At Abbey Road Studios with Cicely Balston
It’s almost universally agreed there is nothing typically to celebrate about Mondays. They are the wet sock of the week, the taking-the-bins-out after the party, the nil-nil away game in which you’re embarrassed at the price you paid for your ticket. I don’t watch football but this feels like the kind of rough deal a typical Monday provides.
However, it was a Monday in December where none of these usual caveats applied. Exiting St. John’s Wood tube station in London, I crossed Finchley Road and continued down Grove End, past Waverly Place and Loudon Road and rounded the corner in full view of the Edward Onslow Ford Memorial.
It was here where a small crowd of tourists were waiting to set foot on the most famous pedestrian crossing in the world. I strolled across the functionally ordinary strips of white painted tarmac, horns beeping at the ones holding up traffic. A stone’s throw down the pathway was a wall decorated by the handwriting of a thousand people. I’d wanted to join them, but in my haste to leave the house, I had forgotten a permanent marker.
It didn’t really matter. Beyond the wall was a small car park, and beyond that, a grand white house – number 3, Abbey Road.
A phone call from reception up to one of the suites later, and a figure was waving on the other side of the glass. We would be spending the afternoon with the charming and talented mastering engineer Cicely Balston!
Cicely Balston in their mastering suite at Abbey Road Studios. Image Credit: Moths and Giraffes.
We met Cicely Balston for the first time not at Abbey Road Studios, but at Bar Doña in Stoke Newington for drummer Maxie Cheer’s first solo performance, which we reviewed in July 2023. At the time, Cicely was working at AIR Studios and that summer would be the mastering engineer for Maxie and Rachel Still’s band Just Kids on their EP ‘photographs from a past life’.
Beyond that we only knew that Cicely was the recipient of the prestigious Music Producers Guild award for Mastering Engineer of the Year 2023, having previously been nominated in 2021. It was only later we discovered some of their mastering credits include Ludovico Einaudi, David Gray and Max Richter, while remastering projects encompass the catalogues of David Bowie and Christine McVie. Film and stage works include Anthony Willis’ score for ‘Saltburn’ and the theatre soundtrack for ‘Prima Facie’ by Rebecca Lucy Taylor (Self Esteem).
A skill honed at Gearbox Studios, their speciality in cutting vinyl lacquers has seen them working on music by Iron Maiden, Simply Red, Judas Priest, Sinéad O'Connor and Kraftwerk. This is a cherry-picking of names, Balston’s vinyl lacquers are both numerous and diverse in genre.
This is not a technical interview by any means. We don’t discuss compression, limiting, or sample rates, the age-old analogue vs. digital debate or how exactly grooves on a record translate to music (literally majick – honestly I have no idea).
We laughed a lot in this interview. We asked Cicely about working with friends, potentially starting an instrumental punk band, and being a teenager studying Music Tech with all the limitations of secondary school budgets. And maybe some of the cool projects above.
Teri Woods: So firstly, where are we and what goes on in this room?
Cicely Balston: (laughs)
TW: I think that’s a great way to start.
CB: We are at Abbey Road Studios in my mastering room that I share with someone. Yeah, I do mastering, it’s the final stage of the whole recording process I guess. Mixing, mastering, if you were releasing for people who are releasing music. So, we’re not working on film or TV shows or whatever in here. But albums, singles, EPs.
TW: Beginning research on this interview, because you’re so modest, I actually had no idea that you’d worked on remastering some of David Bowie’s work (laughs), so.
CB: It’s not something I lead my hellos with!
TW: No, no, absolutely not! How did that opportunity come your way?
CB: So that was when I was at AIR. So my career, very loosely, has gone: I went and did a sound recording degree at the University of Surrey, called the Tonmeister course, and on that I did a placement in my third year. We all did. And one of the places that I worked at – this is a long-winded way to answer this question.
TW: That’s ok.
CB: Erm, one of the places was a mastering studio, this is how I got into mastering. They were a record label/mastering studio called Gearbox Records, and they were really great. And then, I went back there after uni, but after I was there for a few months, maybe four or five months, a job came up at AIR Studios, where a mastering engineer called Ray Staff was sort of looking for an assistant. Which is pretty rare in mastering because the kind of workflow that we have- or particularly the workflow that I have at the moment doesn’t really have any space for someone else to do any of it. Like mixing or recording, they’re much bigger projects, they’re much longer kind of things, there’s more prep, there’s more, just in terms of actual tasks. The stuff I’m working through is so much quicker. So, like, assisting in mastering isn’t very common.
But he was looking for an assistant, basically because eventually he was looking to retire. So he was looking to train someone up and they wanted someone who had shown some interest in mastering, but hadn’t spent much time in it. Basically, it worked out very well for me, I had already been in touch with him, I emailed him being like ‘Hey, I hear you’re looking for an assistant, can I find out some more?’
So I started working with him and one of the major projects he had on was this big David Bowie remastering. And he was doing it because he had done mastering of the original records. And so him and the producer Nigel Reeve, had this whole plan for this whole thing happening, and I think I joined at Box Set No. 2?
I think they had just finished the first box set, it was all being sort-of released in these massive box sets where they kind of had the main albums but also they collected live albums from the time, demos, anything, it was sort of a huge research project as much as anything else. Erm, yeah, and I did maybe three box sets over the three years I was at AIR the first time around?
Ray would be mastering it. I’ll be there kind of doing all of the- in that instance there was session prep to do. We were working off tape a lot, so I did a lot of tape transfers. Erm, just collecting all the bits together so that Ray could just come in, do the session and then go away again because he was sort of stepping down in his amount of time that he wanted to be working and stuff like that. And I’d do all the bits and bobs, running out files, making CD masters, running out all the different sample rates and putting the IRC’s on. All of that stuff.
So yeah I did actually get to do a little bit of mastering, because I left AIR for a bit, and then rejoined AIR, so there was I think one EP. So my former colleague, John Webber, who’s been taking on that project ever since, there was one EP when John was off on paternity leave, so I got to do a little bit of mastering, otherwise it was all assisting, but, um, yeah it was amazing. It was huge. Yeah.
TW: So, one of those Bowie projects you worked on was ‘Welcome to the Blackout’, which is one of the live albums you mentioned. What’s the most challenging thing when working with a vintage live recording like that one?
CB: Mmm! I guess trying to find the source material for stuff is gonna be tricky, like it very much depends. In some cases, something’s been out before, so that was kind of planned at the time that it was gonna be released. Then sometimes it’s like they’ve found some bootleg recordings that had happened at the time, like illicitly, but now, you know this is amazing that that got put out.
So I don’t remember whether that album was a bootleg or an official recording done at that time, for example. But, the recording quality can vary hugely from that era because it could’ve just been someone in some row, somewhere, with the recorder right?
And it’s still really cool that gets put out but yeah obviously the quality’s not gonna be so good. Just generally in live albums you are quite limited in the sound that you can achieve on the recording just because there’s so much else going on at the same time. And it’s not always possible to monitor the recording as it’s happening.
I guess we’ve had tapes where the tape has been edited, where someone’s just (makes a chopping sound), you know the applause starts and someone just fades it right out or whatever and then you have to go in. I do remember on at least some live albums going back in and doing these really complex, like, stealing audience noise from other recordings, putting them in to make it sound like it was a kind of natural thing because it didn’t get captured at the time, or like, for whatever reason, it only sounds for wherever the microphones are. The band sounds great, but it sounds like there’s three people in the room.
So all of that kind of audio wizardry, because you’ve got to think about what people are expecting to hear and sometimes you can’t put a note just being like, FYI, the microphone’s right at the front, and they were cardioids and they weren’t picking up anything from behind so there isn’t any audience noise. It’s like it’s a live album, there probably needs to be an audience there, you know what I mean?
Stuff like that you’re just kind of limited in what is and isn’t possible by the source material that you’ve got. It’s always amazing where things come from and where people start coming out from the woodwork and saying, ‘Oh actually, I’ve got this,’ or something had a radio broadcast and being able to try and find those tapes or like whatever it is, trying to source all the audio, not something I was doing personally, but a feat, for sure.
TW: It’s funny because your name keeps cropping up in records I actually own.
CB: Oh yeah! Go on.
TW: Yeah. You know, stuff that I’ve had for years. So, with that said, how would you approach working on something more sparse like Einaudi’s ‘Seven Days Walking’? Which is a tremendous set of albums. Is there much for a mastering engineer to do on a project like that where it’s so sparse?
CB: It’s a kind of yes and no. Like, there’s significantly less that needs to happen, because the sound is very much-
TW: It is what it is.
CB: It is what it is. Yeah. If they want something major to change, then, you can. But yeah like most of the sound there is in the recording and then in the mix, and then, if that’s been done well and nicely and everyone’s signed off on it, then no there’s not a huge amount of sonic stuff to happen. But there’s still the kind of QCing side of mastering, so listening to it, making sure it’s alright, making sure the PQ’s in the right place.
I think it was all recorded to tape, that one? So I think I had to transfer the tapes back into the digital realm so it could be released in digital form (laughs). I think I did four of those albums, and so like trying to have the wider picture view of all four albums, well I didn’t master the other three. So, thinking about the kind of levels and the sound as compared to the other albums as much as anything else and within the album itself. But maybe that is a mastering task as opposed to a mixing and recording task. Yeah, it’s not that there’s nothing to do, but it is a very different ballgame sonically.
TW: I mean I regularly listen to – because I actually have all seven, I regularly listen to them all from start to finish-
CB: Yeah, yeah!
TW: And it’s incredible how well they all flow together obviously because of the composition, and the players, but sonically it does just flow like one set.
CB: Yeah, yeah, yeah! Great. I think that’s also, like, testament to Einaudi, who, he was very much involved in the whole thing, he was there popping up, checking things, his whole kind of creative team really had their eyes on the bigger picture too, which is actually really nice and it really shows. Sometimes that doesn’t always happen in other things. Yeah that’s nice to know.
TW: I saw you worked on the Prima Facie soundtrack by Rebecca Lucy Taylor, did you ever see that play?
CB: No I didn’t! Occasionally it comes up in cinemas and I’ve been meaning to go and see it. Did you see it?
TW: I did! Yeah, it gets you.
CB: That music was- it still sticks with me now, actually I can really remember it, which is unusual because I work on a lot of things. But there’s moments of that score that I can really recall. I can only imagine what the show was like. I would love to see it actually. That’s a good reminder. Maybe I’ll see if it’s being shown anywhere.
I went to see- I worked on Max Richter’s score for ‘MADDADDAM’? It’s a ballet, he is incredible and also to see this music that I know and you sort of don’t really realise how much you know something when you work on something- It’s just there. Anyway, it was just like a whole different dimension, it was amazing, with dance as well!
TW: To see it in the context that it’s intended. You know? Because you’re seeing basically only half the story, or listening to only half the story.
CB: You know it’s my job to translate it into a listening experience and so that’s not necessarily a bad thing that I don’t have that perspective on it because what I’m trying to do is be the listener. And there are things that are kind of important to do with the listener in mind. So like the classic example is I do quite a lot of film soundtracks, or show soundtracks. And if you’ve got something to watch, it’s very normal for the music to come creeping in extremely quietly and crescendo up to something noticeable at a kind of emotional point. If you’re listening, and you hit play on a track and you can’t hear it immediately, you’re gonna sit there going-
TW: Where is it?
CB: Where is it? (laughs) And so I’m forever turning up the starts of tracks, particularly for soundtracks and things, because as a listening experience, as long as I do it in a way that it still gets the emotional impact or crescendo, it’s just important that you can hear it when you hit play (laughs). Like you can hear something, you don’t then whack it up because you think, ‘Where’s my music?’ And then thirty seconds later and it’s like, blowing your head off.
TW: So of course those are all bigger projects, but as you mentioned earlier, you work on EPs, you work on smaller projects, also with indie musicians, so, what is it like to work with a band like Just Kids vs. a major label project?
CB: Well Just Kids particularly has been such a nice feature of maybe the last year or so. It’s always nice working with your friends, and that’s just a nice feature of my life. You know I did a university course, I see a lot of people from my university around and about in the industry and that’s really great. But like particularly Just Kids, there is a bit of a group there.
TW: Yeah!
CB: Right? And it’s like that’s so fun to be able to know all the context and to see the songs in their- You know I might’ve seen the track that got released on Friday, at a gig, maybe months ago or something.
TW: We were there at The Lexington back in September.
CB: Yeah exactly. You just kind of get to see the whole context from my own perspective, not even just from asking people about it when they come into the studio, kind of thing?
TW: Yeah, yeah, yeah, you’ve already taken it in in some way.
CB: Yeah, which is really nice.
TW: At that point, had you already done the master, or did that come like way after?
CB: No, I think it came after.
TW: So you already got a taste of what that would be like to an audience?
CB: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Or, and then vice-versa, working on things is nice for then going to see things and I’m the only one that knows all the songs. You can sort of just be excited for the release that comes. And that’s not to say that’s absent from working with major label stuff, that can very much be true, like a lot of the Max Richter stuff, I know the engineer really well and I know various people, that’s a nice, sort of group in itself.
But it’s not always a given that you’re gonna get the same kind of level of context. Or it’s what I’ve been trying to think of and what I might try and build in a bit more next year is to kind of generate that, whether that’s like finding the people on Instagram, sending them a message, like trying to kind of bridge-
TW: What, like, ‘I wanna work on your stuff’ or?
CB: No, like, ‘Hey, I’m working on your stuff.’
TW: Ah, I see.
CB: Like, because it doesn’t always come directly from the artist. It might come from the managers, it might come from the label, and it’s not like they don’t know that I’m working on it but, some people-
TW: Some people are removed from that process.
CB: Yeah, yeah. It can be a very different way and actually it’s easy to feel maybe like disconnected? It would be hard to be quite as integrated into everything I work on as I am in the Just Kids world. But there is somewhere in between the two. I think it would be nice to try and find a way to bring that in a little bit more. The issue is when I get really busy. I then just get really busy and then I just sort of find it hard to like, do the work on top of the work. It’s just the usual music industry fluctuation I think. (laughs) Um, it’s a classic!
TW: So, going way back, what was your first recording or engineering set-up you had at home?
CB: My god. Ok! (Laughs) I’ve never owned a microphone in my life. I mean I had a Mac when I was at university with Pro Tools on it. Did I have Pro Tools? No, I had Logic. And we worked on Logic at school? We had little studios at school, so I guess yeah. I didn’t have any of the stuff at home, but we recorded into Logic with a little studio at school that a lot of us spent a lot of time on. It was a little eight track digital thingamajigum, and it must’ve been going into Logic. I’m really struggling to remember. I think that’s my earliest recording memories. Just jamming around.
TW: Just like class projects?
CB: Yeah! We did Music Tech, I guess it must’ve been in Sixth Form. We’d all do little recordings for all each other’s stuff. You could be linked to the room with the drum kit in it that was about half the size of this room or something, or linked to the music hall. Like those are your two places to record. Yeah, just used to, be around and about quite a lot in the music department. It’s cool.
TW: Like weren’t we all? (laughs)
CB: I mean, as is only right!
Cicely suggested we take a photo of them at the cutting lathe, ‘because it’s a classic!’ Image Credit: Moths and Giraffes.
TW: Yeah, exactly! So in a world that could take you in many different directions, why mastering engineer? Was there a point where you could’ve been going somewhere else in a different direction?
CB: I guess, yes and no, I did get quite niche quite quickly by doing a sound recording degree, but people from that course go off and do all sorts of things. It’s very sort of mathsy and very physicsy, so there’s just as many people doing software engineering, and then, like audio equipment design, as people doing anything more on making the music or working on the music side.
I think it’s a bit of a combo, it really appealed. When I started, I really enjoyed learning about vinyl, when I was on placement at Gearbox. They were an all-analogue studio and everything at that time we put out was vinyl only. So I sort of wanted to keep that up and I felt like it was quite a cool niche skill to have learnt, to be beginning to learn. But also I wasn’t like, it’s this or nothing. It’s kind of just been like a thread that I’ve been following and when things open up, to kind of try and follow the path, it’s sort of opened up in front of me.
I don’t know how much that’s me or not. And I don’t know how much that was intention or not, but I have felt it’s more like, ‘Oh, do I want to go back to Gearbox? Like, yes, I like these things.’ ‘Oh, this kind of other job, I want to be learning a bit more about the kind of digital side of mastering,’ and this job seems to have come into my sphere at AIR Studios. ‘Do I want to pursue that? Yeah I guess so,’ and then, you know, if that hadn’t come off, then sure, maybe I’ll be doing something else and like I went freelance for a bit when I was at AIR.
I left AIR in 2019 and was freelance for about eighteen months and that was maybe a bit more open, I kind of took mastering as my basis for stuff, so I had a mastering room in Hammersmith, kind of totally freelance. And I was trying to persuade a studio in Bristol to give me a job. So I was kind of using that as the framework but I was open to whatever else, I ended up doing some editing at Spitfire, but yeah I dunno. Sort of, so far so good. (laughs)
TW: So there’s no point where your degree could’ve been in something else?
CB: I think if I hadn’t gone to Surrey, I definitely would’ve done Music, I guess that was maybe the more like – path’s open, anything’s open, and then, this is where I’ve ended up. I don’t think I would be doing this if I hadn’t done that degree. If I hadn’t done that degree, I definitely would’ve done something a lot more open. I guess I probably still would’ve done music because that’s what I wanted to do at the time, but I did want to do engineering as part of my degree which is why I ended up on the Tonmeister course just because I’m interested in why music sounds like it does and stuff like that.
Cicely performing during their time at the University of Surrey, 2012
TW: Ok, so, we’re now onto the centrepiece of the interview which is: What are your drumming inspirations and what do you like about their style? Forget everything we just talked about.
CB: Ah this is such a good question! I think you’re overestimating my drumming abilities. I’ve taken up drumming again in the last two years, having not played the drums for about twelve years or something. I played them throughout school, and then when I got to university there was just much more space. I also played saxophone and I also played the clarinet, there was just a lot more space to play saxophone than there was for drums, so it kind of fell by the wayside quite a lot. My drumming inspirations - anything like punky.
TW: Ok!
CB: Yeah, in my head, that’s the music where I’m like, ‘Yeah, drums!’
TW: (laughs) It gets you excited about it.
CB: I’m like, Green Day, or, who did I have? I used to have- I had one planner (laughs) in one of my years at school. You know like your school planner, did you have…? Yeah, you like decorate it obviously to show who you are.
TW: It’s gotta be done, yeah!
CB: One of them was a drummers one, I think it had Travis Barker, it had, erm, Tré- can’t remember.
TW: Cool.
CB: Tré Cool, obviously. Um, it had Dave Grohl on it, and then also I listened to a lot of jazz as a teenager. I never really wanted to be a jazz drummer but I was always amazed by the drummers, that kind of like fluid-
TW: So fascinating to watch.
CB: But I think there was a drummer called Dave Smith? And we saw him a lot, he was sort of part of a group of people, of musicians who were kind of our teachers as well, so my sax teacher, or one other guy, he used to tutor the saxes in the big band that I was in called Tom Challenger. He used to play with Dave Smith quite a lot. Yeah all kind of a lot of free stuff. But yeah the music that makes me want to drum is pop punk (laughs).
TW: Yeah? Fair enough.
CB: I wish I could- I think that’s a cool answer. Fine.
TW: I remember when I was a teenager and I had some drumming lessons for a little while, my drum tutor said, ‘Everyone comes in here and asks for me to teach them how to play American Idiot.’ (laughs)
CB: (laughs) It’s the best album ever!
TW: Yeah, it’s like, ‘They don’t really want to learn how to drum, they just wanna know how to drum American Idiot.’
CB: They just wanna play that one song! That was literally the album- So Maxie (Cheer’s) suggestion was to do like an album project where you just like go through it song by song and that is the album that I’m doing! (laughs) I was like, ‘Fuck it, I’m just gonna choose an album that I wanted to drum when I was a teenager.’ I’m having a real teenage resurgence in my life, I’m just trying to get into it as much as possible.
TW: It happens to us all.
CB: I’m happy with it, yeah!
TW: How old were you when that album came out?
CB: When did that album come out?
TW: 2004?
CB: Uh, twelve.
TW: It’s the most influential time, surely?
CB: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Exactly, yeah! I wish I could be cooler and say a different Green Day album but I can’t! That’s my Green Day album.
TW: No, that’s fair. (laughs)
CB: That’s as much as it is. (laughs)
TW: Ok, so, we talked a bit earlier about musical projects that you’re doing right now. Is there anything you wanna say about that? (laughs) Or-
CB: Ah between doing all this, I’m not really playing much at the moment other than the drums for just my teenage fun. I come and go in how much I want to. Yeah also time, like-
TW: It’s very time-consuming, yeah.
CB: Life is pretty intense (laughs) What’s been nice about re-taking up the drums is to try and get away from that like, ‘It’s only worth it if you’re good at it,’ kind of thinking. That is very easy to fall subject to, and particularly when you work in music and music has always been something that you did as a hobby. There’s quite a lot of knotty stuff there actually of like, ‘Oh, not good enough.’ Like I played the saxophone again and I’m like, ‘Oh why am I not better?’ And it’s like, no! I’ve actually made a choice because I didn’t want to be playing the saxophone all the time, you know? And that’s ok! Because I didn’t want to be doing X, Y, or Z.
Yeah no I’m not in any sort of project or anything. That will maybe come back? And maybe it won’t? I find I have to tread a very careful line of not putting too much pressure on myself to be good at stuff, ha. If I joined a band or whatever, I would only be sitting there thinking, ‘Oh well, I’m not good enough.’ And actually (laughs) let’s just leave that. That’s something to work out slowly over time. I’m not, not doing it because I won’t be good at it but it’s like…it’s ok to not do everything all the time.
TW: Yeah, I mean predominantly everyone gets into music for fun, for enjoyment.
CB: Yeah!
TW: And I think that somewhere along the way we kind of go, ‘No the enjoyment is not good enough, why am I not better?’ You know? And I think everyone does get to a point where you need to like recapture that because why on earth do we do-
CB: Because what’s the point of doing any of it?
TW: What’s the point! Yeah! Do it for your own enjoyment.
CB: Yeah (laughs) I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about that the past couple of years. I’ve got a friend and every time we see each other we’re like, ‘We’re gonna start a punk band!’ And at some point we will! We actually lived together, not in the same house but in the same place where I have my drum kit up, and then, we, er, (laughs) we didn’t even do it then, but anyway! We will one day. It’ll be some punk duo, but neither of us wants to sing? So-
TW: Ah.
CB: It’s gonna be instrumental punk.
TW: That’s tricky, that one. Erm, well maybe we’ll be back and I’ll be interviewing you for your punk band project.
CB: Yeah!
TW: Instrumental punk.
CB: (laughing) Ok!
TW: Self-mastered!
CB: Self-mastered, absolutely! I’m not gonna inflict that on anyone else! (laughing)
‘Twist something that’s gonna upset someone.’ Image Credit: Moths and Giraffes.
TW: So, from that to- I guess, maybe you’ve read some stuff about this online because this is predominantly where these people exist. Audiophiles-
CB: Mm!
TW: -have their own opinions on what a badly mastered album is.
CB: Yeah… Yeah, they sure do.
TW: So what is it for you? (laughing)
CB: Well a badly mastered album for me, would be…if I had done something that no one else in the rest of the album, ie - the people whose music it was, was happy with, like on a fundamental level that would be me doing a bad job.
TW: Like not following the brief.
CB: Not following the brief, or like asserting something of myself over and above the person whose actual music it is. Don’t get me wrong, things go out in the world that maybe I don’t like how they sound, or whatever. But I would say that often the missing part in peoples’ speed at which they pan the mastering was like, ‘Who else was involved in this project?’ Like, ‘What was the source audio?’ You can hear the final product and you could blame the mastering for the entirety of the sound, but like, who knows? Who knows what has happened to get that music to being out in the world.
And for sure there are easier comparisons when you’re talking about remastering and things and I completely sympathise with someone who like loves the sound of a record or loves a record and then it comes out and they don’t feel like they like it as much or something. But, and I can only speak to my experience with the work that I do, well it’s part of a team and we’re all trying to do our best for the music. And best is a completely subjective term, absolutely. And so you can disagree with what you think best is, but you weren’t there so (laughs), you weren’t part of that team making those decisions that got made. Quite possibly they were made with the artist involved and that was what they wanted it to sound like and you can still be disappointed and that’s completely understandable.
Yeah it’s a sort of funny one. It’s a classic example of the internet giving a platform and a kind of validation to people airing their opinions in a much wider forum than people would be able to before and it’s not that they’re invalid opinions at all, but it’s like, they might not have the full picture, they just have what was released, you know what I mean?
So like a bad mastering from my perspective would be me overriding everyone else and for some reason thinking it was my project. What’s really nice is when you get to work with people and add your opinion, and add your voice and add your touch or whatever onto something. That’s the nice side and the bad side would be someone going away being like, ‘I worked with Cicely, and I’m deeply unhappy but I cannot communicate that to them because for some reason I feel like that’s not gonna land.’ If that would be me, I would be sad to hear that about anything that I worked on.
TW: I mean you saying about an artist’s intentions and, you know, it comes out the way it comes out, basically because that’s how everyone intended for it to come out. I read an example recently where- Have you ever heard Metallica’s ‘…And Justice For All’ album?
CB: Not in its entirely but, I feel like I know it. Yeah, yeah.
TW: Sure, sure. So the whole thing that people go on about with that record is that there’s like no bass on it. And so, Jason Newsted, the bassist on that record said a fan came up to him and gave him a bootleg copy of the album being like, “We’ve turned the bass up for you! We’ve called it ‘…And Jason For All’!’ Or something like that.
CB: And Jason- Amazing. (laughing)
TW: And he received it and he was like, ‘Thank you very much, however, the way that album sounds is how we actually intended it to sound.’
CB: Yeah it wasn’t like a mistake! Yeah.
TW: No, like yeah, there were months of decisions made that led to how that came out.
CB: Yeah, there’s so many layers, for that album particularly. Do you know what I mean? For something that big to come out, there are so many layers of people and voices involved. You do have to trust that at some point…they listened to it and said, ‘Yes.’ Like that they were happy with it.
I think it’s sweet, there are bass-loving fans. It’s nice you can do that as well, that’s also quite fun, it’s why you might get a stereo with a bass on it. You know what I mean? And you can change things if you want.
TW: A bit of home EQ.
CB: That’s ok! That’s ok. It’s your music, you can enjoy it how you like.
TW: Yeah! It’s true. Erm, so listening to so much music in a day surely causes ear fatigue. What do you do to combat that? Do you find yourself leaving work and listening to no music at all after?
CB: Yeah very much so. So I go wildly in and out of phrases of actually listening to music like not for work purposes. And listening to quite a lot of like, more speech based podcasts or stuff. While I’m at work, I take naps. Not all the time.
TW: To renew yourself?
CB: Actually just to try and shut off, because like everyone I found myself staring at my phone.
TW: Yeah, a different screen!
CB: Looking at the screen over there like it’s just not good, and it hurts your brain as much as your ears doesn’t it. So I’m just trying to force myself to be like: just sit. Just sit. Close your eyes, for ten minutes. It can really, like reset quite a lot.
It’s just bad for your brain. It’s bad for my brain, I don’t know about anyone else, but, like, trying to switch between things all the time. It’s like people shouting at me. If I was in a room full of people and one of them was going, ‘Oh hey I did this on Thursday!’ And one of them is going, ‘Are you going to come to this thing next week?’ And someone else is going, ‘Did you see that this happened?’ Like that would be exhausting to me. (laughs) And yet why do I accept it when it’s from my phone? I don’t know.
TW: Yeah, it is a strange kind of concept when you put it that way. Because you would leave that party, if it was overwhelming for you.
CB: Like, ‘I can’t manage this!’
TW: Yeah! That’s understandable. We’ve got one last question. What would be a dream mastering project for you? A dream artist to work with perhaps.
CB: Yeah… That’s a tricky one- artist to work with… I mean, I just like working with my friends. Like, I think that is the dream, just being able to feel like you’re contributing and I think that’s in the communication actually, that makes it dreamy because I can say, ‘Hey, have you thought about this?’ And they can say, ‘Hey, sure. Maybe this? Maybe that?’ La, la, la, bit of back and forth, bit of chat. Erm, yeah, that’s a bit of a flimsy answer I think, but, erm-
TW: I actually think that’s a 10/10 answer. What is life if like not working with your friends?
CB: Like it’s so nice to get to do your bit of the work but without any of the, I guess the worry? Like, to get to do the bit, like the actual mastering is obviously, I’m doing that all the time. But working with people that you know, it’s just a safety thing, like it’s a security thing, I’m not worrying that they’re gonna be like, ‘Oh, not gonna go to them again.’ Like, you know, ‘Hate this, can’t say it back,’ or whatever. And we can get better results because we’ll feel safe saying how we feel. Yeah it’s that. That’s such a great feeling. And when your friends are doing cool things and you get to contribute, great. There you are, it all comes down to that. I think. Yeah.
Image Credit: Moths and Giraffes.
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