Penticton DJ earns Grammy nomination for work on Chromeo album
Head Over Heels is nominated for Best Engineered Album, Non-Classical
One of the first times Vaughn Oliver can remember being curious about how a sound was created was while watching a hip-hop track on Much Music when he was a kid growing up in the small B.C. town of Penticton.
Fast-forward a couple decades and Oliver, now a professional sound engineer, has been nominated for a Grammy Award in the category of Best Engineered Album, Non-Classical for his work on Chromeo's Head Over Heels.
"I was kind of in shock a little bit," Oliver told Daybreak South host Chris Walker.
However, this isn't the first time Oliver — also known as DJ U-Tern — has been recognized by the Grammys. He was previously nominated for co-writing one of the songs on Kelly Clarkson's album Piece By Piece, which earned a Best Pop Vocal Album nomination in 2015. However, Oliver says this nomination feels more personal.
"The nomination is kind of more specific to what I did on the record, so it just means a little bit more," said Oliver about his contribution to the Montreal electro-funk duo's fifth studio album.
The 2019 Grammy Awards will be announced Feb. 10.
Here’s why this nomination and category means the world to us: for all the studio rats, the producers splicing wavs, the engineers comping vocals all nights & the mixers tweaking knobs...you know we’re the biggest audio nerds ourselves. This one’s for all of us. Funk forever. <a href="https://t.co/1RsK8LbYCl">pic.twitter.com/1RsK8LbYCl</a>
—@ChromeoGrowing up a DJ in Penticton
Although Oliver grew up in a small town, he doesn't feel like he was at a disadvantage when it came to pursuing his craft.
In fact, he credits his lack of resources for his development.
"When I was starting, it was pre-internet. You really had to put in the work to figure out how things were done," he said.
"So I guess it made me more passionate about it, overall, because it was an uphill climb."
Oliver later moved to Vancouver, where he met more people who shared his passion.
Sculpting the sound
As the sound engineer, Oliver says he's responsible for layering all the different instruments and tracks together to create a polished, professional record, where all the sounds work in harmony as a cohesive unit.
Of all the tracks he engineered on the album, Oliver says there's one that stands above the rest. Right Back Home to You is one of the simpler tracks on the album, consisting of fewer than 10 instruments.
It's the simplicity of the song that Oliver loves.
You can listen to the full interview — including the song — below: