After a long day of tinkering and tweaking music tracks at Abbey Road Studios in London, two-time Grammy award-winning producer Giles Martin finds it difficult to unwind. “It’s hard for me to switch off in some ways, I make conscious decisions about music every day for about ten hours,” he says. “So when I put on music when I get home, I find it really hard not to go, ‘Why am I listening to this? How is it done? Who is playing on it? How is it mixed? What do the speakers sound like?’”
The Sound Experience Leader at audio company SONOS and Head Of Audio and Sound at Universal Music Group retreats to his farmhouse, a home he shares with “four women”; his wife, two young daughters “and my wise best friend who lives next door in a cottage.” For Martin, fitting out his home for great sound is as essential to him as the early acoustic take of “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” was essential to his remastered Beatles offering The White Album.
“We are at this stage where it’s easy to listen to everything. Now it should be incredibly good to listen to everything,” Martin says. “The SONOS Beam and the SONOS One are the two best value products and least expensive. For me, they actually unlock the world of SONOS. I have them at home. Sometimes in the farmhouse, I get bad Wi-Fi or power shortages – I only notice [how great the sound was with the speakers] when the power switches off. I turn on the TV and it’s suddenly like, ‘What has happened to the sound?’ That’s what great products should be. Great products should be something that you completely take for granted. I love the idea of no longer noticing, you just have it naturally sounding good.”
Martin has remastered the way we hear the band and has made judgement calls to transition tracks from vinyl into digital.
“What might be surprising is people in studios use SONOS One as reference speakers because they just sound natural. As far as watching a movie at home goes, the SONOS Beam pretty much does everything you want it to do and also plays music well. These are good investments because they really open up the world of listening.”
The son of late Beatles producer Sir George Martin, the music producer has one of the most fascinating and decorated careers in the industry. Remixing the Beatles albums Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band and the aforementioned White Album, Martin has remastered the way we hear the band and has made judgement calls to transition tracks from vinyl into digital. He is currently putting the final touches on the Elton John musical fantasy Rocketman, for which he produced the sound, music and soundtrack. It’s his role at SONOS, however, that determines how best these projects are delivered to the consumer’s ear. For Martin, this means pushing the studio technologies through to the music-lover and how they listen at home.
“Rocketman has been a year and a half work. That’s a long time to dedicate your life to something,” says Martin. “I need to make sure that when it’s played back, it’s as good as it possibly can be.”
“We can do things in rooms which are amazing and it’s my mission to get people to hear that in the home,” he continues. “If you think of a speaker as being the only way a musician can communicate with someone in their home, it’s my job to make sure that thread is as good as possible. You’ve got to think about podcasts and films too and how they should be heard. It’s the peeling back of the layers so the listening experience is as natural as it can be. And the irony of that is, technology adds to that. There’s a strange dichotomy where you can throw technology at something and it’ll make it more natural. You usually think of that as the other way around.”
“If you think of a speaker as being the only way a musician can communicate with someone in their home, it’s my job to make sure that thread is as good as possible” says Martin.
When it comes to entertaining, Martin says he’ll start the night with “lots of old school to start the party and then finish with something acoustic and mellow” – with a glass of red.
For your listening pleasure we present: Giles Martin’s ‘entertaining at home’ playlist:
• Rocky Took A Lover by Bell X1. “No one would have ever heard about this Irish band but this is a great track.”
• Matador by Gaz Coombes. “I love this album.”
• Graceland by Paul Simon. “I’ve been listening to a lot of Paul Simon lately. There’s a lyric on this song which reads “And she said losing love is like a window in your heart. Everybody sees you’re blown apart.” I think that is one of the best lyrics I’ve ever heard so this is a good kitchen classic for me.”
• Groove Is In The Heart by Deee-Lite. “I listened to this in college.”
• Insane In The Brain by Cypress Hill. “I played this the other day and it was brilliant hearing my nine-year-old go ‘Insane in the membrane!’ [laughs].”
• Childish Gambino. “I use this for working out.”
No doubt each track is subject to Martin’s acutely analytical ear. Regardless, with his musical pedigree, you can be sure he’ll be listening through a quality sound system, and savouring every last nuance and each artist’s lyrical motifs for maximum benefit. Groove is in the heart indeed.
Enjoy brilliant sound at home with SONOS
