Meet Franz Matthews: Musician, DJ, Engineer, Producer & Studio Owner
Berlin based Matt Brismontier is more commonly known by the name of Franz Matthews. In addition to being an active DJ, Musician and band frontman, he is also the owner and founder of MOWD Studios. We recently caught up with him to find out how it all started and what he's been up to of late.
How did you first start engineering music, Matt?
I’m a musician at heart, so the natural progression from that point was to start producing my own tracks. These would eventually become my band’s first EP, back in 2010 – ‘Pronounce: Par-ley-vu-en-gley’ by Parlez-vous Anglais?. I soon realised that the more I kept on making music, constantly being in recording studios with other engineers, the more know-how I got – not to mention all the more gear I had accumulated! After a few years of focusing only on myself and the band, I started producing music for other artists. This soon became my full time job as a producer/engineer based in Berlin, where I decided to set up my own studio, MOWD.
What are you working on at the moment?
My work is quite varied and I’m happy to see that MOWD has grown into a fully-working commercial studio. At the moment, I’m working on my band's [Parlez-Vous Anglais?] first full-length album, an EP for Languages - a duo I am involved with - and also finishing up a couple of remixes. I've also started producing a series of film trailers which you'll hopefully be able to hear in the coming months – I’m afraid that’s all I can disclose for now.
What is your favorite stage in the music production process?
I love it all! Tracking, producing and mixing have all become interdependent over the last few years: it's pretty hard to do one without touching the other. As a producer, what I like most of all is being able to “find the sound" of the artist I’m producing. I enjoy working alongside artists and engineers to genuinely collaborate on a project – bouncing ideas, creating new concepts and sharing techniques... that’s how we all learn, after all.
What about a favorite piece of gear you’ve used recently?
That would have to be my API 527 compressors. No later than yesterday I ran a whole group of orchestral tracks (violins, cellos, violas...) from my DAW into the compressor and the strings literally came to life! It was amazing hearing how bright and tied together the strings were sounding, compared to the digital version. This is actually one of my favourite techniques I use every day to give digital an extra bump of ‘analogness’.
Matt's band: Parlez-vous Anglais?
Name your bucket-list pieces of studio equipment:
As I said before, my API 527 compressors alongside my API 512c for tracking, mixing and just about everything in between - they're simply great!
The RME Fireface 400 for its liability, clarity and amazing input/output options for its size.
My analog synths tower which is made up of a Juno 106, Dave Smith Instruments Prophet 08, Roland JX3P and a Nord Stage (which is a bit less analog, I agree... but still very handy!).
One last question: can you finish this sentence? 'If I wasn't engineering music, I'd be...'
Trying to play a lot more live shows than I do now!