Chris Lord-Alge
Chris Lord-Alge is an American mix engineer. He is the brother of Tom Lord-Alge, another audio engineer. Chris Lord-Alge is known for his use of dynamic range compression in both hardware and software plug-in versions.[1] He is also known for collaborating with Howard Benson, who has produced a minimum majority of the albums Lord-Alge has mixed.
Chris Lord-Alge gained notoriety while working at Unique Recording Studios, New York City in the 1980s for his mixing on James Brown's Gravity album, which included the hit song "Living in America", the Rocky IV soundtrack, Prince's Batman soundtrack, Joe Cocker's Unchain My Heart album, Chaka Khan's Destiny album, Carly Simon's Coming Around Again album, Tina Turner's Foreign Affair album and 12" remixes of Madonna's "La Isla Bonita", the Rolling Stones' "Too Much Blood" and Bruce Springsteen's "Dancing in the Dark", "Cover Me", and "Born in the U.S.A.". While working in Japan (1995–1997), he worked with Tetsuya Komuro, No! Galers, Namie Amuro and hitomi.
Chris, and his brother Tom are known inside the music industry for crafting their mix with an abundant use of Compression (an audio dynamic control tool)[2] for molding mixes that play well on small speakers and FM radio (see Loudness War).
In early 2010, Waves Audio released the Chris Lord-Alge Artist Signature Collection of audio plug-ins, a collection of 6 application-specific audio plug-ins for Bass, Drums, Effects, Vocals, Guitars, and Unplugged.[3] Slightly before that, Waves had also released a collection of CLA-branded compressors, labelled the 'Classic Compressors' bundle, featuring the CLA-76 (Urei 1176LN), CLA-2A (Teletronix LA-2A) and CLA-3A (Urei LA-3A). These are among Chris's favourite dynamics units. It is widely assumed that Waves were unable to get a license to produce authorised versions of the 1176, LA-2A and LA-3A as their current manufacturer and owner, Universal Audio, already produce their own range of audio plug-ins - the UAD packs; and so branded them under CLA's name instead. Waves also performed this action under the name of Jack Joseph Puig, where some of his favourite outboard, including a Fairchild limiter (sold as Puigchild), and 2 Pultec EQs (sold as Puigtec) was modelled by Waves, who again are widely assumed to have failed in obtaining a license to officially release the plug-ins under their true company names, as they have successfully done with brands including API and Solid State Logic.
On February 22, 2011 Smashing Pumpkins frontman Billy Corgan announced on Facebook that the band is working with Lord-Alge on two new songs for their project, Teargarden by Kaleidyscope.[4]
References
- ↑ "Secrets of the Mix Engineers: Chris Lord-Alge". Soundonsound.com. May 2007. Retrieved 2012-11-21.
- ↑ "TOM LORD-ALGE: From Manson To Hanson". Soundonsound.com. Retrieved 2014-07-16.
- ↑ "Waves Chris Lord-Alge Artist Signature Collection Includes Six Audio Processing Plugins". Gearwire. 2012-09-28. Retrieved 2012-11-21.
- ↑ "The Smashing Pumpkins". Facebook. Retrieved 2012-11-21.
External links
- Chris Lord-Alge - Official Website (chrislordalge.com)
- Video interview
- Artist Direct entry
- "An Evening With Chris Lord-Alge", EQ Magazine, Sep 2006
- Chris Lord-Alge Feature, RecordProduction.com
- Chris Lord-Alge's Waves Plugin Collection