Alan Douches, West West Side Music mastering engineer, is credited on at least a handful of CD's in any underground music fan's collection (go ahead, check). Douches has been at the board for releases on labels such as Roadrunner, Victory, Trustkill, Ferret, Jade Tree, Equal Vision, and Vagrant. In total, he has had his hand in over 6,000 records. Douches' work with such bands as Hatebreed, Unearth, and Throwndown has made him a household name in the underground music circles but, still, no one 20 years into a distinguished career as a mastering engineer, Douches (rhymes with couches) laughs off the confusion and lets his body of work speak for itself. His name has become synonymous with the dense, pummeling production values of modern hardcore and metal and, while he can't take credit for creating or popularizing the genre of metalcore, he feels a bit like a gatekeeper for the scene. "I'm responsible for having a certain level of quality. When we read the CMJ Loud Chart and know that sometimes we've done half the records, that puts a little pressure on me," says Douches. The engineers track record is well documented, but even with those familiar with his body of work are ignorant of one interesting fact - not only does Douches master hip-hop records on a regular basis, some of his earliest experiences in the music industry were in the realm of rap. "When I started off in my engineering career 22 years ago, I had done a Grandmaster Flash record, and and a lot of work with Select Records," says Douches. "Then I had a stint where I was staff engineer for Sugar Hill Records. So once in a while when some indie label asks, 'Alan, have you done any rap or hip-hop?' I go 'Um, Grandmaster Flash, Run DMC...'" Douches came of age in the music industry before the advent of recording workshops and audio engineering trade schools. He apprenticed with Jack Douglas, a Grammy Award-winning producer whose credits include John Lennon, Aerosmith, Cheap Trick, New York Dolls, and The Who. A self-described "longhaired surbanban kid," Douches spent 18 months with Douglas, "doing everything from getting him coffee to engineering." There were no schools back then," continues Douches, "that was the schooling. I happened to be at the right place at the right time, and then, quite frankly, kicked ass. If you're going to make a living in this business, you've got to be on fire... and talented." Fortunately, Douches is both. Douches worked with Aerosmith and then went into sessions with Grandmaster Flash. That longhaired suburban kid, like much of America in the early 1980's, wasn't quite sure what to make of rap. "I actually had to have Flash explain to me the history of what he was doing, just so I could understand it more and really be helpful during the recording and mixing." he says.
Grandmaster Flash caught Douches off-guard by asking him to hook him up with rock bands Douches had worked with, such as Aerosmith. Douches laughed it off at the time, but Grandmaster's pestering turned out to be prescient following the Run DMC and Aerosmith collaboration, "Walk This Way"; Public Enemy's sampling of Slayer and mash-up with Anthrax on "Bring tha Noize"; and the mostly unfortunate genre of rap-rock. Douches still holds Flash in high regard. "Brilliant man, absolutely brilliant man, and extremely talented." Douches would have most likely had a successful career as a recording engineer and record producer, but circumstances pushed him in a slightly different direction. "I got into it completely accidentally." says Douches about mastering. "I was producing records for Caroline, and when we'd get the pressed records back you'd be like, "What happened?" Douches may have been working on records for independent labels with smaller budgets, but he was frustrated when the quality of a bands recording was compromised. "You find out that some guy at the pressing plant was responsible for taking it to a CD, and so, I decided that I could do better. I started (mastering records) for these indie bands because there was just no money. Caroline certainly embraced me doing that and started giving me a lot of work, and I said, 'Wait a minute; I need some some special gear to do this right.' We kind of made an agreement with them that we would do a certain number of records for them at a certain price and it enabled me to get the right editing station, the right compressor, and it started from there." Between there and here, Douches and a friend built West West Side Music, a studio with a name so distinctive and frequently mangled as his own. Douches is amused by the confusion and figures, thousands of records later, he "can't change the name now." In simple terms, the process of mastering a recording is "really just nipping and tucking at the mix with extremely high-end gear. You start adjusting each little part and, before you know it, the whole has taken on a completely different meaning," says Douches. But is the process of mastering a hip-hop record - often just a handful of tracks between vocals, synthesizers, and samplers - different from mastering a recording by a rock band with full instrumentation? Most of the time I think that it's the same. I'm just trying to make it sound like what I think it should sound like," he says. Douches works on a surprising diverse array of recordings, staying on the cutting edge of multiple genres at once. "Any style of music or artistic expression that isn';t pretentious is worth giving a couple minutes to and checking it out. I think part of mastering is that you can't like just one style. although maybe you get a reputation in a style, you have to be open to a lot of different styles." Douches has developed a reputation for mastering thick, compressed metal and hardcore records that re-define loud, but to him that's simply a matter of giving his clients what they want. "To me, the volume of a disc is self-evident. Many people think that mastering engineers are the problem and the answer. Quite to the contrary, we only make records as loud as the artist or the record companies want them to be. Sometimes I try to persuade bands that the dynamic range is what they want. But very often there is a bigger meaning to their record than acoustical dynamics, and they waant to deliver it in a certain way," says Douches. "some music is meant to be brutal, some music is meant to be heartfelt." Call us directly at 845-563-3094 or email us... wwsm@mac.com
