Mix engineer Tom Lord-Alge has chosen Barefoot Sound‘s MicroMain27 monitors for his Spank Studios in Miami Beach.
A three-time Grammy Award-winner, he has amassed one of the music industry’s most prolific discographies, including diverse credits ranging from U2 to The Rolling Stones, P!nk, Peter Gabriel, Dave Matthews Band, Blink-182, Thirty Seconds to Mars, Avril Lavigne, and numerous others.
“When the Barefoot monitors showed up, it was a good day,” says Lord-Alge. “I was excited because everyone that I spoke to, Michael Brauer, my brother Chris, and other people within the industry, had always spoken very highly of these monitors.”
Tom Lord-Alge began his career at Unique Recording in NYC, and won his first of two “Best Engineered Recording” Grammys in 1986 for recording and mixing Steve Winwood’s “Back In The High Life.”
During this period he scored his first big break producing, engineering, and mixing “If You Leave” by Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark for the ‘Pretty in Pink’ soundtrack.
“From the moment I set my Barefoots up, I was shocked at just how good they sounded, right out of the box,” Lord-Alge continues.
“They’re self-powered, so you just plug the power in, plug the line level input in, and you’re off to the races. Immediately, I was impressed with how true they sounded; and as I’ve worked with them over the past couple of months, I find myself using them as the point of reference, as opposed to my NS-10s.”
Lord-Alge would win his second Grammy in 1988 with Steve Winwood’s follow up, “Roll With It.” In the same year he left his staff job at Unique Recording, spending several years freelance producing before deciding on becoming a career mixer and building his personal mixing environment, Spank Studios, in Miami Beach.
“Where the Barefoots have really impressed me is in their low-frequency reproduction,” he continues. “It’s crisp, it’s tight, it’s got just the right amount, so with the Weezer project and pretty much all the projects I’ve mixed lately, it’s really helped me to dial in and tighten up my bottom end. And the top end is spectacular, just so nice and clean and not harsh—it got me jacked up about cymbals again.”
Recent mix projects include a new studio album from Live, Kensington’s smash album “Rivals,” Weezer’s latest album “Everything Will Be Alright in the End,” and tracks for Angels and Airwaves, Ash Koley, and Crosses. So far in 2015, Lord-Alge has mixed the new Sleeping With Sirens album “Madness,” and tracks for Tom DeLonge, Dweezil Zappa, Armin van Buurin and Japanese superstar’s Shogo Hamada, One OK Rock and Scandal.
“I’m very quietly just mixing records here in Miami Beach,” Lord-Alge explains. “I did my time in Los Angeles, I cut my teeth in New York, and I just found that, for me, I really enjoy living down here, and it’s just a wonderful place to make music; and my clients love coming down here. At the end of the day, they come in, they listen to the mix, and they’re nice and focused, and then we go out and have a nice meal, and then we do it all again the next day. It provides them with this great kind of relaxation, so that they can really focus on what we’re doing here.”
