At the End of the Trail, a Day in the Studio

Oxford, UK (August 2, 2024)—Keeping track of oxen in Oxford could land one winner a day in the recording studio. The session is just one reward among many in a fund-raiser for a hospice in the U.K. city, where Solid State Logic is headquartered.

Indeed, visitors to SSL’s Oxford headquarters earlier this year might have been surprised to encounter an ox in the reception area, one of a herd of 30 life-sized sculptures decorated by local and national artists that are currently to be found on the streets of the city. Decorating the ox took local multidisciplinary, multimedia artist Rawz nine 10- or 12-hour days spread over more than two weeks at SSL’s HQ. “It was quite an intense experience,” he says.

The sculpture is part of OxTrail 2024, a fund-raiser for Sobell House Hospice—which provides palliative and end of life care to Oxfordshire residents—organized in partnership with Wild in Art. An OxTrail app enables users to log the codes on each ox they discover and unlock rewards and prizes from the sponsors. The SSL-sponsored ox is the key to one lucky winner spending a day recording and mixing at In-Spire Sounds, a local SSL-equipped recording studio.

Rawz is involved with day-to-day operations at In-Spire Sounds, which was established about five years ago to provide professional recording, mixing and mastering services that are supportive of the community and charitable activities. “It’s run by one of my best friends, a producer and musician named King Boyden. I work closely with him and bring some of my experience to the practice,” he says, such as running sessions and working with youth projects at the studio. ​

“He’s the SSL fanboy amongst us,” he reports. “He pretty much had a fully kitted-out SSL studio before the sponsorship happened.” The equipment list for the studio, which is in the historic Oxford neighborhood of Jericho, includes a BiG SiX SuperAnalogue console, an SSL 2+ interface, an outboard G Series Bus Compressor as well as 500 Series LMC+, E Series EQ and Compressor modules, SSL plug-ins, and an SSL CONNEX USB mic.

Rawz has a home studio setup that includes an SSL 2+ audio interface. “It’s just a really intuitive, handy piece of kit,” he says. “It’s one of the key bits of kit in the bag. It’s the interface that we use when we do gigs or when we’re doing workshops in locations outside the studio. That’s part of my practice; I really like to be influenced by where I’m creating. The SSL 2+ is a handy tool for that, because it’s so portable. All you need is SSL 2+, a microphone, and a laptop, and you’ve got everything you need.”

The decorated oxen will remain on the streets of Oxford until August 29. “Mine is in a fairly prominent place near the train station in central Oxford,” Rawz reports. At the end of the trail, most of the life-sized sculptures and some of the smaller oxen will be auctioned off, with proceeds going to the hospice. “I’m hoping my ox will find a home in SSL’s reception area, where it was created.”