From the ‘00s on, Silvey’s reputation as a top-flight mixer began to grow, as he completed landmark projects such as Portishead’s Third and Arcade Fire’s The Suburbs. “As a producer/engineer, everybody seemed to like my rough mixes,” he says. “I think I just started then kind of insisting that the stuff that I either produced or recorded, I mixed it as well.”
Now based in his latest incarnation of Toast Studios in west London, Silvey utilizes an array of vintage and modern equipment, while being trusted by artists and record companies as someone who can polish their recordings to an impressive shine.
“It was a perfect coinciding,” he explains. “Because as budgets were shrinking for bands and artists, there seemed to be a lot more willing from record companies to let new bands record in their rehearsal space. Then they just brought in somebody who knew what they were doing at the end. They only have to use the real studio at the last bit.”
The past decade has seen Craig Silvey mix Arctic Monkeys’ Suck It And See, Bryan Ferry’s Avonmore, The National’s Trouble Will Find Me, Arcade Fire’s Reflektor and Everything Now and Noel Gallagher’s Chasing Yesterday and Black Star Dancing EP. As a producer, he has worked with Baxter Dury, Bear’s Den and John Grant.
Recent clients include Jarvis Cocker’s new band JARV IS…, Tennessean singer/songwriter Julien Baker and The Rolling Stones, who employed Silvey to oversee a fresh mix of an outtake from their 1973 album Goats Head Soup.
“Coming of age in the ‘90s in the world of band rock,” he says, “I’ve spent my whole production career trying to make things sound like the Stones in the ‘70s. And then to finally actually get a Stones track and be able to manipulate it… It’s maybe the most fun thing I’ve ever done.”