Headliner USA 24

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Paul Watson CEO

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Rian Zoll-Kahn COO

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Alice Gustafson Editor-in-Chief

Adam Protz Senior Writer

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

Country’s cool again. Not my words, but US country star Lainey Wilson’s. Her single declaring that these days, “Everybody wanna be a cowboy,” was released in 2024, and since then, she’s been proved right month on month. At the time of writing, Morgan Wallen’s I’m The Problem is riding high at No.1 on the US and UK album charts, and Beyoncé’s Cowboy Carter tour is in full swing.

Once seen as a niche or regional genre, country has evolved into a more diverse space, resonating with younger listeners thanks to artists like Chappell Roan and Miley Cyrus, and expanding far beyond its traditional fan base.

Last year alone, Post Malone and Beyoncé released full-length country albums (the latter winning AMAs for Favorite Female Country Artist and Favorite Country Album for Cowboy Carter just this week), while Shaboozey scored the biggest hit of the year. Stagecoach sold out before Coachella for the first time, and Twisters – one of the year’s biggest blockbusters – featured an all-country soundtrack. Even pop heavyweights like Lady Gaga, Bruno

Mars, and Sabrina Carpenter leaned into country sounds.

And it’s not just in the US. The last year has seen country achieve its biggest annual share of the UK recorded music market this century, largely led by Shaboozey, Beyoncé, Morgan Wallen, and Post Malone. Even the UK’s Eurovision act got in on the action, choosing country-pop trio Remember Monday to represent Britain in May, which proved that country is popular, even though the UK never is…

The popularity of the genre has not gone unnoticed by AEG Presents, the live-entertainment division of Los Angeles-based AEG. In this issue, we catch up with Darcey Jackson, lead festival booker at AEG Presents’ European festivals division, who, struck by the overwhelming demand for Stagecoach Festival tickets, booked Zach Bryan for this year’s BST festival in Hyde Park.

Away from country, our cover story this month is an in-depth interview with Grammy-winning songwriter and music producer Jon Shave, who, one year on from Brat summer,

reflects on writing and producing tracks from Charli XCX’s multiple Grammy and BRIT award-winning Brat album.

Elsewhere, we catch up with Morcheeba singer Skye Edwards about the trip-hop duo’s 11th album, Escape The Chaos, while country artist Chase Matthew opens up about his new album, Chase, and what does – and doesn’t – make an authentic country artist in 2025.

Plus, we bring you the latest from the worlds of studio, live sound, install, sound production, upcoming artists, and review the must-have tech creatives are using today.

Saddle up and enjoy the issue!

Alice Gustafson Editor-in-Chief

By Adam Protz

By Alice Gustafson

By Adam Protz

By Liz Wilkinson

SPILL TAB ANGIE

Having collaborated with Metronomy and supported Sabrina Carpenter on tour, 2025 is the year in which French-Korean artist spill tab releases her debut album, ANGIE. This Los Angeles-based singer and producer chats to Headliner about the brilliant singles she’s released for the record, singing in English and French, her huge support slot for Charli XCX in Paris this summer, and how Guinness tastes different around the world.

Born Claire Chicha in Bangkok, Thailand, to an Algerian father and a Korean mother, spill tab also spent time in Paris before settling in Los Angeles. Her musical project was announced to the world in 2019 with the release of her debut single, the brilliantly assured Decompose While many artists often become unrecognizable from their very first release, Chicha’s first single was the perfect introduction to her stylish bedroom pop, lo-fi music production and her Billie Eilish-esque, almost whispered vocals.

Things built very quickly, with a following established in good time for her 2020 debut EP, Oatmilk. The opening track, Calvaire, let the world know this was not an artist who felt bound to the English language, and the third track, Santé, also sees Chicha singing in French. Generating tens of millions of streams, the EP is deeply impressive as a first collection of songs, and it’s little wonder that its popularity continues to this day.

Credit: Jade Sadler

Chicha has just got back to Los Angeles after supporting Perfume Genius in Europe, and is pleased to report that, “The weather in L.A. is gorgeous, the tacos are good, and the beer is no longer cheap, but it’s affordable, and that’s all we can ask for. In Europe, I was living it up on all the beers there. It is crazy how Guinness and Pilsners taste different in different places! Those European beers really do be tasting so much better in Europe than they ever could in the US.”

Chicha had a fairly unique childhood in that she spent a lot of time at her parents’ post-production studio in L.A., until they were forced to close it due to the recession and film studios starting to record and engineer in-house.

“My parents met in Bangkok,” she says. “My mom is from South Korea. My dad grew up in the South of France. They were on a work thing, and they met at the airport, which I find super romantic,” she laughs. “We’ve moved countries many times. I’ve had about 21 different addresses where I’ve lived. My dad grew up a jazz man and played the sax and the flute, and was a composer. My mom was obsessed with the piano and classical music. When we moved to L.A., they started a post-production business. So it was a lot of dubbing movies from one

language into 40 other languages, or doing ADR sessions. They would do orchestral engineering, recording, and mixing. There was this big recording room where they would record 40 or 60-piece orchestras, and I had the whole mixing board in front of me when I was tiny.”

With the decision to make her music bilingual as early as 2020 on her first EP, with its even split of French and English language tracks, Chicha pondered the commercial implications of doing so, weighed against her artistic vision for not singing solely in English, as many non-English speakers feel obliged to do for their music to reach the markets of the US, the UK, and beyond.

“I loved listening to Bossa Nova when I was younger,” she says. “And I’m a huge Rosalía fan. When artists sing in their native tongue, I find it so beautiful, and it’s a different way to interact with the music — when you don’t understand the lyrics, you are thinking about the production and the way the vocals sound. When you can’t understand the lyrics, your other senses of the music are heightened. When I decided to incorporate French, it was partly to represent my identity in its fullest form. But I was also excited to utilize a different language, almost like a new instrument, because

French does flow very differently from English. It was a way to experiment with texture and I just also thought it sounded cool.”

Chicha’s love of sticking a number of genres into a blender and switching it on, full power, is evidenced again on Assis, one of the recent singles for her upcoming debut LP, ANGIE Choosing to sing en français on this track, it’s a track that initially places you somewhere between the ‘60s and ‘70s with its Rhodes piano and bass guitar groove, before the modern lo-fi production and vocals enter the mix.

“We started Assis on the drums and bass,” Chicha says. “The essence of it already had this Euro ‘50s cinema vibe to it. That guided the choice to sing in French quite a bit. I was leaning into this idea with it feeling like a movie. It feels like an Italian or a French movie where they’re driving down the coast with the girl having a little scarf on her head, and it’s a convertible.

“One of the things that I had in mind that I wanted to exercise was more live instruments, and more instruments recorded onto a mic. So there’s a lot of upright piano, and there’s trumpet on the album. There are live recorded strings. I think with that territory comes a lot of humanity and human error, and that breathes a lot of life into a track. If it didn’t have that, it would be to the grid, which is super cool for certain contexts. I wanted to feel like it was breathing a little bit.”

“THE WORK IS AWESOME AND MYSTERIOUS AND CRAZY, AND I AM HAPPY TO DO IT.”

Prior to this single release was the album’s title track, with an accompanying music video in which Chicha gets into a car in a junkyard, only for her and the car to be lifted high into the air by a crane. In keeping with the rest of the record, Chicha brilliantly achieves her goal of melding real instruments with the electronic: in this case, acoustic guitar with electronic sounds and a lead electric guitar plastered in effects pedals. Her vocal refrain soars over the grungey textures; on paper, it shouldn’t work, but it does.

In terms of producing the album with the co-producers she worked with, she says that, “It was me carving out what I liked and didn’t like, and then moving stuff around. They’d bring loads of ideas to the table, and then it’d be 20 per cent of me adding stuff. On Angie, we worked on that second verse in the studio — I didn’t want to add new instruments, I liked the instruments that we had, but we didn’t have them with us in the studio anymore. So I just chopped and spliced the guitar from the chorus, and then pitched it around and made that the verse.”

Beyond ANGIE releasing, another career milestone for Chicha this Summer sees spill tab on the poster for France’s We Love Green 2025, just a few entries on the poster’s lineup below the all-conquering Charli XCX.

“She’s incredible,” Chicha says. “She’s such a headstrong, independent artist. And she does it exactly how she wants to, which is really inspiring. I’m but a humble fan, and we’ll be partaking in Brat summer for sure.”

When asked what the phrase ‘play out loud’ means to her, she says: “The first thing that comes to mind is this idea of being present and having fun and enjoying what we’re doing. There are a lot of times when I can feel pretty lost in the sauce, and on a mental health level, there are days that are not as good as others. So I think the idea of playing out loud at a live show is being comfortable in my skin and being able to express myself freely and have a good time.”

With that French festival slot, other big performances booked, and the imminent release of her debut album, there is a very strong sense this could be the year spill tab’s music finds a much bigger audience than the one she has already cultivated. “I took a year-long hiatus to just work on the album and didn’t do much else. I just want to give it the best chance of reaching people and the best chance of being portrayed in the right way. The work is awesome and mysterious and crazy, and I am happy to do it,” she grins.

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Jon Shave

droW s by ALICE GUSTAFSON

MAKING CHARLI XCX’S BRAT

A year on from Brat summer, the blur of radioactive green memes, TikTok dances, and chart and award domination is still sinking in for one of Charli XCX’s Brat album writers and producers. Grammy-winning songwriter and music producer Jon Shave has been working with the British artist for over 10 years – first meeting Charli when writing the hook for her and Iggy Azalea’s 2014 banger, Fancy – but it wasn’t until 2025 that he would see her get her flowers. And by flowers, Headliner means awards.

Shave has been busy since then, most recently lending his talents to Sugababes, JADE, Jesse Ware, Kim Petrus, and Louise Redknapp. His credits read like Hunsnet’s roll of honor or a dream Mighty Hoopla festival lineup – “How does it feel to single-handedly be keeping the gays alive?” enquired an Instagram follower about his recent co-written and produced Sugababes track, Jungle. He replies with a salute. He’s been keeping the pop girlies fed for decades, after all.

Shave began his career in the early 2000s as a member of Xenomania, a songwriting and production team that was known for churning out mega hits for Cher, Kylie and Dannii Minogue, Girls Aloud, Sugababes, The Saturdays and Sophie EllisBextor. In 2008, he co-founded The Invisible Men, where he co-wrote and produced multiplatinum songs including Fancy, Zayn Malik’s Mind of Mine album, Jessie J’s Do It Like a Dude, Rita Ora’s Hot Right Now, and Britney Spears’ Pretty Girls

Headliner catches up with Shave not long after the BRITs, which saw Charli XCX collect five gongs. A month before, she won three Grammys.

“It’s all been pretty insane, but in the best possible way,” he admits from his studio in Kingston upon Thames –“we call it London, but some people don’t,” he points out. “I went to the Grammys, and it was amazing. I never take it for granted. I feel like I may never get there again, so I try to enjoy it,” he laughs self-deprecatingly.

Dictionary. Before long, Brat summer had become one of the biggest pop culture moments of 2024. The official Harris presidential campaign even got in on the action by renaming itself Kamala HQ, changing its banner picture to Brat green.

fun, and fascinating writing and producing processes that I’ve been lucky to be part of.”

“At its heart, it’s a very serious event, and they take it very seriously – as they should. As a British person in that environment, you just feel very small. The BRITs are always a really fun evening. They have a very British way of doing things. There’s something very anarchic and chaotic about it, which I love,” he grins.

For the chronically online, Brat was inescapable last year. Released in early June 2024, the album marked Charli XCX’s highest debut on the Billboard 200, and it was ranked the highest-rated album of 2024 on Metacritic. Then came the awards, and Brat was named the word of the year by the Collins English

As part of the songwriting and production team on the album (alongside A. G. Cook, Finn Keane, Cirkut, George Daniel, and others), Shave was confident that Brat was a strong body of work, but never could have predicted the way the concept took hold.

“Unexpected sounds like the wrong word, because you go in with the best intentions and you have all the hopes in the world,” he says, reflecting on the album’s staggering success and impact on pop culture. “But equally, you can never plan or predict these things, especially the cultural impact. No one is in control of that. That’s something that takes on a life of its own. I make sure I enjoy it and appreciate it because these things don’t happen every day. It was amazing to see how it was received. It was also one of the most gratifying,

Confusingly for those over the age of 30, as of 2024, to call someone ‘brat’ was no longer considered a way of throwing shade, but now meant praising someone who is confidently rebellious, unapologetically bold, and playfully defiant. Shave weighs in on the concept:

“That discussion consumed so many people’s conversations last year,” he smiles, shaking his head. “That was part of the fun of it. I had it the other way around in that neither of my children is interested in what I do at all. But one day, I was walking with my eight-year-old son and he said, ‘Daddy, look: someone’s got brat trainers on,’ and it was literally just someone with lime green trainers on. Every time there’s anything vaguely green, he’d be like, ‘Look at that brat front door!’ or, ‘There’s a brat car.’ It became his byword for garish green.”

Credit: Terrence O’Connor

Credit: Terrence O’Connor

Charli XCX started by sharing her music on Myspace in 2008, then gaining widespread recognition after featuring on Icona Pop’s chaotic single, I Love It. Her debut studio album, True Romance, followed in 2013. Since then, Charli XCX has never compromised her vision to be recognized, has largely worked with the same team for years, and waited for the mainstream to catch up. Shave shares his thoughts about what it was about Brat that finally broke through:

“There have been a lot of times when she’s been known as your favorite artist’s favorite artist, as culturally and creatively, she’s always so far ahead. But sometimes that hasn’t been recognized commercially or in the mainstream, and when you work that hard, that probably feels frustrating at times.

“So what was so amazing about last year was that this album was so uncompromising and was probably the most Charli album it could have been, and it did the best of all her work, so I was so happy for her.”

Shave shares that Charli XCX put a lot of thought into the concept of Brat before she’d written a note or stepped into a studio. “She had developed the idea of the concept before writing any music, and the concept was so strong that it provided a dense and complex framework for the making of the music,” he says.

“All the writing was exploring, what is Brat? What does it mean? What does it not mean? All those conversations informed the writing sessions in the studio. She’d put such a lot of thought into how she was going to uncompromisingly deliver that. You couldn’t escape that messaging in terms of everything she was doing. It felt bold. I think it also had to do with the timing of that in terms of people’s appetites, and obviously, she’d built up her sense of momentum within her fan base, and they championed her

and wanted her to cross over. It was everything coming together at the right time that people tapped into. That’s what took it over the top and reached way beyond what would have been her core fan base.”

Brat draws inspiration from the 2000s English electronic rave scene, delivering a harder, more intense club sound than her previous release, Crash, from only two years before. Shave is credited as a co-writer on Sympathy is a knife – one of the first Brat tracks he worked on. He shares that the lyrics (which ultimately ended up being about self-doubt and insecurities) took a while to get right, unsure of the direction they would take:

“It wasn’t an instant thing,” he

confirms. “We had the title early on, and we were having conversations around the meaning of the title, and real-life situations for Charli that would inform the feeling of the song. We also had this amazing melodic sketch that felt so instant and powerful, but when you have an amazing thing like that, it almost creates more pressure, because the lyrics have to be great, and you don’t want to lose any of that feeling. “So we had a false start with the first draft of the lyrics, where it wasn’t quite landing. We stepped back from it for a bit, and that allowed Charli to think about it.” When Charli returned to the studio with the lyrics more fleshed out, the track finally fell into place, with Shave likening the words to being a hotline into her brain. “We had long, involved, interesting conversations where we were throwing ideas back

Credit: Harley Weir

ALL

THE WRITING

WAS EXPLORING,

WHAT DOES IT MEAN? WHAT DOES IT NOT MEAN? WHAT IS BRAT?

and forth. It needed to feel like it was coming from her, like a conversational stream of consciousness.”

On the unusual decision to have the chorus suddenly lurch into a different key, Shave says it was all about momentum: “Once we had the sketch down, we worked out ways to get the most energy out of the track. We found that taking away rather than adding gave the opening of the chorus, where the track drops out, an exciting feel. It’s an unexpected chord change, and also, Charli hit on that jarring note on the first word of the chorus, and we felt we should

lean into that. That’s such a special moment. When you get moments like that, that’s what propels the song forward. When she hit on that note, on that chord change, I thought, ‘This has some crazy potential.’ That gives you the energy to get stuck in.”

The synth-pop track is driven by synths and AutoTuned vocals, the latter of which the singer is known for in her live shows. “Charli uses AutoTune as a creative tool because when she’s freestyling and she hears herself back on headphones, it’s an inspiring thing that pushes her to certain areas and makes her try out

different notes,” says Shave. “AutoTune was there from the very first rough takes we recorded. It was one of those songs that demanded it, and creatively, it felt like the right thing.”

Brat is not all high-tempo hedonism and TikTok dance trends. Vulnerable track, I think about it all the time, sees the singer ponder if motherhood lies in her future or not. Also co-written by Shave, he highlights the contrast with Sympathy is a knife

“It was the opposite: no AutoTune, and very deliberately so, and kept much rawer in a way that matched the feeling of that song. For the last few years, I’ve been co-writing a stage musical which is about motherhood and a lot of the unexplored and uninterrogated feelings around that. I’ve spent a long time exploring this whole world of parenthood and what it does to your brain when you’re in a creative industry where it’s not seen as a cool, valuable, or sexy thing to do. For women in particular, that’s even more heightened. When Charli mentioned she might want to explore writing about it, I was all for it. It sparked a really interesting conversation and is something very close to my heart. There’s something fragile and rare about that song, and she managed to sum up this beautifully nuanced, complicated set of feelings that are so universal. I can’t think of any other songs that have tackled that.”

Another vulnerable track on the album is So I (co-written and coproduced by Shave), which serves as a tribute to Charli’s friend and collaborator SOPHIE, who passed away in 2021. Shave recalls the moving recording session:

“It was emotional. It’s one of those you all feel. I got to know SOPHIE through Charli and had quite a few sessions with her. SOPHIE was such a strong, vital character that taught me loads about myself, and was also such an uncompromising champion of other people. She did a lot for me

in helping me with my confidence and my own self-belief. She was a unique talent and was inspiring to be around. When she passed away, I didn’t have the outlet to express my sadness about it, because I didn’t want to be seen to be jumping on anything. It was a very unexpressed thing for me, so it felt like a real privilege to be part of that song. I was very touched by how it came out. It feels like a bit of a dream sequence.”

Songwriter Finn Keane was in the session too, and they all felt the pressure to get it right. “It was too important,” says Shave. “So that creates pressure. Obviously, they are emotional lyrics, but it also sparked a lot of conversation about the good memories. A.G. Cook helped us finish it off with the production and did the remix with the flip side lyrics of, ‘Now I wanna think about all the good times,’ which is such a beautiful counterpart to the first version.”

The production was kept simple on this track. Shave created synth sounds on Serum combined with an arpeggiator sound, and used AutoTune on Charli XCX’s vocals once again. “That felt in keeping with a lot of Charli’s work with SOPHIE,” he explains. “We spent quite a lot of time layering up the vocals so they get bigger as the track goes on. It’s pretty much all Serum.”

He suddenly remembers what stands out to him most vividly about creating this song: “This sounds really weird,” he discloses, stressing that he’s not

superstitious in any way, “but when I was playing the chords, I felt like SOPHIE was with me, bizarrely. I didn’t say anything to anyone, but I had that feeling, and the chords just came out. When I played the idea to Charli, she said, ‘I want this to be the song about SOPHIE.’ There was something strangely joined up about the feeling I’d had, like it was meant to be.”

When collecting her BRIT for Album of the Year, Charli XCX acknowledged that it’s not in her nature to do the same thing twice and that she’ll likely never make a record like Brat again, instead choosing to subvert expectations and continue to challenge herself as she evolves as an artist. She recently doubled down on this, saying that she’s made her peace with the idea of her next album being a flop. Whichever direction her next album takes, and whichever season it might dominate, Shave is game:

“You can’t try and compete with Brat and what it did, and Charli of all people will know that,” he says. “I wouldn’t be surprised if her next move is to make a left turn and try some different stuff.

“I don’t know what the next album will be, but obviously, I will always make time for Charli.” JONSHAVE.COM

WILKINSON

IT CLICKED

LAIDBACK LUKE

Two decades into a career that helped shape the global dance scene, Dutch DJ and producer Laidback Luke is embracing a full-circle moment, fired up, back in the studio and preparing for a relaunch. From the sounds of ‘blog house’ to the pressures of social media, he talks to Headliner about rediscovering his roots, building the perfect home studio and the baby toy that inspired his new single, It Clicked.

You’ve been based in New York for a while now – what prompted the move from the Netherlands?

I started DJing in America a lot, and then it’s a very familiar story: I met a girl. She was from New York, and we have a daughter together. I settled in here after we split, and I stayed to be there for my daughter.

I’ve been in New York for about 12 years now, although I do miss the Netherlands - the Dutch blood keeps running through me! It’s funny, you think of New York as this exotic place, but once you live here, you start to miss home. I live about 30 minutes out, in a suburban area with trees, so I don’t really have to deal with the chaos.

What does a typical day look like for you these days?

First of all, I think about what to do on social media that day. I plan a couple of days ahead to be in front of it. Then I’ll quickly run through some emails, and then it’s whatever deadline is first – it could be a remix, it could be mastering my new track It Clicked, which I just did before this interview.

A couple of years ago, I was quite relaxed about it and thought, ‘Oh, I hope social media goes away.’ It didn’t. And now I actually really enjoy doing it. I realized that if there’s no output on my side, then there’s nothing - you don’t exist as a brand.

I’m quite TikTok-focused right now, because that’s where everything’s happening. Sometimes I cross-post the same video on Instagram, and one doesn’t do anything while the other blows up. It’s ever-changing. The newest trend is super low-fi. For instance, the super quality photos of DJs performing at shows with the massive crowds and the fireworks does nothing anymore, whereas, if I would be in a bathroom at the airport taking a selfie, being unshaven and out to a show, that would hit many more marks. It’s wild how that goes…

You recently played a sold-out show at Avalon Hollywood – tell us about that.

This was the unofficial relaunch of my Laidback Luke brand. There’s a resurgence in the vibe and energy where I’m grabbing back to my legacy. At Avalon, we got to test that by turning a club show into an event, and I want to do more of that.

The official relaunch is my new track, It Clicked. I’ve been doing this for decades, but at a certain point, there needed to be a reinvention. I felt I got a bit stale and too comfortable. Then I went through old blog house tracks on my hard drive - not even my own - and thought, ‘Man, these kids have no clue where Dutch house came from or what that energy was like.’ It reminded me of the drive I had back then, and the will to reinvent myself and bring that to a new generation.

Do you ever take sell-outs for granted, and do you still get that same buzz connecting to the crowds like that?

It’s absolutely incredible. I’ll be very honest, my brand has got a bit stale over these decades. You take things for granted, and there was a slow decay up until now. The dance music landscape has changed. It’s tougher to sell out shows.

So when that hits, I always keep track of my number one show of the year, and it was incredible that it happened in January already. The vibe, the energy, the amount of success - everything went right.

There’s so many things that can go wrong. I’m one of those DJs that really likes to DJ very live and very improv. Someone asks me, ‘What’s your first track?’ and I’m like, ‘I don’t know, let me peek.’ I look at the crowd and think, ‘Oh, they need this,’ so I’ll play that. I do mashups and live edits on the fly, and within all of those motions, everything can go wrong, and sometimes it does. I remember a couple of shows outside where there was a monsoon, all your equipment gets wet, and the sound shuts off. There can be all sorts of drama!

stereo. He pressed the button, and out of that button came a percussion loop. I loved it so much, I took it into the studio. Sometimes you need to sit for hours, but in about two and a half hours, the track was there. So it started with a baby toy. How about that! It’s really nothing that you’ve heard from me in probably 15 years. And that’s the feeling I got - like, ‘Oh, he’s back!’. It’s the energy. It’s the crazy, kooky creativity that I always had in my tracks. There are hints of early Dutch house in there.

Are you bringing that energy into your upcoming releases, too?

This one sets the tone. It’s almost like the gunshot at the start of a race. I’m gonna ride that out for the coming year and see how I feel at the end, see if I’m still this fired up. But right now, it’s all guns blazing, for sure.

Talk us through your studio setup; what equipment is essential for you?

The main upgrade was actually soundproofing this properly. Before this, I had that old-school, dark grey, thin soundproofing. My manager’s studio in L.A. inspired me - it sounded really damp, and mine always sounded very reverby. I tried recording a lot of YouTube content and always needed to AI it in the end.

Where did you start with It Clicked?

I love this question, because I’m a dedicated dad, and I was playing with my son – he must have been one and a half – and he had this little toy

I bought Genelec 8331As two or three months ago – the perfect size for a compact studio. I recently released a track with Henry Fong called Mommy, and I usually master on my Sennheiser headphones, but the

Genelecs sounded so incredible and detailed, I thought I might as well master my new single on them. I hear everything in there, proper Genelecstyle, which I’ve known for decades.

Leave the World Behind, Turbulence, and even the predecessor, Show Me Love were all made on 8030s.

I just remember the quote: if it sounds good on [Genelecs], it sounds good everywhere. So I mixed it to perfection on the Genelecs, then checked it in the car or with AirPods, and it sounded incredible.

Do you have any advice for producers choosing their first set of monitors?

It’s fascinating. There’s another speaker brand that’s been really popular on social media the last few years, and I’ve tested them. But when I sweep an EQ in my DAW, they don’t really pick up all the frequencies or detail. So it’s important to choose monitors that give you that HD 4K quality for your ears. On the flip side, I’ve been in huge studios with these Rolls-Royce-type monitors, and a kick and hi-hat sound amazing in there, but then you get in your car and it sounds like nothing. You need speakers that make you work. If it sounds good on them, you can trust it’ll sound good everywhere. That’s why I love Genelecs. They sound a bit dry, and that’s what makes you nail the mix.

After two decades in the game, how do you see the electronic music scene today?

There’s all sorts of changes going on. Even when I started in the mid-tolate ’90s, styles and DJs kept evolving. The 2000s brought electroclash, then blog house, then EDM broke through. With that came big sponsors and organizations… and then it all kind of imploded. Now it’s more Afro house, but also hyper techno with high BPMs, and influencers where it’s not necessarily about skills anymore, it’s about how famous you are on social media. With AI coming in, and creators not even needing to make their own content, it’ll be a whole different world. But that’s what keeps it exciting - it never stays the same, and I think that’s a good thing.

How do you feel about AI in music?

For me, personally, especially being an electronic music producer, the mindset has always been to embrace technology - that’s where dance music came from. A botched-up bass synth like the Roland TB-303, a drum machine like the TR-909 - put them together and you’ve got acid house. Decades later, we’re still using those sounds, and acid came back just a year or two ago. So whatever the new technology is, I’m about it. I think it’s exciting. But the old stuff doesn’t disappear. You still see DJs using vinyl, and natural instruments coming back into dance music. Everything that’s been will always be there, we just get new tools.

Credit: Andrew Barajas

LILY WILLIAMS LOSING MY ACCENT

Rising UK singer-songwriter Lily Williams is a Brit abroad, and she’s losing her accent. Born and raised in the UK, she’s now based in California where she’s attracted an audience of loyal listeners with her soothing lullaby-like vocals, and has racked

up over 10M streams completely independently. Williams reflects on going viral on TikTok, and the sadness that comes with losing a part of her British identity living in the US.

Despite the unmistakable American twang to her accent, Williams hails from Haywards Heath in West Sussex in the UK, where she began playing classical piano and clarinet at the age of 10. These days, she calls Huntington Beach, California home.

“I went to college in Boston when I graduated high school,” she says warmly, then immediately corrects her first Americanisms. “Oh my gosh! I realise how much I speak like an American when I’m talking to you,” she laughs, beginning again: “When I finished sixth form, not high school. I met my husband out there and all my network out in Boston, and felt like everyone I knew was moving up to L.A.”

Having honed her talents overseas at Berklee College of Music in Boston, the multi-talented musician found herself back in the UK during the pandemic, where she began

writing her album, How The Story Ends. Once restrictions were lifted, Williams headed to California again, although is quick to point out that she does miss England.

“I always go back at Christmas,” she nods. “You don’t want to spend Christmas in California. It’s just not the move. They don’t know what Yorkshire puddings are. Their gravy is weird, so you’ve got to get home for the roast dinner. Luckily, I have this little corner store which is just across the street, and it has a lot of British snacks like Digestive biscuits, Cadbury’s, this jam that I like from home, and I found some Heinz baked beans recently – that was a great moment,” she says, laughing at how excited she sounds. “I was just craving them!”

Headliner suggests it’s quite the trade off: Roast dinners and Digestives in the UK versus seeing

the sun in L.A. “I know,” she laments. “I love being out in the sun. That is one of the best things. That’s the one thing that makes me scared about moving back to England in the future, because I’ve got used to the sun every single day.”

After posting some of her unreleased demos online in 2021, Williams swiftly attracted an audience of loyal listeners, largely due to her success on TikTok. I Hope You Think Of Me became her first single, followed by July (Later On) and July (Live), drawing a combined 450K+ unique Reels on Instagram and over six million streams.

Tallying over 10M streams independently, her authentic voice has endeared a growing fanbase in the US. Williams is slightly baffled by the way this has come about.

“I LOVE HAVING A BRITISH ACCENT, BUT I REALIZED MY ACCENT HAS REALLY CHANGED.”

Credit: Andrew Barajas

“It was so funny, because I’d been posting for maybe a year, and sometimes you get a little bit of traction on a song. I posted I Hope You Think Of Me initially, and it got a little bit of traction, but nothing crazy. I decided to post it again months later, and that’s when it really took off. It was a wild experience. I definitely wasn’t expecting it, but it was so cool to see a song connect with so many people. That was the first time that had ever really happened to me.

“It was really freeing at the beginning, and it also was that start for my artist career, because once that started to grow in popularity, I had a lot more people interested in doing sessions

with me as the artist in the room,” she says of the ways TikTok has boosted her career – although replying on that platform alone has its pitfalls as well as benefits:

“Over time, it becomes a little pressurised,” she nods. “Like, ‘If this song does well on TikTok, then it’s going to do well on streaming, and it’s going to gain your following and attraction. That’s such a real pressure that a lot of artists feel today. It’s amazing though – it’s the best tool ever. It’s leveled the playing field for so many people, which is just so cool, but there is pressure that comes with that, and a need to be consistent. With Tiktok, that’s a bit of a danger

because you can have these – not one hit wonders,” she says, choosing her words carefully, “but a little bit, because people are just interested in one of your songs, they’re not really trying to come along for the journey. But on the whole, it’s a great help.”

Her new EP, Losing My Accent collects a dazzling run of new music, including such deeply personal songs as Every Storm, If I Don’t Like You, Love You To Death, Learning Curve and Things That Fall. Its title track of the same name sees Williams pondering her British identity in L.A., which has affected her more deeply than she at first realized.

“Every new person that I meet will be able to tell I’m not from California or from the States, but they will immediately think I’m Australian,” she says. “People can’t believe I’m from England for some reason. I do think part of it is just because it is hard for people to tell the difference between all those accents. Living in the States, all my friends have different American accents, so I’m surrounded by the culture. I’ve definitely picked it up. My dad tells me my intonation is not British anymore. I still sound a little bit British, but everyone at home is like, ‘You have an American twang’. I love having a British accent, but I realized my accent has really changed.”

After one such occasion when someone apologized for incorrectly guessing her accent, Williams shrugged it off, but felt differently about it by the time she got home. “I was actually really sad that people can’t recognize I’m British,” she shares. “And it wasn’t because they got it wrong, but it was just because I was like, ‘I’ve really changed’. I’ve now been in the States for such a big period of my life, and it feels weird to be letting go of a little bit of my childhood, or to be growing up and changing. It was this realization of, ‘Wow. I’m really far from home, and I’ve definitely changed a lot’”.

Williams’ previous EP saw her take inspiration from influences spanning classic Disney scores, Chet Baker, The Beach Boys to Sara Bareilles, Laufey, and John Mayer. With Losing My Accent, her real life experiences took on more of an influential role in shaping the sound of the EP:

“For my last project, I had a very clear idea that I wanted it to be one story told through many songs,” she explains. “But with this one, it wasn’t as clear cut as that. I was looking at the song selection and I felt like it was a window into being in your mid 20s and having that – not a midlife crisis – but the famous quarter life crisis that everyone seems to be having. It’s that thing of transitioning from being a kid to being an adult. I got married, so I found the love of my life, and I was learning to love someone forever, and I was watching my friends lose the people they thought were the loves of their lives, and also, people start thinking about their parents differently.”

10 years and be 5,000 miles away from your family. But you don’t think about that when you’re 18. You only think about that when you’re 26, 27, 28 and you’re suddenly like, ‘I’m really far from all my siblings and my mum and dad are getting older, and I’m missing out on a lot of things.’ It’s not that you’re sad for the life that you chose, but it’s that you can’t have everything. You have to make big choices. The project was really about growing up, looking back and all those big decisions that you make when you’re trying to figure life out. It was more like diary entries and it was a window into how I’ve been feeling the past year or so.”

She uses her own experience of leaving her home country as a teenager as an example: “When you’re 18, you think, ‘I’m just gonna go travel the world. I’m gonna move across the country’. You don’t think about how when you move across the country, you might never go back home. You might end up living there

She says that the answer changes a lot, but the song Learning Curve is a personal favorite of hers, while Love You To Death is the one she looks forward to playing live. “It makes you think a lot, but it’s this tongue in cheek-type song, and it’s more of a Bossa nova feel. I have so much fun playing it and singing it, and you always get a good reaction from the audience, so that’s definitely a great one to play live.”

For her live shows, Williams makes use of a JBL EON ONE Compact Portable PA with Professional-Grade Mixer, which has been a gamechanger for the touring musician.

“I play the piano, so I’ve always been jealous of people that could just pick up a guitar and go out into the streets and just play without a PA system. You can’t really do that with a keyboard!

“Having a PA system is so useful for gathering fans together and doing a little show in the park, or doing something outdoors. It’s so useful for that, or even for rehearsals where you don’t want to be lugging a bunch of equipment around. Plus, it’s so easy to use,” she enthuses. “It’s very loud, and that’s definitely something that you want and you need, especially from something so small. Also, it’s very lightweight, easy to set up, and so portable.

“You see so many people lugging sound equipment around, and that is what has put me off a lot busking because I am already having to carry a massive keyboard somewhere. There’s always just so much equipment, and you have to be pretty strong to be able to carry all that stuff! But having something super lightweight and portable is so useful because then you can just go out and do it yourself,” she smiles.

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ESCAPE THE CHAOS

by ADAM PR O ZT

MORCHEEBA

Credit: Michelle Hayward

Three decades in and with over 10 million albums sold, trip-hop duo Morcheeba are back with their 11th album, Escape The Chaos. Singer Skye Edwards chats to Headliner about singing with Pavarotti, writing one of the band’s most cinematic albums yet, and how her back garden swimming pond helps her escape the chaos in her own life.

While Morcheeba have reached great heights in their career, the group, originally a trio, started from humble origins. Brothers Ross and Paul Godfrey had moved to London from Kent and met Edwards at a party in Greenwich. She was a backing singer in a funk band at the time, and the three quickly started writing songs and recording music at the Godfrey brothers’ bedroom studio in North London. Having produced music and sent demos to labels around London with no joy, it was the addition of Edwards that saw them signing to the China record label, and the release of their first EPs, Trigger Hippie and Music That We Hear

Morcheeba released their debut album, Who Can You Trust? In 1996, and followed it up with Big Calm in 1998. A fitting title, as the single The Sea became a radio hit; the sumptuous trip-hop masterpiece combines Edwards’ velvet vocals with a lazy drum beat, opulent strings, and bluesy guitars. Like Massive Attack without the heart of darkness, the song is still the group’s signature song today, the kind of track you’re likely to hear in a café serving matcha lattes and hosting yoga classes. At the turn of the millennium, Morcheeba had another hit with the upbeat single Rome Wasn’t Built In A Day and its anthemic chorus.

Despite much of their music being so hazy and relaxing you can almost smell the incense thick in the air (the ‘cheeba’ in the band’s name

is a reference to a slang term for marijuana), the band’s tenure hasn’t been without drama. After a period of personal and creative differences, Edwards received a call in 2003 from the group’s manager informing her she was out of the band.

After two failed attempts to replace her, the Godfrey brothers eventually spent the band’s next chapter working with guest vocalists. Edwards remained with the same management company as Morcheeba during her time as a solo artist, and the three would eventually cross paths again.

In 2010, NME reported that she had rejoined the group. A few years later, Paul left the band, leaving Ross and Edwards to briefly work under the name Skye & Ross before eventually reclaiming the Morcheeba name.

Regarding that fateful party in Greenwich, Edwards says, “I don’t really remember much of the party as such. I didn’t meet Paul that time. Apparently, he was DJing there. My friend had invited me and asked me to get there early because she didn’t know the guy well. So, like a dweeb, I got there at 11, super early, and the only other people that were there were Ross and his friend, Justin. We got chatting, and I think I might have borrowed some skins from him. I said I was trying to sell my drum kit, and I got Ross’ number. Justin and I started dating, and he told them that I could sing. I was very cross with him at the time, because I didn’t believe that I could sing – I certainly wasn’t front person material.”

When getting the chance to interview someone like Edwards, it would be remiss not to ask for a retrospective of some of her favorite memories across Morcheeba’s three years as a band, albeit on and off.

“When they first played Trigger Hippie on the radio at three in the morning on some random underground station, we thought we’d made it then,” she says. “And it’s not until you’re in the back of a cab in London, and you get chatting, and then the driver says, ‘Oh, yeah, I know Part of the Process. I heard that on the radio.’ If the cab drivers know who you are, then you know you’re doing all right!”

Casting her mind back, she says, “It felt like we were in Italy every weekend. There was a TV show called Festival Bar, and it was a competition where people would phone in to vote for their band to come back. But I don’t know how that worked, because we would already be booked to come back before the fans voted. So figure that one out. But it was always in a different town square around Italy, and we were treated really well. The food was amazing. Singing a duet with Pavarotti was pretty crazy as well. There was a seven-year break where I wasn’t in the group. That certainly helped us to appreciate each other and move forward. And then, of course, Paul left. It seems to be working now, 30 years in!”

That casual Pavarotti name drop refers to Morcheeba’s performance at Pavarotti and Friends in 2001, in which Edwards fittingly performed Rome Wasn’t Built In A Day, while also joining the beloved tenor on stage for a duet of That’s Amore

“IT’S LIKE WE’VE BEEN THROUGH A DIVORCE; WE FOUGHT OVER THE KIDS, WHICH WAS THE STUDIO BACK IN THE DAY.”

Morcheeba’s new album title, Escape the Chaos, will resonate with a lot of people; 2025 being a chaotic year is putting it mildly. As will the lyrics and title of its opening track and single, Call for Love. It’s reassuring with that classic Morcheeba sound: opening with hints of eastern musical instruments, the trademark bluesy guitar riff and easy-tempo sampled beat await Edwards’ unmistakable vocals, sitting on a bed of Godfrey’s layered production.

Track four almost sounds like Morcheeba’s pitch for a James Bond theme song — you can easily visualize a title sequence and Daniel Craig pointing a gun around as you stick on We Live and Die, one of the album’s most cinematic moments. The strings, the track’s titles, Edwards’s darker lyrics, and the way it builds leads to a powerful close.

For Edwards, the song’s content is a combination between her relationship with her husband Steve, and her relationship with Ross. “Who I call my tour husband, because we’ve known each other all of this time. It’s like we’ve been through a divorce; we fought over the kids, which was the studio back in the day. The song is an homage to the fact we’re still here, still going strong, still loving it. I really do love creating music, creating lyrics and creating a dress that I’m going to wear on stage, to sticking my little lashes on and my high heels. I love travelling and getting on stage. I feel very, very lucky that this is my job. You know what I mean?”

Credit: Michelle Hayward

It’s not only Morcheeba’s music that has a relaxing vibe, Edwards has something of an aura herself.

With that in mind, it would be a missed opportunity to not ask her what rituals she has for escaping the chaos of the world herself and finding a bit of peace.

“I love being in my little sewing room,” she says. “I tell the kids, ‘Don’t come in here without any shoes on!’ Because there are scissors and pins everywhere. And I like to get barefoot in the garden. I’ve just planted some seeds. I’ve got what’s called a swim pond. It looks like a pond with plants around the edge, and it’s got a swim zone, which is four by ten, and two metres deep, so you can dive in.

“So it’s nice to be barefoot, or bare hands, yanking up the grass to see

where the earth is, and planting wildflower seeds.”

Returning to the music, a really exhilarating moment on the new LP is the hip-hop collaboration with Tottenham emcee Oscar #Worldpeace, Peace of Me. Over a trip-hop meets grime bassline, the rapped verses go back to back with a soaring chorus from Edwards.

“Keeping up with the yute,” she says with a laugh. “Well, I say yute, he’s probably in his 30s. He’s somebody that Ross found, he heard him on 6 Music. And him being called Oscar, #Worldpeace, it all ties in with his name nicely and lyrically. And then the melody came; I don’t really know whether the chorus lyrics really match with what he’s rapping about, but it just works. It would be great if we could get him to join us for a show in

London or in Brighton.”

Morcheeba may well be celebrating 30 years of making music together, but it’s still full speed ahead with this being another huge year for them. Edwards signs off with what’s coming up following the release of Escape the Chaos: “We’re headlining at Crystal Palace Bowl for the South Facing Festival. And then we’re just all over Europe, summer festivals, Bulgaria and Hungary and Spain, Italy, France, Estonia. It’s full on. And then October is our own shows around Europe. We’re looking into next year touring Australia. And it’d be lovely to get back to America and South America,” she smiles.

MORCHEEBA.UK

Credit: Michelle Hayward

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LENNY KRAVITZ

Photograph Credit: Julian Huke

Multi-Grammy-winner Lenny Kravitz is currently on the US leg of his Blue Electric Light tour, which kicked off in Europe in June 2024 in support of his 12th studio album. Sound Image, a Clair Global brand, is supplying a control package for the tour that includes two DiGiCo Quantum852 consoles for veteran FOH engineer Laurie Quigley and monitor engineer Josh Mellott, two SD-Racks, and six SD-MiNi Racks, plus three Fourier Audio transform.engine platforms, as Headliner discovers…

Mellott is something of a DiGiCo whisperer. He has been touring with Kravitz for 14 years, initially as a monitor tech before getting behind an SD7 to mix, and previously worked on DiGiCo desks with Crosby, Stills & Nash on tour and at Sound Image’s shop in Southern California.

“I was the code writer for all the socket files for any tours that were still using D5 and D1 consoles,” he says. Over the years, he and Quigley, who has been with Kravitz for more than two decades, have used virtually every model of DiGiCo console, from the D5 to the new Quantum platforms. Quigley, who has also worked with KISS, Aerosmith, Mötley Crüe, Whitesnake, Ozzy Osbourne, and Bon Jovi, began the tour in 2024 with an SD7 but switched to the new Quantum852 in 2025.

After years of layering updates on his SD7 at monitors, Mellott says, he chose to start from scratch when he switched to the Quantum852 for 2025, copying every setting from the SD7 before hooking up Pro Tools for a virtual soundcheck.

“I spent three or four days on everybody’s monitor mixes, going through every snapshot, every song, every mix, and readjusting everything,” he says. “We still had the same 32-bit cards and fiber system,

“LENNY PULLED ME ASIDE AND SAID: EVERYTHING SOUNDS CLEARER. IT SOUNDS LIKE THERE’S MORE SPACE IN THE MIX.”

but now everything sounded the way I wanted it to sound. I was even able to take away some of the EQ cuts and keep the dynamics involved.

“I didn’t need to have all this compression or EQ anymore, because it was sonically in my face and where I wanted it to be.”

On the road, the pair are also very hands-on, Mellott says. “Lenny and Craig will go to front-of-house and listen to the band with Laurie and make adjustments. Craig will come to the monitor console and listen to his mix and make adjustments. We all talk to each other and work together to make this whole collective thing work, because audio is such a big part of Lenny’s performance.”

The switch to the new Quantum852 consoles did not go unnoticed by their principle, Mellott continues. “Lenny has been really happy with what Laurie and I have done over the years. He’s never really had any complaints. But towards the end of this leg, he pulled me aside and said, ‘I don’t know what the difference is between last year and this year. Obviously, we have the same band, the same microphones, all the same setup, but this year is just dramatically better. Everything sounds clearer. It sounds like there’s more space in the mix.’

I explained that we had upgraded to the Quantums, and he was like, ‘You know, it could be that!’”

Out front, Quigley has an SD-Rack for his interconnections, while Mellott has an SD-Rack at monitor world just for the wireless microphones and IEM outputs. “We also have six SD-MiNi Racks scattered around the stage and I have an Orange Box interface to run the playback and backing

tracks,” Mellott says. All of the DiGiCo equipment is on a fiber loop.

The core band may be just two guitars, bass, drums, and keyboards, but between them they take up a lot of channels. In addition to 24 channels of guitars, Mellott says, “There are

20 keyboard channels and 20 drum channels. We record every night, and the most I can record is 128 channels. That’s not everything, so I had to stem down some things like the 12 audience mics to just one stereo channel.”

The two engineers have worked hard over the years to deliver studioquality sound both to the audience and onstage. During band rehearsals in the Bahamas for the current tour, Mellott and Ross regularly visited the studio to document every delay and reverb used on the Blue Electric Light album, then combed through the plugins on Fourier’s transform.engine to best replicate the devices used on the recordings. “I listed eight different reverbs and eight or 10 different delays just for Lenny’s vocal,” Mellott says. He programmed those into Quigley’s transform.engine at FOH, but instead of duplicating everything at monitors, he simply takes whichever effect Quigley has currently applied over the Optocore loop.

Mellott can then make that effect available to anyone who wants to hear it in their monitor mix.

For the most part, Mellott continues, “Lenny has a specific space that he likes in his in-ears, so I have my own reverbs for Lenny’s vocal. His mix also

goes through a dbx 160, because that’s how he does it in the Bahamas. The 160 keeps the band in check but keeps his vocal on top and in his face without taking away any tonality from the band or his vocal.” Mellott runs a single computer with two transform. engines for redundancy, setting up a Dante patch to seamlessly switch over as a backup if ever needed.

To replicate the guitar tones of the record releases, Kravitz and Ross each have 12 channels of amplification, ranging from a small Fender Tweed to a Marshall stack, all of which are positioned far upstage. “It’s not a quiet stage. We have wedges underneath the risers specifically tuned and EQ’d for guitars. That way, all of the guitar amps come out at the same volume and shoot in the same direction,” Mellott elaborates.

“We also run different delays and reverbs in the Fourier system on every song that all correspond to the albums and the Pro Tools tracks.

“We have snapshots throughout the show, including drum triggers from the albums.”

Since 2019, the crew has also been generating a broadcast mix whenever it is required, inserting a third DiGiCo console into the fiber network. “Quality control is a big, big thing with this operation, and we don’t leave anything to chance,” Mellott stresses.

“We bring our own Quantum5 and have our systems engineer, Frank Müller, provide a stereo mix anytime we do a broadcast. We loaded the front-of-house file onto it and programmed it with Craig over the last year or two in rehearsals. All the plugins that Laurie is using get sent to Frank and he can also throw up delays and reverbs as needed. With DiGiCo, it’s all one big ecosystem, and one that works very well for us.”

Credit: Pavane

DARDUST FROM BOWIE TO URBAN IMPRESSIONISM

With a remarkable 100-plus platinum records to his name, Dario Faini is a songwriter, pianist, and producer whose music and songs have been heard at the Super Bowl, NBA matches, and the Winter Olympics. On the foundations of working with some of Italy’s top pop acts and having countless songs reach the Eurovision Song Contest finals, he releases his latest solo piano album as Dardust, Urban Impressionism, putting him in league with the likes of Nils Frahm and Ólafur Arnalds.

It’s possible that Dardust is one of the most decorated names you haven’t yet heard of; in 2020, Apple Inc. chose his track Fear from the album S.A.D Storm and Drugs for one of the tech company’s famed keynote presentations and product launches at the Steve Jobs Theatre in California. A year later, he performed an under-the-stars concert at the UNESCO World Heritage Site in AlUla, Saudi Arabia, as well as performing at the 66th Eurovision Song Contest onstage with Benny Benassi and Sophie and The Giants.

As if these weren’t enough huge, culturally significant events, he was then asked to compose new music for the flag handover ceremony during the Olympic flag transition from Beijing 2022 to the upcoming Winter Olympics in Italy, MilanCortina 2026. You could be forgiven for wondering why you’d want any distraction from the world of big, glitzy events and rubbing shoulders with pop stars, in the form of brutalist architecture and minimalist piano compositions, but that is just how multi-faceted Dardust is.

He joins the Zoom call wearing an Under Armour sleeveless top that suggests he somehow also found time for a workout on top of everything else he’s doing. “I’m practising piano all day long, and am reviewing my pieces for the next concert that I have,” he says. “It’s a very demanding period, but I’m doing my best and I want to do everything perfectly.”

“THE CLASSICAL WORLD SEEMS TO HAVE BECOME A GAME OF PLAYLISTS.”

In terms of how the worlds of classical, pop, and electronic music collided for him, Dardust is a musician who, like many before him, had a Bowie awakening in his teenage years.

“When I was nine years old, there was a piano in my home, and my sister was having piano lessons,” he says, “So just to emulate her, I began to study piano. But then I came across this beautiful picture of Ziggy Stardust in a music magazine at school. I’d never seen anything like this. I was 10 years old, and I was totally bewitched by this image. I wanted to go deeper and discover his music.

“It was a totally different scenario compared to classical studies. I began these two different paths in music: classical music, contemporary music, and electronic music. Thanks to David Bowie, I discovered the electronic music world, from Kraftwerk to the ‘90s scene, The Chemical Brothers, and The Prodigy. I grew up with this unconventional musical vision, and at a certain point, I decided to combine these two different worlds.”

The start of his prolific songwriting and producing career began in 2006. “I remember that I was writing songs, and I wanted to investigate the song form. An Italian star, Irene Grandi, was very popular. She’s a beautiful singer. She chose one of my songs. I don’t know how she received my song, and from that moment on, I signed a contract with Universal Publishing.

“Ten years later, my songs were placed with a lot of publishers in Italy, and a lot of artists wanted to sing my songs. The next step was that Tommaso Paradiso had a big break in Italy in 2016, and he told me that I have to produce the song, and that I didn’t have to deliver the song to another producer. From that period on, I became a very successful producer. The big break was with Mahmood, with the Sanremo Festival and Eurovision.”

Going from one of the most decorated songwriters and producers in Italy to pursuing starkly minimal piano and electronic music depicting brutalist architecture in musical form might leave some scratching their heads, but Dardust

is fully committed to exploring this side of his musical psyche. This classical project hasn’t quite met the wild success of his pop career, but the growth is very clear to see: he’s now signed to Sony Masterworks, has seven albums under the Dardust name, and has just completed a European tour. He’s very inspired by his contemporaries, such as Nils Frahm, but has very strong feelings about the Peaceful Piano playlists on Spotify that have come to dominate the genre.

“Nils Frahm, Ólafur Arnalds, Hania Rani – they inspired me to start this new musical path as a contemporary composer and pianist. But the classical world seems to have become a game of playlists, where some editor decides if your song deserves to be in the playlists or not. If one of your songs is in this playlist, your profile becomes huge because they have millions of streams. But a lot of the songs are fake. Maybe they are made by AI, or they are fake projects. This is not my business. I want to do my vision, I don’t want to be distracted by all these things.

“For me, the numbers appearing on the profiles of this platform are a mistake. Because art is not a number. It’s totally wrong. Sometimes you have a very important artist who has a 30-year career, and their profile has fewer numbers than a new artist, because this new artist is placed in a lot of playlists. We don’t care about numbers. We care about the vision. We care about art.

“I think that these numbers have to be totally cancelled from the streaming platforms.”

As Dardust rightly points out, this music scene, dubbed ‘neoclassical’, which started out with such a small cluster of artists such as Frahm making music in such a DIY way, has become strangely dominated by piano streaming playlists. The likes of Arnalds have confirmed their suspicions that Spotify creates fake artist profiles for these playlists, possibly even paying off composers to write tracks for them without receiving royalties. Dardust’s suggestion that AI music will start seeping its way in doesn’t sound unlikely either.

With the neoclassical scene now so congested with said fake artists, but also innumerable composers who mimic the felt piano tracks of some of the artists mentioned without adding much of a new voice to the genre, the wonderful news is that Dardust brings something stunningly new to the table.

The opening title track of Urban Impressionism is quite glorious, with the Italian opting for a grand piano (instead of the ubiquitous soft piano sound that has been done to death), showcasing his virtuosic playing skills, while somehow combining his penchant for urban pop production with a sub-bassline. It has no right whatsoever to work, yet it does.

The deluxe version of the album has just been released, and by sheer coincidence, the album’s original release happened to coincide with The Brutalist , the multi-awardwinning film in which Adrien Brody plays a tortured brutalist architect. On how architecture inspired the album, Dardust says, “I grew up on the periphery and in the outskirts, and I felt a bit abandoned in that kind of environment. I was far away from the core of the world. I began to use my imagination, to use the colors of the piano to create a magical environment, to bring the colors of the piano into the black and white of the outskirts.

“The brutalist concept was perfect for the album, because brutalist buildings are naked without a facade. I like this concept because, for the first time, compared to my producer world, which is made of a lot of layers, in this album I used only my piano and very minimal electronic textures.”

Dardust’s previous album, Duality , took a much less minimalistic approach. It’s almost a dance music album. For this latest LP, he purposefully restricted the tools he was allowed to use for the music. And besides the piano, those tools included a multi-effects channel called The Godfather. “Made by these two guys in Puglia,” he says. “I think that I am the first in Italy to use it. Then I have my Juno-60, my Moog, and that’s it, just four elements.”

Modern classical music is often associated with Berlin on account of Frahm, Dustin O’Halloran, Max Richter and many other artists being based there in its early days, and Iceland thanks to the icy textures of Arnalds’ music. In Italy, modern piano music is much more associated with the easy listening of Ludovico Einaudi (one of the most streamed classical artists in the world) and Giovanni Allevi. But Dardust, who has recorded previous solo albums in Berlin and Iceland, is clearly not seeking to be labelled as easy listening, even though some of his piano pieces are wonderfully calming and introspective.

“I want to push the boundaries of contemporary classical,” he says. “I feel very lucky, because in Italy, what I’m doing is very highbrow and niche. Italian music is dominated by urban and pop music. We have Ludovico Einaudi and Giovanni Allevi, and they are very pop, very easy listening. I love them, I’m not judging them. But I want to explore more, and I feel very lucky; it’s a miracle what I have been doing in these last 10 years. It wasn’t granted at all that I could have my own audience.

“My next goal is to explore more, to expand my music, and my visions abroad. I’m thinking of moving to London and splitting my time between there and Italy.”

The deluxe edition of Urban Impressionism is out now, and we could all do with music that is somehow equal parts uplifting, calming, and of course, brutal. Surely London’s brutalist masterpiece, the Barbican Centre, which has hosted neoclassical music’s biggest stars, now beckons for Dardust. In the meantime, it will be fascinating to continue witnessing him effortlessly slipping between the worlds of pop music and contemporary classical.

Credit: Stelle

ALICEGUST

HOMECOMING

SNL50

SNL50: The Homecoming Concert, was an unforgettable celebration marking five decades of Saturday Night Live, which recently took place at Radio City Music Hall in New York City. The star-studded lineup featured the Backstreet Boys, Bad Bunny, Bonnie Raitt, Brandi Carlile, Chris Martin, Cher, David Byrne, Dave Grohl, DEVO, Eddie Vedder, Jack White, Jelly Roll, Lady Gaga, Miley Cyrus, Preservation Hall Jazz Band, Post Malone, The B-52s, The Roots, Snoop Dogg, and many more. The complex live production demanded top-tier audio quality, seamless workflow, and maximum flexibility – a challenge perfectly suited to Music Mix Mobile (M3) and its extensive experience with high-profile multi-act events. Headliner discovers how they couldn’t have done it without Lawo consoles…

Joel Singer, co-founder of M3, and his team, were responsible for ensuring pristine sound for this historic event.

“This was a massive production, not only in terms of the artist lineup but also from a technical perspective,” he explains. “We had to accommodate a vast number of sources and deliver an impeccable mix. Lawo consoles were central to making that happen.

M3 deployed its two mobile units, Phoenix and its flagship truck Eclipse, each equipped with a Lawo mc²56 console. These mixing systems provided the necessary capacity to manage the 448 mic preamps needed for the production—224 on each desk.

“We used fiber exclusively, no copper at all, running everything through Lawo’s interfacing systems. This not only ensured the highest audio quality but also helped us avoid grounding issues, which can be a concern,” Singer notes.

“WE HAD TO ACCOMMODATE A VAST NUMBER OF SOURCES AND DELIVER AN IMPECCABLE MIX. LAWO CONSOLES WERE CENTRAL TO MAKING THAT HAPPEN.”

The scale of the production required a sophisticated audio network and efficient signal distribution. Firehouse Productions, responsible for comms and infrastructure, provided additional splitters to integrate all signals seamlessly into the Lawo ecosystem. “We wanted full access to every music

input at all times and the only way to achieve that was to bring in additional splitters so all signals could be processed through the Lawo system. That gave us complete flexibility and eliminated any surprises, especially during the challenging rehearsals,” says Singer.

“LAWO CONSOLES DON’T JUST SOUND GREAT – THEY GIVE US THE CONTROL, RELIABILITY, AND SCALABILITY THAT WE NEED IN HIGH-PRESSURE LIVE PRODUCTIONS LIKE THIS ONE.”

The mixing workflow was carefully structured, with two seasoned audio engineers handling specific portions of the show. Lawrence Manchester, music mixer for The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon, operated from the Phoenix truck, mixing performances involving The Roots, as well as Miley Cyrus, Brittany Howard, Lady Gaga, Eddie Vedder, Jelly Roll, Brandi Carlile, Snoop Dogg, David Byrne, Robyn, Cher, The B-52s, Andy Samberg, The Lonely Island and the Backstreet Boys.

Eric Schilling, eight-time Grammy winner and one of the two music mixers at the 2025 Grammy Awards, took charge in Eclipse, handling all stand-alone acts such as Lauryn Hill, Bad Bunny, DEVO, Mumford and Sons, David Byrne with Arcade Fire, St. Vincent and the Preservation Hall Jazz Band, Post Malone and Nirvana, and Jack White. Additional

comedy segments, including musical performances intertwined with production elements, required close collaboration between the audio and broadcast teams.

“Some of the comedy segments were especially complex, like Jimmy Fallon’s performance where we had to mix music from Lawrence’s truck and lead vocals from production. That kind of integration was only possible thanks to Lawo’s routing flexibility and real-time control,” Singer explains.

The entire production was delivered in High Dynamic Range (HDR) with 5.1 surround sound, ensuring an immersive audio-visual experience for viewers. “Lawo consoles don’t just sound great – they give us the control, reliability, and scalability that we need in high-pressure live productions like this one,” says Singer. “The mc²

series desks are the best-sounding digital consoles on the market, and their networked environment allowed us to execute this show without compromise.”

M3 has been a Lawo user for years, with a fleet that includes six Lawo consoles, including mc²56 models in its trucks and an mc² 56 flypack – the first immersive flypack M3 has deployed.

Singer’s trust in Lawo technology stems from its robust build, pristine sound quality, and adaptable workflow. “From multi-act concerts to intimate performances, our clients expect the highest standards. Lawo allows us to deliver exactly that, time and time again.”

Words

by LIZWILKIN S NO

PLANNING SUCCESSFUL MUSIC FESTIVALS

DARCEY JACKSON

AEG Presents European festivals division’s 2025 announcements are well underway, with Charli XCX, Raye, Zach Bryan and more already revealed across its portfolio of London festivals. With anticipation already building, Headliner caught up with Darcey Jackson, lead festival booker at AEG Presents European festivals division, to explore what it takes to curate a standout festival lineup catering to diverse audiences. As a successful female under 30 working in music, she’s responsible for booking artists of all calibres for some of the UK’s most popular festivals. In this interview, she offers insight into the new music scene and the meticulous process of bringing together unforgettable live events.

From working at festivals at a younger age to joining AEG Presents European festivals division, Jackson has risen through the ranks to become a pivotal leader in festival planning, keeping her finger firmly on the pulse of current and emerging music trends to curate iconic lineups for music fans.

“I went to Manchester University for a little bit and ended up dropping out because I knew I wanted to work in music,” Jackson reflects. “It felt like what I was doing there wasn’t right.” Of course, what came next wasn’t entirely straightforward and Jackson

found herself scouring the internet for any opportunity to gain experience in the music industry. Her first internship came via a live event agency linked to The X Factor, where she was tasked with handling eliminated contestants each week.

From there, she worked stints in PR and then box office operations, before landing a role with a music agency that worked on the Isle of Wight Festival. Eventually, Jackson was hired as an events assistant for AEG Presents European festivals division, a company she credits for investing in her career

and giving her the space to grow. Seven years later, she worked her way up the ranks. “They’ve had me for almost all of my 20s,” she laughs. “But I feel like I’m in very good hands.”

As AEG’s festival offering has evolved, so too has Jackson’s role. “When I started with AEG, I was working more on the management and operational side,” she recalls. “But now, as a booker, I get to travel, experience incredible festivals abroad and bring back ideas for what we can do here in the UK.”

A visit to Stagecoach Festival in California, she highlights, was a standout moment for her. “It was one of those, ‘Whoa, this is insane’ experiences. Seeing how huge country music is over there and imagining what that could look like in London was a bit of a pinch-me moment,” she says.

This vision is now becoming a reality with AEG’s growing country music offering. Following last year’s recordbreaking Morgan Wallen show, which became the biggest outdoor country music event the UK has ever hosted, AEG is doubling down with two nights of Zach Bryan at BST Hyde Park this summer. “Over 100,000 country fans in the park - it’s going to be massive,” Jackson says enthusiastically. “It’s amazing to bring something new to the UK’s live music scene.”

The 2025 festival season is shaping up to be one of the biggest yet, and for Jackson, seeing these plans come

to life is a reward in itself. “Some of these headliner conversations start almost two years in advance,” she reveals. “It’s so exciting when we finally get to announce them - it’s like, ‘OK, the world can finally see what we’ve been working on.’”

Jackson is particularly excited about this year’s diverse lineup. “It feels like this festival season is all about diverse audiences. We’ve got legendary acts like ELO at BST, but then you’ve got someone like Raye and Doechii leading the charge for a younger audience. We’ve got a sold-out Noah Kahan show, we’ve got a sold-out Olivia Rodrigo show, a sold-out Sabrina Carpenter show. Seeing those acts sell-out shows in 24 hours is incredible.”

So, how does Jackson stay ahead of the curve? “It depends on the genre,” she explains. “For acts like ELO, we’re obviously not looking at somewhere like TikTok. But for someone like Charli

XCX, it’s the perfect place to gauge what’s happening.”

While keeping a close eye on social media plays a huge role in identifying emerging artists, Jackson warns against getting caught up in viral culture. “It’s easy to see a song blow up on TikTok and assume the artist is a safe bet, but you need to listen beyond that. Who are the A&Rs excited about? What are labels prioritizing?

“It’s about trusting your gut, having a good ear and backing yourself.”

Jackson says a prime example of this was her experience securing rapper and singer/songwriter, Doechii. “At the time we booked her, some people outside the industry were unsure, but we believed in her,” Jackson says. “Now she’s a Grammy winner, leading the way. Sometimes you have to take those risks.”

Credit: Rory Barnes

“SOME

OF THESE HEADLINER CONVERSATIONS START ALMOST TWO YEARS IN ADVANCE.”

Balancing genre diversity while maintaining a clear festival identity is one of the more complex aspects of Jackson’s job. “We don’t do the big three-day camping festivals where audiences stay for the whole weekend,” she explains. “Each day at BST in Hyde Park, for example, has to feel like a standalone event with a cohesive vibe.”

“Touring schedules are also incredibly rigid,” she expands. “You might dream up a perfect lineup, but if an artist isn’t in the right cycle or their management has other plans, it’s just not going to happen.”

This year, AEG Presents European festivals division also launches its new festival Lido, Victoria Park in East London.

“It’s like ‘first day at school’ energy launching a new festival,” Jackson laughs.

“The lineup that we’ve got behind it - Jamie XX, London Grammar, Charli XCX- is great. It’s exciting. I’m ready to be down in the field now for that one!”

Looking to the future of the festival landscape, Jackson sees experience-driven events playing an increasingly central focus for AEG Presents European festivals division. “One of the reasons younger audiences are flocking to festivals is the overall experience. It’s not just about seeing a band and leaving - it’s the entire day, the community, the inclusivity.”

Credit: Jordan Curtis Hughes

AEG is leading the charge in making festivals more inclusive, accessible and immersive. “BST is a gold standard when it comes to accessibility, from genderneutral toilets to viewing platforms and dedicated assistance services. That inclusivity is opening up festivals to a much wider audience,” she remarks.

Jackson explains that technology is also shaping the future of festivals and will heavily impact the experience for music fans. “Adopting new technologies will be an exciting concept in festivals,” Jackson notes. “We’re looking at integrating things like AI-powered information stands where attendees can ask for stage times, food recommendations or even directions, and get instant, accurate responses.”

Reflecting on her own career, Jackson is quick to encourage aspiring live music and events professionals to embrace every opportunity. “My advice would be to throw yourself into anything you can. One of the best jobs I had early on was working in the box office at Shepherd’s Bush Empire. It gave me so much insight into ticketing, which is vital to every aspect of live music.”

“Reaching out directly to companies can open doors that a standard job search won’t. You won’t lose anything by trying, but you might miss out if you don’t.”

AEGPRESENTS.COM

Credit: Dave Hogan / Hogan Media

‘CHASE’

& COUNTRY CREDIBILITY

CHASE MATTHEW

Genre-blending country artist Chase Matthew chats to Headliner about leaving North America for the first time as he heads to the UK and Europe on tour, having mixed feelings about Beyoncé making country music, finding out country legend Keith Urban is a fan, and his new album, Chase .

Matthew’s career really is a dream come true for a country artist who once worked as a mechanic and thought he might never leave the United States, to recently completing a UK and European tour. Growing up in Nashville, Tennessee, the state in which country music was born, he went from signing to the country label Holler Records to a major label partnership with Warner Records Nashville. Chase marks the third album to his name, having debuted in 2019 with his first single, Never Say It To My Face

Hello, Chase! How’s life in Nashville today?

It’s good. The weather is finally starting to warm up. So we’re getting out the ATVs (all-terrain vehicles) and having fun, that’s what we do around here.

You grew up there, which must have played a big part in your musical identity?

I come from a musical family, so it’s always been in my blood, I guess you could say. I’ve always been around music. Growing up in Nashville, I spent a lot of time down on Broadway before the area became a touristy place. I spent a lot of time there. My mother worked downtown, and so I’d spent a lot of time at work with her sometimes. I’d be by the window, watching musicians walk up and down the road. I think that probably played a big role in what I’m doing today. I love my home and where I’m at now. And I think that every journey is what gets you to where you’re supposed to be.

Before you went full-time as a musician, you were working as a mechanic? That might be the most country thing Headliner has ever heard!

I was an ATV mechanic, but I also worked on other vehicles and cars. But for six years, that’s what I did. I grew up out in the country with my dad, and we didn’t always have a lot of money. We always say, ‘Poor boys got poor boy ways.’ In other words, if you don’t got the money to pay somebody else to fix it, you gotta learn how to fix it on your own. My dad taught me a little bit, and then I ran with it. It’s my hobby as well. I do the music thing, but my hobby is to work on stuff and build fast cars and trucks.

In terms of country artists, who were the ones that made you want to pick up a microphone?

I would say Jason Aldean and Keith Urban, which is crazy, because I just got off tour with Jason Aldean. I’m going out with Keith Urban this year, which I can’t even believe I’m saying. Nickelback, as well – I grew up around a lot of rock and roll. And contemporary Christian music; I grew up in church, so I had a little

bit of that as well. I think it all added up to my sound today.

A few years before signing with Warner, you self-released your debut single Never Say It To My Face. How was that experience of releasing a song into the world for the first time, DIY style?

That was great. I’ve actually never talked about that song. I recorded that on my laptop back in the day. I didn’t ever think I was going to put it out, but I wanted to finally put something out via the distribution platforms. So that was my first time getting my feet wet. I left it up because I was like, ‘Man, one day we’re gonna look back and talk about this, and we’re gonna laugh about it,’ and here we are laughing about it. I did a lot of production back then, too, and I started putting my own drive into my music. I produced all of it and mixed it and everything. It’s definitely not the best, but it shows the growth of where it all started.

I was looking for an opportunity to get on country radio, and they saw my vision and what I wanted to do. I How has it been working with Warner Records Nashville?

was able to keep all of my creativity and still be able to do whatever I wanted. I think that Warner is definitely the artist label. They don’t want to change anything. They want to make sure you’re happy and you’re staying creative. That’s kind of what sold me on it. We didn’t end up doing a record deal, though; we did what’s called a joint venture, and so we basically just partnered up. They helped me wherever I asked for help, and it’s been great – I still get to do my own thing and really mean it.

Country music has been going through a special moment in the last few years, especially internationally, with events like C2C doing so well in London and other European cities, for example. But it feels like it’s got even more heightened off the back of Beyoncé releasing Cowboy Carter and her Grammy and wins for that album.

I have mixed emotions about all that, actually. I don’t know how many of them I should share… I’m not riding the wave, because I am the wave. I’m country, I grew up in the sticks. I ride four wheelers, I work on shit, that’s what I do, right?

I think there are a lot of people who are trying to jump on our wave, which is our thing, our genuine authenticity. People that ain’t lived none of that in their life, that they’re singing about, are trying to join the genre just because it’s hot right now. I’m not gonna say any names, but you mentioned a few. If you’re genuine, people believe it. If you’re not, and they can tell you don’t know what you’re talking about, they’re not going to go for it. GRAMMYs are cool; hopefully I’ll get one one day. But I’ll tell you, man, I want to earn it. I don’t want it handed to me.

Your third album, the eponymous Chase, is out now. How does it feel to have it out in the world and to share it with people?

It feels good. We’ve had some really awesome opportunities. Some billboards in Times Square, in downtown New York City, and a lot of people are coming out of the woodwork to show support. I got to celebrate it by playing Ryman Auditorium in Nashville, which is a very iconic venue here in the States. We played that venue the night the album came out. That was a really cool celebration with my hometown.

How does this record compare when you put it next to your previous two albums?

I haven’t been this excited about an album since my very first one. I’ve really tried to hone in on what I wanted on these songs, and what I wanted this project to say, and it’s really laid out a path for what I’m going to do in the future as well. We’ll look back at this in three years and be like, ‘Wow.’ There’s a song for everything, a song for any kind of emotion you’re feeling. It’s a project for the people.

Thanks to this album, you’re coming to the UK and Europe for the first time, and you’re covering a lot of the bases of the UK with Belfast, Glasgow, Manchester, and London. What do you expect when touring in Europe?

I’ve never left North America! In a way, I’m a little bit nervous, just because I haven’t been there before, and,

you know, planes and water! It’s just a scary thought, but I’m excited to do something different. I already know when I get there and hear people singing my songs, knowing that I’m that far away from home, it’s going to be a crazy feeling.

I’m excited for Ireland. That’s going to be cool, because I’m partially Irish. I’m really excited for Manchester — I think that show sold out. So that’s going to be wild. I know that some of these shows are really close to selling out, so I’m excited for all of them. I’ll be able to answer which one was my favorite after it’s all said and done.

How did it feel to find out that one of your heroes, Keith Urban, was a big fan of yours and wanted you to go out on tour with him this year?

It’s so wild. It was like a chain of events that happened. My manager told me, ‘Hey, I got a weird phone call. Keith Urban’s manager just called and said, ‘Keith’s a huge fan of yours.’ And I was like, ‘What? Keith Urban knows who I am?’ And a few weeks later, somebody from Live Nation came up to me. He goes, ‘Hey, man, you’ve got a big fan. You’ve got a huge fan, dude. Keith Urban’s called me six times this week, trying to get you on his tour.’ This guy is the president of country music at Live Nation. So I knew it was real at that point. And so when we finally got everything finalized, I just couldn’t believe it.

MYTH OR TRUTH?

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CHOSSY PRATAMA FOUR DECADES OF FILM SCORING

Chossy Pratama is an Indonesian songwriter, producer, audio engineer, and television theme composer, with a glittering career across the Asian continent spanning four and a half decades. Pratama had a career breakthrough in the early ‘90s, writing theme songs for a number of Indonesian films, quickly becoming his career specialty. He chats to Headliner about his long and illustrious career, why he is now passionate about helping young singers break into the music industry, and how his Merging Technologies kit has proven key for him.

Growing

up in Indonesia, what inspired you to get into songwriting and the world of audio?

My mom was a classical piano player, and my dad taught me to play the ukulele, so I have played both piano and ukulele since I was five years old. My father bought a second-hand

upright piano. So I started to play piano first by just looking at how my mom played, and then she sent me to a teacher. I dropped out after two years and just played my own style. So even though I grew up professionally as an electronic engineer, music has always been in my blood. I was in a band in my teens and wrote songs, but I decided to leave the live music scene in 1972 and finish my studies and start to work professionally as a QC Engineer. Then, later, I opened my own industrial automation company in Singapore. In 1986, I met legendary Indonesian composer A. Ryanto. We call him Mas Kelik. He was the person who asked me to go back to music. I already knew about MIDI and production at that time. Now I have my own label, Chossy Pratama Production. I also started to build recording studios, radio broadcast studios, television studios, auditoriums, and more.

“THE PERFORMANCE OF PYRAMIX OUTPERFORMS THE OTHER DAWS. I’M A 100% MERGING MAN.”

You started out as a music arranger for a few Indonesian horror films in the early ‘90s. How did you land those jobs and get a start in the industry?

I started to enter the film industry as a musician because it was very difficult at that time to enter the music industry. I knew my knowledge of MIDI and production would be a big asset. I started to receive a lot of requests to do movies, and one day, an old friend who happened to be the owner of a production house called and asked me to do the scoring for his TV series. I wrote a pop song to be the theme song, Si Manis Jembatan Ancol. It was a big hit. Then the industry started to come to me. It was all God’s work, because when I went back to music, I was already 37 years old, and the others were 10-12 years younger than me, and they were already on top.

In the world of film and TV, what have been some of your favorite projects and happiest memories from your career?

On film, all projects are equally important and challenging, because I had to wake up at 2.30am, then go to the production house and do a copy to VHS. Unlike today, when everything is just sent by WeTransfer or something like that. Then I would rush to my studio and start doing the scoring in MIDI. Afterwards, I would have to dump the MIDI audio to a 24-track, and do the mix from there. There was no digital audio at that time, so we would all be so excited and happy whenever we completed a project on time!

I got an offer to do an audio restoration You’re currently based in and working from the island of TimorLeste. How has that move been, and how are you finding working there?

project in Dili, for the Archiving and Resistance Museum. It is a restoration from audio cassettes, VHS, and some vinyl. Apart from doing that, they also wanted to have a studio that could remake the old songs made during the struggle for independence. So I built them an audio studio that will do audio restoration as well as recording, and also I built them a video editing room and a green room to do chroma key shots. The project was completed in 28 days, and running Pro Tools at that time. Then they asked me to stay as a consultant to train the staff, and so I have been here for almost three years now. I set up a separate restoration room using Pro Tools and installed a new Pyramix Pro14 Native for the recording studio, and it became the best-sounding studio in Timor-Leste. I also did a design for the National Television of Timor-Leste, also using the Pyramix Pro14.

What are some of your favorite hardware and software tools for your work?

I started recording when I was only 13 years old using my father’s Akai two-track tape recorder back in 1962. I started experimenting with mic placement on the upright piano, sometimes even dismantling the piano, until my mom screamed in anger! Coming from there to where I am now, my favorite hardware is still analog hardware. I have the Tubetech Dbx160, the SSL Bus Comp, and the Focusrite Red Compressor. I also have the SSL EQ hardware, the Focusrite EQ, the Lexicon 480L, the TCE 2290 Delay, and the Klark Teknik Reverb. My mixing console is the Euphonic CS3000. My plugin arsenal is Harrison, SSL, Flux, Merging, Slate, Izotope, UAD, Plugin Alliance and Waves. My DAWs are Logic Pro and Merging 14 Prime Masscore.

Part of your setup is based around gear from Merging Technologies. How does this help your workflow?

At Promid, I am using Pyramix 14 Masscore with Horus and Anubis for tracking, mixing, and mastering. I’m also using Quested V3110 speakers. Both computers, Horus, and Anubis, are connected via the QuadraArtel switch, a PPT switch. Since all computers are connected, the workflow is super easy. All audio from Logic will be transported to the media file of a project in Pyramix, and in Pyramix, we just drag it into the timeline, and we are ready to work. Pyramix is a hyper-end recording system, it is definitely not a DAW in my opinion, it is a system on its own. It does not do MIDI, it only does audio, and it uses the analog routing concept, stemming work quickly and easily. Also, with the internal bus facility that is easy to use

and understand, it is very easy to do a return bus, and also record to audio all effects if deemed necessary. The final metering is superb, it is very easy with Pyramix to have stable output at -11 LUFS, for instance. Pyramix Prime MassCore is my weapon for any kind of audio work, with the proper window tweaking and correct motherboard and CPU setup. It’s very important to follow Merging’s recommendation. Although I have, in my own studio, built a PC which is not 100% compliant with the Merging recommendation, and it still works and is stable. The performance of Pyramix outperforms the other DAWs. I was a proud user of Pro Tools Indonesia, and I migrated to Pyramix in 2019 after using Horus with Pro Tools from 2017. Now I’m a 100% Merging man.

LEWITT CONNECT

Headliner puts CONNECT 2 to the test, Lewitt Audio’s compact USB-C audio interface, which is designed for musicians, podcasters, and streamers alike, with an emphasis on quality sonics at an affordable price.

CONNECT 2 is an ergonomically pleasant and sturdy interface that presents itself as a large rotary control surrounded by seven option icons. It’s also compatible with any device supporting UAC2. This includes your iPad and iPhone, although you may need to hook it up via Apple’s camera connection kit to boost the USB power or allow connection via the older style lightning cables.

When you first plug it in, it backlights up with all the available icons around the outside of the control circle, which

simply increases or decreases as you run your finger around in a clockwise or anti-clockwise direction. Software for the unit, ‘LEWITT Control Center’, is available from Lewitt and is a simple install process which takes less than a minute, including a CONNECT 2 firmware update. It also comes with a decent 1.5M USB-C cable and a USB-C to USB-A adaptor, should you need it. The CONNECT 2 also works as a standalone device with Apple’s Core Audio, so if you run a number of interface options, you don’t necessarily need to install the Control Center software.

The CONNECT 2 is every bit a desktop interface: the way it illuminates, the way all the cabling fits neatly into the back panel, the way it’s weighted, while its rubberised base

stops it sliding about as you select or adjust parameters. Starting from the bottom-left on the interface and working clockwise, the custom button, by default, brings Control Center to the front of your screen –although that can be changed to a range of options from within the Control Center’s settings menu. These options (input section, mute, speaker output, headphones, and input/ playback mix) are then controlled in level by the touch-sensitive circle and indicated by the movement of the LEDs, which also double up as a realtime audio level indicator.

“IF YOU’RE NEW TO MUSIC PRODUCTION, PODCASTING, OR EVEN STREAMING, THEN AT THIS PRICE, IT’S A NO-BRAINER.”

CONTROL CENTER

Like other more expensive interface software, there is more than one way to control and use the CONNECT 2. To get the best out of its extensive features, you need to install the CONNECT 2 software. There is a selection of samples that you can download and a number of test projects and stems you can use to practice your art. A free Licence for Steinberg’s Cubase LE is also available to get you started if you don’t already have a quality DAW, and there are no hidden ‘pay to unlock’ options, which, of late, is somewhat refreshing. Within the Control Center itself, there are a number of hidden gems.

Autosetup is available on either or both the Mic and Instrument inputs simultaneously: it will automatically select parameters like phantom power, high pass filter, preamp characteristics, de-noise, compressor and clipguard settings once you start singing and playing. Auto gain can also be selected from the interface by pressing in the middle of the rotary and then selecting either the Mic or Instrument icon (or both) and starting the Autosetup process that way. You can, of course, adjust gain or preamp settings yourself, but what this offers you is a really quick and easy way to get your creative flow into your DAW without the need for a checklist regarding setup procedure. Your knowledge and experience of the recording process doesn’t need to be comprehensive, shifting focus back

to the creative, and you will learn as you go.

Both the denoise and compressor are one-button selections and setups if selected in isolation, but are much quicker to use as part of the Autosetup procedure. It’s useful to see just how much gain reduction is being applied, as you might want to reduce or increase the gain accordingly. The preamp types are genuinely good and are clearly audible as their descriptions suggest; I particularly like the ‘warm’ setting for bringing a mellower, smoother vibe to more aggressive rock-style vocals, and ‘clean’ for brightening up the mellowest of deep male vocals. Plus, they’re really good at adding a tonal characteristic to instruments as well.

HIGHLIGHT FEATURES

I must give a quick mention to Clipguard, which is something featured on both the Lewitt RAY microphone and CONNECT 2, but wasn’t on the original CONNECT 6. With this feature, I found it almost impossible to digitally clip the signal from either the RAY into another manufacturer’s interface or the CONNECT 2 with another manufacturer’s condenser mic. For me, though, I think it works best in conjunction with the compressor. It’s extremely useful and impressive.

Another great CONNECT 2 feature is Loopback, which allows you to feed your computer output, say, from a

Zoom call, to your DAW, and add your voice in real time while monitoring on headphones. This could be used to live stream as well, and the introduction of two additional channels (3 and 4) to facilitate this is an added bonus.

CONCLUSION

Lewitt’s CONNECT 2 is a greatsounding, robust, attractively-priced interface in the mould of its bigger brother, CONNECT 6. If you’re new to music production, podcasting, or even streaming, then at this price, it’s a no-brainer.

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.”

PINK FLOYD LIVE AT POMPEII

Over half a century from its original filming, Pink Floyd’s iconic concert film, Live at Pompeii, has been digitally re-mastered in 4K with a new high-resolution, Dolby Atmos mix by Steven Wilson. Recorded in 1971, Live at Pompeii saw the English rock band perform at the ancient Roman amphitheatre in Italy using the band’s regular touring equipment.

Thanks to the meticulous restoration efforts of author and audio historian, Chris Hewitt of CH Vintage Audio, a once in a lifetime opportunity arose for attendees of the world premiere screening to experience the film’s soundtrack through Pink Floyd’s original analog PA system used during their 1971 performance in the ancient Roman Amphitheatre. The WEM PA system features periodauthentic Celestion G12, G10, and MH1000 drivers.

Tell us about Pink Floyd and your relationship with the band and their music?

I think the first time I saw Pink Floyd was about 1969 at the Free Trade Hall in Manchester. The show started with the stage in absolute darkness. They had a WEM PA and all you could see in the dim light was the little orange glow of the UV paint on WEM badges on the speaker cabinets. They also had a couple of H&H amplifiers which had green luminescent panels on them. The sound coming from the stage was of someone frying bacon and eggs and pouring milk on cornflakes. The first five or 10 minutes of the show was actually the road crew, cooking and eating breakfast on the stage in darkness…then the band came on stage performing the track, Alan’s Psychedelic Breakfast. Sounds were panning all around the room, I was blown away. After the show I bought their album Ummagumma. There’s a picture on the back of the record sleeve taken at Biggin Hill Airfield, just outside South London, where the road crew, their van, and all their gear is laid out on the tarmac. Apparently, it was inspired by the way that the U.S. Navy

lays out their equipment on the flight deck of an aircraft carrier when they do a display. Ever since, it was my dream to be able to take a picture like that. About five years later, it was 1975, I’d just got back from watching Pink Floyd at Knebworth. We had a van that we’d hired to go to the show and I thought, “Today’s a nice sunny afternoon, we’ll just grab all my PA gear and set it up in this car park and lay out in the same way as Ummagumma.” The caretaker of the car park came out panicking because he thought we were going to hold an illegal concert, but obviously we were just doing a photo shoot. It all started from that point, but never did I imagine where it would end up.

Tell us about your inspiration to pair Pink Floyd’s original concert PA with the Live at Pompeii film.

I’d written four books on the history of live sound and Pink Floyd features prominently within them. We did a

Hi-Fi show last year and were playing Floyd music through the Dark Side of the Moon PA and mixing desk. A guy approached me who had the books and asked if I still owned the Pompeii PA. He collects and restores vintage cinema equipment and told me he had a friend who owned a vintage cinema. He suggested that it might be cool if they tried to acquire an original cut of the film and then we could bring everything together. This past February, I was in Abbey Road, Studio 2, filming a reinstallation of some ‘60s Beatles gear that I owned, when he rang me and said, “We may have found the 35mm film.” That was exciting, but then, two weeks later, he rang again to tell me that Steven Wilson from Porcupine Tree had just remixed the Pompeii soundtrack, and it was finally coming out as an album. He asked, “Do you want to use Pink Floyd’s actual sound system at the world premiere?” And that’s just how it happened.

How did you come to acquire the PA?

I started off by buying six WEM Audio Masters that belonged to Pink Floyd, five working and one non-working. Once you start to own a little bit of Pink Floyd gear, other people come out of the woodwork and say, “I’ve got this. I’ve got that. Do you want this?” It just grew from there. The problem now is I’ve got people offering me stuff that was used on the Division Bell tour that’s been stored in a warehouse for 30 years and asking for 100 grand because it was used by Pink Floyd once! [laughs]. Those are just a collection of wooden boxes with speakers in them, where on the other hand their PAs for Pompeii and the Dark Side of the Moon were unique. What Pink Floyd was doing with live sound back then was groundbreaking, but as time progressed, the PAs that they used were great, but became fairly standard technology for the time. I’m just talking about their PAs here. Their concerts, whether it’s Pink Floyd, Roger Waters, David Gilmour, or Nick Mason, always push the boundaries and always will.

Can you tell us specifics about the PA?

The Live at Pompeii PA was created by WEM, Watkins Electric Music, based in the U.K. WEM was one of the first companies to develop a product line dedicated to large scale concert sound reinforcement. One of the hallmarks of the WEM sound, and this PA was no different, was their choice of Celestion drivers for many of their models. The Pompeii PA is specifically configured with each side (left and right stacks) comprised of 10 SL100 slave amps, six WEM 4 x12 PA columns with Celestion and Goodmans 12in speakers, two WEM 2 x 12 PA columns with Celestion 12in, a WEM Festival stack consisting of 2 x15in Celestion bass unit, 4 x 12in Celestion lower mid, 6 x10in Celestion cone speaker upper mid horns. Additional pressure unit horns cabinets comprised a four-way Celestion MH1000 and a three-way vertical MH1000 horn box, plus additional Vitavox 15 cell multicell horns. The Celestion 12in and 10in cone speakers used were new designs, G12s and G10s, that

were built using different cones and suspensions than the speakers that Celestion had previously been making for guitar amps. The MH1000 was a midrange compression driver developed by Les Ward.

Some of the components needed repair, can you talk about the restoration?

With the Pompeii PA, it’s all the actual speakers. Some Celestion 10s in the festival stats and the 12inch Celestion G12s in the columns were blown. I just used off-the-shelf components. I’ve got quite a lot of Celestion drivers, even rare ones, some going back to the pre-ROLA time. We re-coned the speakers and were ready to go. The mixing desk was more involved. We had to recreate it because it had been destroyed and we were fortunate to get Andy Bereza involved. He designed the original desk for Pink Floyd and later went on to found Allen & Heath.

Andy still had all the original measurements and schematics for the mixer. Originally, we made a replica “dummy” mixing desk with 28-channels, but only two working ones. When Allen & Heath caught wind of what we’d done, they were so impressed, they offered to finish the job and turn it into a fully featured, working analogue desk with all the same components.

So, even though the original mixer got destroyed, it’s basically the same mixer that was used for Live at Pompeii and the Dark Side of the Moon tours, all the way up to the Wish You Were Here tour, when it was retired.

“NEVER IN MY LIFE HAVE I HEARD A SOUND SYSTEM GET A STANDING OVATION BEFORE.”

What made this PA special?

Let’s start with the sound. We took the Pompeii PA into the cinema and their audio guy at first just wanted to give us a stereo feed and told us not to “play it too loud,” like he thought what we were doing was just a gimmick or a novelty. He went on to talk about his “state-of-the-art Dolby Atmos system, with fantastic sub-bass units, a digital desk, digital amplifiers, and racks of processors…” I listened and then politely asked, “When I’ve plugged mine in will you at least hear it to see how it sounds?” Guess what? As soon as we turned the original Pompeii PA on, he changed his tune and said, “Oh! We won’t use much of the cinema sound tonight other than for the surround channels. Your analog PA sounds so much better.”

Technically, the special thing about the Pompeii system is that all the speakers are running full range. There are no electronic crossovers, because for the most part, they hadn’t been invented yet. Crossovers didn’t come into the mix until the Dark Side of The Moon tour. We take a stereo feed from the soundtrack and everything on the same channel

gets the same signal. The only thing approaching a crossover on the entire system are two 2.o uf capacitors on the positive leg of the cable on the horn drivers. Everything else, the 15s, 12s, and 10s, even the amps, all get the same signal. The other thing I think that made the Live at Pompeii PA and WEM speakers in general are the fact that they used Celestion which are English speaker drivers. Speakers made in England sound different from anywhere else in the world, because English speakers are made in damp places. The Celestion drivers in this PA were made in East Anglia, Ipswich, whereas American speakers at the time were made in sunny California. In England, where it rains all the time and the humidity is so different, you have a “damp” cone when you manufacture the speaker and you get a totally different sound. I swear you can hear it in the tone.

How were the screenings?

We did the world premiere of the film with the Pompeii PA at the Parkway Cinema in Barnsley, of all places, which is in the outback of Yorkshire. The cinema owner

prides himself on having really good vintage projection equipment. The combination of the original analogue sound equipment in a vintage cinema was really something special. During an average showing they get about 20 people on any given night. We sold out the theater with about 200 people, including three guys who’d driven from the south of France just to hear the Pompeii PA. They were planning to sleep in their car until I invited them back to my house. Never in my life have I heard a sound system get a standing ovation before, but there were a lot of audio engineers and musicians in attendance. So many people in audio have grown up with Pink Floyd, I think if you put on a Pink Floyd whatever, you’ll always find that they turn out. I heard feedback like, “The sound was amazing for such an early PA rig, loud but with crystal clear detail.” But the general consensus was that it was a unique experience and that it felt so authentic getting to hear Pink Floyd’s Pompeii performances through the actual gear they had originally performed with.

JUNO AWARDS

ROGERS ARENA

Each year, the Juno Awards celebrates Canada’s top singers and musical artists in a televised event broadcast live on CBC. This year’s three-plus-hour ceremony took place at the cavernous Rogers Arena in Vancouver. Hosted by local native Michael Bublé, the 54th annual show featured performances by Bublé himself, Josh Ross, Snotty Nose Rez Kids, Aqyila, and Tia Wood, among others. Anne Murray was presented with a Lifetime Achievement Award, and the band Sum 41 was inducted into the Canadian Music Hall of Fame, playing its last-ever farewell performance, capping off the group’s nearly 30-year run. The Juno Awards is a fast-paced production with numerous moving elements and no room for error – or poor sound – which is why KiAN Sound brought in L-Acoustics L Series and K Series loudspeaker systems to ensure that not a note was missed throughout the 19,000-capacity venue.

This was one of the first deployments of KiAN’s newlyacquired L-Acoustics L2 and L2D enclosures. The L Series is optimized to deliver exceptional sonic performance with superior clarity, precise coverage, and lowfrequency extension. Not to mention these eco-conscious systems require 56% less paint, 30% less wood, and 60% less steel than traditional line arrays, highlighting L-Acoustics’ commitment to sustainability.

It was, says KiAN GM Derek Mahaffey, a winning outing as it was also the company’s firstever Juno Awards ceremony show, after over a decade of providing live sound for many of the event’s

peripheral shows. “The Junos sounded wonderful this year,” enthuses Mahaffey. “Many of the Canadian music industry’s leading artists and execs were in the audience, and we deployed an L-Acoustics sound system that let everyone hear the music perfectly in every seat. The system’s coverage was extremely consistent; there were no dead spots. When it comes to sound reinforcement systems, KiAN’s owner, Mark Reimann, always goes the extra distance to ensure every single component is perfect, right down to the cables and connectors. With a production of this importance, we needed the very best system in place, and that was the L Series.”

The system brought in by KiAN for this year’s Juno Awards was specifically designed to address the 270° seating configuration. It consisted of six L2 and two L2D in total for the left and right main arrays. Two hangs of 12 K2 per side served as side-fills, with another set of 12 K2 used for the rear out-fills. Cardioid-configured KS28 subs were flown eight per side, with eight more ground-stacked to anchor the LFE. Delay coverage was delivered by two hangs of 12 Kara II per side, while six X8 front-fills were built into stage and buttressed by four A15 side frontfills. The performers who preferred traditional monitor wedges enjoyed a dozen available X15 at their feet, plus a pair of A15 as side-fill monitors and an SB18 sub for the low notes. Eight LA7.16 and 31 LA12X amplified controllers powered the entire setup, with system management achieved via a pair of P1 Milan-AVB processors.

The Juno Awards sought the Holy Grail of all awards shows: top-flight musical reproduction combined with crystal-clear speech intelligibility.

“Rogers Arena is a pretty good venue, sound-wise, but it’s an arena, so it can get a little boomy in the back,” Mahaffey adds. “But every element of our L-Acoustics system combined to create a single experience. The transition in coverage between L2 to

K2 was seamless, and the front to back of the system was virtually flawless as well. Rear rejection off the PA was also excellent, with almost no bleed onto the stage.

“Out in the house, when I walked the entire arena – from the lower bowl on the floor to the upper bowl – everything sounded just spectacular everywhere.”

“I loved working on the L2 system,” enthuses Juno Awards head of sound Mark Vreeken, who also mixed front-ofhouse sound for the production. “It had great coverage and more consistent throw than any other rig I’ve used. Also, I have never heard that kind of rejection on stage, so the vocal tone and clarity was really nice. We were very well supported by Patricia Carr from L-Acoustics, who brought in André Pichette and Phil Hornung to help tune and set up with the KiAN crew. We also had our longtime trusted systems engineer François Hallé and audio crew chief Alex Bibeau there from Solotech, who provided the control package. Tal Ophir and the guys from KiAN had the PA flown in record time and did a great job as they always do. We were in good hands!”

“Insight Productions sends a huge ‘thank you’ to Patricia Carr and the L-Acoustics team for their partnership

and collaboration,” adds Lindsay Cox, co-chief content officer and executive producer for Insight Productions, which produced the show. “We were thrilled to be working with such an incredible group of professionals who focus so carefully on the artists as they bring their sound to life. As showrunner of The Juno Awards, I’m tasked with delivering the best possible live and broadcast experience to the artists, and I have great appreciation for L-Acoustics’ attention to detail and client care. They planned for months how to provide the best possible experience for our arena Juno audience with a unique focus on each artists’ style and genre. We are additionally grateful to KiAN Sound, which made certain that all of the live audio requirements for a show of this magnitude were met. We could not be more appreciative of the team from KiAN and L-Acoustics for bringing our show to life.”

L-ACOUSTICS.COM

Credit: CARAS

WIENER STADTHALLE

When Austria’s largest and most iconic venue, the Wiener Stadthalle, set out to upgrade its audio system, only the best would do. In a headto-head shootout between four top loudspeaker brands, CODA Audio emerged as the unanimous winner, impressing the entire team with its power, precision, and clarity. With Audio-Integra handling installation and Wilhelm and Willhalm Consulting and Sales GmbH (W&W) delivering system design, CODA was chosen to carry the sound legacy of this legendary Vienna venue into the future, as Headliner discovers…

Opened in the late 1950s and located in Vienna’s 15th District, the iconic venue has hosted leading international stars for decades, and is regarded as one of Europe’s premier entertainment venues.

Christoph Mader, head of sound at Wiener Stadthalle describes the shootout: “We didn’t want to rely solely on our ears, so we engaged a renowned acoustician to obtain objective measurements. CODA Audio performed flawlessly, with a linear frequency response and better dynamics and impulse accuracy than the competitor brands.”

When the listeners’ subjective assessments were taken into account, the outcome was even clearer. “My four colleagues and I, with varying ages and levels of experience all independently awarded CODA the highest scores by a wide margin,” explains Mader.

The system at the Stadthalle was based on CODA Audio’s very latest CiRAY compact line array, a highoutput 3-way dual 10-inch line array. The venue invested in 24 CiRAY units, complemented by four SC2-F sensor-controlled bass extensions, four SCP sensor controlled subwoofers, three APS compact arrayable point source, five N-APS ultra-compact arrayable point

source, and eight CUE FOUR high performance 3-way stage monitors.

Four CODA Audio LINUS14 and five LINUS12C DSP amplifiers power the system, which was designed by Thomas Dürrbeck from W&W, who was involved in the project from the outset. He was more than confident that the high standards demanded at the Wiener Stadthalle would be comfortably met using CiRAY.

“The acoustician mentioned that the system offers an extraordinary phase alignment and provides a very uniform sound across the entire audience area,” comments Dürrbeck.

He points out another advantage: “The system operates efficiently with minimal amplifier power: three loudspeakers per channel on each array,” he says. “For me, the decisive factor is that the system delivers a balanced sound without electronic assistance, purely through the design of the components.”

Audio-Integra’s Christian zur-Loye remarks on the collegiate approach to completing the project with great efficiency: “It was a tight schedule over the summer, but thanks to effective communication between client, integrator, supplier and manufacturer, I was able to complete the project ahead of schedule.”

Although the primary function of the system at the Stadthalle would be to service the wide variety of entertainment taking place in the venue’s Hall F, the management team also required that the system could be deployed in other halls within the complex as required. CODA Audio’s flexibility and ease of handling made this easily possible.

“We are able to set up and take down easily, the system is very flexible and energy efficient, and the fact that the units are so compact means that sightlines are not compromised when events are broadcast for television,” Mader points out. “CODA Audio scores top marks in every respect!”

The system made its debut in Hall F for ‘Flying Hansel & Gretel’, a high energy music and dance show which featured rappers, beatboxers, pianists and electronic sounds – a challenging setup, as Mader explains: “Honestly I was quite nervous for the premiere but everything went brilliantly. It was very demanding. The music ranged from hip-hop to classical with some samples as low as 28 Hz in the bass range. We stood there, looked at each other and just smiled because it sounded so good.”

The system’s qualities were then further tested in Hall D, the largest in the complex, at the ‘Erste Bank Open’ ATP Tennis tournament, where it was used in a different configuration to cover the 8,000 seats.

With sight-lines critical for TV broadcast, the compact CODA units more than proved their worth.

“This was the ultimate flexibility moment,” Mader enthuses. “We realized we could also use the system very effectively for arena sound

coverage. The CiRAY provides a huge output with extremely clean resolution, and the bass is punchy and precise.”

“It’s fantastic to see a CODA Audio system chosen for such a prestigious project,” concludes global sales and marketing director for CODA Audio, David Webster. “It means a lot to us to see such a strong vindication of the quality of our pioneering proprietary technologies. To have led the way in the shoot-out ahead of a number of premium brands is something we’re naturally delighted about. As well as the audio quality, the compact nature of CODA systems, made possible by our technologies, was clearly a factor in our favor, as was the simple and intuitive rigging.”

s by ALICE

GUSTAFSON

ONE NIGHT ONLY

DONNY MONTELL

Every pop star dreams of delivering an unforgettable live show, but Donny Montell takes that ambition to a whole new level. The Lithuanian pop icon has carved out a unique space in the live music world with a bold concept: one massive concert per year, no repeats, no compromises. Following 2057 in 2022 and the futuristic 360 in 2023, Montell returned to Kaunas’ Žalgiris Arena in 2024 to raise the bar once again. With over 10,000 fans filling the arena, Montell delivered a sensory feast powered by the creative forces at Baltic Production Service and Marfa Lights. The latter lit up the stage with a dazzling arsenal of 350 Cameo fixtures, transforming the venue into an immersive world where pop, performance, and production collided, as Headliner discovers…

Marfa Lights and Baltic Production Service created a multi-level stage design that combined huge LED surfaces, sophisticated visuals and a diverse lighting set-up to create depth on multiple stage levels.

“We arranged the visual elements on the stage in several layers to create

an immersive environment,” explains Andrius Stasiulis from Marfa Lights. “A large LED screen in the background, the musicians in front of it, then a transparent LED screen, Donny Montell and the dancers in front of it and, as the foremost level, the interplay between the lighting design and the audience.”

Marfa Lights positioned the fixtures at strategic points to emphasize the depth of the stage design and make the visual impact as strong as possible. The team arranged a total of 90 Cameo PIXBAR SMD IP G2 SMD LED bars into two 40-meterlong, continuous horizontal light lines across the entire width of the stage to give it even more structure and depth, with chase and pixel mapping effects synchronised with the video content.

“The PIXBARs were one of the central visual components of the show and more than impressed us with their combination of technical precision and creative possibilities,” enthuses Stasiulis.

Another eye-catching element was the OPUS H5 beam spot wash hybrid moving heads. These were arranged on both sides of the stage in a large grid formation and framed the set with balanced

lighting accents, dynamic beam movements and sharp transitions between individual lighting moods. The OTOS B5 beam moving heads acted as a kind of “bridge” between the stage and the audience. With their enormous light output and flexible beam angles, the OTOS B5s filled the Žalgiris Arena with powerful beams and also ensured that even darker color palettes were clearly visible from all spectator areas. The Cameo moving lights in the lighting design by Marfa Lights are rounded off by eight OPUS X PROFILEs, which were used as powerful and precise side lights to emphasise individual performers or objects on stage in isolation.

However, the ZENIT W600 and W300 LED wash lights, which were arranged in a box-shaped structure above the stage, made the biggest contribution to the visibility and illumination of the stage. “In combination with the ultra-wide

LED screen, the ZENIT W600 and ZENIT W300 transformed the entire set into a three-dimensional experience,” concludes Stasiulis. “It felt like the stage extended into the audience and merged seamlessly with the hall.”

To set the scene for the central catwalk, Marfa Lights also placed 24 ZENIT W600 SMDs on the sides of the catwalk, which were operated in full-pixel mode, enabling them to be flexibly synchronized with the stage visuals and audience lighting.

Credit: Joana Suslaviciute

Words bY ALICEGUST A F NOS

MIXING MELODIC METAL

SLEEP TOKEN

Sleep Token may be the most committed concept-rock group of the 21st century. Appearing only in costume, they weave a mythos around an ancient deity called Sleep as its earthly apostles: lead singer/instrumentalist Vessel and band members II, III, and IV. Their stage productions could be set pieces in a Jodorowsky film, and their music blends elements of metal, electronica, djent and careful songwriting into a consciousness-altering potion. Songs are “offerings,” shows are “rituals,” and front-of-house engineer Thom Pike mixes a sound so powerful it could indeed summon the otherworldly. His talisman for drummer II is the D6 from AUDIX, joined by the new D6X as well as the SCX1HC compact condenser mic on cymbals. Pike tells Headliner that while the D6 is known as a go-to kick drum solution, it also turns up in an unexpected application…

How did you adapt going from smaller venues and tours, to the scale you do now with Sleep Token?

How did you first become aware of AUDIX microphones, especially the D6?

First, a couple of local bands asked me to go on the road, so I did, playing clubs of, say, 300 to 500 capacity. I used to tour with a band called Holding Absence, who are still quite active. Some are former bandmates of mine. Sleep Token supported Holding Absence on a co-headline tour with Loathe in Manchester. Having the same management for three acts was efficient, and the manager told me, “You need to mix the opening act because they all wear masks onstage, so no one is allowed in the venue when they soundcheck.” So, I’ve been working with them for about six years. We just sold out a 2025 arena tour in America, in support of the new album, Even in Arcadia I never really had a single mentor. Every sound engineer I ever met used the D6 and told me it was the microphone for kick drum. I’ve never used anything but the D6 on kick in my professional career. In addition to the kick, I use it on the 10-inch, 12inch, and 16-inch toms. Each has their own D6.

How did you discover the D6 worked well on toms?

We tried it as a laugh in sound check one day. Then, both the drummer and I loved it so much that we stayed with it, and now that’s our standard setup. The only drawback is that the mics are large compared to the rest of the D series, so to onlookers who can see the kit, it almost looks like there are extra tiny drums or coffee mugs up there, but the sound is well worth the visual oddity. Sleep Token may try D4s in the future for that reason, but the D6s sound absolutely great. The new D6X, which we acquired recently, makes a great mic even better by giving you the versatility of different sounds. I should mention that on the tour I’m currently

on, with the band Night Verses, we do have D4s on the smaller toms, and they give me most of what I like about the D6. You need less low end given the smaller drum size in any case.

What do you like about the sound of the D6?

The D6 is essentially an out-of-the box mic. When we put them on the toms, they sounded correct before even adding any EQ. It gives you that presence, but the “gut” of the tom as well. Also, we have triggers for gates on the drums to control bleed because the stage is quite loud, and the response of the D6 interacts well with the gates. It makes the whole kit sound very snappy and punchy.

Are any other AUDIX mics in your kit, for Sleep Token or elsewhere?

What advice would you give to your younger self when you were new to sound engineering? What, if anything, do you add in terms of EQ or compression?

I’ll follow the curve the mic already has. It depends on which tom, but with the D6 I like to accentuate a slight dip around 200 to 400 Hz, as it makes things even punchier. To be honest I don’t stare at EQs much. It’s all by ear. I’ve found that the more I’m depending on something visual like an EQ graph, the less I hear.

Do you use AUDIX mics in the studio?

I’ve never really touched the studio world. However, I work for a band called Creeper, where I’ve used the SCX25A condensers — the ones that look like a lollipop — as overheads. They’re transparent and spacious. Great stereo picture.

I just acquired the tiny pencil mics, the SCX1HC condensers, and their sound is amazing for their size. They’re literally the size of your pinky finger. I’m going to try them out as close mics for cymbals during our next production rehearsals for the Download Festival this coming summer. I want to capture the detail in some of the smaller cymbals like splashes and need something that can go very close and be low-profile. We tried other small-diaphragm condensers, and they just didn’t work in this application. Never be scared to ask questions. No question is too dumb. The dumb thing is to make an embarrassing mistake because you didn’t ask a question! I know in my earlier career I placed a high value on looking like I already knew everything, and I think that’s common to younger professionals in any part of the music business. There’s a need to look cool and confident. But you hang around awhile, and you see even veteran FOH people who do arena tours still asking questions. So just ask. There’s no need to suffer.

PowerProX18

18-inch / 2400W

For demanding bass applications

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

AUDIO WELLNESS

APPLE CIDER VINEGAR

Credit: Netflix / Ben King

Netflix’s riveting Apple Cider Vinegar is inspired by the reallife story of Belle Gibson, an althealth influencer who built one of Australia’s hottest wellness brands around her miraculous recovery from brain cancer via diet alone. There was just one problem: Her entire story was a lie. As episodes begin, characters break the fourth wall to caution that the series is fictionalized, but this does not mitigate the audience’s horror as the depth of her deception is revealed. Sets ranged from tight interiors to the expanse of a tropical healing resort, necessitating that lead sound mixer Nick Godkin shift gears on a dime, as Headliner discovers…

Godkin – whose credits include The Newsreader, Shantaram, and Surviving Summer – recorded the production with Lectrosonics Digital Hybrid Wireless. The SSM microcompact transmitter served primary talent, backed up by SMV and SMQV packs as “workhorses.” His receiver rack included a Venue2 system as well UCR411a and SR-series units, plus a new all-digital DCR822, all fed by a UCM16B antenna multi-coupler.

“I started in location sound over 25 years ago,” Godkin begins. “I was a second assistant, then a second boom operator, which I think we called a cable wrangler back then. I received placements through VicScreen, which is a development organization funded by the Australian government that supports the film industry. I worked with a lot of sound mixers, obviously, and saw what they were using. Much of the time, that was Lectrosonics, and they cited its reliability and consistent operation as a reason they used it. So, when I became a sound mixer myself, starting on second units, it was the logical next step.

“As she’s sitting down you catch a glimpse of her pack, as it’s supposed to be the pack for the interview, but IT was also actually capturing the dialogue.”

“When I was that boom operator, moving around all the time, I did go through a few different brands of equipment, and settled on Lectrosonics.”

Godkin’s own experience confirmed what his senior colleagues had told him. “I want something that’s reliable and works the same way every time,” he says.

“That’s Lectrosonics. I don’t want to have to think about it too much. I actually do have other things to worry about as a sound mixer beyond just the wireless, so I want that to get out of my way, so to speak. I prefer to work with my tools, not on them.”

On Apple Cider Vinegar, Godkin turned mainly to the compact SSM for use on primary talent. “The SSM is great because we’re hiding transmitters all the time,” he explains. “It’s just so easy to tuck it away anywhere. The SMV serves as a sort

of workhorse transmitter, then I have the dual-battery SMQV as a hop transmitter, or for anything where size isn’t as much of an issue.”

One transmitter even did double-duty as a prop. “There’s a scene towards the end where [lead actor] Kaitlyn Dever is doing a video interview with the journalist for Women’s Daily,” recalls Godkin. “As she’s sitting down you catch a glimpse of her pack, as it’s supposed to be the pack for the interview, but it was also actually capturing the dialogue.” The multiplicity of tight interiors made Lectrosonics’ range and clarity a lifesaver. “The most challenging thing, I think, is that the series was all location,” recalls Godkin. “We were all over Melbourne and the surrounding area. Sometimes we couldn’t even squeeze the sound department into an interior, so we’d set up outside on the street. With Lectrosonics, we’d just put up some simple antennas and the reception would be great.”

Apple Cider Vinegar also featured frequent party scenes with the camera moving between different groups of characters in conversation and the audio department working, again, at least somewhat remotely. This required high channel counts to accommodate the lav mics on the actors, and capturing them all was a process streamlined by Godkin’s UMC16B multi-coupler.

“The UMC16B is a handy rack device that lets multiple receivers take advantage of a single antenna rig,” he explains. “So, it feeds my Venue2 as well as the SRb and SRc receivers. I can then scan through my antennas and see if there are any RF issues in the air that we should be aware of. Then, I get on with setting frequencies on all the receiver channels.”

The volatile nature of the main character could mean that actress Kaitlyn Dever quickly went from a whisper to a scream, then back again.

“Much of Kaitlyn’s performance was very quiet,” notes Godkin, “but when it wasn’t, it really wasn’t! As I learned her voice, I found I could set the gain on the SSM ideally so as to capture all the quiet dialogue, but only barely hit the limiter on the louder stuff. That speaks well to the SSM’s dynamic range. Whatever the level, it did not sound companded or unnatural. As an aside, Iet me say that although Kaitlyn is an American actress, her Australian accent was amazing. She came out on an early location recon, which I’ve never seen an actor do, and I think she was studying us!”

As to Lectrosonics’ durability under harsh conditions, Godkin says, “I’ve done a lot of shows involving beaches. Sand has never proven a problem, and the only thing I’ve had bring down a transmitter is full submersion in water. What does happen more often is things being dropped. For comms, I hand out a lot of the R1a [belt-worn IFB receivers], and I have to say I’ve come to recognize the sound of one hitting the floor without even looking! I’ll look over and whoever dropped it, an actor or producer, will either own up to it straight away or be looking around nonchalantly like nothing happened. Point being, they don’t die from it. You pick them up and they keep going,” he smiles.

Credit: Nick Godkin

THE BUSINESS OF SHOWBIZ WHAT EXECUTIVES CAN LEARN FROM LIVE EVENT CREWS

In his latest Headliner column, pro audio executive Mike Dias catches up with Bryan Olinger, an experienced director and senior level producer with 20 years of working in the broadcast and content creation industry. He is a dynamic videographer with a professional skillset in visual storytelling, video editing, and video production logistics. Always up to date with the latest technology and video trends, Olinger specializes in live streaming solutions and multi-cam production for the concerts and live events space. Here, he shares the biggest lessons from live entertainment, and why meticulous planning, clear communication, collaborative leadership, and creative risk management can significantly enhance corporate team performance and executive effectiveness under pressure.

I’ve spent the last 20 years working at the intersection of pro audio and consumer electronics. I watched global headphone sales explode while I was helping the world’s most influential artists make their in-ear monitor choices. And then I pivoted over to microphone sales, finding myself at the epicenter of the creator

economy — where everyone and their grandma now has a podcasting setup that rivals most studio gear. I split my time working with corporate execs and sales teams on one side, and tour managers, production crews, and live engineers on the other—making sure each had exactly what they needed to perform at their

highest level.

Throughout this entire experience, I kept having the same business revelations: tours and productions run circles around most corporations, and roadies work harder and smarter than most MBA graduates.

At first, this blew my mind because it was so contrary to everything that we’re taught in school. How could a bunch of grizzled roadies consistently outperform freshly minted MBAs? How could long hair, old jeans, and faded tattoos beat khakis and polos? This is definitely NOT the reality that my mom wanted to hear about. But time after time, it proved true. And the more that I watched and embraced it, the better I became at my own job. My productivity and effectiveness soared each time that I’d absorb or adopt lessons from the road. Once I uncovered this reality, I became obsessed. I became fascinated thinking about “What Entertainers Could Teach Executives” and it became my life’s mission to share what I’ve learned. In my own way, everything that I do — all of my talks and workshops and writings — are my way of connecting the businessworld to showbusiness. And to truly highlight this and to showcase the best example that I could think of to kick off this new column series, I spoke with Bryan Olinger, the senior director of the iHeartRadio Theater in Los Angeles. Bryan has captured amazing performances from artists from every genre — from Coldplay and The Black Keys to Blake Shelton and Alicia Keys. And with his expertise in visual storytelling and production logistics, he’s the perfect person to really solidify everything that I’m talking about by sharing his business insights on leadership, teamwork and communication. Listening to Bryan talk is like getting a backstage pass to the best leadership training no MBA ever taught.

ON DELIVERING THE DESIRED OUTCOME

So for me to be successful — to really capture the essence of a performance — I need to understand what the artist wants to do technically and how they need to be represented brand-wise and image-wise. But I also need to understand what they are creatively trying to say to their fans and to their

general audience. This is what I focus on and how I start every production meeting. It always starts with the how and the why. From there, we can quickly get into three territories: creative, technical, and budget. Then we play this balancing act where all of these things need to take priority, but they all have to work with each other — like every business project.

ON STORYTELLING

When we talk about story, we are really talking about what are all the elements we need to account for so that we’re not just capturing and surveilling the performance. Storytelling goes beyond simply recording. Storytelling is communicating the energy. If we do our jobs right, you watch a concert and it elicits something in you. You get immersed. The same way a really beautifully directed scene in a movie can bring an emotional response, we hope to capture some of that ethos with our live capture production. So storytelling for us is identifying those energies, “is this a sweet, slow, dramatically lit ballad-based performance that we really want to move people on a more lower level? Or is this a flashing fire, red focus on electric guitars and just the most screaming close up of vocals so we capture that raw rock and roll? The stories go on and on.

ON PLANNING

I don’t think we ever talk enough about the planning process, the rehearsing, the planning, the scripting. It always starts with scheduling. How much time do we have to put together the stage? What stage space are we walking into from the day before? Then how much time do we have to rehearse? Are these new songs? Are these classics? Is it a mix? We build it out from there. Then it comes down to appropriating the right amount of time for each part of the day for this large crew to do their job correctly. In these environments, there is rarely such a thing as “additional takes”

so your success will be developed in the prep. Talk to anyone in live events, and they’ll tell you the best shoots come from great planning and communication.

ON SCHEDULING & COMMUNICATION

In my world, once we’ve all had our meetings, we understand and have taken account of all the elements that we will need to be bringing to make an entire cohesive show. Since I film live events, once the machine’s on, it’s running until you’re at minute 60 and you’re clear. There is no stop down and we don’t fall off the storyline. We can’t miss anything or be out of sync. So how do you do that? How do you get 65 people all executing their jobs at the right time, staying in sync with each other, no second takes, no take twos, no missing your marks?

Well, it’s communication. It’s scheduling and it’s communication. Everybody has to collaborate and agree upon a master schedule — meaning that we are essentially building a master run of the show, something that just says, “Item number 34 starts at 7:27 PM for 30 seconds. We need to see cameras pointed at this person at stage left because they’re speaking on this mic.”

It’s that granular. Then once you’re in the show, everybody’s just following this roadmap that in a perfect world we’ve all properly rehearsed, and we stay in constant communication ensuring that everything is executing as planned and that everyone is delivering on script and on cue.

“SOMETIMES THOSE BIG SWINGS TURN INTO BIG REWARDS, BUT THOSE SAME BIG SWINGS CAN BE THE DOMINOS THAT TOPPLE ALL THE OTHERS.”

There has to be a director. There has to be an appointed person who ultimately says, “This is how it’s going to go.” But it’s nuanced, It’s not just a black and white thing. The thing I’m tasked with with every show is playing that collaborative spectrum of when to yield and recognize a good collaborative suggestion versus going, “Hey, that’s a great way to approach this, but in order for all these other pieces that are outside of your department to fit, we’re going to do it this way.” Directing and leadership is more of a conductor role. A good director, in my opinion, has a working knowledge of every department. I am not going to be able to mix a 64-input show down the two channels and sound amazing on your laptop speakers, but I can at least know that a mixer has this big board in front of them and a lot of plugins and a lot of things, and I need to be like, “Hey, I hear something in my experience that sounds louder than it should. Can you find it and address it?” The same point with videos. I’m not going to have the bandwidth to necessarily be making every lighting decision, but I do need to go, “Hey, lighting director for this particular scene, it does need to have reds. Can we use your tools to make sure that red comes from this location on the stage?” What I’m getting at is leadership is a collaboration that is fine-tuned by experience. And it is led by adhering to the overarching vision.

really the most effective tool when we come to this and collaborating with labels and artists. At the end of the day, I always go back to we all want the same thing. And when the decisions aren’t based around creative choices, then it becomes very factual. Technical limitations are technical limitations. They don’t have opinions. They’re on and off switches, they’re electrical signals, and they don’t care. Some things are simply not compatible with your production plan, and then you’re facing less of a “can we / can’t we” decision, and “is this want worth uprooting an otherwise well laid out plan.” Sometimes those big swings turn into big rewards, but those same big swings can be the dominos that topple all the others. Measuring this risk /reward scenario is probably the most critical lesson and realization when it comes to business development.

Whenever we film, it’s not just my team that I’m working with. I need to interface with the talents’ team — with their management — and inevitably we have overlapping and sometimes conflicting needs and wants. That’s the nature of all work and collaborations. But at the end of the day, I always come back to this general rhetoric. We all want the same thing. We all want a show that’s successful. We all want to look the right way, we all want to be lit the right way. Everybody wants to use the stage the right way. Everybody wants to sound their best. And when creative decisions must be made to help achieve the vision and put the cogs in all the right places so the machine runs as efficiently as possible, then it’s imperative to have a very transparent dialogue. I feel like transparency is

Bryan’s take-aways aren’t isolated insights. They’re part of a larger framework I’ve been developing to help teams perform better under pressure. In this new ongoing series, I’ll show how lessons from behind the scenes in entertainment can help every executive lead with more clarity, creativity, and impact. Stay tuned for next time…

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.

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