Several decades ago a young engineer left Italy for New York, looking to enter the studios of Manhattan. These days, Marc Urselli is a respected producer, recording engineer, and front of house live sound mixer. He works out of New Yorkâs EastSide Sound as Chief House Engineer and has done sessions as varied as U2, Esperanza Spalding, John Zorn, Laurie Anderson, Lou Reed, and Foo Fighters, as well as having worked extensively with Hal Willner before Halâs passing this year. Willner was famous for his unique, multi-artist tribute albums, and his final production, Angelheaded Hipster: The Songs Of Marc Bolan And T. Rex, was engineered by Marc and saw release in August this year.
How does a Swiss-Italian guy end up in New York working at an established studio?
I got to New York in 1999 and sought out an internship here, thanks to a common connection. It took me another year until I actually got the internship. In the late â90s a lot was happening in studios. When I finally got my internship â making coffee, cleaning toilets, and vacuuming the floors â I basically stuck around 15 to 18 hours a day until I could prove my knowledge and value. I already had been running a studio in Italy for several years, but you canât come to New York and say, âI already know this.â Youâve got to show people what you know. I started vacuuming floors and pouring coffee for clients, and then I started assisting on sessions, eventually engineering. Now Iâm the Chief House Engineer and I manage the studio.
EastSide Sound is known for having lots of isolation possibilities when tracking.
Yes. And I love it. Itâs my favorite way to work now. I got so used to the isolation and the cleanliness of tracks that I get, without sacrificing the âvibeâ of people playing together. Itâs something I wouldnât want to sacrifice. I donât want to have a studio where everyone has to track one at a time. Here they can still track together and look at each other, because thereâs perfect line-of-sight with at least four out of the six booths in the live room. Everyone can record together and play to each other, and I get clean tracks out of it. Of course this is a huge asset when it comes to editing, which people do a lot of these days. Theyâre so used to having options that they might say, âWe should try this without drums.â And here you can actually mute the drums, unless of course itâs a super-loud drummer where youâre going to hear some of it through the doors. When I book studio time in other studios, right after console make and brand, iso booths are one of the first things I look for and ask about.
To see what isolation they have available?
Yeah. It obviously depends on who I work with. I did lots of recordings with a great producer, the late Hal Willner. We were tracking the last record [AngelHeaded Hipster: The Songs of Marc Bolan & T. Rex] all over the U.S. Hal wanted to be in the live room, but he didnât want to sit next to the drums. The first thing Iâd look at is, âIs there a drum booth? Are we going to have horns or strings on the session that we can isolate?â And so onâŚ
Hal Willner had a very hands-off approach with artists.
The first session for the AngelHeaded Hipster album I did with Hal, I made an assumption: I assumed he was old-school. I mean this in the best possible way; I love old-school. I assumed he wanted everyone set up in the same room, so thatâs what I did. He came in and was not down with that at all. I moved the drums into the drum booth. No problem. That was in L.A. at Studio A of The Village Studios. Their drum booth in A is pretty small, but the drummer was cool and made it work. That was a session with Nick Cave. From then on, I knew what to book when I looked for a studio for a Hal session.
One of his fortes is gathering people and seeing what they make.
That was definitely one of Halâs fortes. Putting people together who he knew are amazing, and that you didnât necessarily think would work together. He always made it work beautifully. Hal was a huge influence and mentor to me and for how I work now.
Do you work with a lot of different producers?
I do. Iâm not exclusive to anyone. Hal was one of my favorites because of his method of work and his incredible way to be around artists. He was really special and unique. Like I said, old-school in the best possible ways. I love that about producers, and I aspire to be that kind of producer when I get older.
Youâve worked a lot with John Zorn. I bet thatâs a different experience.
Completely different! We stopped counting, but by last year we had done 100 plus records together. You can definitely say I work a lot with him! Heâs an incredible artist. I guess you can call him a producer, but heâs a different kind of a producer. Heâs not a producer, in Hal Willnerâs way. Hal was very hands off, whereas Zorn is very hands on. Heâs very unique and obviously an incredible musician. Zorn is like one of those movie directors who writes a specific part for an actor. He writes scores, knows who the score is for, and he writes it for their persona, their ability, their sensibility, and their techniques. If he were to write the same score for two different violin players, he might even write each one differently. Thatâs a really unique thing about Zorn. He writes with musicians in mind so that he can get the most out of the musician. He always pushes everyone past what they think is their best. Some projects are more open and free, and on other projects he knows exactly what he wants, and he wants it that way. Heâs obviously open to suggestions, but heâs one of those cats who knows before he walks into the studio where he wants to go and what he wants to achieve. A very specific vision. He works to get that out of the musicians, and Iâm there to make sure it translates in the way he expects to hear it. Zorn is very good at psychology too. I remember one session where the artist wanted to start with the hardest tune [in order] to get it out of the way. Zorn was like, âNo, weâre not doing that. Letâs start with one of the easier scores instead.â I asked him why he didnât want them to do the hardest one first, and he said that if they tried the hardest one first, it would take so much time, and it would affect their performance for the rest of the day. If you do the easy one first, theyâll have a morale boost, so to speak, and feel more relaxed and not under the microscope. The other thing he does is: Letâs say heâs not happy with one thing. He will first mention five or six other things that he really liked before he says what he doesnât like. Theyâll feel great about him liking it, and then theyâll listen the last thing he wants them to change, but theyâre still hyped-up about what he liked of that performance so they donât feel criticized. These kinds of subtle techniques are one of the many lessons I learned from him. Thatâs one of the many ways he gets the most out of everyone.
Do you feel with a long-running relationship like that that you intuitively capture his compositions?
Yes. After more than ten years together, we donât have to say much. I know what he wants before he walks in. I set up ahead of time before his sessions, because I know how he likes to place musicians. Thereâs never that question. Bringing it back to the isolation here: The first time we worked together, Zorn walked in and said we should record everyone in the same room. I said, âI think you would benefit from having everyone in isolation. This studio has that capability. Why donât we try it?â He was very reluctant. I did the same with Lou Reed. I said, âLook, letâs start tracking this way [with iso booths]. If you donât like it, we will not charge you for any of those hours. Weâll bring all the musicians back into the live room, and youâll start paying when we get rolling.â That way they donât feel any pressure about wasting time. Both Lou Reed and John Zorn went with that, and they were happy with the results. Neither ever went back. I facilitate Zornâs method of work, in terms of knowing what to expect from him, as well as knowing what heâs going to want from the musicians, in terms of microphone choices. Heâs not technically knowledgeable to the point where heâll say what mics he wants â except for the sax, of course â but Iâll know, from trying different mics, what he wants on different instruments. Even if theyâre not my primary choice. For example, Zorn and I have never seen eye-to-eye on kick drums. When I start mixing for him, Iâll put the kick drum where I want it, then I take it down 6 dB and I know thatâs the âZorn level.â After years and years, you know and do these things automatically.
EastSide Sound History
When Lou Holtzman opened this studio in 1972, musicians were afraid to come downtown. There were a lot of drugs down here in the â70s. All the studios at the time were in midtown. This actually was the first downtown studio in the city. It was definitely the first one below Houston Street and one of only two below 14th Street â the other one being Jimi Hendrixâs Electric Lady. This whole area was like zombie territory in the â70s. Now itâs super gentrified and unaffordable, which is a problem for us, of course, because we are renting. But weâve been hanging in here close to 50 years now. We moved into this ânewâ space in 2001. Before 9/11 we had a bigger building two blocks away, with three studios on three floors. Two were large control rooms. One had a large live room attached to it. In the upstairs mix room we had a Harrison Series 10. Not this same exact console, but the same model. Then downstairs we had a Neve, serial number 13, actually (modded and with Flying Faders). That console sounded incredible. We had another studio upstairs, a small production suite. In 2001, after 9/11, we downsized to this facility, which is self-contained on one floor. We still have two studios, but Studio B is a production suite with an iso booth, while Studio A is a control room with a live room and six iso booths. After a few failed partnerships with people who almost ran the studio into the ground, Lou took back the lease and Iâve been helping him run the place. But we are looking to partner up with somebody so we can keep the studio alive. www.eastsidesound.nyc
The great thing about long-running working relationships like this is that the process is much easier for both of you.
Exactly. You take all the guessing out of it. We know exactly what we want. We have a very close relationship. We donât eat when we work, which is not necessarily my choice, but he likes it that way. Itâs nonstop from when he walks in to when he walks out. We record and mix very, very quickly. Very quickly. Thatâs how he does 100 records in ten years. Weâve never spent more than four days on one record. Iâd say that the average is around two and a half or three days for a record. Itâs usually one, or maximum two, days of tracking, and then one, or maximum a day and a half, of mixing. Thatâs really it. There have been cases where we mixed a record in five hours. The last Mary Halvorson record [Paimon: Book of Angels Volume 32] was recorded in a day and mixed in five hours. Needless to say, I start mixing when Iâm recording. Not printing, but I start getting my sounds when Iâm recording so that then, when theyâre done recording, Iâm already 70 percent there. Thatâs why it only takes five hours.
With the Harrison Series 10 console here being recallable, you can have everything ready to go.
Absolutely. Everything I do here is saved, so when John comes back a week later, I can recall the mix, or whatever tracking settings I had, and start from there.
Iâm assuming this is all being tracked digitally, at this point?
Recording is all to Pro Tools these days. We have two tape machines in storage, but nobody wants to pay for tape. I record everything in Pro Tools these days.
I think people romanticize tape a lot, but when you tell people itâs $370 a reel...
I agree. That immediately puts the tape conversation to rest. I have had that conversation, âSure, we have tape machines in storage. Are you ready to pay $375 for 15 minutes of music?â That usually stops that.
Do people ever approach you and look at the isolated style of recording for jazz-ish sessions and feel itâs incorrect?
Itâs happened a couple of times, but I donât get that a lot. On the first session I did for this great vinyl-only audiophile jazz label â Newvelle Records, for whom Iâve engineered and mixed over 30 records â they wanted to record in the same room and I talked them into trying it my way. People trust me. Honestly, Iâve only gotten compliments, even on classical recordings. Comments such as, âYour classical music recordings sound so close and palpable. You feel like youâre right up there with the musician.â That is definitely my style; close micâing, even when I do classical music ensembles. Iâll still have room mics, but I spot mic as much as I can. I like that level of precision; of hearing everything. I got that partly from Zorn, actually. He wants to hear every subtlety of the instrument. He doesnât even use room mics anymore. Thatâs another example of how you get to know what an artist wants after youâve worked with them for a long time. At the beginning with Zorn, I used to always set up close and room mics. After a couple of years of realizing that they never got added into the mix because he didnât like them, I stopped setting them up all together. He likes everything up close so you can hear the bow on the strings and sounds like that. Iâve carried that over to a lot of other classical recordings that I do. I did one with ICE, the International Contemporary Ensemble, that was all tracked together in the same room with no isolation, because the classical guys like it that way. But I still did close mic everything and mixed it together with the room mics.
Zornâs taken you on the road for live sound mixing too.
Yes. Live sound is something Iâve been doing since the very beginning, at the same time that I started tinkering in recording studios, around â94 or â93. When I moved to New York, I stopped for a minute simply because I didnât have any contacts here. Then I resumed around 2002 and did a tour with Eliane Elias at that time. That brought me back in touch with the live music world. I do both to this day, and I love doing both. Diversity keeps things interesting. I did live sound for Lou Reed for seven years, and also worked with him in the studio until he died. That was being on the road with him about 30 percent of the year. Iâve toured with The Beach Boys, The Black Crowes, and Marianne Faithfull. I still work with people like Mike Patton [Tape Op #53] and John Zorn live. Lately itâs been mostly studio work, but I still do a good percentage of front of house live sound.
How do you see the skills intertwining between live shows and studio work? Theyâre quite different.
Yeah, they are; but thereâs obviously a strong connection. I like that difference; it keeps me on my toes. I will also say that a lot of what Iâve learned in the studio, Iâve been able to apply live, and vice-versa.
What types of techniques?
Iâve experimented within the studio with micâing techniques that you would only do live. Or, if Iâm on a digital console live, Iâll try things that I usually would do with plug-ins in the studio. Why not? I experiment. It doesnât always work, but if I have the option and the time, I do it. Obviously time is the biggest difference, because live you donât have time to try things. Although nowadays in the studio, everyoneâs rushing anyways, so itâs almost the same.
Since moving here youâve seen a lot of changes in the studio industry, especially for New York.
Of course. I miss the golden era where people were throwing money at studios. Already by 1999 people were looking at the clock. But itâs definitely gotten worse, in those terms. Thatâs why being a fast engineer on Pro Tools, and having a recallable console, have become assets; those together are important these days. People are on budgets and thereâs no time to spend on recalling settings. Whatever it might take to allow a client do what they need to do, in the amount of time that they are able to afford, is obviously key to making it happen.
Working with U2 and Elton John
Hal was good friends with the U2 guys. Had been for a long time. Hal considered the Angelheaded Hipster: [The Songs Of Marc Bolan And T. Rex tribute] album to be his âWhite Album,â so, when he and I started working on that album, four years ago, naturally Hal asked U2 whether theyâd wanna do a song. Bono sent Hal an iPhone clip of him singing âBang a Gong (Get It On),â so that meant they were in. From that point â until the U2 schedule cleared to actually do a session â another year went by. They had warned us it would be last minute during The Joshua Tree Tour, and one day a call came in and they said theyâd have an afternoon for us in two daysâ time, during a day off in New Orleans. We had less than 48 hours to book flights, hotels, a studio, and musicians. Hal wanted to add a horn section, since we were tracking in NOLA, so we also needed an arranger to write horn charts. Hal had produced Marianne Faithfullâs Horses and High Heels at Piety Street Recording years prior, and I knew that studio too, but it had been sold to a private owner. I had to convince that new owner to let us occupy his studio for a day. I got in at 9 a.m. to assess the situation. The live room was basically a living room with several couches and a lot of gear was missing in the control room. The SSL console was still there, but I brought a lot of my own microphones from New York and we sourced some locally. Theyâd kept the BURL converters, but they only had 24 inputs, which proved challenging, but I had to make it work. I proceeded to clear the live room of all the couches and Halâs right arm/manager, Rachel Fox, handled the huge incoming U2 machine (security, catering, managers, assistants etc.). Two of U2âs techs brought their drums and amps and set them up in the live room, and I micâd up everything and put the horns in the âdrum boothâ of the studio. I got drum, bass, and guitar sounds with the techs. We were ready by 4 p.m., so I rehearsed the horn section with the original T. Rex recording. U2 showed up around 6 p.m. and we did a few takes, all live, playing together with the horns and with The Edge playing in the control room next to me. Bono had told Hal he wanted to track with two microphones, and I had heard a rumor that Bono likes to track with a [Shure] SM58 from the control room. I set up a 58 by the couch, and a Neumann, a [Shure] SM7, and my JZ Black Hole BH2 in a vocal booth next to the control room. Because I only had 24 inputs I had a patch ready to use for two out of those four mics in order to save channels. Hal was so proud I got Bono into the vocal booth. He always told people, âMarc got Bono in a booth. Bono never does that.â The horn section was killer; Trombone Shorty [Troy Andrews] showed up and played a solo â probably the first time U2 had a trombone solo on anything of theirs. Still high on the fumes of a great, long day, at the hotel that same evening â at Halâs request â I did an in-the-box mix to send to Bono, and they liked it. Eventually we flew to France to record Elton John playing piano and ad-libbing on the same track, which was a surreal experience. Being in the same room with Hal, U2, and Elton was definitely inspiring and exciting. Everyone was so nice and easygoing, and they were all in awe of each other. The stories at lunch that day were incredible! The whole experience was surreal, and driving through the south of France with Hal is still one of my greatest memories.
The more jobs you can get through the door, being organized helps.
Absolutely. You know how I feel about organization.
I know that youâre a stickler for it.
Itâs got to be the Swiss side of me. I couldnât do what I do without being organized, because Iâm constantly working on at least six projects at the same time. If I donât keep it organized, itâs not going to happen.
How does a lot of your work find you now? I find it really fascinating that youâve worked in quite a few different genres.
Thatâs the thing Iâm most proud of in my career. Itâs what I try to hang onto and focus on. I would say that the main reason for me becoming an engineer in the first place is that I love too many genres and cannot decide which genre to focus on. When I was a musician, at 15 or 16, when I played an instrument, I had a crossover band that mixed rap, metal, rock, and jazz or whatever, because I couldnât make up my mind about what I liked the best. Engineering allowed me do all the genres. Now I do almost everything. I donât do hip-hop or R&B so much. I do jazz and all its derivatives of avant-garde music, new music, etc. Rock, classical music, and electronic music. Most of my work is word-of-mouth, really. Occasionally there is going to be the person who found me on the web, like Googling out of nowhere, but 95 percent is word of mouth.
So you do some mixing here and some at home? How do you delineate that for clients? Different rates?
Thatâs the only reason to mix at home. I have good speakers. I use Adam Audio these days, both at home and here in the studio. My listening reference is very similar. For the client itâs a matter of money. If they can pay for the studio, we should do it here because itâs analog summing and itâs going to sound a little bit better. If they canât afford it, rather than go mix it with some guy who doesnât know what heâs doing, I can mix it for you, so at least you still get my ears to mix it; but it wonât be analog summing and it wonât be attended mixing, because at home I only do unattended. Thatâs the way they get to choose. They can choose whether they want to be present and have analog summing, or not. A lot of it is hybrid these days. Even the last record I did with Hal Willner was hybrid, in the sense that Iâd do premixes at home, simply because the scheduling was so insane that it wouldâve been impossible to get together with Hal every time to do a new mix. Iâd do premixes in-the-box at home and get comments from him. Iâd send him a new mix, and when it was 90 percent there weâd bring it into the studio and break it out on the analog console. We started with faders at zero and weâd go from there, making our last little adjustments while keeping our analog summing that we loved so much.
It used to be hands on the faders, make all the changes, and if you want to remix it, itâs a big pain in the ass. Now itâs expected that we can recall it.
We have to roll with it. Thatâs the name of the game these days.
Surviving COVID-19
Needless to say, the Coronavirus pandemic has affected everyone in some way or another. My girlfriend was sick with Covid for seven weeks, and losing Hal Willner was definitely my biggest loss. He was a mentor, a friend, and a true inspiration. Iâve learned so much from him and, to pay tribute to his legacy, I created the website to collect tributes from his musician friends, as well as to collect and itemize his incredible discography. As a sound engineer who tracks, mixes, records, and does live show sound, two thirds or more of my income has vanished into thin air. Being a ânon-essentialâ business, EastSide Sound has had to remain closed for months. When the pandemic started and borders started to close I was in Europe, as I was supposed to do a South African tour leg with a UK band, then work on the sound design of a theater piece in Paris, as well as later mix the BBC Symphony Orchestra in Germany. All of that was cancelled, and I decided to stay in London until it was safe and I was allowed to return to New York. I bought a pair of Adam Audio speakers, a pair of OLLO Audio headphones, and a 22-inch display for my London apartment and started doing unattended mixes. One of the things I did was to offer some free mixing services for bands in order to help with the current situation. I setup a voting system, so everyone had a chance of getting their songs mixed â I ended up doing six mixes for free. I also started a series of videos on social media where I discussed how to set up a home recording project studio to stay creative during the lockdown. I think it is super important that we stay active and continue making music. I made seven short videos and posted one every week, choosing an accredited charity as a recipient of donations made by myself and by those who found the videos useful. On the home front, Lou Holtzman has been doing an amazing job maintaining the studio gear to be ready for when we reopen EastSide Sound. In July, in accordance with NYCâs official guidelines, EastSide slowly resumed sanitized and socially distant sessions. Aside from using masks and hand sanitizers (and of course sanitizing vocal microphones), once again the great isolation at EastSide has proven to be a winning card; with all the iso booths it is truly possible to do a socially distant session. We are grateful to our landlord for being understanding during this situation, and hopefully by the time this interview is in print weâll be doing sessions full time again.
www.haltribute.com
Skipping back, what Lou Reed sessions did you work on?
I wasnât fortunate enough to work on any of his albums, sadly. I did work with him once at Avatar, recording a Buddy Holly cover thatâs on a Starbucks compilation [Rave On Buddy Holly]. Then we did some recordings here. We did a lot of mixing here. We mixed âThe Debt I Oweâ for a Woody Guthrie tribute record [Note of Hope: A Celebration of Woody Guthrie] that was recorded somewhere else before I knew him; we remixed it together here. We did some recordings here with him and Laurie Anderson when they were guests on other projects. We did one with them here with Kevin Hearn, the guy from Barenaked Ladies and the MD and keyboard player in Louâs live band. The last thing I did with Lou was mixing a live DVD of the last concert that heâd done with his band, which was in Prague [Live at Archa Theatre, Prague 2012]. That was the last thing we did together. I mixed the show live and then mixed the DVD mix in the studio; I knew it inside out. We spent four days mixing in here, and that was an amazing experience.
As he got older, he got much more aware of sound and sonics, how his guitars worked and what he wanted them to sound like.
He was always very much into sound. We would do soundchecks at concerts where heâd stop a soundcheck and he wouldnât go to the next song because he was working out some specific sound. I donât want to say âwaste,â but weâd spend the rest of the soundcheck on that one sound and not be able to rehearse the rest of the songs. He was so fixated, but that speaks to his commitment to sound. I loved that about him.
Was mixing with him in the studio an interesting process of focusing in like that?
It was very much an interesting process. In fact, I had one experience with him on that Buddy Holly song I mentioned. He said to me, âIâll come back around 2 or 3 oâclock.â I said, âOkay, Iâll get the mix started around 10 or 11 a.m. so itâs in a good place when we get started.â I did the mix, and by 1:30 or so I didnât know what else to try anymore. It sounded good to me. I waited for him, and he shows up around 2:30. He was like, âOh, it sounds pretty good, but what if we try this?â I thought to myself, âOh, he doesnât like it.â So we start âtrying things.â By trying things, I mean he has his guitar tech coming over with pedals that he wants to run elements of the mix through. We spent four or five hours [on it]. I was getting depressed, thinking, âWow, heâs really not happy with this mix.â After about four or five hours he was like, âLet me hear your first mix.â I recalled it, and he said, âOh, this sounds perfect! Donât change a thing. We canât do better than this.â That was a morale boost. The next day we had dinner, and I asked, âWhy did we do all that? That was a lot of time we spent in the studio.â He said, âSometimes youâve got to try everything to know that you had it right in the first place.â That was a lesson.
What did you pick up from Hal Willnerâs work?
Well, one of Halâs greatest talents was psychology in the studio. He would basically let people do their thing without getting overbearing or in the way. Without them noticing that he was doing it, he made the session go in the direction that he wanted it to go. If it didnât go in that direction, or people got stuck, thatâs where heâd step in or make a suggestion that would usually make things flow again. So psychology, because he was very hands-off in that sense. Heâs wasnât a guy who writes arrangements, writes charts, or plays an instrument. He was very hands-off, but he got the best out of people. I saw that from day one, because Hal was Louâs producer. Thatâs how I met Hal. He was sitting there at rehearsals with his iPad. I was like, âWhatâs that guy doing sitting there?â Then I saw, over the years, how he worked, and it was pretty incredible. I definitely was learning from him. Weâre all still learning, but I did so many sessions with Hal, and I really enjoyed his way of working and seeing how it came together in the studio.
We might all start off technical, trying to learn where to put the mics and all that. But at the end of the day if you donât get people in the right headspace, youâll only get garbage.
Absolutely. Itâs all about the headspace. Itâs all about finding a good vibe. Itâs all about keeping musicians comfortable and relaxed.
www.marcurselli.com
