Legendary recording, mixing and mastering engineer George Horn has reportedly died.
Josh Cheon, who has worked with George Horn on mastering for all of the releases on his label, Dark Entries, broke the news of Horn’s passing via a series of posts on Twitter. The recording engineer died as a result of COVID-19, Cheon reported.
Based out of the US’ West Coast, Horn began work as a radio engineer in the ’50s and later went on to take up the role of Chief Engineer for Mercury and Columbia Records, as well as working at the legendary Coast Recorders studio. From 1980, he worked from Oakland’s Fantasy Studios, going on to open his own mastering facility in Berkeley in 2008.
Over the course of his career, Horn was involved in the mixing, mastering and recording of music by the likes of Bob Dylan, Cybotron, Simon & Garfunkel, Charles Mingus, and much more. With Dark Entries, he was involved in the remastering of various crucial releases by the likes of Patrick Cowley, Severed Heads and Lena Platonos. You can find his almost 2,000 credits via AllMusic.
In a social media thread about his work alongside Horn on Dark Entries releases, Cheon wrote: "I am so grateful Chris Rolls suggested we use George to master our first release in 2009. Chris warned, ‘Make sure George finishes his donut before you start your project’, a sign that he would be in a good mood. Luckily we hit it off and as I brought him more work we bonded.
"He became a sage for all things audio related. He would always ask how sales were going and saw my passion and growing list of releases and when I hesitated or asked if I should slow down he told me not to, and said it was like a snowball effect and to go with the momentum.
"We send our condolences to his family and will miss him so fucking much, it hurts. He has mastered every single Dark Entries release since day one and cut lacquers with help from Anne-Marie Suenram by his side since 2014, she will continue mastering and cutting discs at his studio."
