GRAMMY Nominations 2025: Best Dance/Electronic RecordingThe 2025 GRAMMY nominations are here and we're going to help you to untangle it all right up until the big event, continuing with the Best Dance/Electronic Recording category.

Take a listen to the nominated recordings below--who do you think will win?

See the full list of nominees in every category here.

No CapDisclosure & Anderson .PaakDisclosure, producer; Guy Lawrence, mixer

Victory LapFred again.., Skepta, & PlaqueBoyMaxBlake Cascoe, Berwyn Du Bois, Fred again.., Darcy Lewis, Dan Mayo & PlaqueBoyMax, producers; Tom Norris, mixer

SPACE INVADERKAYTRANADAKAYTRANADA, producer; KAYTRANADA, mixer

VOLTAGESkrillexJohn Feldmann & Skrillex, producers; Luca Pretolesi, Skrillex & Virtual Riot, mixers

End Of SummerTame ImpalaKevin Parker, producer; Kevin Parker, mixer

KAYTRANADA photo by Hannah SiderThe post GRAMMY Nominations 2025: Best Dance/Electronic Recording first appeared on Music Connection Magazine.

GRAMMY Nominations 2025: Best Pop Vocal AlbumThe 2025 GRAMMY nominations are here and we're going to help you to untangle it all right up until the big event, continuing with the Best Pop Vocal Album category.

Take a listen to the nominated pop albums below--who do you think will win?

See the full list of nominees in every category here.

SWAGJustin Bieber

Man's Best FriendSabrina Carpenter

Something BeautifulMiley Cyrus

MAYHEMLady Gaga

I've Tried Everything But Therapy (Part 2)Teddy SwimsThe post GRAMMY Nominations 2025: Best Pop Vocal Album first appeared on Music Connection Magazine.

‘I see an explosion of hybrid sounds coming from Africa. The next big global hits will come from these cultural crossovers.’MBW’s World Leaders series meets Nuno Rocha, Head of Business Development for MENA, Lusophone, and Francophone markets at ONErpm
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TuneCore Surpasses $5 Billion in Indie Artist EarningsIndependent artist development platform, TuneCore, announced that artist have now earned over $5 billion since the company started.
The post TuneCore Surpasses $5 Billion in Indie Artist Earnings appeared first on Hypebot.

The “Tiny Desk Boom” Is Real: Here’s How NPR Helps Boost Artist InfluenceLuminate Data helps quantify the influence of NPR's Tiny Desk Concerts on artists' digital reach.
The post The “Tiny Desk Boom” Is Real: Here’s How NPR Helps Boost Artist Influence appeared first on Hypebot.

Apogee Introduces Native Thunderbolt 3 Connectivity for Symphony Mk II Audio InterfaceApogee Electronics, a leader in professional audio technology, has announced a significant update to its flagship Symphony Mk II audio interface: native Thunderbolt 3 connectivity. This enhancement is a direct response to user demand and is designed to future-proof the interface, ensuring it continues to serve as the core of professional studios for years to come.

“The Symphony Mk II is a significant investment for any audio professional,” said Apogee CEO Betty Bennett. “Our users are in critical, no-fail environments, and they asked for a native Thunderbolt 3 connection for maximum confidence and a simpler setup. We’re thrilled to deliver that today, both for new customers and for the thousands of producers, engineers, and artists who already rely on Symphony.”

The Thunderbolt 3 update is focused on simplifying studio workflows while maintaining the sound and performance that Symphony Mk II users expect. Key improvements include:

Future-Proof Connectivity: Native Thunderbolt 3 ensures that Symphony Mk II will remain compatible with modern systems for years, safeguarding a substantial studio investment.

Streamlined Setup: Direct TB3 connectivity eliminates the need for adapters, reducing potential points of failure and simplifying the connection process.

Flexible Cabling Options: The module is compatible with TB3, TB4, and TB5 cables, including optical options for extended cable runs.

Importantly, Apogee emphasizes that this update affects only the connectivity. Users will continue to enjoy the interface’s elite AD/DA conversion, ultra-low latency performance, modular I/O flexibility, and existing drivers and software, without any changes to workflow or sound.

New Symphony Mk II units now ship with Thunderbolt 3 as standard, identified by the “TB3” designation in the part number. Existing owners can also upgrade their interfaces using Apogee’s Thunderbolt 3 Upgrade Module, a process that is DIY-friendly for those comfortable with hardware installation, or available through Apogee support and authorized dealers.

For users currently operating with Thunderbolt 2 adapters, compatibility remains fully supported. The new module is offered purely as an option for those seeking a more modern and direct connection.

For more information on this update, visit Apogee’s official blog: apogeedigital.com/blog/thunderbolt-3-and-symphony-mkii/

The post Apogee Introduces Native Thunderbolt 3 Connectivity for Symphony Mk II Audio Interface first appeared on Music Connection Magazine.

Confirmed: Thomas Coesfeld will continue to lead BMG in dual role alongside Chairman and CEO position at parent BertelsmannCoesfeld to succeed Thomas Rabe as head of Bertelsmann on January 1, 2027
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Deezer’s 50,000 Daily AI Song Uploads — How Fraud Hides Behind InvisibilityNew data highlights the growing shadow that generative AI content is beginning to cast, how it's reshaping streaming, and why platforms are racing to keep fraud in check.
The post Deezer’s 50,000 Daily AI Song Uploads — How Fraud Hides Behind Invisibility appeared first on Hypebot.

Industry Perspectives: Gui Morais (Symphonic) on the Importance of Local Culture“Global success doesn’t start with a strategy. It starts with identity.”
The post Industry Perspectives: Gui Morais (Symphonic) on the Importance of Local Culture appeared first on Hypebot.

Is Everybody Ready For The Next Band? The Rolling Stones 1969 US Tour Book By Richard Houghton  In November 1969 the Rolling Stones toured the United States for the first time in three years. Gone was founder member Brian Jones, replaced by Mick Taylor from John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers. Gone too were the Top Ten-laden 30-minute sets played over inadequate PA systems to crowds of screaming, teenagers.

In their place was a fully-fledged 75-minute rock show drawing heavily on the albums Beggar’s Banquet and Let It Bleed, using lighting and theatrics rock audiences had never witnessed before. Terry Reid, B.B. King and Ike & Tina Turner were the opening acts.

The Rolling Stones rocked across America with a tour whose essence is captured in the live album Get Yet Ya-Ya’s Out! heralded by many as the finest live rock album of all time.

Is Everybody Ready For The Next Band? - A People’s History Of the Rolling Stones 1969 US Tour byRichard Houghton mixes contemporaneous press reports with previously unpublished first-hand accounts of the Rolling Stones on their 24-date US tour that has gone down in history as the template that others then followed. From an un-publicized opening night in Fort Collins, Colorado through to the reported events at Altamont, California a month later, this is the story of one of the most infamous rock tours of all time in the words of more than 130 people who were there.    November 2025 marks the 56th anniversary of 1969’s Rolling Stones trek.  Is Everybody Ready For The Next Band? - A People’s History Of the Rolling Stones 1969 US Tour is scheduled for publication in November 2025 by Spenwood Books. 

The Rolling Stones’ November 1969 concerts at Madison Square Garden yielded the 1970 monumental Get Yer Ya-Ya’s Out! the band’s definitive live album.  It was produced by the Rolling Stones and Glyn Johns.

In my October 11, 1975 interview with Tina Turner in the now defunct Melody Maker, she reflected on the Rolling Stones and the 1969 United States expedition with them. 

“We toured for years with all the English groups and I always liked what they were singing about. The biggest change started happening when we were working around L.A. in 1966 and ran into Phil Spector,” she remembered. “He wanted to record me and when we cut 'River Deep, Mountain High.' Mick Jagger, who was visiting Phil at the time, was in the recording studio.

"After hearing the song, he wanted us to tour England in 1966 with the Rolling Stones. The English weren't used to seeing girls with high-heeled shows and I think they were shocked a bit,” Tina smiled at Chasen’s restaurant in Beverly Hills. 

“River Deep, Mountain High” also impressed Mick Jagger.

Turner in 1966 at Colston Hall in Bristol, England in a hallway corridor taught Jagger an interpretation of the sideways pony dance right in front of Marianne Faithfull, Brian Jones, and Keith Richards.   

In our 1975 interview, Tina further reminisced, “After hearing the song he wanted us to tour England in 1966 with the Rolling Stones. The English weren't used to seeing girls with high-heeled shoes and I think they were shocked a bit.”

For B.B. King, his one-month November 1969 spot on the Stones shows was career altering. King’s "Paying the Cost to Be the Boss” was a top 10 R&B hit in 1968 and popular in L.A. I heard it regularly on KGFJ-AM.  Then he got booked on the Stones’ 1969 dates. 

On November 8th in ‘69 at the Forum in Inglewood California B.B. was now playing in front of more paying folks, music reviewers, rack jobbers, and both AM and FM radio deejays in those arenas then he had ever reached before. It was evident King knew his next half century calendar dates were taken care of. 

I had already seen both B.B. King and the Ike & Tina Turner Revue in Watts and around Hollywood as a teenager. B.B. resided in our neighborhood when my family lived in Crenshaw Village. There he was playing on stage with the Rolling Stones in nearby Inglewood! Followed by Ike & Tina who resided locally in the Baldwin Hills View Park area, close to the Forum.

“The Stones were a better live band then any other band at that time,” explained Bill Wyman, bass player of the Rolling Stones in a 2004 interview we conducted.

“The band was great live always.  I’m not saying they were the greatest songwriters or the greatest recording artists, but they were the best live band wherever you went. You could go up on stage and blow everybody away no matter who they were.”

What did Wyman think contributed to the live concert dynamic of the Rolling Stones, besides the obvious chemistry the group members had together?  

“Practice. Doin’ them little clubs in the beginning,” he emphasized. “Going through all of that learning process, that apprenticeship. Starting off not thinking about being rich and famous and having a career and making a record or going on TV or touring America. Or going out in a limousine like kids think now when they go into a band. None of that. It was let’s play this music and if people like it, that’s a bonus. And if we got a bit of change in our pockets, that was a bigger bonus. And it was that simple.

“I always thought…As long as me and Charlie could get it together, then the rest of the band could do what they’d like and it worked. And that’s what happened in the studio, and that’s what happened live. Me and Charlie were really always on the ball, always straight, always together and had it down.

“If we had our shit together, we got it right. What he was doing and what I was doing, standing next to him and watching his bass drum, and all that, which a lot of bass players don’t do, stupidly, once we got our thing going, and the group was there, then anything could happen. That’s all there was. There was simplicity. It wasn’t how many notes you played, it’s where you left nice holes and I learned that from Duck Dunn and people like that,” remarked Wyman in our conversation.

“Once you’re on the stage it’s just some floor boards in spite of it,” detailed Keith Richards in a 1999 Rolling Stones pre-show interview with me discussing his band in concert setting.

“And you’re not really aware of everything you are seeing. In a way, maybe when you write songs without even knowing it, you’re kinda saying, ‘Can I do this live?’  And so, in a way you add that in.  You don’t know if it’s gonna work, but I guess you keep in the back of your mind is ‘We’re making a record here.’  What happens if they all like it and we gotta play it live?  So, in a way, that maybe in the back of the mind it sets up the song to be playable on stage.”

Before the Stones embarked on their 1969 tour there was work to do for an album called Let It Bleed and preparations for the landmark undertaking. 

They Stones arrived in Los Angeles on October 17. They formally rehearsed in Burbank at the Warner Bros. soundstage recently used for the movie They Shoot Horses Don’t They. They also practiced material around Stephen Stills’ Studio City Laurel Canyon area home, formerly owned by actor Wally Cox and before him, the noted Hollywood Bowl Orchestra conductor Carmen Dragon and his musical family.

On November 8th I saw two concerts from the band at The Fabulous Forum in Inglewood, Ca. as they launched their 1969 US tour. The 11:30 pm-5:30 am experience debuted selections from Let It Bleed. That’s when I heard the Mick Jagger/Keith Richards composition and ABKCO copyright “Gimme Shelter” for the first time…

I remember when KMET-FM in Los Angeles first spun “Gimme Shelter” from an acetate they acquired just before Let it Bleed shipped to retail outlets. I was stunned.

Photographer and writer Heather Harris described the song as “an anthem of dread.” It fit the mood of many young people just then, a time of social and political unrest.

While in the Southland in 1969, and rehearsing for their tour, there was a press conference touting the Stones upcoming US trek at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel. The Rolling Stones returned, to the United States for their first tour in more than three years and camped in Southern California. In July 1966 radio station KHJ sponsored their concert at The Hollywood Bowl.

During their stay in L.A., Mick Taylor could be seen around town shopping for blues LP’s at Flash Records. Keith Richards was looking for clothes and albums. Record producer Denny Bruce took Keith over to Ed Pearl’s Ash Grove music club on Melrose Avenue. They had a record section run by Chris Peake. Keith forked out some big bucks for a rare 1965 The Cool Sounds of Albert Collins album. Denny Bruce managed Collins. 

Keith and Mick had gone to the Ash Grove to see Taj Mahal and Arthur "Big Boy" Crudup. They sat right in front of myself and Peter Piper behind a roped off area.  They also visited Thee Experience club on Sunset Boulevard operated by Marshall Brevetz. One night Bo Diddley was the headliner October 29th-November 2nd before the Stones embarked on their ’69 tour. Mick and Keith jammed with Bo on “Mona,” and were at Thee Experience to see Albert Collins.             

In November 1969, the Rolling Stones taped three song performances for The Ed Sullivan Show in Los Angeles at CBS Television City. Little Richard, clad in a green suit, was an audience member. In 1963 the Stones were an opening act for his UK tour. The Stones did “Love in Vain,” “Gimme Shelter” and “Honky Tonk Women.” Ella Fitzgerald was also on the program which delighted Charlie Watts.  During 1969, the Stones filmed some promotional spots for The Music Scene TV show that were lensed at the ABC Television Center in Hollywood but never broadcast.

The Stones tour began on November 7th in Ft. Collins Colorado and moved to California for two shows. The tour's second stop, in Inglewood at Southern California’s The (Fabulous) Forum, has achieved mythic status.

In arranging this Forum date, a previously set hockey match between the Los Angeles Kings and the New York Rangers was rescheduled -- at the request of owner Jack Kent Cooke who owned both the Forum venue and the Kings team.   The lengthy change over at the facility caused massive delays. The first scheduled show began very late in the evening with Terry Reid opening.  The second show didn’t get started until after 2:00 a.m. Due to time constraints, Terry Reid didn’t play the nightcap. 

After the Rolling Stones 1969 tour conclusion, the band had organized one more booking on Saturday, December 6th, for a free show that featured the Flying Burrito Brothers, Santana, Jefferson Airplane, and Grateful Dead (who chose not to perform) in a free thank you concert acknowledging their successful 1969 US tour that has always been reported as the disastrous Altamont free concert. 

And contrary to popular belief, many people who went to Altamont that afternoon and evening had a good time and left with a sense of wonder and delight.

Take into consideration actor/poet Harry E. Northup, who was at this infamous gig.

The Stones played "Brown Sugar" live on that stage for the first time during the Altamont appearance.  

Northup has made a living as an actor for over 30 yeas, acting in 37 films, including Mean Streets, Over the Edge (starring role), Taxi Driver & The Silence of the Lambs. Northup is that rare American actor who is also an accomplished poet with 9 books of poetry published.

“I was working in Hollywood as a waiter at the Old World Restaurant on the Sunset Strip,” emailed Harry.

“My first wife, Rita, & I had arrived in Los Angeles, from New York City on March 5, 1968. That day we got an apartment in Santa Monica & that night. I got a job as a waiter at the Old World. I came to L.A. to work in the movies. I worked at night & auditioned for movie & TV roles in the day. We hung out at the beach & went to every rock 'n roll concert that we could at the Santa Monica Civic, Palladium & Venice Beach.   

“Rita & I and our 10-month-old son, Dylan, drove to San Francisco, Ca., on the 5th day of December, 1969, in our blue & white Volkswagen van. It had a bed in the back. We slept in it in the Haight. The morning of the 6th, we ate at Brother Juniper's -- I remember seeing a black man, sitting next to us, with a cross cut into the top of his head -- & then we drove to Altamont. It was slow going when we got near the Speedway. We parked on the side of the road & walked a long way. We took turns carrying Dylan.

“At the concert, we met 5 long-haired surfer guys & 3 girls we knew from Santa Monica. It was a gray day. It seemed like half a million people were there.  We had driven up Pacific Coast Highway many times from Santa Monica to see the Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane, Janis Joplin, & the Paul Butterfield Blues Band, among others, in Golden Gate Park & other venues, but had never been at a gathering this large.

“Most of the time, we stayed on the perimeter & danced. My wife loved the Stones. She pranced & pointed & sang like Mick. She had seen the Beatles at Shea Stadium years before. (Harvey Keitel, who was my fellow student in Frank Corsaro's Method acting class in Manhattan, had introduced her to me at the one party that I had given in New York City in the five years that I lived there, from 1963-1968. He also introduced me to Martin Scorsese, who hired me to play The Rapist in his first feature, Who's That Knocking At My Door in 1968. Marty hired me to act in his first six features & first TV show. Bette Midler, by the way, sang Bob Dylan's ‘A Hard Rain's Gonna Fall’ at that same party.)

“We shared joints, people gave us food: fruit, juices, sandwiches. Our surfer friends danced, held Dylan. Once, I snaked my way down to the left side of the stage just as the Rolling Stones sang, ‘Jumpin' Jack Flash.’ It was electric. I saw a young woman, who kept trying to climb up onto the stage, & at each attempt, a Hells Angel, who wore a wolf's head kicked her in the face. She must have been a masochist, because she kept going back for more. I headed back to our group. We danced & had a wonderful time. The Stones & Santana were tremendous. We felt renewed.

“It was a long slow journey back to our VW. It wasn't until we were driving south on the 5 Freeway that we heard, on the radio, about the killing at Altamont. “In 1970, I saw Gimme Shelter, by the Mayles Brothers, which showed the violence in all its vividness. In 1973, I played the Vietnam vet who destroys his own homecoming in Scorsese's first masterpiece, Mean Streets. Scorsese utilized ‘Jumpin' Jack Flash’ on the soundtrack for Johnny Boy's (Robert De Niro) entrance into the bar.”

Gimme Shelter (1970), directed by David and Albert Maysles and Charlotte Zwerin, documented the Stones’ 1969 American tour and took its title from the song. A version of “Gimme Shelter” played over the closing credits.

“In Get Yer Ya-Ya's Out! we have actual audio (and, with the Maysles Brothers' footage, video) documentation for the ages of Rock and Roll becoming Rock, and more crucially the Sixties becoming the Seventies,” writer Gary Pig Gold injects.

“A popular musician's goal could no longer simply be to write and record the perfect three-minute hit. You now had to be able to perform it on stage, along with at least an hour's worth of additional material, in front of attentive, ever-growing arena-sized crowds. No longer could you rely solely on a record producer's control-board tricks, or an arrangement that need only be completely executed once across the nearest four tracks.

“The Rolling Stones, along with scant few other fellow British Invaders, had no problem bridging those decades and environments: They always were a band who made recordings of performances in the studio, and could easily replicate them -- and, as Ya-Ya's amply demonstrates, often ENHANCE them -- on the concert stage.

“That is key to the band's success, not to mention longevity, and with Get Yer Ya-Ya's Out! we can ear-witness the Rolling Stones totally maturing from England's Newest Hit Makers into The World's Greatest Rock and Roll Band.”

(Harvey Kubernik is the author of 20 books, including 2009’s Canyon Of Dreams: The Magic And The Music Of Laurel Canyon, 2014’s Turn Up The Radio! Rock, Pop and Roll In Los Angeles 1956-1972, 2015's Every Body Knows: Leonard Cohen, 2016's Heart of Gold Neil Young and 2017's 1967: A Complete Rock Music History of the Summer of Love. Sterling/Barnes and Noble in 2018 published Harvey and Kenneth Kubernik’s The Story Of The Band: From Big Pink To The Last Waltz. In 2021 the duo wrote Jimi Hendrix: Voodoo Child for Sterling/Barnes and Noble. 

Otherworld Cottage Industries in 2020 published Harvey’s Docs That Rock, Music That Matters. His Screen Gems: (Pop Music Documentaries and Rock ‘n’ Roll TV Scenes) is scheduled for December 2025 publication. Harvey wrote the liner notes to CD re-releases of Carole King’s Tapestry, The Essential Carole King, Allen Ginsberg’s Kaddish, Elvis Presley The ’68 Comeback Special, The Ramones’ End of the Century and Big Brother & the Holding Company Captured Live at The Monterey International Pop Festival.

During 2006 Kubernik appeared at the special hearings by The Library of Congress in Hollywood, California, discussing archiving practices and audiotape preservation. In 2017 he lectured at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland, Ohio, in their Distinguished Speakers Series. Amidst 2023, Harvey spoke at The Grammy Museum in Los Angeles discussing director Martin Scorsese's The Last Waltz music documentary.

Kubernik is in a documentary, The Sound of Protest now airing on the Apple TVOD TV broadcasting service. https://tv.apple.com › us › movie › the-sound-of-protest. Director Siobhan Logue’s endeavor features Smokey Robinson, Hozier, Skin (Skunk Anansie), Two-Tone's Jerry Dammers, Angélique Kidjo, Holly Johnson, David McAlmont, Rhiannon Giddens, and more.

Harvey is interviewed along with Iggy Pop, Bruce Johnston, Johnny Echols, the Bangles' Susanna Hoffs and Victoria Peterson, and the founding members of the Seeds in director Neil Norman’s documentary The Seeds - The Seeds: Pushin' Too Hard now streaming on Vimeo. In November 2025, a DVD/Blu-ray with bonus footage of the documentary will be released via the GNP Crescendo Company.

The New York City Department of Education in 2025 published the social studies textbook Hidden Voices: Jewish Americans in United States History. Kubernik’s 1976 interview with music promoter Bill Graham on the Best Classic Bands website Bill Graham Interview on the Rock ’n’ Roll Revolution, 1976, is included). The post Is Everybody Ready For The Next Band? The Rolling Stones 1969 US Tour Book By Richard Houghton   first appeared on Music Connection Magazine.

Grammy winner MixedByAli launches ‘EngineEars Direct’ music distribution platformService is powered by EMPIRE's white label distribution platform, Supply Chain
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AI Detection and Fan-Sourced Feedback: Is Coda Music Streaming’s Savior?Coda Music is a new streaming app offering a human-first platform, ensuring users can enjoy genuine music without AI interference.
The post AI Detection and Fan-Sourced Feedback: Is Coda Music Streaming’s Savior? appeared first on Hypebot.

Is a Song Just a “Data Object?” (Hint: No)An OpEd by Ian Temple of Soundfly about the way we interact with songs as code-based entries in a data library, and what a "song" really could be?
The post Is a Song Just a “Data Object?” (Hint: No) appeared first on Hypebot.

Milk & Honey expands in UK, adding Bigfoot Music Management and clientsAs a result of the pact, Jeremy Ford, Adam Beyer’s longtime manager, becomes Senior Vice President of Electronic for Milk & Honey globally
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Wyoming's Timber Canyon Studios Opens with Solid State Logic ORIGIN ConsoleAccording to news on Tuesday, "Veteran engineer, mixer, producer and musician Jim Roberts and his wife and business partner, Marie, have launched their new private music production facility, Timber Canyon Studios, in the Laramie Mountains of southeastern Wyoming. The studio’s control room is centred around a Solid State Logic ORIGIN 32-channel analogue mixing console and additionally features U Series DAW controllers, Fusion and THE BUS+ analogue processing units, as well as SSL 500 Series modules."

"The couple, who have known each other since high school, lived and worked in New York for 46 years before relocating their studio to Colorado in 2012. Several years ago, inspired in part by the famed Caribou Ranch in Colorado, they began planning a destination studio that could similarly attract major artists to the Front Range of the Rocky Mountains. The 2,100-square-foot recording studio, designed by renowned acoustician Sam Berkow, incorporates windows throughout the spacious tracking space and control room that offer expansive views of the mountains and herds of pronghorn that roam the 35-acre property."

ORIGIN: pushing the frontier of hybrid workflow"Jim Roberts, whose credits include work with Kansas, Steve Walsh, John Entwistle and Leslie West, among others, jumped at the chance to replace his SSL Matrix with the new ORIGIN console."

“I work in the hybrid world, but I come from an analogue world, and it felt very much like an SSL 4000. It was the right time, right price point, right feature set and right kind of routing, with an eye towards the hybrid workflow that I enjoy now.”

At Timber Canyon, he continues, “I wanted to mix analogue and do the recall in Pro Tools, and I wanted to have a tracking studio.” Having worked on various SSL analogue desks over the years, he says, “I still think there's tremendous value when you're tracking to be able to put your hands on everything at once, including the headphone mixes and the EQ — and ORIGIN has the EQ flavour you want on a board - SSL’s ‘242’ black knob design.”

A host of tools from Solid State LogicRoberts keeps all his SSL audio tools close at hand. “The ORIGIN’s centre section is configurable, so I chose to put the UF8 8-fader DAW controller in the centre section, directly above the analogue stereo group faders. That’s brilliant, because you're right in the sweet spot and you can control both legs of the journey, analogue and digital. And I've got the UF1 DAW controller on a rolling cart, right where I would once have had the tape machine auto locator, off to my right hand. With the integrated UF8 and UF1 directly on hand, I really don’t feel the need for a fully automated console. Then I have THE BUS+ and the Fusion in the left sidecar of the console with a 500 series ‘lunch box’ with two 611DYN modules.”

Choosing an SSL console for its sound quality is a given, but beyond the sonics, Roberts says, “Taking away all those physical switches that you had on the older SSL consoles, all those points of failure, and using logic and a digital matrix to control the analog routing is brilliant and is also infinite in terms of how you can group things and bus things. You can change up your workflow. The number of possible permutations far exceeds anything that I currently do, but it’s very reassuring knowing the console will allow me to take my workflow in any direction I like.”

He also appreciates SSL’s thoughtfulness in maintaining a vintage feel and retaining SSL’s console design legacy with the ORIGIN, while also enabling it to integrate seamlessly into today’s hybrid workflow. “The Unity gain button on each channel, on both sets of faders, makes it easier to break out stems from Pro Tools. A quick button push and everything's at 0 dB, and you can do that across 64 faders if you want to. To me, that shows that they're paying attention to modern workflows,” he says.

Realising the ultimate vision with no boundariesThe past three years, building the studio, a home and accommodation for two or three visitors, has been hard work. “But this was the ultimate vision, where we had no physical boundaries,” he says, noting that his previous studios were retrofits into existing spaces. He and his wife conferred with several architects and acousticians. “Sam sent his proposal, and we looked at each other and said, ‘Let's make this investment.’ Because, A, we want to get it right and, B, it's going to bring an air of legitimacy to the space.”

Laramie is well located for anyone travelling to the region, Roberts notes, with Denver Airport just a two-hour drive away or a short hop from Laramie’s regional airport. “We're just a few miles from the University of Wyoming and its music department, which was another reason why we picked this location. It's a big music town, with lots of live venues. There's plenty of music going on nearby, let alone regionally or nationally.”

Meanwhile, following the facility’s soft open in September, Roberts and a group of friends are now producing a third full-length record of the band they put together during the COVID pandemic. “That was just a little passion project. We're not going to tour or gig. I also have a second personal project with some friends of mine from around the country. We record cover tunes, and I license them. We put the songs out just for fun; it’s music therapy, which we probably all need!”The post Wyoming's Timber Canyon Studios Opens with Solid State Logic ORIGIN Console first appeared on Music Connection Magazine.