John Loder - Engineer/Producer
John Loder
JOHN LODER
Sound engineer who founded the legendary Southern Studios in London.
Born April 7 1946; died August 12 2005.

I first met the sound engineer and record producer John Loder in about 1968. He was
on an acid trip and seemed to be talking out of the top of his head. The next time I met
him he was straight and made a lot more sense. We soon found that we shared. a
common interest in Jimi Hendrix, Frank Zappa, John Coltrane, and KarlHeinz
Stockhausen. When we got bored with them, we would play birdsong forwards and
Bach backwards.

By 1970 John, who has died aged 59, and I were working together in Exit, an
avant-garde outfit. I was the percussionist, playing an amplified bicycle wheel, and he
was using an ancient one-track tape-recorder discovered in a friend's attic; primitive,
but it was the beginning of what was to become John's lifework.
Financed by a brief spell as a mini-cab driver, by 1972 John had cobbled together an
innovatory multi-track sound system, first used as a part of the wildly ambitious
avant-garde International Carnival of Experimental Sound (ICES 72). By the time Exit
disbanded in 1974, John had accumulated enough equipment to build a recording
studio in the small garage of his north London home.

During the next three years we lost touch, but by 1977 he was recording advertising
jingles - which he didn't enjoy - and I had cofounded the band Crass, which I enjoyed
thoroughly. From then on the ball started to rock and roll. As "the ninth member of the
band", John became our recording engineer and financial manager: the music was bad
and so was the money, but it was fun.

Within a couple of years Crass albums were dominating the alternative charts, and
John's garage had become Southern Studios. In 1979 we created Crass Records and,
despite marketing our first single for 45p against John's warning that every copy would
lose us 3p, we made money.

We were in business, and from the outset it was clear that the music industry was not
well pleased; John was a maverick, a DIY champion who didn't play the game. In his
philosophy, beautiful came before big: to the last he drove a wreck of an old van, and
never considered moving his garage studio to a more "desirable" location.

Likewise, attempts to buy him out failed, just as media attempts to denigrate Crass had
no effect on its growing popularity. Crass Records became the label that every
aspiring punk band looked to, Southern Studios their destination, and John their
engineer of choice.

Throughout that time, with scores of bands being released on the label, no contract
was ever signed and no paperwork ever thrust in faces. It was all done on trust, a
principle that John held dear throughout his life. And it was John's managerial,
production and engineering skills which were to assist the likes of Crass, Bjork,
Chumbawamba, Fugazi, Shellac, The Jesus And Mary Chain, Slint and Babes In
Toyland into the public domain,

Born near Plymouth, educated at a boarding school that he didn't like, John studied
electrical engineering at London's City University. Details of his early history are brief
because he didn't like talking about himself. John was one of those people who
appears to have been born on their 20th birthday.

For every band that made it on to Crass Records, 10 were turned away. Crass's
ideology was uncompromising and, as John felt, many good bands were losing the
chance of public exposure. As a response, in partnership with his artist wife Sue, he
created several labels and Southern Distribution, to ensure that they found a market.
Aided by a small team to whom John was devoted, Southern grew into the international
force that it is today.

John resisted many attempts over the years to rein him in; as other independents
collapsed, Southern survived, as majors conglomerated and became increasingly
bland, Southern remained a vibrant voice in the wilderness. When bands got too big
for their boots or managers began to burn his ears, John would suggest they go
elsewhere. In the truest sense, Southern was a cottage industry, it placed people
before profit.

Media requests for interviews with John always drew a blank, he displayed a reticence
which extended even to his closest friends. For that reason very few people were
aware that during the last 18 months he had been battling with a brain tumour which
finally killed him.

But just as John's studio has become legendary, so has his insistence that quality of
product should come before quantity: his angle, small is beautiful, was the big idea.

He is survived by his wife, Sue, and daughter, Natasha.

Penny Rimbaud
Friday August 19, 2005 The Guardian
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