Cicely Balston is one of the UK’s breakthrough young talents. They’ve worked across leading London studios like Gearbox, Air and now the legendary Abbey Road, with its iconic zebra crossing out front. Cicely has a hugely varied list of credits and has put their finishing touches to everything from punk to alt-pop to UK jazz, and from up-and-coming bands like Witch Fever to legends like David Bowie's back catalogues, as well as some of the most memorable film soundtracks of the past few years. Cicely’s ear for detail has been numerous times at the UK’s Music Producers Guild Awards. They won Mastering Engineer of the Year in 2023 and 2025, and also this year, they were part of the team that took home the award for Best Original Score Recording for their work on the very memorable thriller-comedy Saltburn.

Electronic music pioneer Suzanne Ciani talks to host Kate Hutchinson about the Buchla synthesizer’s counter cultural beginnings, breaking through as a rare woman in early electronic sound in the 1970s, sleeping on Philip Glass’s floor, why she never became a Warhol Superstar, the importance of risk, the sensual slowness of sine waves and what drives her as an artist and innovator now.

In this episode of Studio Radicals, host Kate Hutchinson is in Miami, Florida, with Maria Elisa Ayerbe, who Billboard magazine named one of the songwriters, producers and engineers who is “Blazing New Paths for Women in Latin Music”.

Ramera Abraham is an award-winning vocal producer, recording engineer and songwriter who really gets great pop music. She has created arrangements and/or engineered for the likes of Victoria Monet, Little Mix, Jade Thirlwall, Arya Starr and Ivy Queen, and has also assisted on songs by Adele, Jess Glynne and Elton John. She won Vocal Producer of the Year at the 2023 MPG Awards and, as well as working with big names, helps up-and-coming musicians to find their voice.

Hannah Peel is a musician, producer, composer and BBC Radio 3 broadcaster based in Yorkshire, England, who blends electronic and classical music across her many film and TV soundtracks and artist albums, including 2021’s Fir Wave, which made the Mercury Music Prize shortlist. Hannah’s soundtracks are Emmy-nominated and Ivor Novello-winning: in 2023, she became the first woman to win Best Television Score for British sci-fi series The Midwich Cuckoos. She’s released several solo albums with ambitious concepts, including a meditation on neuroscience inspired by her grandmother’s dementia and a seven-movement space odyssey written for synthesisers and a 29-piece brass band. In this episode, Hannah talks about her search for connection, experimenting with creating new instruments and sounds, how growing up in Northern Ireland and Yorkshire influenced her experience of sound, composing music for Game of Thrones and her affinity with Delia Derbyshire.

Ebonie Smith is an LA-based engineer, producer and artist who The Fader called “one of the most meticulous minds behind the boards.” She has worked on smash-hit albums and theatre soundtracks, including Hamilton: An American Musical, Cardi B’s Invasion of Privacy and Janella Monae’s Dirty Computer, and is behind the non-profit organisation Gender Amplified, which aims to help more women and gender-expansive individuals into music production. In 2024, Ebonie was behind the poetry album, On Imagination, released on Atlantic Records and featuring 12 poems performed by legendary Black American women. They included Angela Davis and a very special session that Ebonie recorded with the late soul great, Roberta Flack.

Catherine Marks is a Grammy-winning music producer, mixer and engineer from Australia who got into studios via a chance meeting with the legendary producer Flood. Since then, Catherine has worked with some of the biggest bands in indie-rock – Wolf Alice, The Killers, Foals and Interpol among them. She mixed St Vincent’s Grammy Award-winning album and won a Grammy for Best Rock Song for her work on St Vincent’s fifth album, MASSEDUCTION, and again for her work producing boygenius’s 2023 debut album The Record. She tells host Kate Hutchinson about her career and drilling down into the emotional resonance of a song from her laidback space at Eastcote Studios in west London.

Episode one of Studio Radicals meets Marta Salogni, an Italian-born, award-winning engineer, mixer and producer known for her sonic experimentation and creative use of analogue tape machines. She has worked with some of the most exciting names in music, including Björk, Frank Ocean, Bon Iver, FKA twigs, Ela Minus and English Teacher. Marta produced the latter band’s debut album, This Could Be Texas, which won the UK's coveted Mercury Music Prize in 2024.

Studio Radicals is a brand new podcast series from dCS Audio and journalist Kate Hutchinson, featuring in-depth conversations with some of music’s most innovative minds. It celebrates the individuals who are shaping how music is made and bringing a fresh approach to production, from the composers building distinctive sonic worlds to the engineers helping translate artists’ ideas into sound, including Marta Salogni, Suzanne Ciani, Catherine Marks, Ebonie Smith, Hannah Peel, Maria Elisa Ayerbe, Ramera Abraham and Cicely Balston.