KEVIN GRAY VINYL-MASTERING MASTER
WHEN I NEED INFORMATION ABOUT RECORDINGS, I GO TO DISCOGS. AT DISCOGS, KEVIN GRAY HAS MORE THAN 2500 ENTRIES. THAT’S AS GOOD AN INDICATOR AS ANY OF THE AMOUNT OF GROUND HE HAS COVERED IN HIS CAREER SO FAR AS A CREATIVE PARTICIPANT IN THE RECORDED-MUSIC ART KNOWN AS MASTERING. SINCE STARTING OUT IN THE EARLY 1970S, IN LOS ANGELES, HE HAS WORKED FOR ALL THE MAJOR MUSIC LABELS AND MANY INDEPENDENTS, IN ALL MUSIC GENRES.
At one time, behind-thescenes jobs like Gray’s were anonymous and technical—not really viewed as real creative work. When the Beatles started recording for EMI, audio personnel wore white lab coats. No one knew their names. But as the culture of recorded music became more varied and sophisticated, listeners became more aware of the contributions made by people behind the scenes—studio musicians and especially engineers—to the sound of the music they were hearing. By the end of the 1960s, most people knew that the Beatles worked with a guy named George Martin—and that he was called the producer—at a recording studio in London called Abbey Road, to create the music they heard and loved. Today, most fans of the music know the name Geoff Emerick, who served as the Beatles’ recording engineer.
Today, Kevin Gray’s name is very well-known, especially among vinyl-record fans, as is his reputation for excellent sonics. I—a member of that clan—look forward to listening to albums he has remastered: “Tone Poet” reissues of classic Blue Note records, the earlier, similar series from Music Matters, and LP reissues from Craft Recordings, Intervention Records, Resonance Records, Rhino Records, Speaker’s Corner, and others. The odds are very good that any LP he’s involved with is going to sound fabulous, or at least as good as the source material (often recorded on aging analog tape) allows.
Not all the recordings he works. Recently, I took time to catch up with Kevin, learn about his approach to mastering and cutting LPs, and hear about the new, all-tube recording studio he built from scratch and installed next door to his mastering studio.
