Paul Northfield

Having been a fan of prog rock since the age of 14 in 1970 Paul couldn’t believe his luck when he managed to get a job as an assistant 3 years later at Advision, one of the Uk’s most prestigious central London recording studios and frequent home of Yes, ELP, Gentle Giant and other well known prog recordings. His first job was assisting on Flash’s ‘Out of our Hands’ album and soon after ELP’s ‘Brain Salad Surgery’ In his first 5 years as a recording engineer in London he worked with Gentle Giant, Steve Howe, Soft Machine, Greg Lake, National Health and many others. 

After leaving the UK in 1978 he settled in Canada at Le Studio in the Laurentian mountains where he subsequently worked on recording and mixing  Rush’s Permanent Waves, Moving Pictures, Exit Stage Left and Signals albums along with Asia’s ‘Alpha’ album.

In the decades since aside from additional albums with Rush he has worked with Queensryche on ‘Operation Mindcrime’  Porcupine Tree on the ‘In Absentia’ and ‘Deadwing’ albums, Pure Reason Revolution’s ’The Dark Third’ and on 3 albums with Dream Theater.

At this point one may be hard pressed to find an engineer or producer who has worked more extensively in ‘Prog’ over as long a period. Paul hopes to be able to convey some of the creative dynamics and context of recording in this genre over almost 50 years.