Where Scent Meets Sound, with Jacob Brown

I’ve always been drawn to music. There is something about an artist’s ability to create sonic worlds and to communicate feelings beyond what we can describe with words that has always captivated me.

My mother often tells me a story about taking the train into Auckland when I was around three years old. Classical music was playing quietly in the background and, according to her, I was completely entranced by it. After noticing my interest in music, she enrolled me in violin lessons when I was four. Later, I learned trombone and then bass guitar at school.

Sadly, I no longer play violin or trombone, but I remember picking up the bass at around eight or nine years old and becoming absolutely obsessed with it. At some point during high school, I also became intrigued by the process of making and recording music. The school curriculum taught us the basics, but much of what I learned during that time came through conversations with my music teachers - particularly my bass tutor, Bevan Galbraith.

Bevan had a studio at his house, where I got my first real taste of audio engineering and production. I fell in love with the marriage of technicalities of recording and artistic expression. They can seem like opposing forces, but when they are balanced well, they can help create the most incredible art.

Since then, it has been a slow and steady process of honing my craft: making music with friends, experimenting on my own, and eventually landing my first studio job at Parachute Studios. I began as an assistant and later became an engineer, and I was fortunate to be surrounded by many talented producers, engineers and artists whom I could learn from and alongside.

I left Parachute a few years ago to work as a freelance engineer and producer. I now work across various studios in Auckland, but mostly alongside fellow engineer Tom Broome at his lovely studio in Avondale.

Helping Tom build the studio was one of the most rewarding experiences. There are an enormous number of technical challenges involved in making a room sound good for working on music while also making it feel pleasant and inspiring to be in. I am a huge nerd for this, but I’ll spare you the details.

We designed the studio around our own processes and the ways we like to work. That allows me to feel comfortable and intuitive in the space, which creates more freedom for experimentation and expression. It also gives me confidence because I understand the room, its capabilities and the thinking behind every part of it.

I’m not sure there is one piece of gear that holds a particularly special story for me, or that I would consider a defining part of my sound. I treasure everything more like a palette of paints and brushes. The magic is in how each piece interacts with whatever it is presented with.

Sometimes it is a piece of equipment’s strengths that enhance a sound. A particularly clean and open-sounding microphone, for example, might make a vocalist feel as though they are standing directly in front of you. At other times, the limitations of a piece of gear can inspire that same vocalist to perform in a way that feels richer in emotion - and that may serve the music far better.

Over time, I have discovered a handful of certain combinations that I really enjoy. One of them being, Instead of recording a piano once with two microphones to create a lush, natural stereo image, I sometimes place a small, thin and slightly crappy-sounding microphone very close to the piano and record the part two or more times. The microphone adds warmth and charm, perhaps reminiscent of a worn old record, while the small imperfections between the layered performances create a depth and movement that can be really beautiful.

Another favourite is the Roland RE-501 Chorus Echo. It has its own microphone preamp, which distorts in a wonderfully bombastic way when pushed too far. Sometimes I plug a guitar directly into it instead of using a guitar amplifier, turn the preamp all the way up and add plenty of the unit’s echo and reverb. It creates a wild and gritty but ambient and spacious guitar sound that I am very fond of.

This was such an exciting project for me. I had never done anything remotely similar before and, during my research, I couldn’t find many examples of other people attempting it either.

There was a lot of experimentation, but my process relied heavily on conversations with Ben from Ashley & Co. We explored all sorts of associations and abstractions surrounding each scent. I spent time experiencing the fragrances in their various product forms and collected my thoughts, images and impressions in a journal.

From there, I could begin to form an internal picture of the emotions, environments and scenes each scent suggested. It then became a process of searching for sounds, textures and musical gestures that evoked those same feelings.

Both. Some scents presented a clearer mood than others. With the less immediate ones, I spent a lot of time searching and experimenting until something suddenly clicked. Once that happened, I would often feel as though I was already 90 percent of the way there. The rest of the process was refinement - adding, removing and shaping sounds until everything felt just right.

That is a tough one. I like them all, but I would probably choose either Mortar & Pestle or Doug, Dug & Dug.

Mortar & Pestle may have been my favourite fragrance of the collection. It has a grounding, almost mantric quality that was very enjoyable to express through sound.

For Doug, Dug & Dug, Ben gave me this lovely image of a dog rummaging around in a garden: “A dig in the rhubarb patch, a brush against the rose bush, a rumble amongst the irises beneath the crab apple tree.”

For whatever reason, that created an incredibly vivid and sensory scene in my mind. I thoroughly enjoyed trying to recreate that dog's backyard journey through music.

Absolutely. I imagine they share a similar ability to activate parts of the subconscious before we have consciously interpreted what we are experiencing.

I would love to research the relationship between the senses, memory and the subconscious in greater depth. I find it endlessly fascinating.

I hope the soundscapes offer people another way of understanding and experiencing each scent. I also hope they communicate the level of craft, care and curation Ashley & Co. puts into every fragrance and product.

Each scent creates a distinct experience capable of elevating an otherwise ordinary part of someone’s day. And they really do smell good.