142 Henrik Marstal
The ability to collaborate is essential for every individual entering a
recording studio, since good music-making so often is dependent upon
the mutual work among the musicians, producers, and engineers involved.
But in order to create the best assumptions for a possible collaboration,
the empirical results of this study show the importance of regarding each
other as equal partners. The more out of gender balance the collaboration
is, the greater the risk of someone slamming the door, resulting not only in
interrupted collaborations but also feelings of betrayal and being let down
in fragile surroundings.
Finally, the study has shown that in recording studio cases where people
of different genders work together, it is important to prepare oneself for
both the ontological and epistemological tasks at stake. But since the his-
tory of recorded music is primarily a male-gendered history, and since
male producers and engineers continue to dominate at a numeric level, the
tasks should be first and foremost a male issue – and not, as it is usually
assumed or even expected, a female issue.
NOTES
1. Unfortunately, and perhaps not too surprisingly, there is not much help to nd
in literature concerning the gendered aesthetics and practices as well as the
histories of the recording studio in popular music discourse. Neither Milner
2009 nor Cook et al. (eds.) 2009 make any mention of the word gender in their
respective indexes. This is also the case for Cunningham 1996, and while two
of the sixteen devoted chapters in Frith and Zagorski-Thomas (eds.) 2012 are
either written or co-written by female experts, this anthology does not deal with
gender issues at all. This notion calls for even further consideration concerning
the topic of gender in music production, even though it has been addressed in
a number of studies, including Wolfe 2020.
2. The verses quoted in the sections ‘Introductory remarks’ and ‘The male issue
of studio recordings’ amount to the lyrics to the song ‘And the Day Came’
from the album Where Did Nora Go, written by Lössl. The lyrics are repro-
duced with kind permission.
3. Curiously, in Chinese, the word for “feminism” is named after Ibsen’s Nora
and called nuola zhuyi, which translates as “Noraism” (Bailey 2012: 62).
4. Thinking once again of Yoko Ono’s somewhat futile appearance in the studio dur-
ing the recordings of The Beatles’ The White Album, it seems quite apt that the
working title for the album actually was A Doll’s House (Harry 2000: 108–109).
5. Personal conversation with Lössl, September 2018.
6. Ibid.
7. The verses quoted in the sections ‘About the context of the recordings’,
‘Preconditions and motivations’, and ‘Lössl speaks: Leaving the door ajar’
amount to the lyrics to the song ‘Your Doll, Your Maid, Your Toy’ from the
EP Away, Away, Away, written by Lössl. The lyrics are reproduced with kind
permission.
8. Email correspondences with Astrid Nora Lössl, March 2–5, 2019. The cor-
respondences are reproduced with kind permission.
143 Slamming the Door to the Recording Studio
9. The verses quoted in the section ‘Concluding remarks’ amount to the last part
of the lyrics to the song ‘Sister of the Dark/Walk in the Light’ from the album
Where Did Nora Go, as well as the EP Away, Away, Away, written by Lössl.
The lyrics are reproduced with kind permission.
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