While the completion of My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy was ultimately dictated by Kanye West himself, it’s clear that he had many great minds around to help shape its creation. One such individual was Grammy award-winning mix engineer Andrew Dawson, who spoke with the Los Angeles Times about his creative process working with Yeezy.
Serving as an engineer for West since his 2004 seminal debut The College Dropout, Dawson has witnessed the musical transition within the Chicagoan rapper/producer, which has crested with his latest album. “Kanye wanted to do a complete departure from the standard format of Hip Hop albums,” he said. “The cool thing for me was that I got to throw out all of those pop conventions where we had to have a four-minute song and have a hook come in the first minute. It was very free-form working on the album. So the key thing was trying to capture it without getting in the way and trying to let [West] express his ideas as easy as possible.”
Referencing the Rock sample of King Crimson’s “21st Century Schizoid Man” used for the album’s first single “Power,” he added, “There are certain sounds and certain production aspects that he really likes. If there’s a sound or an idea he wants, he’ll take it to, like, an extreme, to where you start to wonder, ‘Why is this so far out there?’ Then he’ll pull it back to a perfect amount.”
With the monumental accomplishment of My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy in the rear view mirror, Dawson says his next project will be with Doomtree member P.O.S. “He’s a friend of mine going all the way back to high school, and he just reached out to me earlier this year and said he wanted me to produce his entire album.”
You can read the full interview here.
No, offense but the world needs to stop calling non-engineers, “engineers”. A sound engineer like Andrew Dawson, should be called something else that relates more closely to mixing in and putting songs together.
It’s no wonder grown people have no idea what an engineer does, and why even more kids in high school have no idea too. The societal valuation of a professional can and does affect the industry’s salary chokehold. Simply put, because many people don’t know what an engineer is and does, they also do not value that same engineer, because of this, an engineer, especially one fresh out of school, is getting paid much lower, then they should be, and are being hosed around by private sector companies.
And so it is because of this misinformation that engineers are not as valued in this society as they should be. They are as valuable as doctors, and 100 times more valuable than lawyers, and politicians, yet ask Joe Schmoe, and he’s clueless.
End Rant/
He is a sound engineer. I’m a mechanical engineer, and musician, and there are overlapping principals (DB, WB, etc). The engineers I work with (Berklee) grads are just that.
I agree alot of people don’t understand though. I mean it’s not like saying the janitor is a “custodial engineer”
You’ve got to be kidding me. Society knows very well where engineers fit in and if anything they’re as valuable as any white collar profession you mentioned given the fact society would cease to function without Politicians and Lawyers but in reality wouldn’t if engineers disappeared. Shit just wouldn’t get done though, but society wouldn’t consume itself.
You have a chip on your shoulder homie, get over yourself.
AND
The term Sound engineer fits perfectly
Actually, no, society could function without lying lawyers, and most definitely function without lying, thieving, murdering politicians. Fact: you couldn’t go to work without transportation. You couldn’t save your hard earned money without computer programs, and you couldn’t hold dangerous criminals in a place they can’t escape from without physical barriers, and guns. All of that is done by science one way or another. Everything you do from sun up to sun down involves science and technology.
Ever hear of a Technocracy? A world ran by engineers and scientists. There would be no limits to what we could do as human beings. No starving kids in Africa, no disease we cannot cure. No more poverty, and have-nots. No wealth gap, or even money for god’s sake. And that is just the stuff we CAN do right now. Anti-gravity and low nuclear fusion energy, for free to all is what we can accomplish in the future.
But of course through propaganda society is lead to believe “jack junior” here, will make the world better by practicing, and upholding an uncivilized notion called “the law”.
Of course sheep like you, will continue to believe, we humans, are naturally violent, naturally dishonest, and so need appointed “middlemen” to tell us how to live, and tell us what to do. Funny though how crime happens more often in poor conditions. Very evolutionary indeed.
heres another fact. their would be no social structure in the world without politicians. You wouldnt have a job to go to if it wasnt for CEOs and other white collar positions, and eniginers wouldnt exist without any of the above.
besides who gets a sound enginer confused with electrical enginers or other sort of blue collar enginers? only idiots like you do.