the AVIARY
in-house team
Fraser
Montgomery
prod : eng : mix : FILM
It started with 2 track cassette recordings in the back shed. This lead to many memorable years writing, recording and touring with my band Symbiosis in the 2000's. In 2008 I turned to my newfound passion of recording and production, and in 2012 I finally built my dream, The Aviary Studios, to focus on making other people's records full-time.
Since building the studio, I've been working hard with independent bands and artists to bring their visions to life. In various combinations of engineering, mixing and producing, I've worked with a number of artists, including: Allen Stone, Dan Parsons, Tracy McNeil (ARIA nominated), Kerryn Fields (Victorian Music Award for Best Folk Album), Matt Joe Gow (Victorian Music Award for best Country Album), Emilee South, Yirrmal, Shane Howard, Hannah Acfield, Lior & Domini, Eastbound Buzz, Justin Yap Band (Best Album at Victorian Blues Awards), Little Wise, and Pete Denehay (2 x Golden Guitar Awards), to name a few.
If you'd like to listen to a few things I have done, you can head to the SIGHTS and SOUNDS page for videos and sound clips, or my own website www.frasermontgomery.com for my discography and a bit more on my approach to working with artists in the studio.
Stephen
mowat
PROD : ENG : MIX
Analogue tape hiss. Twanging, steel-stringed blues guitar. The sharp punctuation of a drum-machine snare. These are just a few of the sounds conjured by genre-crossing and ARIA-winning producer, writer and mixer Stephen Mowat.
Mowat began his music career early and his passion for crafting singular, expressive works of creativity has followed him to this day. His teenage experiments with DJing and electronic beat production led to early success in Australia’s rising hip hop scene, a pivotal time for the genre locally, in which it was discovering its own uniquely Australian voice.
Beginning his musical education working with an MPC sampler instilled in Mowat a magpie-like curiosity for music. To find the perfect sample for that beat, you need to trawl through old records and diverse genres. And you can hear that broad musical appreciation in Mowat’s work today, through its deft combinations of digital and analogue production techniques.
From helping hair-metal guitars simmer under raw hip-hop drums on Sydney rapper and producer BLESSED’s ‘Superfly’, to writing songs with Melbourne alt-rocker Ali Barter in his studio, Mowat puts the artists he works with first. He lets their work sing and breath, so that the messages in their songs can ring out across the world.
As Matik, he produced Pez’s ARIA-nominated album A Mind Of My Own – including the single Festival Song, which was number seven in Triple J’s Hottest 100 of 2008. He also produced for Drapht’s ARIA-winning album The Life Of Riley, Bliss n Eso’s platinum-selling and ARIA-nominated albums Running On Air and Circus In The Sky, and Seth Sentry’s This Was Tomorrow.
A note about Stephen from Fraser: Stephen has been working in and around The Aviary for nearly 5 years. As a long time resident of the production rooms here, he has engineered and produced many a record upstairs in the main studio. Having recently returned to Melbourne after a solid stint in Nashville, it is great to have Stephen back in the fold. He is at the top of his game. His recent work with WILSN and Molly Apirana are inspired. Stephen brings an amazing level of studio professionalism and depth of experience to the team, and his ears are as platinum as the record on his wall. It’s truly exciting to have this bloke and his skills on the “In-House” team.