Catherine Marks talks to Kevin Paul about her traditional route into the industry as an assistant to Flood and Alan Moulder, plus her tips for how to approach a mix and get the best out of a track.
Show Notes
Chapters
00:00 - Introduction
00:29 - Getting Started In The Industry
04:22 - Working With Flood
08:50 - The Modern Studio Career Path
12:43 - Developing People Skills
16:21 - Working With Alan Moulder
18:57 - The Mixing Assistant Role
22:26 - Working With Poor Recordings
23:42 - Finding The Vibe Of A Track
29:00 - Mixing Hardware And Software
30:33 - Duration Of A Mix
31:44 - Getting Feedback From The Artist
33:16 - Checking The Mix
34:13 - Performance Over Quantisation
36:37 - Things To Avoid
Catherine Marks - Biog
Catherine Marks is an internationally renowned Producer and Mix Engineer, with over 17 years in the industry. Catherine won MPG Breakthrough Producer of the Year in 2016, MPG Producer of the Year in 2018, Heavy Music Awards Producer of the Year in 2020 and, in 2023, Catherine was named Producer of the Year at the MBW A&R Awards.
Catherine produced and mixed Wolf Alice’s GRAMMY nominated ‘Moaning Lisa Smile’, mixed GRAMMY award-winning album ‘MASSEDUCTION’ by St. Vincent, and has produced/mixed six Top 10 UK albums, including ‘therecord’ with supergroup boygenius in 2023, which achieved UK number 1 album status and was nominated for seven GRAMMY Awards.
Cementing herself as a global leader in production, Catherine’s credits include: Wolf Alice, Foals, Manchester Orchestra, boygenius, The Killers, St. Vincent, Oscar Lang, The Wombats, Palace, The Mysterines, Frank Turner, Frank Carter and The Rattlesnakes, Alanis Morissette and The Amazons.
https://www.catherinejmarks.com
https://www.instagram.com/cjmarks
https://twitter.com/cjmarks
Interviewer: Kevin Paul - Biog
Kevin Paul started his career as a DJ but quickly found his passion was sound engineering. His first audio job was at Soho Studios in 1991, moving to Konk Studios six months later, where he worked alongside successful producers and engineers such as Bob Clearmountain, Adam Mosley, Pascal Gabriel and Gil Norton, as well as bands such as The Kinks, Galliano, Terrorvision, UFO and Elastica.
After working on archiving the Depeche Mode back catalogue in 1994, he was offered an engineering role at Mute Records’ in-house studio, which eventually lead to a position as Head Engineer, which gave him access to the entire Mute Records roster. Highlights include mixing Goldfrapp’s 'Felt Mountain', David Bowie’s 'Hours' and Nick Cave’s 'No More Shall We Part'. He also worked in 5:1, mixing Moby’s 'Hotel', Goldfrapp’s 'Black Cherry' and more for DVD.
In 2004 Kevin went freelance and re-mixed the entire Depeche Mode and Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds back catalogues for SACD/DVD. Since 2008, Kevin Paul has been in charge of mixing and remixing performances at the iTunes Festivals in the UK and Germany. He has mixed over 100 artists to date, including Adele, Ed Sheeran, Alicia Keys, Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds, The XX, Calvin Harris, Foo Fighters, Jack White, Linkin Park, Florence & The Machine, Deadmau5, David Guetta, Jessie J., Norah Jones, Oasis, Mumford & Sons, N.E.R.D., Lykke Li, James Blunt, KT Tunstall, Hot Chip, Paul Weller and many more.
He continues to record, engineer, produce and mix many projects in music and film, runs the mixing and surround mixing modules for the Masters Degree course at UK’s Westminster University and divides his time between London and Berlin. Recent works include the international-selling new album by Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds and mixing the latest album of Denmark’s 'Dúné' with the first single premiering at the Danish Music Awards, plus the latest iTunes Music Festival.
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