Headroom Productions is a music production partnership based in Leeds comprising two engineers / producers Matt Peel and Andy Hawkins.
Matt began his career as a live sound engineer, working at various venues around Leeds. It was during this time that he met the band Parva (now the Kaiser Chiefs), whose keyboard player Nick Baines introduced him to Adam Pearson, the owner of Pravda Studios. Over the next two years, Matt worked with various artists such as Monster Killed By Laser, Voltage Union, Jeepster, Dave Creffield (producer) and, most notably, he worked on the most recent Kaiser Chiefs demos (including the hit single “I Predict A Riotâ€).
Andy spent his formative years in the band Midget, signed to Warner Bros records. During this time he co-produced the band’s albums alongside many well known producers including Dave Eringa and Mick Glossop. After Midget disbanded, Andy continued his production career alongside live sound engineering, working with artists such as The Damned, Ginger (The Wildhearts), Chris Shiflett (Foo Fighters) and Motion City Soundtrack. However, it was Leeds band Bodixa that brought him to Pravda Studios, where he met Matt.
It was whilst working on the Bodixa album that Matt and Andy realised their working methods and philosophies complemented each other extremely well. After further production collaborations, Andy decided to move to Leeds and came to work alongside Matt permanently at Pravda Studios. It was out of this ongoing collaboration that Headroom Productions was born.Matt and Andy’s production methods place the utmost importance on songs and performance. After many years experience of playing in bands themselves, they have a thorough understanding of song writing craft and playing technique. This knowledge is used to make sure that the best result is always attained from whoever they work with.
In order to capture these sounds, Matt and Andy turn to their formidable collection of audio gear, which places great emphasis on high quality analogue signal paths (Neve, Focusrite, Amek etc) and an extensive microphone collection (Neumann, Royer, Audio-Technica and Shure). Analogue outboard processing plays an important role in both tracking and mixing, although the ease and flexibility of digital recording is never overlooked.
To ensure the quality of the end product, Headroom Productions has recently opened an analogue mastering suite, for use with its own recordings and those of external clients. Again placing emphasis on analogue and valve processing (Prism, Avalon, Waves), excellent digital/analogue converters (Apogee), and accurate monitoring (PMC), the Headroom Productions mastering suite offers a high end service which is unavailable anywhere else in Yorkshire...
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