New Tattoo Signs Asian Actress Pop Star
Pictured (L-R) at Bernie Grundman’s are executive producer Richard Rudolph; songwriter Redd Carter, Natalie Zenn, producer/engineer Adam Berg, and mastering engineer Paul Grundman. Photo by David Goggin.
The songwriting team of executive producer Richard Rudolph, engineer/producer Adam Berg and songwriter/vocal coach Redd Carter have mastered the new album by Natalie Zenn at Bernie Grundman’s with mastering engineer Paul Grundman.
Under the New Tattoo moniker, Rudolph and Berg operate out of Berg’s Manifest Music studios in Santa Monica, and are developing a roster of international artists in what Rudolph calls a new business model for the music and entertainment industries. For this project they are joined by two-time American Idol finalist Redd Carter, who shares songwriting duties and acted as Natalie Zenn’s vocal coach.
The 16-year old Chinese-Indonesian Natalie Zenn is a leading actress and pop star in Asia and is making her English language album debut with the New Tattoo project, which combines traditional record making with story-driven video content. The first video for Zenn was directed by Mike Mihail of Guerilla Hollywood, who directed Kendrick Lamar’s “Don’t Kill My Vibe.”
“Our new direction is really just a better contextualization of music, wrapping music in story form,” explains Rudolph. “Instead of just making music videos, we’re collaborating with the artists and producing deeper music-driven content.
Richard Rudolph is a multi-talented composer, guitarist, musician, songwriter, and producer. He was married to singer-songwriter Minnie Riperton and co-wrote many of her songs including her hits “Lovin’ You” (1974) and “Memory Lane” (1979). His son Marc is a recording engineer and his daughter Maya is a film and television actress, formerly a cast member on “Saturday Night Live.”
“It is such a kick to be back at Bernie’s,” commented Rudolph. “Paul Grundman is our go-to mastering engineer for all of our projects. He has an uncanny ability to maintain a big and rich dynamic soundscape when working with hybridized musical arrangements and mix styles. He makes the mastering process as creative as can be.”
Some of the artists New Tattoo are currently working with include New York’s Liza Colby and Mary Akpa and Los Angeles-based artists Redd Carter and Dustin Warren aka Godfrey At Large. Rudolph and Berg are both signed with Music Sales Corporation, an international publishing company with offices around the world.
“There are many filmmakers out there making great music videos,” Rudolph continues. “We are interested in taking this further, creating compelling story driven content and using solid audio production to accomplish those goals.” Rudolph proposes full long-form HD video/music productions that could also be presented as serialized episodes, leading to television pilots and serving as incubators for feature films and stage musicals.
Rudolph and Berg operate out of Manifest Music, a state-of-the-art production facility in Santa Monica with two mix rooms and one live room, offering tracking, mixing, mastering, dialogue, editing, music composition/production, format conversions, sound design, post production, and sound restoration. Key equipment in the Zenn project was from Tonelux, Valley People and Joe Meek of the PMI Audio Group. http://www.manifestmusicproductions.com
Natalie Zenn’s debut album will be released simultaneously in the US, China, and Indonesia.
ABOUT BERNIE GRUNDMAN MASTERING
Bernie Grundman Mastering in Hollywood operates six studios, including a 5.1 mastering room. All processing devices can be completely bypassed, resulting in sonic quality that is unsurpassed in the mastering industry. Virtually all digital and analog formats are accepted for mastering, with the facility providing high quality disk masters, and sub-masters for CD. Grundman’s custom consoles are built in-house with all discrete electronics. http://berniegrundmanmastering.com
