8
Slamming the Door to the Recording
Studio – Or Leaving It Ajar?
Henrik Marstal
A male producer’s recollections regarding negotiations of gender in the
studio work of female recording artist Where Did Nora Go (DK).
INTRODUCTORY REMARKS
And the day came
When being curled up inside
Was no longer enough
And the day came
When staying secure
It lost its frantic grip
Can you feel it
Can you see it
And the day came
When the longing to share what is sacred
Grew inside
Grew vaster than the fear
Of being left out, all alone, cast aside
I see a window open
I let the bravery run free
I see a window open
First part of ‘And the Day Came’
(Where Did Nora Go, 2013)
This chapter investigates the creative process in the early studio produc-
tions of the Danish alternative pop artist Where Did Nora Go (a pen name
for the singer, cellist, and songwriter Astrid Nora Lössl). These produc-
tions include the EP Away, Away, Away (private release, 2012) as well
127
128 Henrik Marstal
as the albums Where Did Nora Go (Für Records, 2013) and Shimmer
(G Records, 2014), the two latter being released and promoted in the terri-
tories of Denmark, Germany, Austria, and Switzerland. The investigation
concerns the creative process of making these recordings by analyzing the
dynamics of the process and decision-making seen in a gender perspective.
The purpose of the chapter is to map out some of the pitfalls of gender
relations in the recording studio, which on a daily basis relate to notions of
gendered expectations and assumptions between people, but which at the
same time can be understood as a result of historical and ideological male
dominance strategies in the creation of popular music. According to Swed-
ish historian Yvonne Hirdman’s polemical reflections on the logics of the
genus system, the labor division between men and women could and should
not at any rate be mixed together (Hirdman 1988: 51), since that would chal-
lenge the power balance of the sexes and – for instance – threaten the notion
that any handling of technology in the studio is a man’s job. According to
Hirdman (ibid.), the genus system is made to prevent women from being in
power, and in the traditional studio work this seems indeed to have been the
case. In the recording studio, the notion has the potential to be a pitfall in
itself, since the reliance on long-established norms overrules critical reflec-
tion on the ongoing power balance between the sexes. Even for otherwise
well-balanced and critical founded males this seems to be the case, since the
pitfalls can be so subtle and tacitly accepted by everyone involved that they
are hard even to notify and challenge. I therefore agree with Paula Wolfe’s
notion that “the historical predominance of men who have practiced music
production has resulted in a gendering of both the technical expertise and
artistic creativity associated with the profession” (Wolfe 2020: 60).
It is indeed true that we lack knowledge on how studio productions and
gender issues relate to each other. Stories and evidences need to be unfolded
much more extensively, if everyone involved in the decision-making of
studio recordings – producers, engineers, musicians, A&Rs and alike –
should be better informed about how gender issues of various kinds can
pervade the atmosphere and creativity of the studio in inappropriate ways.
1
To provide a little bit of evidence on this topic, I will examine how notions
and negotiations of gender were constructed and conducted during the pro-
cess of the three aforementioned recordings between Lössl and her two pro-
ducers, Kasper Rasmussen and myself. This will be done by reconsidering
the recording and mixing processes, which took place in Rasmussen’s small,
vibrant studio called Mikroskopet on the outskirts of the hipster area of
Vesterbro, Copenhagen. I will do this by combining academic consideration
and practical, as well as artistic, insight in trying to recollect the pros and cons
of the process. Moreover, a number of considerations by Lössl herself are
incorporated, thus bringing Alistair Williams’ remark in his book Construct-
ing Musicology into mind: “Like music, musicology does not just reflect
what happens elsewhere; it offers ways of inhabiting and shaping the world”
(Williams 2001: 140). The chapter is informed by feminist theory complexes,
which are used to clarify the gender-related conditions of the collaboration,
as well as the involved constructions of power and decision-making.
129 Slamming the Door to the Recording Studio
THE MALE ISSUE OF STUDIO RECORDINGS
And the day came
When feeling estranged
Didn’t seem so startling anymore
And the day came
When clarity dawned
And the illusion of distance, being separated, faded
Can you feel it
Can you see it
And the day came
When fear no longer would scare
But be part of the quest
And the day came
When freeing ourselves
Was no longer an intimidating fantasy
I see a window open
I let the bravery run free
I see a window open
Second and last part of ‘And the Day
Came’ (Where Did Nora Go, 2013)
2
The advent of studio recording seems indeed to be a male issue, even in
the early twenty-first century. If that is to change, it might be necessary
to reclaim the notion that music-making activities of all kinds are always
gendered, since more or less stereotyped gendered relations and concep-
tions always interact with each other, between the people involved. This
is not only the case when female musicians or, much more seldom, female
engineers or producers are involved. Male-to-male relations in the studio
are always gendered as well, since, as Sara Cohen notes, (heteronorma-
tive) gender relations are “constructed through relations and distinctions
between men and women, men and other men, women and other women”
(Cohen 2011: 230). One could add that this is also the case between all
kinds of men, women, and other genders, no matter how their feminine
and masculine energies are distributed and used in creative relations. This
is the case not least in the history of recorded music, since music is a dis-
course through which gender is constantly coded (Williams 2001: 69) and
negotiated.
Historically, the recording studio has always been an arena in favor
of male genderness, since musicians, engineers, and producers have –
with a number of notable exceptions (Djupvik 2017: 118) – traditionally
been men (Ibid.: 117, 129). Women have usually been kept away from
130 Henrik Marstal
decision-making when in the recording studio, Yoko Ono’s infamous
appearance in the control room during the making of The Beatles’ epony-
mous album from 1968 (Harry 2000: 108–109) – usually referred to as
The White Album (MacDonald 1997: 286) – being one notable exception
to the rule.
Since the studio is dedicated to the performance of music in relation
to recording technologies, and since technology as such according to
Lucy Green “has long been gendered masculine because of men’s devel-
opment and uses of it” (Green 1997; quoted after Kearney 2017: 121),
performances of gender seem to be inscribed (see Citron 1993: 11) in
every action concerning the recording processes. This process is usually
understood as “a culture of masculinity” (Leonard 2007: 67) – mascu-
linity defined, I would add, as “the total cultural, social and political
expression of maleness” (Halberstam 1998: 1, quoted after Djupvik
2017: 117). I thus take my starting point in the notion that gendered
aspects are always an interacting component in the relations between
agents in a recording studio – not only when the producers, engineers,
and perhaps all musicians are male and the artist female, but in every
conceivable relation.
Stereotyped, gendered preferences do play a role since there is no such
thing as ‘gender neutrality’in musical-creative relations. And since the fab-
ric of music production and engineering have been historically taken care
of almost exclusively by males, there are reasons to presume that modes of
listening, methods of production, approaches to creativity, mechanisms
of priorities and so on are framed by a general hegemonic masculinity
(Connell 2005/1987; Connell & Messerschmidt 2005), which seems to
dominate popular music discourse in what Will Straw calls a “masculine
gendering of cultural habits” (Straw 1997: 5). Since there are countless
ways of approaching the art of music production, there is of course not a
certain ‘male’ way of doing things. But it makes sense, I would argue, to
maintain the assumption that hegemonic masculinity has had its say con-
cerning what is acknowledged as defining acceptable studio production
approaches and what is not.
Lucy Green notes that especially female vocalists are not a threat to
“the patriarchal status quo” of the recording studio male practices, since
“unlike instrumentalists, they do not rely on technology to produce musical
sound” (Green 1997; quoted after Kearney 2017: 121). Although female
vocalists not unusually accompany themselves on instruments such as the
cello (as in Lössl’s case) and more often the piano or the acoustic guitar,
the technology involved is often defined by being acoustic, not electronic,
that is: femalized, not masculinized, so to speak. Moreover, as Ian Biddle
claims, “[t]he phallogocentrism of Western rational epistemology marks
music as a particularly volatile yet profoundly effective (and affective)
cultural resource in the imagining, policing, and managing of discourses
on gender” (Biddle 2003: 208). Similarly, Sara Cohen has pointed out in
a seemingly general precondition that rock and pop (and other popular
music genres as well) are “closely associated with gender – with patterns
or conventions of male and female behaviour and with ideas about how
131 Slamming the Door to the Recording Studio
men and women should or shouldn’t behave” (Cohen 2011: 226). Finally,
she states that:
[w]omen have been associated with a marginal, decorative or less
creative role within rock culture, hence the popular stereotypes of
glamorous women who act as backing singers for male groups or fea-
ture on their videos and other merchandise, and girls as adoring fans
who scream at male performers.
(Ibid.: 232)
These considerations all allude to the point that bringing a female singer,
songwriter, and cellist to the historically male-dominated studio with two
males as producers – as was the case with Where Did Nora Go – might
involve the risk of creating resilient gender obedience or pure gender trou-
ble. This is the case even though, according to George Dvorsky and James
Hughes (2008: 18), “a post-genderist future is made possible not just from
breakthroughs in science but through the ‘decline of patriarchy’ resulting
from our ‘slowly dismantling the heritage of patriarchal power, culture
and thought’ ” (ibid.) (quoted after Wolfe 2020: 10).
ABOUT THE CONTEXT OF THE RECORDINGS
So you wanted me to be your doll
All pretty and quiet
I nod and I smile
Never out of line
But it’s not me, it’s not me
I could do it so well
I’d be the sweetest thing
I’d be willing
Oh, this is me, but it is not me
I could do it so well
I’d be the sweetest
More than willing
Oh, this is me, but it’s not me
First part of ‘Your Doll,
Your Maid, Your Toy’
(Where Did Nora Go, 2012)
In 2011, I was approached by Lössl, whom I did not know at the time.
She had come across Thieves Like Us (2011), the EP debut by the Danish
singer and songwriter Penny Police (née Marie Fjeldsted), which I – like
her later debut album The Broken, the Beggar, the Thief (2012) – had pro-
duced together with Kasper Rasmussen. We had also played all the instru-
mental parts on the EP apart from the ones Fjeldsted had done herself.
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