Fantastic Negrito Engineering Team

The San Francisco Audio Engineering Society welcomes the engineering crew behind the Bay Area’s own multi-Grammy winning Fantastic Negrito’s latest two albums, Please Don’t Be Dead, which won the Best Blues Contemporary Album Grammy in 2019 and the newly released Have You Lost Your Mind Yet?

Nahuel Bronzini, Zollie Fears, Migui Maloles and Trevor Orriss will discuss their collaboration with Xavier Dphrepaulezz—the singer-songwriter/producer who records as Fantastic Negrito, and how they translate his creative vision into each album. The engineers will show files and demo songs to illustrate and explain their work process, demystify the secrets to creating a great independent album and answer your questions. Part way through, Xavier Dphrepaulezz will also join our meeting to talk about his vision of the relationship and process between the artist and engineering team.

Since winning NPR’s Tiny Desk Concert in 2015, Fantastic Negrito has released three albums filled with his unique sound, choosing to work in small Bay Area studios, including Dphrepaulezz’s own Blackball Universe, with local independent engineers, reuniting most of the Please Don’t Be Dead team for this year’s Have You Lost Your Mind Yet?

Join AES San Francisco for this special lunch time meeting, which will happen over Zoom. Advance registration through Eventbrite required and registered guests can also submit questions in ahead of the event.

Speaker Bios:

Xavier Dphrepaulezz
When you listen to Fantastic Negrito, you’re invited to hear the story of life after destruction. Each song is a real story about a musician from Oakland who experienced the highs of a million-dollar record deal, the lows of a near fatal car accident that left him in a coma, and is now in the midst of a rebirth that took him from the streets of Oakland to the world stage.

The narrative of this man is as important as the sound, because the narrative is the sound.Songs born from a long hard life channeled through black roots music. Slide guitar, drums, piano. Urgent, desperate, edgy.

Negrito burst on to the national radar by winning the inaugural NPR Tiny Desk contest in 2015, and has since won Grammys for his first two albums: The Last Days of Oakland (2017) and Please Don’t Be Dead (2019). His third album, Have You Lost Your Mind Yet? was released in August 2020.

Nahuel Bronzini is a Grammy (R) Award winning music producer, arranger and sound engineer living in the San Francisco Bay Area. He works out of Airship Laboratories Studios and his private mixing and production room in Berkeley, CA.
Nahuel has worked with a wide range of artists, from writing string arrangements and playing shows and engineering studio sessions with R&B legends Tony Toni Toné!, to engineering Fantastic Negrito’s Grammy winning Please Don’t Be Dead and new release Have You Lost Your Mind Yet?, and creating multi artist collaborations with Bay Area favorites in his own release entitled “The String Quartet Experience”. Nahuel is a multifaceted musician and producer/engineer that feels at home both on stage and in the studio.
Nahuel’s work focuses on the blending of acoustic instrumentation into pop and folk productions, making use of chamber type ensembles such as string quartets and horn sections as a complement to the work of solo artists and bands.
As a mixing engineer, Nahuel’s approach comes from a musical standpoint. Nahuel puts the audio tools and techniques at the service of the music and the artistic intent of the song. From folk to rock, to r&b and synth-heavy pop, Nahuel hears every project as a musical work beyond genre and creates fluid mixes that elevate the production and embrace the song.
Nahuel is a graduate from the San Francisco Conservatory of Music and from Escuela de Música Contemporánea (Argentina), and studied audio and acoustics at Universidad de Tres de Febrero (Argentina). He is currently a Governor of the Recording Academy, San Francisco Chapter and a member of the Producers and Engineers Wing Committee, as well as a committee member for the AES SF Chapter.

Zollie Fears is an Audio Engineer and Technician, specializing in the art of recording and mixing. Starting his journey as an Audio Engineer in 2009, where Zollie was the go-to engineer for all his friends and classmates in high school. Recording music from Hip Hop/ Rap, R&B, to Rock and Roll, Pop music and even Death Metal. Through these experiences, he has developed a love and respect for multiple genres and the process of what goes into making music. After high School, he dedicated himself to learning more about Recording, Mixing, Mastering, Music business, and Live Engineering for events and shows.

Starting his growth at Chabot College, Zollie was taking classes instructed by Michael Rosen (Grammy winning Producer/Engineer) who taught and challenged his students to really learn and “know their” stuff. Even though Zollie was probably not his favorite student (with other students citing that Zollie was sleeping underneath the desk every few days in class), he took to the lessons like a sponge to water and absorb every lesson and passed all the tests given to him. Zollie’s next growth stage came after leaving Chabot in 2014 to be the Music Lead for an Arts Program at a local youth center named REACH Ashland Youth Center. By teaching youth ages 11-24, Zollie was given the opportunity to give his passion for music and engineering by teaching them about music production, basics of audio engineering and ultimately creating music with them. In the same time frame, Zollie participated in various recording and live music sessions learning more on the job and picking the brains of many Music Artists, Engineers and Producers. By absorbing knowledge from AkaFrank (Music Artist), Duckwrth (Music Artist), GQ (Music Artist), Jason Cropper (Producer), Kuk Harrell (Grammy winning Producer), and many more, Zollie developed and shaped his approach and views to music as making people feel than focusing too much on the technical aspects.

In 2018, on a trip with his Arts Program family, they headed to a studio space named BlackBall Universe to present Music Artist, Fantastic Negrito, with artwork based on his album “Please Don’t Be Dead”. During this moment is where Zollie met Negrito and was given an opportunity to stop by and do some recording work with him. By showing up at the date and time of Negrito’s choosing, Zollie passed what Fantastic Negrito called “The Oakland Test” and began working with him and becoming part of his team. Since then, Zollie has shared many memorable music sessions with Fantastic Negrito and continues his growth as an Audio Engineer learning from him, the team he became a part of, and challenging himself with other projects and ventures he’s currently pursuing.

Migui Maloles is a 2x Grammy-Award Winning, Multi-Platinum and Multi-Gold RIAA certified Recording Engineer, Mixer and Producer. He has been making records since 2010 across several different genres. In addition, Migui is an accomplished touring Front of House and Monitor Engineer. He has toured extensively mixing Front of House, Monitors and Tour Managing since 2016 in well renowned venues, theaters, amphitheaters and festivals around the world.

His goal as an Engineer is to sonically realize and accurately translate the intent of the artist creatively, while still preserving the integrity of their vision.

Trevor Orriss is a freelance audio engineer and producer based in the San Francisco Bay Area. He is a Graduate of the Conservatory of Recording Arts and Sciences, an avid Radiohead fan, and a mediocre piano player.