Master of the House

Lurssen Mastering's Gavin Lurssen Wins Third Grammy for Krauss and Plant's Raising Sand

Gavin Lurssen has done it again. The acclaimed mastering engineer, whose Lurssen Mastering is located on the Hollywood Center Studios lot, shared Album-of-the-Year honors at this year's Grammy Awards for his work on Raising Sand, an album featuring the unusual pairing of bluegrass singer Alison Krauss and Led Zeppelin's Robert Plant. Lurssen shared the award with Krauss and Plant along with legendary producer T. Bone Burnett and recording engineer Mike Piersante.

It was Lurssen's third Grammy and duplicated a feat he accomplished in 2002 when he became the first mastering engineer to share in winning Grammy's Album-of-the-Year. That award was for the soundtrack to O Brother Where Art Thou, a project that was also produced by Burnett. Lurssen won a Grammy in 2004 for Best Historical Album for Martin Scorsese Presents the Blues: A Musical Journey.

Raising Sand was the big winner at this year's Grammys, picking up a total of five awards. (The release has actually produced six Grammys, as a single from the disc, Gone, Gone, Gone won a Grammy last year for Best Pop Collaboration With Vocals.) The album, which has sold more than a million copies, also was named Album-of-the-Year at Mix Magazine's TEC Awards, with both Lurssen and his recording studio included in the honor.

Lurssen launched his studio in 2006, following a 15-year-run at The Mastering Lab, Hollywood. The company's facility at Hollywood Center is both beautiful and an engineering marvel designed and built under the direction of Lurssen and audio tech guru Charlie Bolois. The place is also a beehive of activity, mastering more than 100 albums per year, with recent credits including John Mellencamp, Matchbox Twenty, Captain Blackheart, Elvis Costello, Aimee Mann and B.B. King.

The work of a mastering engineer—the final step in preparing an album for distribution—is highly specialized, and involves creating a sound that is consistent regardless of the playback system or listening environment. Lurssen equates it to a form of brain surgery. "It's a voodoo, black magic art that few people understand," he says. "We deal with the overall picture and emphasize the harmonious balance of elements relative to the tonal structure and the frequency spectrum. We use our tools to not only achieve a perfect blend of elements, but also to inject our vibe and our take to support of the work of the artists."