Emre Ramazanoglu

Posted on 07th August 2023

A multi-talented musician and engineer, highly respected in industry circles, Emre has proved a real friend to Devious Machines this year.

He’s played drums for Michael Jackson, engineered for David Holmes and mixed and mastered countless successful releases for artists including Brian Eno, Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds, Paloma Faith, Richard Ashcroft, UNKLE – to name just a few.

Amazingly he also found time to work closely with us when we were developing Multiband X6. And his involvement was priceless. Emre’s presets on X6 are awesome too – especially his new mastering ones which are included in the lastest update.

While visiting his studio in West Hampstead, Emre chatted to us about music, studio kit and his recent work with Brian Eno.

You mixed the drum and bass anthem Bittersweet Goodbye by Issey Cross that’s been blowing up this summer.  I believe it spent two weeks in the UK top 20 in July.  How did that come about and how did you use Multiband X6 in the mixing of the track?

I used X6 on the mix bus here actually. It just touched things a little on the punchy settings and it held everything together beautifully! 

When I visited you this month, you were mastering and showed me that X6 was used on most of the tracks you were working on.  What makes it such a go-to for your mastering process?

This is a really, REALLY powerful processor.

I love that I can do really extreme moves or almost nothing just in one processor and that it has some character, which sets it apart from other multibands for me. The automatic functions are actually really musical and useful too – I was quite surprised by that!

As a mastering and mixing engineer, I know you use a fair bit of software, but any particular hardware you particularly love either in your studio or in studios where you work?

I have about 22 Roger Meyer 456 HD 500 Series units. They are absolutely game-changing for me. That’s a word that’s bandied about a lot, but in this case it’s accurate! They’re not strictly tape sims (although there are elements of them are behave that way) but more like harmonic waveshapers that do something magical to your audio before it hits the a/d and leaves you with much less to do post-tracking! Absolutely amazing.

You’ve been working with Brian Eno recently – and he was kind enough to send thanks for a couple of licences I sent over for Devious Machines software – what havre you been doing with him?  And how did that come about?
We Atmos mixed seven or eight classic Eno albums, working either from multitrack or stems. It was a massive job and it was absolutely incredible to be involved.

Recreating Another Green World and Taking Tiger Mountain By Strategy from the original mid-70s 24-track tapes was like solving a challenging detective puzzle. So the results were enormously satisfying in the end.

What tips can you offer any aspiring engineers and producers?

Make music you love, yourself.
Reference, but don’t emulate.
Don’t get caught up in the “hows” but focus more the “whys”.
Listen listen listen – if you can hear where it’s meant to go that’s the most useful thing you’ll have in your toolkit!

Emre is the drummer and a founder member of “Ill Considered”, a punk-improv-jazz band who frequently tour Europe and the UK. He also owns the Sample pack company “Rattly and Raw“.

• Rattly and Raw
• ILL Considered
• Interview
• Issey Cross