In addition to racking up credits with an impressive array of artists, including Amy Winehouse and Adele during his career, MPG Recording Engineer Of The Year nominee, Cameron Craig has worked tirelessly to have producers and engineers mentioned in the same breath as artists, as Headliner discovers...
Having started out in his native Australia, Cameron Craig achieved success with many multi-platinum albums, securing a nomination for ARIA Engineer of the year in 1995. Going as far as he felt he could in Australia, Craig decided to move to the UK to further his career, although England wasn’t his first choice.
“To be honest, I wanted to move to L.A,” he says sheepishly. “I knew people in L.A, but getting a visa for there was tricky. Anyway, I think I’m more English than most English people! My brother lived in the UK, so coming here was easy. But I didn't know anyone, so I literally didn't work for a year. I was just trying to get a foot in.”
A foot-in he got after securing a job at a studio in Wandsworth, where he immediately felt very at home.
“The reason I left Australia at that point was because I was pretty comfortable,” he clarifies. “So I came over thinking I’d just carry on doing that, but it never quite worked out that way.”
After moving onto Chiswick Reach Studios, Craig had to start from scratch:
“I basically had to throw out everything I'd learned, because anything you did there that you would normally do in a big studio just didn't work. So I had to relearn everything. That's where I met [U.N.K.L.E’s] James Lavelle. We ended up working together and have done ever since. That put me on a different track; it became less technical and more creative, which was really helpful for me.”
England proved to be the right move after all, as today Craig is a two-time Grammy award-winning producer-mixer-engineer, with an impressive credit list that includes several albums with U.N.K.L.E., and credits with Adele, Amy Winehouse, Paulo Nutini, Bjork, Annie Lennox, Grace Jones, Joe Strummer, Duffy, and many more.
One Grammy was secured for Album of the Year for his part in recording Adele's phenomenally successful 25, and for Best Engineered - Non Classical in 2008 for his contribution to the Suzanne Vega album, Beauty and Crime, not forgetting recording the orchestra on Duffy's Grammy and Brit award-winning Rockferry album.
This year, Craig is nominated for MPG’s Recording Engineer Of The Year for his recent work with U.N.K.L.E featuring Michael Kiwanuka, inspired by Alfonso Cuarón's Netflix film, Roma.
“It's nice when [a nomination] comes along, because it is very much recognition, but from people who are busy making records,” he says. “So rather than just sales figures, it's nice to be judged by people who are actually doing it.”