Cy Renner

The hit-maker. Cy owns the record: the hook that has to land in the first fifteen seconds, the chorus a stranger can sing back at their own life. He cut hits in a studio at the bottom of a reservoir; the tape's still on the spools down there.

Cy Renner runs the studio, which isn't the same job as running the board. Dale prints the record, Cy decides what's worth printing. He learned his ears in a room they later flooded for a reservoir, and he'll tell you the water never changed them any. He owns the record, not the file: hook first, the chorus wide enough for a stranger to sing at their own life, the register varied, the one held breath before the last one. He'll send a song back for a real hook before he'll rescue a weak one with volume, and he says the loudness war was lost by everyone who ever entered it. Bury the singer under the production and it stops being a record. If it doesn't move him by the time the first chorus lands, it doesn't leave the room.

Filed under invented. Everyone on this floor is.