Producer Profile

YOU CAN HAVE THE BEST EQUIPMENT AND BAND MEMBERS, AND A GUARANTEED GOLD RECORD READY TO GO – BUT IF YOU DON’T FEEL COMFORTABLE IN THE STUDIO, YOUR MUSIC IS GOING TO SUFFER. THAT’S WHY SAFE RECORDING SPACES, LIKE IN MELBOURNE, ARE SO IMPORTANT.

Creativity can be difficult at the best of times – particularly if you’re the kind of person that pours their heart and soul into their work. But most artists need a place where they feel completely at ease in order to really dig those emotional depths. In Jessicca Bennet’s experience, those spaces were few and far between for underrepresented groups in the recording industry.

Women, LGBTQI+, gender non‑conforming individuals and so on, would enter a session without knowing if it was a safe space, or a hub of outdated attitudes that would mess with their mental health and stem the creative process. These people needed a place where they felt safe and comfortable – thus, Love Shack Studios was born!

Why is the safe space philosophy so important to you?

Truthfully, I found it quite anxiety‑provoking to work in someone else’s space. It was quite debilitating for me, and I came very close to giving it all away. I feel like a lot of that came from being a queer, gender non‑conforming woman in a heteronormative industry. You get so sick of all the discrimination, and it’s something I had to deal with, and witness, for many years. It made perfect sense for me to create an all‑inclusive space where people can focus on their music without feeling judged, threatened, patronised or harassed. Is that sort of behaviour still prevalent in the audio industry?

While we are slowly making progress in the industry, sadly these attitudes and behaviours are still alive and well. I have many examples. I’ve come across some men in the industry that have genuinely made an effort to counter these discriminations, and they have good intentions and I really appreciate their support. But on the flipside, I’ve also encountered men who have been more opportunistic and presented as a ‘knight in shining armour’, here to save the world – but it’s a charade; an opportunity to gain business. How does that impact the creative process for a band or artist?

The effect is that people still don’t feel like they can be themselves openly. It creates a lot of internalised rejection, which harms their psychological wellbeing, and it’s really demotivating and so hard to work on a creative project when you feel like you’re worthless and don’t belong. Safe spaces like Love Shack have lead to people feeling more comfortable with opening up, being themselves and sharing their vulnerabilities through their life’s work. Speaking of the music, a lot of the artists that come through Love Shack write songs with very prominent dynamics that explore a range of frequencies. Where do you start with music like that?

I like to start with the low end, personally, and make sure the drums and bass are tight and working well together. Drums and bass tend to go hand in hand. They are the rhythmic backbone of a band, and I aim to give them their own space, but I also make sure that they are moving together and complementing one another.

These days, I’m working hard on depth of field, using a combination of EQ, compression, panning and effects to place instruments and parts accordingly, because it’s important for each instrument to have its own space in the frequency spectrum and stereo field. It varies from track to track, but some key frequencies that I tend to focus on initially are around the 50‑hertz, 80‑hertz, 100‑hertz and 330‑hertz area. In terms of dynamics, contrasting dips and peaks are very effective. Are there any other tricks with that style of music?

One way to catch the listener’s attention and draw them to another instrument or part is by creating little inconsistencies in a mix – for example, a ping pong delay coming through a vocal reverb panned further out to the sides. Other than that, volume automation, EQ and variation in effects are helpful tools to make something stand out. For example, you might use a slightly different EQ on a chorus vocal as well as boosting it in volume and using a different effect. You’ve also worked with some really full-sounding, gritty, ‘90s-esque indie-punk outfits like Face Face. How do you structure that kind of dirty wall-of-sound in that scenario?

I used every trick I knew when it came to mixing. A lot of parallel compression on the drums, gated reverbs, and I constructed walls of guitar by cutting up the original takes and running them through EQ’s and effects to change the timbre. There was a lot of distortion, compression and limiting on vocals, as well as a lot of volume automation and double vocals. For tracking, I mostly used dynamic mics because it was a live recording in the one room. The only exception was drum overheads where I used a couple of condensers.