ABOUT

In the autumn of 2008, an eighteen-year-old Brent Ulrich crossed the threshold of the University of New Haven with two ambitions burning in equal measure: a Bachelor of Arts in Music and Sound Recording and another in Music Industry. The campus became his crucible. By day he absorbed the grammar of microphones and mixing boards; by night he slipped into the dim, sweat-slicked rooms of local clubs, coaxing clarity from the chaos of garage bands and singer-songwriters who still believed in tomorrow. It was at The Space, legendary DIY venue in Hamden, Connecticut—that he first claimed the front-of-house console, learning to ride the edge between feedback and revelation as raw talent poured across the stage.

Three years later, in 2013, the pull of a larger canvas grew irresistible. With little more than a duffel bag, Ulrich boarded a plane for Los Angeles. The city greeted him with its familiar paradox: limitless promise wrapped in relentless hustle. He freelanced at first, a journeyman threading through the sanctuaries of Capitol Records, Sony, RCA, and Henson—studios whose very walls seemed to exhale the ghosts of legends. His first true studio position was at Dream Studios in Echo Park, where manager Tom Malkowitz took the young engineer under wing. Beneath Malkowitz’s, Ulrich learned not merely technique but temperament: how to listen for the soul beneath the signal, how to serve the song rather than the ego.

By June 2017 he had migrated to Big Bad Sound LA, a rising outfit in Silverlake that soon outgrew its quarters. When owners Jack and Zach relaunched in 2019 as a gleaming commercial facility, Ulrich found himself surrounded by the rarest instruments of his craft—a vintage API console, and tube microphones that cost more than cars. The gear was seductive, but it was the artists who truly enlarged him: Jessame Berry’s molten phrasing, The Wailers’ undying reggae heartbeat, the roots-rock ache of The Americans, Grace Weber’s crystalline gospel runs, MILLY’s razor-edged anthems, Sam Marsey’s whispered confessions. Each session carved deeper grooves into his instinct.

Ownership called next. Ulrich christened his own room the Orange Room, nesting it within the rebranded Palmquist Studios (once Infrasonic Sound). There, amid walls painted the color of late-day sun, he cultivated a clientele of independent dreamers—labels, creators, and lone wolves who trusted him to midwife their visions. In 2020 he forged a producing partnership with Chris Ascher—known to the initiated as Shaggy—and together they sculpted pop, R&B, and hip-hop confections for Sugar Joans, Cody Christian, Kawasi, and the incantatory Yellowbird Mantra.Yet the cinema’s siren had always hummed beneath the surface.

In 2019 Ulrich began collaborating with sound designer Matt Schaff, and their first joint offering, Jason Axinn’s animated fever dream To Your Last Death, earned them a nomination for the MPSE Golden Reel Award—an accolade that tasted of both vindication and new hunger.All the while, the stage lights never dimmed.

Since 2013 he had moonlighted with West Coast Music and Design Sound INC., mastering the high-wire art of live production for galas and corporate spectacles where a single dropped transient could upend a million-dollar evening. Seven years in, the call came from Dart Collective and Ulrich stepped into an even broader circuit, translating studio finesse into the adrenaline of the moment.

Today albums continue to bloom under his hands; mixes are honed to surgical gleam; masters carry his invisible signature into the world. Live rigs still summon thunder for Dart’s far-flung events, and somewhere in the quiet between takes, new sound-design tendrils reach toward the next screen. Brent Ulrich remains what he has always been: a pilgrim of waveform and emotion, forever chasing the perfect second where silence gives birth to song.