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Sadia, S 2015 Stephen I. Digital Still. © copyright 2015 all rights reserved.

 
Stephen W Tayler - Sound Artist 
 

Stephen W Tayler is a mixer, music producer, composer and sound designer who has contributed this collection of talents to hundreds of world-class albums to date.

Stephen grew up studying and performing music professionally. At the age of seven he became a boy chorister, then lead chorister, at New College, Oxford. He gained a music scholarship to Shrewsbury School, followed by three years at the Royal College of Music in London. Stephen then moved into the world of professional audio.

As a result of his growing interest with technology, he started a career in the recording industry at the legendary Trident studios in London, reaching the position of chief engineer in three years. He went on to become freelance, and has since worked around the world not only on high profile but eclectic music projects as well.

Having originally been schooled in traditional recording methods, he became an early adopter of synthesis, sampling and digital audio techniques.

His albums include work Tina Turner, Peter Gabriel, Stevie Nicks, Underworld, Rush, Duncan Sheik, Howard Jones, Bob Geldof, Rupert Hine, Sting, Suzanne Vega, and Lou Reed, as well as scores of singles and remixes. He has also mixed diverse live concerts for disc and broadcast, specialising in surround mixing, and has received awards too numerous to mention.

In 1990 he travelled around the world with the BBC production ‘One World One Voice’ which recorded and filmed over 400 musicians on location. By stretching the studio technology of the day to the absolute limit, Stephen helped create a musical collage for the one hour TV special, directed by Kevin Godley. The show, with its ecological themes, and a behind the scenes documentary were broadcast simultaneously to a massive world audience.

Stephen has also worked with European and world music artists that include Les Negresses Vertes, Noa, Khadja Nin, Remmy Ongala, Claudio Baglioni, and Renato Zero, among others, and at studios in London, Paris, Rome, Mumbai, Milan, Bologna, New York, Los Angeles, Toronto, Montreal, Dublin, Helsinki, Rio de Janeiro, Amsterdam...... and on location in: Tanzania, Brazil, Russia, France, Italy, Spain, USA, Canada, the UK and Ireland, among others.

Since 2009, Stephen began working with Kate Bush on ’Director's Cut’, ’50 Words for Snow’, and he also remixed ‘Running Up That Hill (A Deal With God)’, which was played in its entirety at the closing ceremony for the 2012 Olympics.

In August 2014, Tayler returned to work with Bush on her twenty-two date residency at the Hammersmith Apollo, for the show 'Before The Dawn - KT Fellowship’. Tayler was brought on board to specifically control Bush's vocal sound, processing and effects. He joined the sound team of nine people, and the preparations for the show took many months, featuring a dazzling combination of lighting and sound design, projections, props, puppeteers, and theatrical effects. In 2016 he mixed the album of the ‘Before the Dawn’ live concerts with Kate.

In recent years, Stephen has immersed himself in the world of film/video arts and post-production as a composer, sound designer, music mixer and editor. With musical/production collaborator Sadia he formed the world music fusion outfit ‘Equa’ which has written, performed and recorded for CDs, film soundtracks, ballet and installations.

Having studied music extensively, Stephen plays a wide variety of instruments, including woodwind, keyboards and guitars. His compositions contain acoustic, electronic, ambient and abstract elements, and range from conventional music forms to pure soundscapes.

In 2013 Stephen relocated to a private studio/production room at Real World Studios, along with his creative partner Sadia Sadia.

In 2015, Stephen released his first solo album of original compositions, ‘Ostinato’ through Esoteric Antenna.

November 2016 saw Tayler return to playing live shows with the ensemble Nooten/Barten/Tayler for performances in Amsterdam. In 2017, Tayler performed his audio-visual solo show 'Ostinato - LIVE' at The Pound Arts Centre in Corsham, Wiltshire.

Since 2018 Stephen has specialised in creating new mixes in stereo and surround for deluxe box set reissues of classic albums. So far he has remixed the entire Be-Bop Deluxe back catalogue along with 'Sound On Sound' by Bill Nelson’s Red Noise, as well as 'The Charisma Years' collection from Van der Graaf Generator, featuring four of their best albums, along with a classic Marillion album from 1991, 'Holidays in Eden'. There are many more reissues in the pipeline waiting for release in the coming months.

He continues to produce and mix new and current works for various artists.

2019 also saw the launch of another brand new audio visual solo project from Stephen, 'Da Capo'. This was conceived first and foremost as a live work, featuring visuals along with performance and real time manipulation of the music and sound. It premiered as a live event to an audience in the Big Room at Real World Studios. 'Da Capo' was subsequently released as a CD/DVD set in 2021.

Links:

Selected works

Innerviews Interview

Prog Magazine Interview

BBC Sounds Interview

Da Capo - Burning Shed

Ostinato - Live at The Pound

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Spotify

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