People & Music Industry

Mikko Gordon is a Grammy nominated mixing engineer and record producer based in London. This year he's nominated by the Music Producers Guild for Recording Engineer Of The Year and Album Of The Year along with Nigel Godrich for The Smile: ‘A Light for Attracting Attention’.

Now in their 15th year, the MPG Awards celebrate the best British talent working behind the scenes in the music industry. The winners are announced at the MPG Awards on 27th April 2023.
Music Producers Guild

Chapters
00:00 - Introduction
00:26 - Musical Background
01:07 - Getting Mentors
01:48 - Learning From Nigel Godrich
02:19 - Creative Engineering Decisions
03:52 - Hackney Road Studios
04:24 - Nominated Projects
05:27 - Other Projects
05:53 - Front-Of-House And Studio Engineering
06:38 - Forthcoming Projects

Mikko Gordon Biog

Over the course of his career, Mikko Gordon had the opportunity to work with many inspirational and talented bands and artists such as Thom Yorke and Jonny Greenwood (Radiohead), Arcade Fire, Idles, Gaz Coombes(Supergrass), Colouring and Island and sees his role as creatively facilitating them to hone their ideas into finished recordings. He's also worked with and been mentored by Radiohead Producer Nigel Godrich.

Mikko works out of his own studio, Hackney Road Studios, in Hoxton and lectures in music production at Goldsmiths, University of London where he designed the Goldsmiths Music Studios. Run by the music department, the studio operates as both an educational and commercial facility.

https://www.mikkogordon.com/

Sam Inglis Biog
Editor In Chief Sam Inglis has been with Sound On Sound for more than 20 years. He is a recording engineer, producer, songwriter and folk musician who studies the traditional songs of England and Scotland, and the author of Neil Young's Harvest (Bloomsbury, 2003) and Teach Yourself Songwriting (Hodder, 2006).

https://www.soundonsound.com

Catch more shows on our other podcast channels: https://www.soundonsound.com/sos-podcasts

Creators and Guests

Host
Sam Inglis
Editor In Chief Sam Inglis has been with Sound On Sound for more than 20 years. He is a recording engineer, producer, songwriter and folk musician who studies the traditional songs of England and Scotland, and the author of Neil Young's Harvest (Bloomsbury, 2003) and Teach Yourself Songwriting (Hodder, 2006).

What is People & Music Industry?

Welcome to the Sound On Sound People & Music Industry podcast channel. Listen to experts in the field, company founders, equipment designers, engineers, producers and educators.

More information and content can be found at https://www.soundonsound.com/podcasts | Facebook, Twitter and Instagram - @soundonsoundmag | YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/user/soundonsoundvideo

Sam Inglis
Hello and welcome to the sound on sound people and music industry podcast with me, Sam Ingalls. In this special episode, I'm talking to some of the people who've been nominated in the 2023 MPG Awards, starting with Mikko Gordon. Mikko is nominated in the category of Best Engineer. Welcome Mikko, great to meet you. Thank you. Thanks for having me. So for those of us who are not familiar with the name Mikko Gordon, can you just tell us a little bit about your background and how you got into engineering?

Mikko Gordon
I studied music at Goldsmiths University of London and I was always a guy in bands who would be recording us and figuring out how to do things.

And when I graduated, I realized that's where my passion lay in kind of production and Just started from there. Um, I'm self taught really. Um, but then later on in my career, I've been, uh, mentored by producer Nigel Godrich. And I've also learned from other people like, uh, mastering engineer, Mandy Parnell and also Chad Blake.

I'm gonna say because it's a big step from having a passion for engineering to actually being able to make a living doing it How did you manage to get these amazing mentors into your life? I mean, I would say that most people who are working in music They all realize and know how difficult it has been Been to have a career because they've been through that themselves.

I've found that people are often surprisingly generous with their time and want to pass some of that learning back. And, you know, that's something I do myself now. You know, I've had many, many assistants and interns and people. I want to try and share some of the things that I've learned and kind of pass some of that on.

Amazing. And Nigel Godrich in particular is, is, he doesn't do very many interviews and he's quite sort of reticent about talking about his work in the press. What were the main things that you learned from Nigel? I would say main things is just his aesthetic and his approach and how he, Thinks about music, you know, more kind of higher level concepts of watching him work like that.

You know, we've never really sat down and discussed what preamp is going to work, you know, but just more the aesthetic of music and what we're trying to achieve. Interesting, because I noticed on your bio you very much describe yourself as an engineer and producer and when you talk about engineering, you're talking about your role as a creative facilitator.

I guess you must see engineering as a creative act as much as a technical one. Yeah, absolutely. And I feel like often, You want the kind of recording process to be invisible to the act of music making in the studio. And you know, when you have an idea and people want to try something out, I find it terrible if you're then stopping and going, okay, hold on, we're going to shoot out these five microphones and see which one will sound best.

Like everything's ready to go. Everything's patched in. Everything's already sounding like a record and people can just play and kind of try things out. So can you give us a few examples of some of the kind of creative engineering things that you've done in the studio? Creative techniques or things that happened in the moment where you were able to sort of elevate something by doing something a bit different?

I work quite a lot with tape now, you know, I was a bit too young to kind of learn it first time round and grew up kind of working digitally, but now have got really into tape and tape loops. And I find that they can be very interesting way of capturing. Snippets of music or almost like sampling ideas.

That is just a very different. Way of doing it sampling into a computer for example And do you do that with a conventional studio master tape recorder or do you use looping devices or what? Yeah, no, just like with a you know, two inch 16 or 24 track tape machine Tell us a little bit about your own studio because you've got your own place in east london Yes, Hackney Road Studios, uh, we've got two rooms there, a bigger tracking space with a 24 channel E series SSL, and then another kind of mixing production space with a Neve 66 broadcast desk.

Cool, so how long has this place been in existence? The studio's been in existence probably about 10 years already. I got involved, uh, with Sean Woodlock, my partner there, about six years ago. So tell us a little bit about the projects that you've done that have earned you this nomination because one of those is actually nominated for best album as well.

Uh, yes. Yeah. That's the smile record, which is, uh, Tom York and Johnny Greenwood from Radiohead and then drummer Tom Skinner. I mean, that was obviously an incredible record to work on. I've worked with Tom, especially for quite a long time now, uh, Tom York, and he is just such an incredible, talented musician and person is.

Just fantastic to be in the same room, really. So was that done at your studio? No, that was done at Nigel Godrich's studio and then also at Johnny's place. And what was your role in the project? I was engineer for that. So yeah, I was making sure everything was captured and sounding good. That album was recorded all to tape as well.

And are you mainly a tracking engineer or do you do mix as well? I do mix a lot, uh, this record was, uh, mixed by Nigel though, though I did, uh, assist him a bit with that. And what else has been on your calendar this year? I, well, I've been continuing doing work for The Smile, so I've just mixed, uh, two live releases for them, uh, the other one, Europe Live Recordings, I think is just coming out any day now.

And that was basically, I went on tour with them and mixed Front of House and then also recorded all the shows and we kind of put the best bits together and I mixed that, uh, for a release. It's quite unusual to have someone who's both a Front of House engineer and a studio engineer. Do you find that the two disciplines sort of inform each other?

Yeah, I think that's something that used to be more common in, like, you read a lot about that people in the 70s making a record and then going out on tour, and these days, not that common. I mean, for me, whether you're mixing something in the studio or live, The goal is the same. It's to like understand The essence of the song and translate that for the listener.

It's just the tools are different and Once you have understand the toolkit, I actually think that the end goal is is very very similar. Excellent Well, congratulations on the nomination. That's fantastic news and very well earned and best of luck on the night Um, it's been brilliant talking to you. Okay.

Thanks so much Anything you can tell us about what's coming up for you in the near future or is it all top secret? You A lot of the worlds I inhabit tend to be very secretive But I am working with idols at the moment and that's been super fun and looking forward to doing more with them Wow, looking forward to that.

Fantastic. Thanks so much Mikko. It's been wonderful to meet you. Best of luck. Thank you very much Thanks for having me Thank you for listening and be sure to check out the show notes page for this episode where you'll find further Information along with web links and details of all the other episodes And just before you go, let me point you to the soundonsound.

com forward slash podcasts website page, where you can explore what's playing on our other channels.