Sorry so late to share, but life happens, and it has been happening a lot lately.
I have now contributed to a chart-topping album. (Cue my expression of dumbfounded shock.) I supervised the creation of the skits on R&B singer Brent Faiyaz’s album Wasteland, which debuted at #1 on the Billboard Top R&B/Hip-Hop albums chart, and both debuted and peaked at #2 on the Billboard 200. It also landed seven tracks in the Hot 100.
More than 15 years working with dialogue and storytelling without picture on Seth MacFarlane’s animated shows—on each episode we are recording and editing dialogue for months before we have even rough animation to watch—served me well on this project that was entirely intended to be without picture. Our superstar team adapted brilliantly to a workflow full of workarounds meant to keep us all in sync and on the same page without having images to do it for us.
And the team… what a fantastic group of people. Jason Oliver shooting a fun voiceover-ADR hybrid on WB stage 1. Angie Faulkner cutting and building dialogue. Luis Galdames doing the sound effects heavy lifting, and Jay Jennings contributing some superb vehicle design work. (And I managed to find time to contribute a bit of sound design! Woo-hoo!) Sanaa Kelley and Adam DeCoster walking foley with Arno Stephanian mixing. And Steve Bucino from Universal mixing in Atmos on one of Signature Post’s beautiful new stages. Nothing beats working with great people. This crew was stellar.
I wouldn’t have been able to put together a dream team if Brent hadn’t had the vision and the guts to want to do things differently. Most album skits are just recorded in the studio. A few people in front of mics, throw in a few sound effects. It’s essentially become its own genre and it has its own sound. But Brent wanted the audience to believe they were listening to a film, and he wasn’t afraid of the time and money it would take to craft that illusion.
Also… large quantities of gratitude to producer Freeze for his proactive efforts to give credit to everyone who worked on the album (including the skits) in a world where credits have all but disappeared from songs and albums. You can see a full credits scroll here.