I’m Justin Stanley. I’m a producer, mixer, a composer. Someone who turns off cell phones before an interview...’ I tend to get too in my head and to become a grumpy person. So I’m lucky that... I’m very lucky that I can work with a really eclectic mix of people. And I really haven’t really planned anything apart from just the desire to make music. At school, I was always tapping. I wanted to be a drummer. That was like... the only focus I had. So I was tapping on the table at school. I got into trouble all the time, ended up having a meeting with the principal, with my mom. and the principal said: “Look, Justin’s always tapping and humming and looking out the window.” And my mom turned to me and said: “What do you want to do?” “ And I said: “All I want to do is make music.” And she got up out of her seat, shook the principal’s hand and said: “Thanks for the education.” So I was like playing in pubs when I was 15. And my mom would have to drive me to the gigs and, you know, shoved all these drums in a VW Beetle and she’d pull up... And she was the coolest. And from that it led to getting interested in writing. And three months later in a writing session, I got a call and it was a friend of mine going (he’s a bass player)... he said: “Look, there’s a band asking, they need a bass player and a keyboard player. You wanna join the band?” And through that, I worked with a bunch of different producers, like an australian producer called Mark Herberts and Chris Kimsey, who did all the Glimmer Twins, like the Stones, Black and Blue, and Peter Frampton Comes Alive and some amazing records. So through that experience, I was always the guy in the band going: “How do you do that?” Really annoying, like trying to work out how this console, how all this gear works. I don’t read music, no. No, I can slowly... pick it out now, but I can’t. Sorry. And most people I work with, you know, a sheet of manuscript never really comes up unless this is a score or... a string chart. And again, if I’m hearing something in my head. I just hum it out or play it on something else. So I’m definitely from the school of just use your instinct. And use your ear and your gut. You know, I’m a big believer that anyone can do that. I think it embodies something. It’s almost like acting and you kind of when you grab an instrument, you try to embody that character of that person you think is playing. And that gives you a big step up on how you might react to this instrument Or like a home player... Everyone has a thing... I think really what led me to do it is that I enjoyed the process. I love the creative process. So touring in a band, you’re playing the same 20 songs day in, day out. There’s a lot of other shit and boredom that goes down with it. And I wanted to just to create. I get so much joy out of creating and collaborating. I’m luckily to be busy. I think the reason why I’m so busy is that I wear a lot of different hats and I’m not precious about a hierarchy and what you do. I can engineer, I can produce, I can mix, I think I can be a player in a session. I don’t think anyone’s better or more important than the other. I think it’s the collective of all those people together. I’m very subtle in my shifting a movement... what I hear, and I’ll be very blunt sometimes, but that’s not to deter someone from being creative. It’s all about being creative and trying to inspire people to do or discover something new and what they’re trying to achieve. Let’s grab that tabla. Now that you mentioned it... The tabla. It’s like an instinctual thing on the day that I work best. I can tell you that you’re inspired by just what’s hanging in the room, the space. And I go: “Grab it like, you know, grab a guitar.” And I go: “Grab it like, you know, grab a guitar.” You know, we’ve plugged in this pedal there, and that’s kind of how it start. And I think that’s how a lot of my sessions kind of evolve. Tape is like an analog camera. It blurs the lines a little bit and that’s my taste, which I love. I love that blurred image. I was using pretty much every piece of this in the last three days. Yeah, and the tape machine, when I do work on tape — which I love — tape is the time between... the time between takes to think. And then rewinding that tape, you’ve got this moment where you just kind of contemplating what to do next and what to do. You know, thinking about the last take and the just the sound of that tape... it’s like soothing kind of... Digital doesn’t allow that. It’s like anything goes, which is the upside to it. But you have to create that space. And you don’t have to think too much about it because it is all instinctual. But just to give it space, just to kind of dream of it. Making music, it’s that whole process that leads up to that and you listen to it and you have that joy of hearing it back loud through those speakers. I got introduced to Dynaudio through a friend, Dylan Berry. He was doing sessions out in the desert. And I went out to this ranch, this amazing ranch, and here was this studio in the middle of nowhere. And they had Dynaudio speakers. And then I was like: “What are these?” you know, like, I’ve heard of them but I’ve never kind of listened to them. And I was just blown away with where the sound was sitting for me in a 3D perspective of distance. Where that sound ends up. And for me they kind of hit that spot where I really enjoyed... Where I was seeing the sound and getting inspired from that. That’s the big thing for me. Are these speakers inspiring? Because I’m, you know, I’m not a very technical person when I break it down. I can’t give you... I can tell you what frequencies they’re throwing at me. Not really in a technical sense. But what I’m hearing, I really, really like and it connects with me on a creative level. It’s a sonic space. You can live in the whole day and be really pleasantly absorbed with it. And it tick the boxes every place I’ve listened to music, I have produced or mixed. And that’s pretty much it for me. The best advice... The best advice is: Don’t overthink it. Feel it.