David Furst: This is All Of It on WNYC. I'm David Furst filling in for Alison Stewart, who is on vacation. Our next guest, Ariel Loh, is a producer, mixer, and mastering engineer based here in New York. Earlier this year, she was part of the team that won the Grammy Award for Best Song for Social Change, making her the first Asian American trans person to win a Grammy. Here's that song titled Deliver by Iman Jordan.

[MUSIC - Iman Jordan: Deliver]

David Furst: Ariel Loh is the founder of Trans Music Archive, a non-profit whose aim is to produce and preserve music from trans artists. She joins us now for another installment of our Women's History Month series Equalizers, women in music production. Ariel, welcome to All Of It.

Ariel Loh: Thank you for having me. It's an honor to be on the show.

David Furst: It's great to have you here. Tell us, how did you first get into production and engineering?

Ariel Loh: Yes, so, like a lot of kids, I took piano lessons as a kid. Along the way, I had a piano teacher introduce me to this Clavinova keyboard. Yamaha Clavinova.

David Furst: I'm very familiar. Yes.

Ariel Loh: Yes, and it has very simple arrangement sequencing functions. I was introduced to, like, oh, I can pull up a bass sound, pull up some string sounds, pull up some horns, and craft the arrangement together. That really unlocked for me this interest and joy in the problem solving and the creativity that comes with really combining elements beyond a single solo instrument. That set me off on this journey of I then continued experimenting with this and eventually got some software and started making hip hop beats.

I would buy vinyl records from ebay just by the lot, the cheapest I could find, and just start finding samples and flipping samples. Started doing that throughout my teenage years, and then that led me to then recording some different folks, start off with just rappers I'd find on Craigslist, all the way to a lot of my high school friends' bands at the time, some ska bands and jazz trios. That ultimately led me to pursue it in college where I went to SUNY Purchase, and yes, I've just been doing it since.

David Furst: That's really cool. If you're not super familiar with these jobs, you're laying it out right there. Right? You're fascinated with sound, the elements that can be combined together to make an interesting recording, and you're finding bands and you're finding different elements of sound and putting them together to create something.

Ariel Loh: Yes, absolutely.

David Furst: Do you remember the first time where you thought of yourself in a professional sense as an engineer producer?

Ariel Loh: Yes. I think along the way, even in my teenage years, I definitely took it seriously and had the identity of aspiring producer, but it wasn't until maybe college, my freshman year, I came back, I was living in Illinois at the time where my parents were. I came back to Chicagoland and got an internship with Steve Albini at Electrical Audio.

David Furst: Hugely influential producer engineer. Didn't call himself a producer as much. Engineer, right?

Ariel Loh: Absolutely. He was such a sweetheart. I know he's got a hard reputation out there publicly, but--

David Furst: Passed away, was it last year?

Ariel Loh: Yes, yes. It was such an incredible experience. Just being at that studio, being in his studio space just felt so validating to me. Just felt like, oh, I'm finally here, and I learned a lot through that studio internship. I think from there on, I really took myself a little bit more-- just felt like I was actually in this. I think it wasn't until maybe after college, I was recording and producing for a band I was in called Stone Cold Fox. I think at that point, I was identifying more with calling myself a producer engineer in a serious capacity, and then a few years after that, I just started doing it full time.

David Furst: Well, Steve Albini had a reputation for really capturing an immediate performance, the sound of a band in the studio done very quickly. Let's talk about what you're doing. Music production happens differently these days or can-

Ariel Loh: Sure. Absolutely.

David Furst: - happen in a very different way these days than it did even a few decades ago. How has that changed?

Ariel Loh: Yes, so I think for me, it's really been a journey of finding what kind of role I like to play in the production process. I think traditionally speaking, back in the day when there was large label budgets for bands to go into large recording studio with a producer and engineer, they would camp out for like two weeks or more, a month maybe, cutting a record. Nowadays, it's like there's a lot of bedroom producers that are making incredible music. The accessibility to recording technology has just really equalized the playing field, so to say-- [crosstalk]

David Furst: Does that make it harder to stand out?

Ariel Loh: It absolutely can. It absolutely can. I think our culture with content creation, social media, Spotify and streaming algorithms, have really pushed that to its furthest extent in terms of the difficulty of standing out, but it has allowed a lot of artists to really be able to make really incredible music with very little and really to be able to make some meaningful changes and impact in the industry.

David Furst: Making something with very little. I've heard this from a few people. Do you find sometimes that having these strict limitations can force you to think of ways to do something creative with something little?

Ariel Loh: Yes, absolutely. I think a lot of artists will oftentimes in their career at some point or another strip back their sound. You see Taylor Swift having done it, you see Lady Gaga having done it. You see a lot of these artists really, after their big pop, shiny, pop production era, a lot of people come back and be like, okay, how can I put some limitations on myself and focus a little bit more on perhaps the core of it, the songwriting that really the essence of it all.

David Furst: Well, let's hear some music.

Ariel Loh: Sure.

David Furst: I want to play a song called look to you by the musician Trace. You produced, co-wrote, mixed, and mastered this one, is that correct?

Ariel Loh: Correct.

David Furst: Okay, but first, what's one thing that we should listen to here, something about the sound of this track that you want to give us a little heads up to listen for?

Ariel Loh: Yes, I think I really love the sound of this. The arrangement of this piece, it just has a lot of space, which is something I really cherish in production. I think space is the most underrated instrument, so finding that balance of space and sound. It's an all-women production. Everyone who played and performed on it were women. There's a lovely sax and trumpet section at the end, which I don't know if it'll make the cut, but.

[laughter]

David Furst: Well, let's listen to the space in TRACE, the song Look to You.

[MUSIC - TRACE: Look to You]

TRACE: I hold back from saying the things I feel

Cause the let down takes it out of me

Mama said I was heaven-sent from above

So her labor of love was too hard to beat

David Furst: Just a little bit of Look to You by TRACE as it's just starting to build behind me here. Tell us more about TRACE, the story behind this song.

Ariel Loh: Yes, so TRACE is a lovely friend of mine from Los Angeles. I had lived in LA for four years and had just moved back to New York this past summer. I met Trace through this queer musician, songwriter, producer circle get together that I hosted called Show and Tell. We would basically come together and just share work in progresses that we're working on. People can seek advice or feedback or collaboration, and it was just a really wholesome, warm space, especially in LA where everything's very--

The Hollywood entertainment industry machine is very forefront and it's very competitive and can be kind of lonely sometimes. It's just a really great way for me to create a space for myself, but also like-minded folks about how to actually feel good about making music in this landscape and just remember the good stuff about it.

David Furst: We really hear that stripped-down sound at the beginning of that track.

Ariel Loh: Yes. We had just met, and at the time, I was working on a film score for Spec to pitch to Ocean Vuong for his book On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous, which I had caught wind was getting an A24 adaptation. I'm not sure what happened to the production ultimately, but at the time I was writing this film score based off of the book, he had also shared a Spotify playlist of musical sonic references that pairs with the book. I was writing this and along the way, I was like, "Oh, I'd love to really do a cover of a classic Vietnamese song for this score."

I reached out to TRACE, who's Vietnamese, and she was like, "Oh, actually my mother was a performer named Carol Kim who is a very famous Vietnamese singer," and she was famous for singing this song called Sài Gòn, which is very ode to the citysong in the way that we have New York, New York by Sinatra. We did this cover of it and made it very cinematic and stripped it down and everything. She started doing film and directed her first short film, and we worked together on this song, Look to You, as the closing credit song.

David Furst: Very cool.

Ariel Loh: This song is also about her and her mother. Yes, it just felt really easy and wholesome when we were working on it and just really came together very effortlessly.

David Furst: Very nice. I want to mention the song that we played at the top of our segment. We played the song Deliver by Iman Jordan in the intro for which you won the Harry Belafonte Best Song for Social Change award at the Grammys this year. How did that collaboration come about?

Ariel Loh: Yes, so Iman is another friend of mine from that same queer music group in LA, and we had met just at a bar. I was eavesdropping [laughs] and heard him talking about music and songwriting and stuff, so I invited him to the group and over the years, we became really good friends and just started collaborating on a few songs here and there. In the last year, he had written a verse for Deliver and had posted social media and had gotten a really good response. This was in light of the war that's happening right now.

It just got a really good response, and he was like, "We should make this into a song." I was like, "I'm so down. This is for a good cause. We're donating all the proceeds." Like, "Let's do it." We came together and recorded the full version of the song, and unbeknownst to me, he had submitted it to this open submission for the Song for Change award.

David Furst: You didn't even know this was up for an award?

Ariel Loh: I didn't even know.

David Furst: It's a great way to find out.

Ariel Loh: Yes. We just got an email one day and the Grammys were basically like, "Hey, we'd like to chat with you tomorrow," and then we were told that we were receiving this award.

David Furst: Well, in your acceptance speech at the Grammys, you shouted out other trans women who have won Grammys. Kim Petras, Wendy Carlos, Jackie Shane, D. Smith. Why was it important to you to mention them?

Ariel Loh: I think it was important because I think when I was up there accepting the reality, I guess, processing the reality of being like, wow, I guess I'm a first. I'm the first Asian American trans woman to receive an award like this, and I just wanted to acknowledge the history of trans people in general, but also in the music industry specifically, and the contributions and roles that they've played.

I know that when Kim Petras won, she claimed, I was the first trans woman to win a Grammy, and it's technical because I think she's the first openly trans woman at the time to win, but Wendy Carlos lived a very full life openly but I think at the time was not technically out when she had received her Grammy. I just wanted to also acknowledge and really acknowledge and pay my respects.

David Furst: We're speaking with Ariel Loh, a producer and mixing and mastering engineer based in New York. Let's listen to some more music. This next song is Delancey by the band Um, Jennifer?. Do I have that right?

Ariel Loh: That's correct.

David Furst: Um, Jennifer?. You engineered and produced this one. Let's listen.

[MUSIC - Um, Jennifer?: Delancey]

Um, Jennifer?: Thought I saw you walking

Over on Delancey

When I looked a little closer

There was no one even there

Guess I’m going crazy -

Do you want me, baby??

I don’t wanna talk about it

I just wanna disappear

I don’t

Wanna say and

I don’t

David Furst: Just a little bit of Delancey by the band Um, Jennifer?. Very different sound on this one, right?

Ariel Loh: Yes.

David Furst: Tell us about this band. Who are they? How did you come to work with them?

Ariel Loh: Yes. Um, Jennifer? is a band that I met here in New York a few years ago. Yes, I can't remember how I have heard of them, but when I heard the first song of theirs, it just really struck me in this really intense way. I've just been a fan since. I've just been a really big fan since. They're a band that's just really fun, upbeat, a lot of trans joy in the music and in the lyrics. It's very unapologetic and just really pure. They're just really talented, writes really catchy music, and I'm just such a fan.

David Furst: I mean, joy is definitely something that comes across in that performance.

Ariel Loh: Yes, absolutely. I had worked with them on this on their upcoming record, which will be out April 25th. I had them come to me in LA at the time, and we just did a week in the studio and just recorded a bunch of stuff. Again, I've just been really all about their music. I want to share it with everybody.

After the Grammys, I was very much like, what do I want to do next with my time and my aspirations and everything, and in light of where we are today as a society, and the idea came to me and my partner Rowan, who's also the co-founder of Trans Music Archive, which is a non-profit that we started to preserve the legacy of trans music in physical format, specifically vinyl records.

David Furst: Yes, that's called the Trans Music Archive.

Ariel Loh: That's correct. Our goal is to basically help trans artists print and press vinyl records in small batches, limited quantities, but just to be able to get as much physical media out there. Especially in the state, the increasing just techno fascist state that we're in, I think the importance of physical media is really great for fighting censorship and erasure and just our role as artists and especially as recording engineers, really we're here-- and also as journalists on radio. It's like we're here to record history and record the times.

David Furst: Preserving this music but also creating art in the face of everything that is going on right now.

Ariel Loh: Yes. The Um, Jennifer? record is going to be our first release with the Trans Music Archive. Yes, there will be vinyl available.

David Furst: There will be vinyl. That is very cool. The name of the band again is Um, Jennifer?, U-M.

Ariel Loh: Yes, Um, Jennifer?, with a question mark at the end.

David Furst: Oh, thank you. With a question mark at the end. I want to try to get in one more song before we finish. This is a band called Semler. Is that right?

Ariel Loh: Correct.

David Furst: They have a song called Saints of Nevada.

Ariel Loh: Correct.

David Furst: Tell us about this song.

Ariel Loh: This is a song that I co-produced with my friend Jax Anderson, who is also the co-host of the queer music group I was telling you about called Show and Tell, who I've met so many of my lovely friends and collaborators through. This is with Semler, who is a queer, non-binary Christian artist, which I just love and think it's so great that they're out there doing this work.

David Furst: The name of the band again, Semler, S-E-M-L-E-R, and the song is Saints of Nevada. We'll hear a little bit of this right now. Producer, mixer, and mastering engineer, Ariel Loh, thank you so much for joining us today.

Ariel Loh: Thank you so much for having me.

David Furst: Here's the song Saints of Nevada.

[MUSIC - Semler: Saints of Nevada]

Semler: Ms. Wright was Daisy Lorraine

Before she gave up her name

And acting pursuits

She'd say the Lord can be strange

And timing is vague

But patience a virtue

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