WORKING A
DESK JOB
Eduardo De La Paz
Eduardo De La Paz is a Grammy-award winning mixer, who has worked with artists including Frightened Rabbit, Self Esteem and The Charlatans. Originally from Mexico, he has recently relocated to North Shields after building his career in London. We speak to him about how he established himself, and how the music industry has changed in the past fifteen years.
Interview by Arlen Pettitt
Photographs by Christopher Owens
Eduardo De La Paz has two Grammys in his studio space. One Latin, one American.
They’re between the scented candle and the Newcastle United coaster
He doesn’t bring them up, so eventually I ask about them.
“It was a project with a Mexican band called Jesse and Joy, they’re a brother and sister duo,” Eduardo explains. “They were working in the studio above me at Kensaltown in London with a Swedish producer called Martin Terefe. At the time it was lovely, we had a really big kitchen where everyone would have a communal lunch.”
“There was this Spanish lady from Malaga, Eloisa, who would cook the most amazing food,” he continues, “and you’d give her a fiver and she’d give you a plate. We would all sit and have meals, and it was great because you’d meet all the other rooms and hear what they were working on. Through that Martin said ‘oh, he’s Mexican too, he’s a mixer’”
De La Paz mixed one track initially as a trial, then ended up doing the whole record - 2016’s Un Besito Más.
“When we’d finished, the A&R said ‘see you at the Grammys!’, and I was like ‘uh, yeah, whatever…’”
Eduardo says although it’s a nice thing to have the recognition, it doesn’t change much. It doesn’t change how you work, and it doesn’t bring work in. Although he admits people do sometimes listen to your opinion a bit more readily.
“It’s all fun. They’re just a shiny thing,” he concludes.
“There's a lot of people that can do really cool stuff in their bedrooms - just one microphone and a laptop. If you're seen enough YouTube tutorials, then you can make really cool, really cool stuff.”
Eduardo is still settling into a new space at 131 Bedford Street in North Shields, where the DJ Geoff Kirkwood has led a project to convert a former metal merchants into a space for creatives and artists. Other tenants include visual artists, illustrators, clothing and textile businesses, music publishers and the Crew Gal agency which supports women and marginalised groups into the creative industries.
De La Paz’s space is a fairly cosy one, with his big desk spanning the width of the room facing the window, equipment neatly arranged, and acoustic panels on the walls.
He’s recently relocated to the North East with his partner and young son - submitting to the almost inevitable draw of the region when your other half is a Geordie - but initially moved to the UK from Mexico to study at the Liverpool Institute for Performing Arts.
After graduating he remembers saying to himself that he had enough money saved to give it six months in London and if it didn’t work, he’d go back to Mexico.
At month four or month five, with his money running out, he landed a job as an assistant at Miloco Studios, which looks after a number of studios across London.
Eduardo remembers the gig as “bringing lunch to clients and coiling cables and popping up the microphone” with much of his time spent at the back of the room learning the practicalities of his craft which education couldn’t teach.
De La Paz then began working with American mixer-producer Craig Silvey, working on sessions with the likes of The National and the Yeah Yeah Yeahs.
After five years with Silvey, Eduardo went freelance and set up his own room next door.
He says the bulk of his work now happens remotely - something which made the move to the North East easier - following a shift which happened during the pandemic.
Where previously artists might check in daily in-person, or in a block at the end of a project, now lots of the to and fro happens virtually with artists having their own setups for listening at home.
“The artist is king, they're always gonna have the final word.”
Even when in London, Eduardo estimates nine out of ten projects were done remotely, and so his location didn’t matter for the day-to-day, although the music industry remains very London-centric, meaning he does have to travel to meet labels and bands.
The industry has changed massively in the 15 or so years De La Paz has been working in it.
“There's a lot of people that can do really cool stuff in their bedrooms,” he says, “just one microphone and a laptop. If you're seen enough YouTube tutorials, then you can make really cool, really cool stuff.”
That low budget DIY approach is part of the democratisation of music, but also reflects falling budgets in the industry.
Eduardo explains how budgets for mixing have shrunk, meaning even renowned mixers have seen their fees squeezed and have started taking on projects which would usually fall to less experienced - and therefore cheaper - mixers.
“For people that are just starting, it's really, really tough,” De La Paz says. “I do think apprenticeships or mentoring or stuff like that are still really important and accessible because that's the best way to learn.”
“I'm not saying I didn't learn in university,” he continues, “but the five years that I did with Craig were where I learned the technical side but also like the business side of how the industry works. How to get clients, how to speak to labels, how to deliver the project.”
De La Paz has found the North East a welcoming new home, and is already beginning to feel connected to the music scene in the region.
“Size wise, it's still in its infancy,” he says, “but there's a lot of talent, a lot of cool musicians, a lot of cool spaces opening up and cool initiatives.”
“There's still so much to exploit here that hasn't been exploited,” he continues, “I don't know if it's because people are either too shy to shout about it or, or people from the South are too lazy to come all the way up here!”
De La Paz has dealt directly with the challenges of finding your place in the industry, and as he was establishing himself he found that he was pushing back against projects with Latin artists, out of a fear of being marked as only able to do one thing.
“You definitely get pigeonholed,” he explains. “That’s the thing that angers me the most because I feel like I can mix anything from hip hop to super-pristine pop to grunge or heavy metal to Latin stuff. I feel like I have the tools to do that. But, you're only as good as your last project.”
So, he looked to maintain a balance, taking on or seeking out work which had variety to keep a broad scope on his recent track record. At the moment, he’s working on a soundtrack for a Netflix series, and mixing a live album from a stadium show.
“I've always hoped that the records I've mixed and worked on and my resume speaks for themselves rather than me having tried to convince people,” he says.
He’s in an interesting creative position, as typically a mixer comes into a project quite late in the day.
Eduardo says he is often enlisted to help get a project over the line, when those involved up until that point - the artist, producer, label or management - know they’re almost there, but not quite where they want to be.
That can mean some juggling of priorities, and being able to quickly get to the root of what people are after - speaking creatively with the artist, and more technically with the producer. Those two, plus the label, won’t always agree on what’s needed.
While he always makes efforts to keep everyone happy and build good relationships with producers and labels, the artist’s view tends to win.
“The artist is king, they're always gonna have the final word,” Eduardo says.
“The face of the product, of the song, is the artist,” he continues, “and they're going to go out and play it across the country, and live with it, and it's their name. If they want it to sound like this, they win over whatever the labels tell me, or whatever the producers tell me.”
I ask whether Eduardo always has his mixer’s ear on, when a track comes on in the background.
He says no, but things do catch his ear and he has to rush off to listen closely and find out who mixed it.
The idea of a music professional listening to a track while cooking in the kitchen raises the question of whether he considers how people will be listening to the tracks he’s mixing.
“I think the key with any mixer will be to know your speakers and your room perfectly,” De La Paz explains. “I know that if I make it sound super exciting in these speakers - punchy and clear and open and there's depth and everything - I know it's gonna translate to your phone, your Alexa, your car.”
Despite that, he says he’ll check a mix on his phone before sending it to a client, or by playing it at as low a volume as possible to see if the elements still stand out.
“There's still so much to exploit here that hasn't been exploited. I don't know if it's because people are either too shy to shout about it or, or people from the South are too lazy to come all the way up here!”
Setting up the room when he moved in he played songs and artists he knew well - Wichita Lineman by Glen Campbell, Comforting Sounds by the Danish band Mew, some Prince.
As Eduardo says this last one, the ambient lights which have been cycling through colours suddenly turn purple.
De La Paz’s gear is set up for how the industry works now, and so is predominantly digital, with small elements of analog through a Chandler mini mixer which gives him some extra warmth and the option of analog effects.
That digital foundation is important because rather than working on a single project and then sending it off and dusting his hands, he has to be on hand to pick up changes which might come weeks after he made the first mix.
Replicability is, therefore, incredibly important and the ability to call up a project digitally and have all the settings just as you left them cuts out a huge amount of the manual work in setting up consoles and fine-tuning dials.
Where now Eduardo can double-click a project and open it up, when he started out as an assistant it was a very different story.
“If there were changes for a song that was mixed two weeks ago, you have to go by photos,” he says. “Put everything…’where was this one?’...move everything to the exact point.”
That was part of the assistant’s job, to take the photos and make the notes.
“It’s a great training exercise,” Eduardo says, “and character building because you have to be very methodical and know that it's gonna come back exactly at that point your boss wants it to be.”
De La Paz says if he had the budget and a bigger space he’d love to go back to analog, but his current hybrid method works for what he’s doing and the speed he’s working.
What is he planning for the future?
“If you’d asked me two years ago, I’d have said ‘I want to produce more’,” Eduardo says.
“And then the last two years I've been thinking ‘why am I trying to be something that I'm not?’,” he continues, “because I realised every time I produce a record, I don't have a good time.”
Mixing is where he sees his strength, and so now the focus is on continuing to get better at it, and on doing a greater mix of bigger projects.
That might mean work which charts and gets attention and plaudits, but it might also mean supporting local artists in his new home of the North East.
“I want to develop stuff more, people who probably don't have the budget but would really benefit from a good mix,” he explains. “And then in the local stuff, try to boost the industry around here, because there's so much to shout about.”
“The good thing about being a mixer,” he concludes, “is on Monday I could be doing like a heavy guitar record and then by Friday I'm doing a folk acoustic one and then on the next week I'm doing a TV show. The rewards are immediate.”
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