Fluid Mastering - Nick Watson

Nick was surrounded by classical and jazz guitar music from an early age, thanks to his father Mike Watson's activities as a session musician and renowned guitar teacher. However despite these positive influences, Nick chose the way of darkness and pursued a keen interest in rock and pop music which encompassed the roots of rock and soul in the sixties right through to the glamorous '80s pop which dominated the charts in his schoolyears.

In 1989 Nick graduated with a degree in Electroacoustics and began his studio career; kicking off with a couple of years dabbling with production and recording before landing a job at Sound Recording Technology (SRT) as a Mastering Engineer. For the next twelve years Nick was kept very busy, gaining a great deal of experience working with an extremely diverse range of musical styles. From indie rock and pop to classical, jazz and folk; artists producers and engineers would amaze Nick with their ability to turn out fantastic recordings on a very tight budget, or, perhaps more often, to f*** it up beyond belief... Nick describes his role at that time as running from quality control at one end of the spectrum, to outright salvage at the other!

In addition to working with new recordings Nick also earned an enviable reputation for his re-mastering and occasional remixing of catalogue material; producing acclaimed reissues by artists such as Fleetwood Mac and Deep Purple, and preparing repaired and enhanced masters for specialist reissue labels such as RPM, BGO, Snapper, Diamond, Sequel, Castle and Connoisseur.

After a number of years, and via a promotion to Chief Engineer, Nick was then approached for a job at the Townhouse where, as well as continuing his re-mastering activities, Nick's clientele broadened to include labels such as Sony BMG, Parlophone and Island, working on recordings by Keane, Coldplay, Jamelia, Mika & Gary Numan among others. During this time, Nick also undertook mastering work in 5.1 and on the SACD format, and remastered seminal works by favourite bands The Kinks and The Small Faces, in the latter case garnering great praise from the remaining band members, who claimed their material had never sounded as good before.

With Fluid Mastering Nick's excited about bringing together his experiences of major and smaller studio work. "A top mastering studio offers exceptional technical facilities," says Nick; "...but too many great projects don't get the benefit, whether it's due to budget, or simply because clients find the major studios too impersonal to deal with. Our studio here at Fluid is the best equipped room I've worked in, and we aim to provide every client with a service tailored to their needs and budget."

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