Tony Draper talks favourite studios and ‘game-changing’ Neve gear

UK-based producer and mixing engineer, Tony Draper recently sat down with Headliner for a conversation about his accomplished career to date, his relationship with recording studios, and the Neve gear that has proved to be a gamechanger in his workflow over the years… 

Draper dials into a Zoom call with Headliner from his mix room up in Ormskirk in leafy West Lancashire; it’s a characteristically stormy April day, and he’s eager to discuss all things music.

Starting his musical journey as a classically trained keys player, Draper was playing guitar in bands throughout his teens and quickly realised his calling. Discovering his best route into the industry could be through recording or working in live sound, he picked up a Mackie Spike two-channel interface at just 15, and started recording himself on Logic. He soon moved to recording other musicians and his love for the craft began to flourish, eventually ending up at the world-renowned LIPA where he enrolled in a Sound Technology degree.

“LIPA is amazing,” Draper says, recalling his humble beginnings. “They give you free access to the studios once you're enrolled in the first year, along with an incredible mic selection and loads of outboard and nice consoles. You get up to speed really quickly, so by the time I got to the middle of third year I was already working at a couple of other studios doing the karaoke sessions that no one else wanted to do. I eventually got in at a place called Parr Street Studios, which unfortunately since we last spoke has gone – the building got sold out from under us.”

Draper cites the biggest help of his career as coming from Chris Taylor, the former owner and manager of Parr Street, and now the owner of Kempston Street Studios – its new home in Liverpool city centre: “We had this lovely symbiotic relationship for a good number of years, where he was calling me and I was doing engineering sessions for Parr street, but then I was also bringing in my own clients,” he laments fondly. “That was my first introduction to Neve, because the studio had a vintage VR60 console which was a beast. The first time you ever get let loose on one of those consoles, it’s a day you never really forget. You think to yourself this is as good as it gets, and it was. I spent a good 10 or 11 years on and off in front of that console.”

Fast forward to today, and Draper has started working with a London-based producer called Simon Byrt, having mixed two albums that he was involved in producing over the last few months.

“One of which is for an Icelandic singer songwriter called Emilíana Torrini,” he reveals. “She’s made some amazing tracks and she was on The Lord of the Rings soundtrack. I mixed her album at the back end of last year, and the first single came out a couple of weeks ago.

“Another project is for Kiiōtō, which is Lou Rhodes from the Manchester-based band Lamb and her partner Rohan. Their first single just came out a couple of weeks ago as well. There's also a band called Kalandra, who fly a little bit under the radar here in the UK, but they are big in Europe. They are huge in Norway and are signed to the biggest label in Norway. They do the most stunning atmospheric, traditional Norse mixed with pop and metal. I've been working with them for probably 12 or 13 years or more, but they are doing new material now that I'm mixing. That’s absolutely incredible stuff. So there's a couple of really great projects there that are going to come out soon; they sound great and I'm really proud of them.”

Having worked in a number of different studios over the years, starting with the iconic Parr Street, Headliner was curious to know if Draper has any particular favourite locations to work from.

He explains how, somewhat surprisingly, music creators are in fact spoiled for choice in the Northwest of England, with the new Kempston Street in Liverpool city centre equipped with an API console, The Grand in Clitheroe with its baby SSL facility, and The Arch Recording Studio in Southport – a huge converted church with a stunning live room – to name just a few.

“In terms of overall favourites, there's a studio in Norway called Ocean Sound, which is just outside a town called Ålesund,” he says. “Last time I was there they had a VR console, so I was very much in my comfort zone. As you sat at the console, to the left hand side, there's a door straight out onto the beach. It's this tiny little island that you have to drive over about eight bridges and 16 tunnels to get to. And then when you're there, it's just like Nordic paradise – snow on the mountains and northern lights and everything you can imagine. That's an incredible place to make music.”

With the majority of Draper’s work falling into the mixing category these days, meaning he mostly works out of his own mix room, his tracking dates are not as plentiful as they used to be.

With this fact in mind, he has been able to acquire a small but carefully-curated collection of outboard gear, and has integrated that into his setup. He has been using Neve, including their renowned preamps and recording consoles, to work on a large number of projects throughout his professional career, and continues to do so.

“You've got to track through a great front end,” he asserts. “As soon as you walk into a studio and they've got a pair of 1073s, you know you're going to be absolutely fine. In The Grand up in Clitheroe they've got a pair of 1084s racked; you just know that that's going to be your main stereo pair or vocal tracking route, and everything's going to be fine.

“In my own setup, the latest addition is the 1073SPX-D interface. I'm lucky enough to be a tester for Neve and so although it's only just come out, I've had mine since late October. It has become my main interface and has changed everything. In my mix setup, I always think that the most important thing is to make sure what you’re hearing is accurate, so I've invested really heavily in converters and have had some really good ones. When the SPX-D arrived, I plugged it in and ran it up to my monitors. Straight away I thought it might be better than anything else I've got, just as a converter for listening through.”

Neve’s new 1073SPX-D has become Draper’s main digital to analogue converter, and he hasn’t looked back: “It's got this low-mid thing without losing the top end. Everything’s a little bit more full and balanced without sacrificing the top and bottom extension that you expect to hear. There's just something about it that I couldn't put my finger on for ages; I was flipping back and forth but just always ended up going back to the SPX-D. I’ve used it on all my recent projects, even if it's just as a monitoring DAC, but on a lot of them it's actually been used as a converter. It really is a dream box.”

Most recently Draper has been dipping his toe into Dolby Atmos, yet like many others, is somewhat dubious about its emergence as a listening format.

“I think it's a little bit of the wild west at the moment,” he says in earnest. “It seems to be a race to the bottom in terms of who can pay the least for the spatial mix that’s required to get onto an Apple playlist. So hopefully that doesn't end up being too disruptive. It's tricky, because the labels aren't going to see any bigger return on investment for spending another £3,000 or £4,000 to do Atmos mixes. But it certainly is exciting to see where that’s going.”