Mixing Contest: Hands Up
I met Grand Baton (aka Big Stick in French, aka J.C Maillard) on a session he was producing at Flux Studios in NYC. We had a lot of common friends, (Sofia Rei, in particular whose record I was producing at the time and whom he was playing with, and others from the NY scene). After a couple hangs at Flux playing each other’s music, he asked me to mix his record. I listened to the first track and i said ‘Absolutely’. The mix of dubstep influences, insane guitar tones, great live drums/drum machine mix, great chords and melodies made me want to tackle these enormous sessions.
JC recorded most the stuff in his apartment in NYC and some of the drums were recorded in drummer’s Thierry Arpino’s living room in Connecticut. None of this was created in expensive studios with assistants espresso machines, expensive treated rooms and $50K worth of microphones, yet it sounds fresh and exciting. I mixed the whole thing in Protools, with Lynx converters through my Dangerous 2-Bus, Fatso, LTD2 and a stock Dangerous BAX eq back into Protools thru a UA 2192.
For this Zelab edition, We thought you guys would enjoy a change of scenery and would like to try and tackle a monster session with lots of crazy gain changes, sound, stereo, short interventions, wacky breaks and endless options for fun and games. Careful, it bites.
Since we are gentlemen we left the two main drum enhancement tracks (Bass drum and snare drum). You’re welcome.
Fab Dupont
