John Loder (sound engineer)

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John Loder (sound engineer) bigraphy, stories - English musician and engineer

John Loder (sound engineer) : biography

7 April 1946 – 12 August 2005

John F. Loder (7 April 1946 – 12 August 2005) was an English sound engineer, record producer and founder of Southern Studios, as well as a former member of EXIT and co-founder of the Southern Records distribution company with his wife Sue. He was also the studio engineer of choice for Crass Records, and was often considered to be the band’s "9th member".Penny Rimbaud, John Loder obituary, The Guardian, Friday August 19, 2005, http://www.guardian.co.uk/obituaries/story/0,,1552016,00.html

Loder was born near Plymouth and educated at boarding school before studying electrical engineering at London’s City University. During his post-graduate work there he became involved in early experiments in digital encoding of audio for the military. By 1970 he had joined EXIT, alongside Penny Rimbaud, utilising a one-track tape-recorder. This led to Loder eventually founding a record studio in his garage after the disbanding of EXIT in 1974. In 1977 Loder was recording advertising jingles when his path crossed once again with Rimbaud, who had by then co-founded Crass, and at this point invited Loder to become the band’s engineer and financial manager, roles Loder happily accepted.

When Crass founded their own record label, Loder worked as an engineer on most of the label’s releases, and when Loder saw potential in a number of bands turned away by Crass Records due to ideological differences, Loder set up Southern Records.

Loder engineered and produced for many bands other than Crass, among them The Jesus and Mary Chain, for whom he engineered the recordings of the Psychocandy album, Big Black’s Songs About Fucking, PJ Harvey, Babes in Toyland, Fugazi, Ministry and Shellac. In the mid 1980s Loder established a television production facility at Southern. Amongst its notable output was the music show Snub TV which, after first being syndicated nationwide in the USA, went on to further success on BBC2 and in other countries.

Loder was responsible for encouraging and establishing independent alternative internet ezines, donating the use of Southern’s servers and bandwidth, taking part in pioneering online media streaming and simulcasting.

Loder died of a brain tumour in 2005, aged 59.

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Category:1946 births Category:2005 deaths Category:English electrical engineers Category:Anarcho-punk musicians Category:English record producers Category:English audio engineers Category:People from Plymouth Category:Alumni of City University London Category:Deaths from brain tumor Category:Crass members