Associate Professor Mike Howlett

Born in Lautoka, Fiji, Mike Howlett spent his teenage years in Sydney, joining the group The Affair in 1968. The group won the Hoadley’s Battle of the Bands (Vocal Section) and moved to London in 1970. During the 70′s Mike Howlett played bass and wrote with esoteric space-funk group Gong, who were only the second signing to the nascent Virgin Records. Leaving Gong in 1976, Mike put together his own group, Strontium-90, with musicians Sting, Andy Summers and Stuart Copeland, who went on to enormous success as The Police. In 1997 the recordings of this group were released on Sting’s own record label Pangaea under the title “Police Academy”.

Mike began producing records in the 1980′s, won a Grammy and had a string of Top 10 UK Hits including:

Martha and the Muffins

• ‘Echo Beach’

OMD

• ‘Enola Gay’
• ‘Souvenir’
• ‘Messages’

Blancmange

• ‘Living on the Ceiling’

A Flock of Seagulls

• ‘I Ran’ (US Top Ten)
• ‘Wishing (If I Had a Photograph…)’
• ‘DNA” (Grammy award winner)

China Crisis

• ‘Wishful Thinking’

and other internationally top-selling albums by:

• Joan Armatrading
• Berlin (US Platinum)
• The Alarm(US Gold)
• Gang of Four
• Julien Clerc (France Platinum)
• La Unión (Spain Platinum)
• Fischer-Z (Germany)
• Gowan (Canada Gold)

These albums each achieved sales in excess of 500,000.

In 1982 Mike received a Grammy award from the U.S. National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences for his work on the Flock of Seagulls track “DNA.”

In 1987 Mike became a founding member of the Record Producers Guild (now known as MPG – the Music Producers Guild) and was Chairman from 2005-2009, culminating in the staging of the first ever MPG Awards event in London in February 2009.

As international co-ordinator, Mike was instrumental in organising the first ever rock concert in Red Square, Moscow in 1992.

From 1995-1998 MPG representative on the Steering Committee working with the Musicians, Union, Equity and the Music Managers Forum on the setting up of PAMRA – the performers rights organisation.

From 1993-95 Mike ran his own record label – Mauve Records, specialising in singer/songwriters.

In 1996 Mike began playing bass again with Gong, completing 4 world tours including the USA, Europe and Japan. In 2009 Gong recorded a new studio album “2032″ and headlined The Glade stage at Glastonbury, the Nearfest progressive rock festival in Pennsylvania, and the Orange stage at Fuji Rock festival in Japan.

In 1999 Mike began lecturing in audio technology, record production and the music industry. From 2002 he created and ran a unit in record production at the University of Glamorgan in Wales and also lectured at Thames Valley University’s London College of Music.

In 2009 Mike was awarded a PhD by Portfolio, an analysis of the record production process based on five of his hit singles.

Mike is currently vice-chair of ASARP (The Association for the Study of the Art of Record Production), which holds the annual Art of Record Production Conference, a forum for academic analysis of record production.