PROFILE
KR Moore
By Michael RaineMichael Raine is the Senior Editor of Professional Sound.Like so many recording engineers and music producers, KR Moore’s
life in audio began with a quest to cheaply record his own music.
Along the way, though, those aspirations of being a performer
turned into a love of capturing and sculpting sounds. Now he’s
working with some of Canada’s most acclaimed young urban artists
as the head engineer and producer at Toronto’s Sandbox Studios.
Before moving to Toronto in 1995 at the age of 12, Moore grew
up in the popular tourist town of Negril in Jamaica’s Westmoreland
parish. “My aunt and uncle were actually performing artists in Jamaica
and I used to watch them and follow them around. I loved the culture
- the music and the energy that it brought,” Moore recalls. “I think it
was for my seventh birthday that my dad bought me a Casio keyboard
and I used to always try to play back the songs I heard when I was
at my grandmother’s house, which was across from a venue called
Kaiser’s Café and a lot of the big reggae artists used to perform there.
I’d climb up on the column on the gates and watch these artists per-
form on the stage from across the street. So yeah, it was embedded
in me from childhood.”
As a young artist, studio time was prohibitively expensive, “ so
I was always trying to figure out how I could record myself with, like,
a little computer mic on our IBM computer and I would always try to
play back the beat in the background and record myself onto it,” Moore
shares. “And before that, we used to do it on cassette tapes with the
Walkman headphones. I think a lot of people can relate...”
As he got more into computers, he realized it was possible to
make his music sound like the songs on radio. “It was at that point that
I decided, ‘Hey, if I can’t afford it and I learn how to do it myself, then I
don’t have to pay anyone to do it.’ That was the initial thought. Then I
kind of just went down a rabbit hole with this engineering thing and
every time I learned a little more, I just became a bit more interested.”
In 2004 Moore started studying recording arts at the Trebas
Institute in Toronto. After graduating and taking some time to work
and save money, he purchased some equipment and started his own
humble studio space. It was around then that a chance meeting with
an important figure would lead to a friendship that has shaped his
professional life.
That person is Kiana “Rookz” Eastmond, now the founder and
owner of Sandbox Studios and an increasingly influential figure in
Canada’s urban music industry; at the time, though, she was a high
school student and friend of Moore’s girlfriend and future wife.
“When I came to pick my girlfriend up from school, she asked if
Rookz could get a ride. While we were driving back, I asked her some-
thing about a song I played for her, like, ‘Hey, what do you think about
this song?’ and just the way she articulated herself and was speaking
about music, the structure, and how the artist was singing and those
different parts, I was like, ‘You really know what’s going on.’ I invited
her to my studio where she and I kind of just got started.”
Fast-forward a few years and Rookz asked Moore to mix and
master a record for a rising neo-soul artist she was managing. “When
I mixed those records, people starting recognizing that sound. A lot
of those songs hit radio and then people were trying to figure out
who this artist was and who was behind it and then I just kept going.”
Over the last half-decade or so, Sandbox has become a much-
loved artistic space known for treating unknown artists with the same
love as it does the stars who have come through, including the likes
of Jadakiss, Cardi B, and Tory Lanez.
More recently, two acclaimed rap records have really put
Moore’s own engineering and production work on the map: The
Sorority’s Pledge and Snotty Nose Rez Kids’ Trapline.
“I like to push the boundaries and, as an engineer, I like to break
a lot of the rules that I was taught to obey in music. I think that is kind
of what creates my sound,” says Moore about his recent work. “If they’re
saying, ‘You’re pushing too much top-end’ or whatever it is, I am just
like, ‘I don’t really care how I got there as long as the end result sounds
like what I want it to sound like and it sounds good.’”
Outside of the studio, Moore keeps busy with his wife and their
three kids – 10- and eight-year-olds sons and a four-year-old daughter.
Like everyone in Toronto and across Canada, he was caught up in the
excitement of the Raptors’ recent NBA championship run, but says his
son’s love of basketball is what has really rejuvenated his interest in
the sport. Also, he says, “I am definitely a big movie fanatic,” but adds
with a laugh, “It annoys my wife sometimes because I’m like, ‘Oh, wait,
that sound like this... That’s really dope; how’d they do that?’ She’s
like, ‘Can we just watch the movie?’”
Looking to the future, Moore is just hoping to keep making killer
albums, honing his engineering, production, and beat-making skills
and, in the process, continuing Sandbox Studios’ rise to prominence
in the city’s – and country’s – music landscape.