LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA: Malcolm Luker's recording career began at Morgan Studios in London. "My mum was a jazz pianist," says Luker, "and so I was thrown into the piano at the age of four or so. I hit my rebellious stage early. By the time I was ten I was trying to play guitar in rock bands." Back in the late 1960s much of the counter-culture was celebrating the virtues of sex and drugs, and Luker's band, Smoke, joined the party. "We had a hit in Europe back then, and it reached America, but was banned by the powers that be because it extolled the virtues of illicit drugs." By the mid-70's Luker had formed a production team with Pink Floyd's Nick Mason. Starting with the then current eight-track tape recorders, Luker began engineering sessions. Record work led to film scores, and eventually to a stint as chief engineer at the Munich studio, ARCO. "We had a full scoring stage, and I was able to work on a lot of interesting projects there, including recording the orchestra for "The Piano" and recording and mixing a lot of the "Young Indiana Jones" TV films live." During his term in Munich, Malcolm Luker became aware of a new line of microphones that Dirk Brauner was working on. "This must have been about seven or eight years ago, just before I moved from Munich to L.A. I saw a number of the prototypes that would eventually become the Brauner VM1 Tube Microphone. When the time was right Dirk brought three of them to the studio. We were recording a full symphony orchestra and I put three Brauner mics on the Decca tree as the main room mics and began tracking. The orchestra was in full throttle, raging away at the opening title cue. Dirk was sitting next to me. After the first take we listened to a playback. It sounded magnificent! I turned around and said, 'Hey Dirk, what do you think?' He didn't say a word - there were just tears in his eyes." Luker's journey took him to L.A., where he became one of the film industry's successful scoring mixers. His recent credits include working on "Matchstick Men" "Pirates of the Caribbean" "The Bourne Identity" and the Mel Gibson film "We Were Soldiers." He currently owns five Brauner VM1s. "I'm very involved with many of the scores I work on, and actually co-produced the score to "We Were Soldiers" with the composer, Nick Glennie-Smith. When I bring equipment to a session I have to be convinced that it's the absolute best. "The VM1 is way above the rest. I like to keep my signal path simple going from the VM1s to Grace mic-pres, and then straight into the console. For orchestral recordings, they capture the room beautifully. The mics are clear, without being overly bright. On harp, acoustic guitar, and strings, the VM1 lets you hear the wood of these instruments. "It's possible to buy cheaper tube mics that sound good. But at the level of recording I'm called to do, you have to get the ultimate sound. A thousand dollars more or less doesn't make any difference. Shortly after I moved here from Munich I was working on "Man in the Iron Mask," which starred Jeremy Irons and Leonardo di Caprio. Nick Glennie-Smith wrote an excellent score for that picture. This was just after I started using the VM1s. During that session, Steve Kempster, who was working in the next studio at the time, dropped in for a listen and fell in love with the VM1 instantly. He now owns Brauner VM1s, VM1 KHEs and Phantom Cs! That's quite a testimonial." |
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