Bryan Martin-Mastering Engineer

 

I began as a studio rat in NYC in 1986 at the now defunct Platinum Island Recording studios at 676 Broadway just north of Houston. At that time, the Village was still populated by artists and musicians, and the East Village was riddled with after-hours clubs, crackheads, and cheap 3AM victuals. Within the blur of pre-dawn coffees at Dantes, before I grabbed the uptown train to my "apartment" (the kitchen was a toaster-oven in the bathroom) at the Breton Hall, and 9AM sessions, I managed to work with many of the great engineers of that generation, and I took a lot of notes.

Many years later, in the new millenia, I was mixing an album with Sam Hyman, and it happened to be his 40th birthday, so we walked over to Cono's O'Pescatore for dinner. After a couple martinis and some stuffed eggplant, he asked me: "why I had come to New York". I replied, "to learn how to make records". And he said, "So I guess you got what you came for". And I realized he was right.

New York City has an incredible energy, and for a time it motivates and drives you.
But after so many years, you start feeding it. And that is when it is time to leave. So after more than 20 years and thousands of miles and songs, I have shriveled up into middle age, forsaken the ancestral home, (though I will always be a card-carrying New Yorker), and have taken up mastering, audio design, and fatherhood. So when you see all those records scrolling by, with some covered in more of my blood than others, realize that I have had a various and sundry hand in all of them. But what I am really trying to communicate is:
at this stage of my life, I know what music is supposed to sound like.

Listen well.

 

 

 

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Sonosphere