Just as Mechanica Mastering was being relaunched in March 2024, I received a message from Gareth McGrillen (Pendulum, Knife Party) asking if I wanted to get involved in a metal project he was working on. They were after a big and dramatic sound – proper rock-opera vibes. After sending me a hot mix of the first single, he said, “It needs to be THIS loud and make it sound fucking ace”.
Challenge Accepted.
The track was “Under My Skin” and the band was Calva Louise. Gareth had been writing and producing it with the band and co-producer Mazare over winter, and it was going to be the first release off an 11-track project that was in its infancy.
Building a Loudness Platform
When someone approaches and says they need a project LOUD, it starts a lot of obvious and oftentimes boring conversations. Just how LOUD are we talking? What about the dynamics? You know it’ll be normalised down? LUFS? dBTP? SPOTIFY??? Thankfully, both Gareth and the band know their shit and are fully aware of the consequences and decision-making around making a LOUD piece of work. Final WAV sound is all that matters – not the distros.
So instead, the conversation was around where we wanted that loudness to come from. Should we lean into the low-end? Do we want to push Jess’s vocals (and the midrange) super hard? Do we want the whole thing quite squashed or address dynamics “à la carte“?
‘Under the Skin’ was going to help us in those discussions. For a metal band, they bring a mix of delicate and IN YOUR FUCKING FACE – a lot of filthy guitar chuggs mixed against gentle dainty piano parts, all against a very dynamic lead vocal style, shifting from soft sweet singing to guttural power-roars; a shift Zuul would be proud of. But this is Calva’s sonic signature – a wild and transnational concoction of influences that separates them from many of their peers.
The tracks’ layering and competing production elements meant it was a challenge to tweak one thing without it dramatically impacting another. So we made the call to stereo-stem everything out to Drums/Guitars/Bass/Vox/Backing Vox/Production, so I had a bit more control over the track. The drums and guitars were pretty well-behaved already, but the bass and vocals needed some more dynamic control and a touch of EQ to pull them out of the mix more. I split out Jess’s lead vocal between the singing and screaming parts and applied a different dynamic chain to each. This allowed me a lot more control, so I could really push that loudness without masking intricate production elements or injecting either distortion or really killing the dynamics.
The instrumental mix then came out of the DAW and into the desk. My TC Finalizer goes first, utilising its M/S encoder to fire into a CLM Dynamic EQ in Mid-Side. This allows be to push the track’s stereo image a bit more without causing mega phase issues. Next, a touch of bus compressions from the faithful SSL Bus Comp (slow attack, fast release to allow the bass some breathing room) before coming back into the DAW chain. This consisted of a touch of Sonnox saturation, a bit of peak chopping from the Tokyo Dawn Clipper and HF limiter before hitting the Fabfilter Pro-L2.
We ran a couple of revisions to get the right balance of loudness and dynamics, get Jess’s vocals sitting nicely and play with the width a bit more. But now we knew how we were going to work going forward.
Platform Complete
Although I knew they wanted this big, dramatic approach, it was only once I saw the first video that I fully appreciated the immense world and lore Calva were beginning to craft around this project, starting here:
Workflows and Deadlines
After the release of ‘Under the Skin’, the next year brought a series of singles and music videos building an episodic story that would lead into the album release. Not only is Jess an incredible musician, she ALSO taught herself CGI and green screen techniques to be able to create the music videos she wanted with a mountain of help from Ben, Alizon and a bunch of other friends. This was peak DIY, but the results are Hollywood.
However, the biggest challenge for us on the music side was trying to keep a consistency over a decently long period. The project was managed through WhatsApp chats and Audiomover sessions. With Gareth on tour in the US, Mazare in Europe and me in sunny Oxfordshire, we all ended up as slaves to the notification buzzer and jumping to work whenever we could get everyone available. This included many late-night sessions as the label deadline crept closer, with a few under some stunning northern lights…
On my side, each track went through a similar workflow. I’d receive a set of stems, bring them through the chains and make the relevant adjustments. If everyone was awake, we’d stick Audiomovers on the tail end of Pro Tools and everyone would tune in.
Typically, mastering an album would mean bringing all 11 tracks into a session and being able to make both macro and micro mastering decisions across the work. But considering the stem mastering element and receiving the tracks over weeks and months, I’d have to pay close attention to making sure the project glued together come the deadline.
The Releases
The band decided on 6 singles, all getting a video to tell the story of ‘Edge of the Abyss’, with a possibility of more. The final album is 11 tracks and 40 mins. The album was prepped for Digital, CD and Vinyl and has been received incredibly positively, with some lovely reviews in Kerran, Distorted Sound and many others.
With a whole summer of gigs and a US/UK tour on the horizon, here’s hoping the album gets all the love and attention it deserves.
Watch the videos on YouTube:
Under The Skin
La Corriente
W.T.F
Lo Que Vale
Aimless
Impeccable
Tunnel Vision
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