Credits

Role: Engineer on all songs, Mixing Engineer on songs 8 and 10.

Artist:Fantastic Negrito.

Release:June 22, 2018.

The Story

It's a huge honor to have participated in this project and to have been involved in it from quite early on. It was a beautiful experience getting to work closely with Xavier and his team and to see how the songs took shape and trying different approaches, textures, (lots of layering...) and getting to work one-on-one with some amazing musicians from the Bay who were involved in the recording process.

I worked on all the recording and production stages of the album, assembling drum loops, editing and choosing takes for guitars, organs, pianos and vocals, and working closely with Xavier trimming every little part of the puzzle until it all felt cohesive. We didn’t want to leave anything in there that didn’t need to be.

I also did rough mixes for the whole album, in order to capture the sonics we were feeling during the production process and so there could be a departure point and reference for mixing. For the songs “The Duffler” and “Never Give Up” I was also the mixing engineer. We really liked the way the rough mixes sounded and wanted to capture that feel and energy, so I took those two back to my studio and mixed them to sound more “like a record”.

A few months after the album was released I received an email from Mike Senior, from Sound on Sound, telling me how much he had been enjoying the album and especially the mix in “The Duffler”, which has some unusual things sonically and balance-wise. I got to have an article on The Mix Review column of the magazine for that song. That was pretty awesome!

The album got the Grammy for Best Contemporary Blues in 2018, for which I received a Grammy Award as Engineer in the project.