Chris Porter – From Cataclysm to Scary Monsters

Chris Porter has over 40 years experience in the music business as a record producer and engineer, working with the world’s greatest artists across every musical genre. His engineering credits collected over the years are many and varied, including a long term working relationship with George Michael, plus Simple Minds, Thin Lizzy, Take That and Chris de Burgh, through to work with symphony orchestras, film and DVD. It all started, however, on the other side of the microphone…

Chris is modest about his early career as a performer, initially with his own prog rock outfit, Cataclysm;

“After a while, I was able to sing and people were able to listen without it causing too much pain.”

But years later and well into an illustrious career at the pinnacle of the music production industry, he was to achieve his most notable vocal milestone, contributing backing vocals on David Bowie’s ‘Scary Monsters’ album, which he also engineered. He worked on the album with Producer Tony Visconti, who he originally met while doing some building work with friends on Visconti’s Soho studio. He has built and owned three of his own recording studios and now has a “compact but powerful” Mac-based system at home.

Chris joined other top audio professionals as a member of the original Aston 33, a listening panel (now numbering more than 90) who, through an extensive blind testing programme, have ensured each Aston mic has been the best sounding in its class, before it even reaches the stores.

“Aston has really raised the bar and has a unique approach to the design and manufacture of its products. I use my Origin and Spirits happily alongside classic microphones such as the Neumann 49b or U87 or AKG C414s and quite often choose the Astons.”     

Chris has also started using Aston Starlights, notably on the recent live shows by prog rock legends King Crimson (whose front man, Jakko Jakszyk, also recently joined the Aston family).

“I asked Aston if I could try the Starlights on drum overheads for our three drummers. Previously Neumann KM84 were being used. The Starlights performed superbly and the ability to choose from one of the three voices available is very useful when there are three drummers on stage. I love using the Aston Spirit as a mid and side pair the unique shape means they can sit one on top of the other for a perfect stereo image.”

We are proud to have Chris on the Aston 33 panel and grateful for his invaluable input on the development of existing and future Aston microphones.

Read the full interview with Chris here.