Alfio Annibalini: On & In Demand

Where are you from?

I'm from Northern Ontario. I'm from Espanola, Ontario, which is this weird little town. There was nothing going on, so either you played hockey or you did music, so I started doing music when I was around 13 or 14. I moved to Toronto and went to Humber College. I was not the best student; I did the first year and then transferred over to the Harris Institute. I didn't have the discipline to become a guitar player on that level. I wasn't interested in playing somebody else's music. I met Daryn Barry at the Harris Institute. We got along famously. Then I went from there, and my first job was at Wellesley Sound. It was just off Queen Street in Sherbourne; it was a nasty neighborhood.

Near the Salvation Army men's shelter?

Yeah. At that time, that was like studio alley. Sounds Interchange, Manta Sound, and Wellesley were there. I started working there, and immediately went from sweeping floors to finding out that one of the engineers who worked the midnight shift didn't have an assistant. He was doing rap, and nobody else wanted to do rap. I thought, "This is a great way to get my hands on some equipment, and also a great way to get some credits." It turned out he was working with Dream Warriors [King Lou and Capital Q] and people of that ilk. I went in, made myself available, and became his assistant for the next few years. Paul Raven [bass] from Killing Joke moved to Toronto. This engineer, Walter Sobczak, they hooked up in a club or whatever. Walter was in a post punk industrial band called Sturm Group. Raven came over to Wellesley Sound, and we were doing industrial. It was a cool mix of a lot of different music. I've learned a hell of a lot there, things that to this day probably influence me. We were doing a lot of programming, sound manipulation, and computer programming. Working with tape, computers, analog consoles, and with the first digital workstation, the 2-channel Studer Dyaxis 1 [Digital Audio Production System].

I remember using it. Great-sounding 16-bit converters, but an awkward, challenging onscreen interface.

That thing was so clunky. We would do an edit on something, a crossfade, and we'd have to go home and come back in the morning to wait for the crossfade to be done. It was so slow! The hard drives were huge – you fired them up and it sounded like a car starting. From there I went to Hypnotic, around the time I first met you. I started working out of Hypnotic for Tom Treumuth and doing sessions for his label and his recording studio. That's where I went from working alone on all of this rap music to working on purely metal, more than anything else. There were a couple alternative bands in there too. Daryn Barry and I did a Made record [Bedazzled] for MCA [Records].

I totally forgot about that one.

We produced that. That record was almost the death of me, in terms of my career. It had all kinds of hype; it came out, and it absolutely did nothing. It was hard to get a gig after that for a little while. But Tom was cool. Tom gave us the rein of the place and said, "Here, go nuts."

Hypnotic Records and Studio was like a one stop shop, right? Everything's there, plus artists coming in.

Exactly. No other label on the planet would have done a Sons Of OTIS record [SpaceJumboFudge]. It wouldn't have happened. Not at that time, anyway. I did a podcast with Tom, and he was talking about how [the group] Big Sugar changed his whole thing. He signed Big Sugar, and then they went on to greater things. He did quite well with that. That funded Voivod [Negatron], Sons Of OTIS, and the other records that are a little bit more edgy.

There were a lot of heavy artists there. Were you prepared for that style beforehand?

The two things that saved me was I always had a love for metal and a soft spot for metal. I liked big, distorted guitars. I liked sounds that were big and heavy. I remember our mandate was always, "Whatever we do, it's got to be big, and it's got to be really aggressive." We didn't want the drums to sound like anything that had come before it. We didn't want the drums to sound like hair metal. We wanted them to sound raw, mean, and big. We wanted the guitars to rip your head off. We got into doing some interesting things with guitars: Putting them in small rooms and turning them up really, really loud, and also mic'ing. We used the common microphones at the time, like Sennheiser MD 421s and overdriving Neve 1272 preamps. Trying to get a bigger, saturated tone out of everything. We did a lot of weird mic'ing. I remember for the Sons Of OTIS record, we used AKG D112s on just about everything.

Really? The kick drum mics?

Yeah. The band was big, and it was loud, but it was so heavy on the low end that you could be in the room with them.

And you triggered samples from Melvins [Tape Op #142] records for kick drums, right?

Yeah. What happened was I started getting into doing that during Negatron. I can't even remember what Apple computer it was. It was not a very powerful one. We would lock it up to the 2-inch tape, trigger samples from a sampler, and write a MIDI program that would track all the parts. We weren't quantizing drums; we were trying to put samples to what was there already. I spent days doing that and making that happen. I started doing that on the Voivod record. We did a lot of that on the OTIS record. I did it for Anvil [Plugged in Permanent and Pound for Pound].

Yeah, what was it like working with Anvil?

[laughs] They're funny, man. I love those guys. They're great guys. They're entertaining as hell. They wanted to play big, play loud, and have a great time doing it. By the time I worked with them it was their seventh album, and they had the process down. There were some really funny moments. I remember we were trying to mic the drum kit. The roadies come in, and in the road kits they have an actual anvil. "The anvil's got to be in the recording studio when we record." Which is fair; I get it. They put it in front of the drums. He's got double kick drums, so I'm trying to mic the kicks, but the anvil's in front of the drums. I'm like, "Guys, can we move the anvil?" They're like, "No. Nobody moves the anvil." So, I had to mic around this thing in order to get the kick drum sound I was looking for. There was a lot of, "Oh, my god. This is so funny." He [Steve "Lips" Kudlow] came in with a ton of Fender Twin amps, and that was easily the loudest guitar session I've ever done. It was unbelievably loud. It was a lot of fun working on those records, because I just didn't know what we were going to be working on from day to day. I'll tell you this; they're incredible players. Robb Reiner's easily one of the best drummers I've ever worked with. The guy's almost like if Buddy Rich got reincarnated as a metal drummer. He's got those kind of chops. It was really easy to get tones.

You and Daryn Barry later worked at Orange.

I did some work as a freelance engineer at Orange, and I did a lot of mixing out of that recording studio. When they first started up, Daryn Barry was one of the owners. They started an Orange Record Label, too. They had a country act signed. They signed Dave "Rave" Ogilvie's Jakalope. I spent many hours in there with Dave. I didn't really work on the Jakalope record [It Dreams], though Dave would have us come by, listen to the mixes he was doing, and see if we had any input. Orange was a great studio. I loved working out of that place. The SSL in there was second to none, at the time. I loved mixing on that. I go back now and listen to work we did in that studio, and that shit sounds good. From that point on, I was at Iguana Studios too. Were you over there?

A few times.

Every studio in Toronto was in the industrial area back then. They had an 80-channel SSL console, a great mix room, but an okay live room. We were known for just mixing records, which was more or less how I got into the whole mixing thing. I did a Joel Plaskett Emergency record [Truthfully Truthfully] there. I did some work with Ogilvie there. I did a Lindy [Vopnfjörð] record [Suspension of Disbelief], I Mother Earth, and some Our Lady Peace there [Happiness Is Not A Fish That You Can Catch]. Those were mainly all mix gigs. I Mother Earth [Blue Green Orange] was a mix gig with David Bottrill [Tape Op #19]. That was a lot of fun.

You were working at the studio, and all those artists came to you?

Yeah, they came through. That's how I ended up working on all this diverse music. The Nelly Furtado [Whoa, Nelly!] gig was done at Iguana, because they came into the studio. It would be Nelly Furtado one day, Joel Plaskett the next day, The Tea Party [Triptych], then I Mother Earth. It would bounce around all over the place.

The business is tough to get into as it is. How did you stay so diverse?

Honestly, it comes down to saying "yes" and keeping my eyes and ears open. Being open to working on whatever. Unless you're in the one percent of people that get known for doing one thing, for the rest of us it's a job like anything else. I've got to take what comes along. I was fortunate, though, because, in most cases, what came along was cool. But it did have me all over the map. The various styles that were coming in, especially at Iguana, I was cool with all of it because it was just music to me. It was a lot of fun. In Canada, if you're going to be a professional audio engineer, you've got to be open to anything and do whatever comes along.

How did your freelance work start to go, and how did you maintain getting gigs? Did go to clubs a lot?

I tried that whole [Toronto] Queen Street thing, where you go to the clubs, hang out, watch the bands, and all that. I'm by nature a shy person, so I'm not comfortable walking up to people, shaking their hands, and saying, "Hey, I'm Alfio and I'd love to work with your band." I sucked at that and had to rely a little bit more on past work or being recommended by one artist. There were a couple of things that really helped. Working with Kardinal Offishall [Husslin'] at Iguana helped a lot, because that got my name back in the rap community. I ended up getting a lot of work from that. Working on Neko Case's [Tape Op #127] Blacklisted album was a big one. Doing DMX [And Then There Was X], that was a big one. There was enough work going along that I was getting relatively regular phone calls and being able to stay alive. I supplemented my gigs with teaching too.

At Seneca College, right? How long have you been doing that?

For 18 years. That gig came along, and I just couldn't say no. It was way too much fun. So much, that I branched out and started teaching at Metalworks Studio in Mississauga too. The best thing about teaching is that it keeps me current. I can see the next generation of music professionals; what's inspiring them and what's making them excited. It keeps me a little bit ahead of the curve, as far as what's coming down the pipeline. Ex-students include Noel Cadastre, who's Drake's personal engineer; Riley Bell, who did Daniel Caesar's Freudian; and Angie Randisi's working with Lil Baby. Working and being around these people helps me stay in touch with what's going on. I'm 55. I enjoy it. It's challenging to try and get your point across, but also keep students motivated at the same time. It's such an unsure business and industry.

What classes do you teach?

Primarily mixing, plus music production. Every day's like a new day. It's like making a record. I have an idea of which way it's going to go, but I never know how it's going to turn out until I get to the end. I enjoy it a lot.

I'm sure you get asked for advice about the reality of the business and incorporating normal life into it.

Yeah, I sucked at it. I still probably suck at it. I've become all-encompassed and completely engulfed in whatever it is that I'm doing. I remember the Hypnotic days; Daryn and I had three years in a row with four days off. That was a long, long stretch. We would get out and go out to clubs, but we were always in the studio. After a while, you get a little tired. I look back on it, and I easily hit the 10,000 hour rule. Now I'm taking my foot off the gas a little bit, and trying to enjoy life more; but it's difficult because I'll get that bug to start making a record, and then I'll start looking for the next thing to come along. Envy of None is pretty busy these days.

How did you get into all of that?

That goes back; my very first session at Hypnotic Records was with Andy Curran.

Of the legendary Canadian band Coney Hatch?

Yeah. His new band was called Soho 69. He was working on a record for Hypnotic called Scatterbrain. Do you remember Chris Wardman?

Yeah, Chris produced Rusty [Fluke] and Sons of Freedom [Gump].

Yeah. He was producing Andy's record, and I ended up working on the mix for it as an assistant. I met Andy, and we got along well. But I didn't see him again until later on when I was at Iguana and worked on some solo music. It's basically been the two of us working together on everything ever since. That relationship morphed between him being a producer and me being the engineer to both of us producing and exchanging musical ideas over the internet. He'd be like, "I've got this idea." I'd play guitar on it and send it back to him. We would start building on these ideas. We wanted to take this music, put another vocalist on it, and not have it be anything other than a project that we would shop to Netflix, or something along those lines. We floundered around with that for a while and had a vocalist singing on it. It was turning out pretty cool, but life gets in the way, and she went and did her own thing. Then Andy met Maiah [Wynne] through a contest; they started talking and decided to exchange some ideas. She sang on some songs for us, we played it for Alex Lifeson, he put some guitars on it, and that was it. The whole thing took off from there. We've been exchanging ideas ever since.

How did Alex Lifeson get involved?

We asked him. I think Andy played a song called "Liar" in one of its first incarnations with the other vocalist. He was like, "Oh, I'd like to put guitars on this." We were like, "Sure, absolutely!" Then when Maiah sang on "Shadow," Alex put some acoustic guitars on that as well. It started becoming this thing, that every now and then we would send him something and have him put a guitar down. Then we would sit on it. Once she started singing on it, it became a very regular thing. The file would either start with Andy or Alex and make its rounds through the rest of the group. It would either end up with me playing on it and mixing it. Or it started with Andy and would come to me, and I would play on it and then send it away; and it would come back, and I would mix it, or whatever. We were in the room to have a listening party, so that's the first time we ever sat down and listened to the album. We've gone out for dinner a couple times, but it's not like we're rehearsing or something.

You've amassed some good gear for yourself, right? You were saying it was out of necessity for survival.

Yeah. I've got a little SSL [SiX console] at home that I mix through sometimes; not always. If I'm working on something and I have to turn it around a little bit quick, and I know there are going to be recalls, then it's 100 percent in the box. If it's something I can take my time with, then it usually goes through the desk. It depends on what I'm doing. I've got a bunch of guitar gear. I've got room now in the house to be able to set up a booth thing and get some microphones happening, but I haven't done that yet. I'm playing through a lot of Blackstar amps. I front end it with distortion pedals or overdrive pedals. I've got a load box for the amp's output, the Two notes [Torpedo] Captor, and that goes directly in. I'm running Merging Technologies' Hapi as my main converter, thru the SSL, and then back to Hapi if I need to sum my mixes in analog. The Hapi also has eight killer mic preamps that I use for recording vocals and guitar. Pretty serious converters and preamps. I'm running all Universal Audio plug-ins via some UA Satellites and Focal speakers. Other than that, I'm not running any real compressors or anything. It's all plug-ins at this point, besides the SSL compression on the strips. But no outboard limiters.

Is there anything you'd want to add about the business?

The business is in an interesting place. I know with Envy of None, we just got our numbers back for the end of the year Spotify thing, and it's shocking how many people listened to it, for how long, and from how many different countries. Obviously, we had a bit of a built-in fan base because of the one guy [Alex Lifeson]. Those fans are incredible. But, yeah, our label, Kscope, did a great job and they continue to do a great job. We’ve got an EP out [That Was Then], and we're probably going to also release it in Atmos. We'll see what happens. We've got that happening, and we've already started the second album. The business seems to be relatively healthy. It's just not the old business. It's difficult to be the age that I'm at right now, and not wonder what it would have been like!