word exchanged.”
For Fitzgerald, the division of labour among the engineers allows each of them to focus on their specific tasks while staying in constant communication. “If something’s wrong - whether it’s a mic sagging or a tech issue - we can fix it quickly without disrupting the flow of the show,” he says.
For Carlo, the camaraderie within the crew is one of the best parts of being on the road. “Bruce is all about you doing your job, and he’s appreciative of the work you put in,” he says. “That kind of attitude helps create a culture of respect and collaboration.”
And a true extension of the Springsteen family is the Clair Global team: “Clair Global is just incredible,” Carlo asserts. “From the techs to the operations people, they’re always there for us. If we need something, they get it done - no questions asked. With their support, we can focus on what we do best: making sure Bruce and the band sound incredible every night.”
At the end of the day, what makes a Springsteen show unforgettable is the combination of raw energy, precise engineering, and flawless teamwork. The backstage crew’s technical expertise ensures that every note, every harmony, and every instrument is perfectly aligned with the band’s vision. And while technology plays a crucial role, it’s the people behind the equipment who truly bring the sound to life. As Fitzgerald puts it, “At its heart, it’s just a good old-fashioned rock band.”
Yet, the coordination, attention to detail, and cutting-edge technology behind every performance is anything but simple. It’s the result of years of experience, a talented team, and an unwavering commitment to excellence.
“We’ve become a family on the road,” Schuette reflects. “And that’s what makes all the hard work so rewarding.”
Solid State Logic (SSL) has launched Oracle, which it is calling ‘A Future Analogue Console’. Delivering an analogue sound with instant, effortless, and complete recall and reset across the entire console, Oracle has been designed to fulfil the dreams of producers, engineers, and studio owners. Oracle embodies the DNA of the classic E, G, and J/K consoles, while taking SSL’s sonic signature into the future. Headliner takes a closer look…
Since SSL launched the SL 4000E console with total recall in 1979, producers, engineers, and studio owners have dreamt of a console that could deliver the analogue sound quality of SSL, but without the disruption and uncertainty of manual recall between sessions; a mixing console that could instantly recall settings and adapt to on-thefly creative shifts, while effortlessly switching between multiple sessions in a single day.
Now, that dream is a reality. Oracle is a fully analogue in-line mixing console offering large-format features in a compact, AWS-size footprint, with instant, effortless, and complete recall of all processing, routing, gain, and pan settings thanks to the company’s new ActiveAnalogue technology.
With the ability to instantly switch between mixing or tracking set-ups, change the session’s workflow in less time than it takes the artist to switch tracks, the new ActiveAnalogue technology within Oracle significantly increases the potential throughput of any studio facility, while delivering the authentic analogue tone that artists and producers crave.
ActiveAnalogue combines the sound and power of SSL’s analogue processing and summing with ultraprecise adjustment and an active recallable control system.
“STUDIO OWNERS HAVE DREAMT OF A CONSOLE THAT COULD
DELIVER THE ANALOGUE SOUND QUALITY OF SSL, BUT WITHOUT THE DISRUPTION AND UNCERTAINTY OF MANUAL RECALL BETWEEN SESSIONS.”
Oracle is an analogue console designed with a large-format, yet compact in-line footprint, featuring up to 112 inputs available at mixdown. It boasts four stereo mix buses, 16 track buses, 10 aux busses, and 16 stereo ‘Flex’ groups. The Oracle is offered with options of 24 or 48 mono line-in channels, incorporating iconic SSL analogue circuitry enhanced by ActiveAnalogue technology. It includes next-gen PureDrive mic preamps
with ‘Drive’ control and the renowned SSL 4-Band parametric EQ with switchable E/G Series curves.
Integrated features like THE BUS+ and dynamic EQ processors complement its flexible channel architecture, supporting track, overdub, and mix functionalities. The Oracle offers both small and large fader paths with assignable EQ and insert points.
Its flexible monitoring system provides multiple stereo options and is optimised for immersive mixing experiences. Detailed VU or plasmastyle metering, alongside dynamic ‘Detail View’, ensures insightful visual feedback during operation.
For seamless workflow integration, the Oracle includes advanced DAW control via SSL 360 integration and is SSL Dynamic Automation System ready. The O-Control app serves as an offline tool for session preparation and console configuration.
All housed in 13U 19” racks, the Oracle’s analogue circuitry can be conveniently located remotely, within the control room, or under the console for enhanced flexibility.
Oracle merges the harmonic drive technology of the latest SSL PureDrive mic preamps, the currentdriven busses introduced in ORIGIN, and various flavours of harmonic saturation accessible throughout the console. Additionally, it delivers what SSL is calling “unprecedented recall” and reset capabilities along
with the sonic flexibility of SSL’s latest analogue circuit design.
Not to mention it is capable of producing the precise sounds of SuperAnalogue audio, to a palette of driven analogue tones, and everything in between.
PowerProX18
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Featuring an advanced cooling system and components with superior thermal stability, PowerProX18 operates with its voice coil consistently at 20°C lower than competing products. The result is ultimate control over power compression, extreme reliability and a relentless high quality performance, even after 100s of hours of use. For more information, contact: engineering@celestion.com
row d s by alice gustafson
PETER FREEDMAN ACQUIRING LECTROSONICS
The acquisition of Lectrosonics by The Freedman Group marks a transformative moment in the world of professional audio technology. Founded in 1971 and celebrated for its pioneering UHF wireless systems, Lectrosonics has earned global acclaim in film, broadcast, and live theatre.
While financial terms remain undisclosed, the deal encompasses the company’s brand, complete intellectual property portfolio, factory buildings in Rio Rancho, New Mexico, and a comprehensive array of production machinery and equipment. Lectrosonics will continue to operate from its existing facilities in New Mexico, with the current management team remaining in place to ensure continuity and preserve the brand’s unique identity and customer relationships.
This acquisition cements The Freedman Group’s position as one of the most comprehensive pro audio companies in the world, expanding on a portfolio
which includes RØDE microphones and audio devices, Mackie live performance sound equipment, Aphex signal processing technology, SoundField ambisonic microphone systems and Event studio monitors.
In this exclusive interview with Headliner, Peter Freedman, founder and owner of The Freedman Group, highlights this strategic move as a milestone in his 51-year career, and reveals his plans for Lectrosonics.
Congratulations on acquiring Lectrosonics! What inspired you to bring the brand into The Freedman Group family, and what do you see as the primary benefits of this acquisition?
Thank you! It is one of the most exciting opportunities I have had in my 51 years in the professional audio industry. The core benefit of having Lectrosonics in our family of brands is their industry-leading technology and an unmatched reputation for quality and reliability. I have wanted to offer our customers the best in professional UHF wireless systems for over 25 years, but it is such a specialist combination of RF science and other closely guarded techniques that very few engineers anywhere in the world are true masters of. Lectrosonics is number one worldwide.
The truth is, I had all but given up on trying to develop this in-house, as I could not find engineers of the calibre and experience to achieve the outcomes I wanted, which was a range of systems that would match our other market-leading brands: the ultimate in sound quality, the greatest transmission range, and a nearly indestructible industrial design and construction are obviously very difficult to achieve!
If you then add that we would also end up with a state-of-theart manufacturing facility where ‘anything’ can be made, as well as full logistics and a dedicated experienced team of audio engineers all located in the US, it was a once-ina-lifetime opportunity.
Lectrosonics is renowned for its innovation and reliability in wireless audio technology. How do you envision integrating their expertise with the existing portfolio of brands within The Freedman Group?
“WE HAVE ALREADY BEGUN TO INVEST HEAVILY IN THE LECTROSONICS LINE AND THERE WILL BE SOME TRULY STATE-OFTHE-ART PRODUCTS COMING TO MARKET STARTING IN 2026.”
RØDE is the world’s leading equipment provider for creators. We were the first with a microphone for on-camera use with the VideoMic series. We designed the first complete all-in-one podcasting mixing, recording and streaming audio mixer, the RØDECASTER 1 and then the RCP 2. We were the first to design and offer miniature 2.4 GHz wireless transmitters with inbuilt microphones and recording, so how does RØDE GO UHF sound as the next story for our millions of loyal customers?
Then we look at Mackie. It is the most respected brand in the live sound world and has been since the ‘80s. Mackie UHF for stage applications as well as IEM is a logical and guaranteed success strategy. Along with this, we have already begun to invest heavily in the Lectrosonics line and there will be some truly state-of-the-art products coming to market starting in 2026 to provide the ultimate in the ultrademanding needs of the film industry, professional broadcast and of course, the highest calibre of live theatre use. This is where Lectrosonics technology is truly unmatched.
Maintaining Lectrosonics’ brand identity and operational autonomy is crucial. Could you elaborate on how The Freedman Group plans to ensure this continuity while fostering collaboration across different brands?
Lectrosonics will remain a fully independent brand with existing management and staff remaining, although we intend to add many more engineers as well as expand the team in all areas. There will be appropriate funding from the Freedman Group HQ and of course collaboration between all engineering divisions in the group. A true powerhouse!
What strategic goals or new opportunities do you foresee for The Freedman Group in terms of market expansion or technological advancement?
While most of our plans are of course commercially sensitive, there are many opportunities to take RØDE, Mackie and Lectrosonics to an even higher level of advanced technology and performance. While addressing distinct markets, the three main brands will be able to be used in
combination to allow for an even better user experience and unparalleled performance. This will be achieved by thinking of the group’s brands as an ecosystem when working on new designs, and will be achieved by investing in software, AI technology and custom electronic components allowing seamless integration for any audio and video needs regardless of the application. This of course demands significant investment in engineering talent and specialised machinery and custom electronics, but as a very famous man in our industry once said, ‘He who tools, rules’ (Greg Mackie). Watch this space!
Could you discuss any upcoming initiatives or innovations that might emerge from this partnership?
I would love to, but then I would have to kill you! [laughs]
Can’t blame us for asking! How about…are there specific areas of product development or technological advancements that you’re particularly excited about?
We have so many very exciting product lines coming from RØDE soon, including AI programs that are truly remarkable and that will change our customers’ workflow, making it better, faster and so much easier to achieve truly incredible results. With Mackie we have been working hard on both electronics and acoustics and will soon release what we call in-house ‘the Mackie is Back’ line. Again, I can’t divulge specifics, but we are not playing at this…
In terms of global operations, how will this acquisition impact manufacturing capabilities and distribution channels, especially with the synergy between Australian headquarters and US operations?
The Group is a truly global brand with nine offices worldwide and an everexpanding team. The sun truly never sets on the Freedman Group now, and having a state-of-the-art design, manufacturing and logistics facility in the US, takes us to a new level in the largest market in the world. China is a very strong and important market for us and we have had a presence there for over 25 years. There are over 50 people located in our Shenzhen office handling marketing and service. There are plans for expansion with our European facilities as well, and we will open our Middle East office in the next few months. We will launch our India marketing division early next year. The Middle East and India are key targets for us and we will invest heavily to allow us to service these in the best way possible.
Diversity in manufacturing and innovation is a key theme in this acquisition. How does The Freedman Group plan to leverage these strengths to stay ahead in the competitive audio technology market?
We keep at the forefront of our industry by investing a very large part of our revenue in both pure R&D
as well as product development. No other professional audio manufacturer has anywhere near the number of precision manufacturing machines and the engineering talent that our group enjoys. The majority, if not all others in our industry, subcontract out their production. This is the fundamental power of the Freedman Group difference, and what we call our ‘impenetrable fortress’. This has been driven by a unique rejection of the accepted ‘industry ideology’ but is why our growth and success will continue and keep us the leaders in our field, and we will continue to invest in the best machinery, technology and people we can find.
The addition of Lectrosonics solidifies The Freedman Group’s position as a comprehensive pro audio company. Looking forward, what long-term strategic vision do you have for the expanded group of brands under your leadership?
As a group, we have an ethos that really places our customers as our number one focus. We know that no other company can claim to offer the same genuine level of care and support that is at the heart of everything we do. This is my 51st year working full-time in professional audio, and my father before me started in the ‘50s. While I am 67, I feel like I am 30 and have just begun. We are unashamedly ultracompetitive and want to design and manufacture the very best technical
solutions for our millions of loyal customers that we possibly can. This is a business of course, and we are here to win, but this is so much more than that, and I know I speak for my entire team when I say we are dedicated to doing the best we can because we love this industry, and there is genuine pride in everything we do.
As the founder and owner of The Freedman Group, how does this acquisition reflect the company’s commitment to maintaining leadership in professional audio solutions while embracing new opportunities in an evolving industry landscape?
It was the last piece of the puzzle for us. We will continue to show leadership and make history through innovation and truly disruptive technology in everything we do and now in all areas within our chosen field. Our raison d’être has been to support performing artists, musicians, filmmakers, broadcasters and the ever-growing group of online content creators with the most innovative solutions, and the future is going to be very interesting indeed for us all.
FINNISH NATIONAL OPERAAND BALLET
Words by ALICE GU S NOSFAT
The Finnish National Opera and Ballet has invested in a Prism Sound Dream ADA, bringing versatile connectivity and high-channel-count audio conversion to the prestigious performing arts venue in Helsinki. Sound designers Erno Hulkkonen and Juha-Matti Vuo explain how they oversee an expansive and varied production schedule that includes traditional acoustic performances, sound-amplified musicals, and streamed content.
“Our productions span a wide spectrum,” begins Hulkkonen. “At one end, we have fully acoustic ballets like Swan Lake, where there’s no amplification or effects. On the other hand, musicals like The Phantom of the Opera require extensive sound reinforcement — up to 80 microphones in the orchestra pit, 50 wireless channels for performers, plus sound effects and returns.”
“The technical demands change completely from one production to the next,” Vuo adds. “It keeps things interesting. Most of our operas and ballets are now streamed, and we’re also responsible for studio work, podcast content, and recording dialogue for performances.”
The opera house comprises a 1,300seat main auditorium, the flexible Almi Hall (200–500 seats), a full rehearsal hall capable of multitrack recording, and numerous studio and rehearsal spaces. The audio team handles all live, streamed, and pre-produced content, including managing internal video monitoring for stage and orchestra communication.
One standout project was Jekyll & Hyde, a horror-themed ballet with an hour-long non-looped soundscape. “It was one of the most creatively rewarding productions I’ve worked on,” says Hulkkonen. “It pushed the limits of sound design in dance.”
Another recent innovation came during a recording for the new Riders opera. “To get a unique piano tone, we placed receipt paper between the strings,” recalls Vuo . “That kind of experimentation is encouraged here, which is part of what makes this such a fulfilling place to work.”
Finding the right solution – When it came time to upgrade their audio infrastructure, Hulkkonen and Vuo carried out detailed research. Their requirements included Dante integration, a high channel count
of microphone preamps, Atmos monitoring capabilities, and sufficient I/O to interface with the house’s patch bays. “This was our first time working with Prism Sound,” says Vuo. “The DREAM ADA stood out as the only solution that could handle all of our needs in one unit. Many other options would have hit their limits on day one.”
“The expandability was a decisive factor,” Hulkkonen adds. “We can add cards, link units, and grow the system as our needs evolve. That flexibility gives us confidence we’ve made a future-proof investment.”
The Dream ADA has already been integrated into the studio workflow, with further installation across the building planned for the summer.
106 MIKE DIAS
byMIKE DIAS
W O RDS
WHAT EXECUTIVES CAN LEARN: BE THE CALMEST PERSON IN THE ROOM
MIKE DIAS
In his latest Headliner column, pro audio executive Mike Dias profiles Bob Windel, a world-class monitor engineer and audio systems tuner whose career spans decades of work with The Eagles, Rob Zombie, and the Goo Goo Dolls, as well as leadership roles at Apple and Lucid Motors. From mixing sound under pressure to building highperformance teams inside some of the world’s most demanding organisations, Windel has mastered the art of trust, clarity, and composure in high-stakes environments. Here, he shares how the calmest person in the room is often the most effective leader, and what executives can learn from those who deliver night after night without ever breaking a sweat.
THE SHOW IS THE REWARD
The pinnacle. The illusion of ease that only exists after a thousand hours of sweat, stress, and everything going wrong during rehearsal. It’s the final, flawless product of a crew pushed past exhaustion, and still chasing perfection. When it’s done right, a great show is so tight, so dialed, so deliberately executed that the audience has no choice but to suspend their reality. They’re transported. Transfixed. Immersed.
And if you’ve ever wondered how to bring that same magic to your own work – how to build teams that deliver night after night – then you study the people who build those shows. You talk to the monitor engineer. You learn from the calmest person in the room.
Credit: Bob Windel
I LEARNED FROM BOB WINDEL THESE ARE THE LESSONS
THE
We were kids, around 22 years old, when something went horribly wrong during a big festival show while the headlining artist was on stage. Total meltdown at FOH. Half the PA went offline. Muted. The FOH engineer’s eyes throwing daggers at us sound company employees. I was surrounded by guys twice my age, with twice the experience, and they were running around like headless chickens, making no progress on fixing the problem. The anxiety was palpable. But my friend who was my age, standing next to me, Maglite in his mouth, not even supposed to be in charge, stepped in.
Calm. Clear. No drama. No ego. No sweat. He looked at the drive rack. Assessed the situation. Thought for 30 seconds. Then solved the problem. Brought everything back online. The show was whole again. And the real kicker? After solving it, he didn’t gloat. Didn’t tell the story. Didn’t act like a hero. He just quietly went back to work watching the rest of the gear. What separated him from the rest wasn’t experience. It wasn’t a degree. It wasn’t even the job title. It was this: he stayed calm, and he took action.
It’s not that his hands weren’t shaking. It’s that his head stayed clear. That’s the trait. That’s the separator. That’s what tells you someone’s going to rise through the ranks. And if you’re trying to build a team, a company, or a movement, you want to be standing next to the person who stays that calm when everything is on fire.
ON MAKING THE IMPOSSIBLE, POSSIBLE
If I had to distill leadership down to just one simple sentence, it’s this:
Winning is about making the impossible possible.
That’s it. It’s not a buzzword. It’s not a bumper sticker. It’s a decision. A choice. When you’re overwhelmed, exhausted, underpaid, and ready to quit, when your brain says, “Hey man… you don’t have to be here. They’re not paying you enough for this…” – you make the choice to push through anyway. That moment is the fork in the road. Rising above the panic is what separates the leaders from the leftovers.
CORPORATE AT A TOURING PACE
After 10 years on the road, I entered corporate life. And like many of us who’ve crossed over, that shift came with some serious whiplash. There were plenty of meetings. Plenty of plans. Plenty of talk. But sometimes, no real momentum. No real accountability. No real action.
Then came Apple. I shipped six products in my first eight months. And it never slowed down after that. Why? Because the culture aligned. It wasn’t about perfection. It was about clarity, accountability, and faith in leadership. At Apple, people believe Tim Cook knows what he’s doing. They’re critical when they need to be, but they still trust the vision. There’s alignment.
That word – alignment – is everything. Because the opposite? When leaders don’t trust the team, and the team doesn’t trust the leaders? That’s not just inefficiency. That’s rot.
CALM IN THE CHAOS
Credit: Bob Windel
TOURING TRUST
So what’s the real difference between corporate culture and life on the road? Look. There are tour managers and production managers who fail. But they don’t make it through a tour. Because it’s a sure thing that if your crew doesn’t have faith in leadership, it will rot from the inside out. But when there is trust, you become bulletproof. You can set up a show in a wet, rainy cornfield and still make miracles happen. You can pull off an impossible 15-minute set change – and finish with time to spare – because everyone is aligned. Everyone is bought in. The leader inspires the team, and the team refuses to fail. That’s not a metaphor. That’s an operational strategy. And it all comes down to how leaders treat their people, especially when things go sideways. There’s going to be stress. There’s going to be failure. What matters is how your leaders act when things get hard. And there’s one more critical element:
Standards
You have to maintain alignment on quality. No exceptions. Because
quality will always sink to the lowest common denominator. If you let anything slip, everything starts to slip. That’s what separates concert crews from corporate teams. Touring allows no gray area. There’s nowhere to hide if you’re the weak link. You either perform or you don’t. On the corporate side? There’s often more room for mediocrity to survive.
FINAL MIX
Bob’s story doesn’t just illustrate the point, it is the point. His accomplishments are the outcome of when the lessons from the stage become strategy in the boardroom. He’s living proof of what happens when you bring touring-level trust, standards, and execution into corporate strategy. Bob didn’t just mix sound. He mixed energy. Alignment. Performance. He was the invisible backbone of shows that felt effortless. And he brought that same discipline, that same touring-level rigor, into strategic roles where pressure and precision still define the outcome. So if you’re trying to build a team that performs under pressure, just start with this question:
Do your people believe in the mission? Do they believe in you?
Because when they do, and when the culture aligns, even a rainy cornfield can set the stage for excellence.
Mike Dias writes and speaks about Why Nobody Likes Networking and What Entertainers Can Teach Executives.
He is one of the few global leaders in Trade Show Networking and he helps companies maximise their trade show spend by ensuring that their teams are prepared, ready, and able to create and close opportunities. This column will be an ongoing monthly feature because Mike loves talking shop and is honoured to give back to the community. If this article was helpful and useful in any way, please reach out anytime at Mike Dias Speaks and let Mike know about what you want to hear more about next time.
MIKE-DIAS.COM
Credit: Bob Windel
REPLAY FOR EVERYBODY, EVERYWHERE.
RiMotion is an easy-to-install replay solution that can be implemented almost instantly in broadcast environments of any scale. It streamlines traditional and modern workflows and provides real-time performance, even when working remotely.
• Intuitive touchscreen
