p 32 Emily Lazar - The Lodge

a bit of an old boys club. The goodnews is that it won’t be for long! Wehave got some great engineers comingup the ranks over here at The Lodge,some of whom are, of course, female.What would you say are the attributes ofa successful mastering engineer?A great set of ears, a strong sense offocus, and an intuitive musical sense.Anyone can buy fancy equipment,but it is the person who is twistingthe knobs that makes the creativemagic happen. Music is a language,and unfortunately not all engineersare able to communicate effectivelywith artists. Being a great engineernot only means being able to hearsubtle differences in timbre but, moreimportantly, it means being able tohear, and then translate, what an artist is emoting. Once you understandthe artist’s vision, the rest is relatively easy.Describe some of your current projects.Sonic Youth 5.1—we did Dirty, this special deluxe remastered releaseof the original master—it sounds amazing, and it has all these B-sides that are the formulations for the songs, so it’s kinda cool to hearthe band go from rehearsal space to a song. So we did that, and nowThe Lodge’s analogtape machinesinclude AmpexATR-102 1" (below)and Studer A80 RC1/2" recorders.we’re doing Goo, which has the DVDsurround-sound tracks to accompanythe video. I just finished DavidBowie’s Reality, and NatalieMerchant’s The House Carpenter’sDaughter—great record, she did thiscollection of folk music—just beautiful;and then Lou Reed, we didNYC Man,it’s a compilation of twoCDs. We did the All-AmericanRejects record, it’s almost platinumnow; and we just did two Madonnatracks, Missy Elliot remixes ofMadonna stuff that are going oncompilations.What’s a typical day like for you?They’re never the same. Never.That’sthe best thing about it. Some basicthings stay the same, like you have tofinish whatever it is you’re working on.You have deadlines—big deadlinestoo, sometimes, which is terrifyingly stressful. But you neverknow who’s coming in the door, and every day there’s a new client.And I have a lot of return clients, and that’s sometimes fun becauseyou catch up on what’s happened since the time you last saw them.There could be a PlayStation tournament in the other room, it couldbe rap mania … it’s never the same, which is what’s great about it.It’s anything but boring.36 October 2003 I homerecordingmag.com