Limerick mastering engineer Richard Dowling has shaped some of the most iconic records of the past four decades — from Bowie to Boyzone, Kylie to The Chieftains
Richard Dowling has spent four decades making other people’s music sound better. The Limerick mastering engineer behind Wav Mastering is marking 40 years in the industry this year, having left his home city in 1986 with an electronics qualification and an ambition to work in music.
What followed was a career spent in the engine rooms of British pop, dance and rock — largely invisible, yet a part of the fabric of some of the most recognisable records of the past four decades.
Dowling completed a course at a London music production school before landing his first industry role at PRT Studios in Marble Arch, a studio complex which was the former PYE Studios a UK power house label in the 1960 / 70’s, it’s Studio One was historic with a second modern mix room, two cutting rooms, CD and Tape Transfer editing suites.
His electronics background, gained at Limerick Institute of Technology, proved an unlikely but invaluable asset as he got the initial break as the studios maintenance assistant but in reality was working in every studio room.
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“I was buying records because I was a big fan of music and now I could see how making a record was done, that’s why I was always in the cutting room.
“You get to hear music before everyone else, before it is released and maybe becomes a huge hit.”
At PRT he worked on projects from Paul McCartney, Bill Wyman, The Waterboys and Motörhead, and it was there that he discovered a deep and enduring passion for the mastering process — the final, critical stage of music production in which a mixed recording is prepared for release, giving it balance, loudness and consistency across all formats and playback systems.
In 1990, he moved to the studio empire of Pete Waterman — one third of the legendary Stock, Aitken and Waterman production team, known as the Hit Factory, whose roster sold over 500 million records, scored 13 UK number ones and three US number one singles.
“Our Kylie” Minogue
Dowling joined the newly opened Transfermation mastering facility, where he would spend the next 16 years working across a remarkable breadth of genres and artists. Top clients during that period included a then little-known A&R man Simon Cowell.
“It’s funny how now using the acronym of PWL or SAW draws blanks in conversation but soon as you mention as I call her “Our Kylie” Minogue hot with her Netflix doc at present or Rick Astley then you get the “oh yeahs””.
The catalogue of work Dowling accumulated during those years reads like a checklist of the era’s defining records working on material by David Bowie, Foo Fighters, Malcolm McLaren, Suede and the Crème of 90’s pop Boyzone, East 17, Five, S Club, Take That and Westlife.
Among dance music devotees however, it is his work on a string of floor-filling classics that carries particular weight — Groove Armada’s Superstylin’, Atlantic Ocean’s Waterfall, Felix’s Don’t You Want Me, Opus III’s It’s a Fine Day and Robert Miles’s Children which “seems to be the track that resonates most with people”.
His approach to the craft has remained consistent throughout, working exclusively on hardware — EQs, compressors and limiters — entirely out of the box, with computers functioning merely as what he describes as tape machines. “It’s from how I was taught,” he says.
“The legacy of a career’s journey. It’s the traditional way to work and I like to preserve that.”
That philosophy has not prevented him from applying creative thinking when the music demands it.
Richard mastered Cormac Begley’s album ‘B’ which is a bass concertina album, including the brilliant track ‘To War’ with its percussive rhythms and has appeared in DJ sets at the eclectic end of record selection.
“There is a lot of low end,” he explains, “and you can also hear the sound of the keys from the concertina. I was EQing the keys as if they were kick drums, putting in kick drum frequency to add a bit of a rhythm to have more bounce.
“I took that experience of dance music and brought it into trad music.”
Back to Limerick
Dowling returned to Limerick in 2006, establishing Wav Mastering and realising his ambition of a purpose-built, professionally designed studio room in 2013.
Since then he has become a quiet but significant figure in the Irish recording industry, working with artists including Clannad, Christy Moore, Moya Brennan, The Chieftains and Choice Award Nominated and Winners, Jape, Kojaque, SOAK, The Mary Wallopers and Windings.
Client’s CD and Vinyl sleeve credits fly the Limerick flag, locally, nationally and globally.
He is, he notes the only full-time mastering engineer working in Ireland doing only that, as a non-musician.
It is a distinction that carries with it both pride and a degree of frustration, as the industry continues to shift beneath his feet.
“I’m up against many different challenges. You have AI, which if you want to use it, is crap, but so be it. I’m up against mix engineers making louder versions of their own mix and people accepting that as mastered.
“With the hundreds of thousands of tracks I have taken on here in Limrock over the last 20 years there has only been one mix I’ve let through without touching so every piece of music has room to be improved on.
“It’s the artists decision if they want to go all the way to proper mastering to then release their music at its potential best in the public domain, obviously I’m of the belief music should not be deemed as mastered until done so by a standalone mastering engineer, it’s an educational thing and battle.”
“But I just want to master music, sitting at my studio desk is my happy space. I bill a very reasonable rate to reflect making mastering affordable for all.”
That, in essence, is the through-line of 40 years. Household names from Bowie to Christy Moore have had his name on their records without ever sitting in his studio.
He describes himself as the invisible man of rock ‘n’ roll — always in the background, yet interwoven into the fabric of the music.
After four decades, he is stepping, ever so slightly, out of the shadows to celebrate 40 years proudly of his sonic art.
Check out Dowling’s website at www.wavmastering.com, to see more of his story and the huge discography of music listed by genre representing the vast engineering experience of those decades.
“Mastering itself is the art of experience.”