RSR514 - David Bottrill - Grammy Winning Atmos Mixing with Tool, Daniel Lanois, and World Music

Recording Studio Rockstars

Lij Shaw

Music

4.8 • 543 Ratings

🗓️ 11 July 2025

⏱️ 114 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In this episode of Recording Studio Rockstars, I sat down with the legendary David Botrill—Grammy-winning producer and engineer behind iconic albums by Tool, Peter Gabriel, King Crimson, Muse, and more. David's journey began in a small Canadian studio run by Bob Lanois, where he learned to be indispensable in the room. From there, he went on to work with Daniel Lanois, Peter Gabriel, and Real World Studios before stepping out on his own. We talk about:

The evolution of his ambient and world music influences
Building a custom studio for Atmos mixing
Embracing imperfection in music
Band dynamics, remote collaboration, and pre-production tips
His hands-on carpentry work and how it shapes his approach to sound

This episode is packed with wisdom for producers, engineers, and anyone passionate about capturing real emotion in the studio. Don't miss this conversation with one of the greats!

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My guest today is David Bottrill, a three time Grammy Award winning Producer/Engineer/Mixer and has had over 15 million copies of his work sold worldwide. He has worked with a diverse spectrum of prolific artists, such as Peter Gabriel, Smashing Pumpkins, Tool, Muse, Silverchair, King Crimson, Godsmack. and Rush. David has also worked with some of the most influential world musicians, noteably Youssou N'dour and Baaba Maal of Senegal, and Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan of Pakistan.

David spent 20 years living in the UK, followed by a term in New York, but has settled back in Canada, where he has a mixing studio. Even still, David still spends much of his time working in the US and abroad.

Thanks to Brian Murphree at SoundPorter Mastering for making this happen!

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Transcript

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0:00.0	This episode of Recording Studio Rockstars is brought to you by Isotope, Native Instruments,
0:06.8	Adam Audio, and S-A-E Institute. You're hearing my voice right now mixed through isotope,
0:13.4	ozone, and velvet on atom audio monitors and headphones. Make sure to get my free mixing course
0:20.0	at Mixmasterbundle.com, and please check out our
0:23.7	awesome sponsors using the links in the show notes, and please like and subscribe to this
0:29.3	YouTube channel, because it's a great way to help support this show. Now, get ready to rock.
0:34.7	And part of what technology now has allowed us in a way is the absolving of decision
0:41.6	making. And I think that that's kind of like a bit of a mistake. I think, you know, a smarter
0:48.1	person than me once said, decisions are your friends. And when we used to record on, you know,
0:52.6	16 or 24 tracks, you had to make decisions.
0:55.3	And you had to build upon them and complete the songs with whatever tools you had.
1:00.1	You didn't have unlimited playlists to do 17 solos or 17 vocal takes or anything like that.
1:06.9	You had to make a decision. If you wanted to change something, often you had to erase something else. So you had to decide, well, is this new thing going to improve things
1:13.6	more than the thing that we have there already.
1:26.2	Welcome to Recording Studio Rockstars. I'm Lid Shaw, and this is the podcast created to help you become a rock star of the recording studio.
1:40.3	From synths to strings to studio guitars, Complete 15 has it all.
1:47.0	Native Instruments Flagship Bundle gives you everything you need to create pro music in any genre.
1:53.0	With cutting-edge instruments like Contact 8, MassiveX, battery, guitar rig, and session guitarists
2:00.0	for lifelike electric and acoustic guitar parts.
2:03.7	Use our code Rock 10 for 10% off at native instruments.com or get started with complete start
2:10.8	totally free.
2:12.8	Howdy Rockstars, it's your host, Lid Shaw, and welcome back to Recording Studio Rockstars,
	...

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