18 Facts About Chris Tsangarides

Christopher Andrew Tsangarides was a British record producer, sound engineer, and mixer of Greek Cypriot origin.

Chris Tsangarides was best known for his work with many heavy metal artists, including Gary Moore, Thin Lizzy, Judas Priest, Helloween, Anvil, Angra, Anthem, Yngwie Malmsteen, and Tygers of Pan Tang.

Chris Tsangarides learned to play piano as a child and studied trumpet at the Royal Academy of Music, before studying economics at college.

Chris Tsangarides started his career in the music business in 1974, as an apprentice at Morgan Studios in London, one of the major independent recording studios in the UK at the time.

Chris Tsangarides engineered the British hit single "Naughty Naughty Naughty" in 1977, a pop song by Joy Sarney, whose success gave him much more work as engineer at the studio.

In that period he engineered and mixed albums of new wave acts, such as Japan's Obscure Alternatives, and jazz fusion releases of Colosseum II and Brand X Tsangarides befriended Colosseum II guitarist Gary Moore, who asked him to produce his solo album Back on the Streets, which was Tsangarides's first job as producer.

Chris Tsangarides continued working with Moore on live albums and produced Back to the Blues in 2001.

When Morgan Studios 3 and 4 were acquired by Zomba Management in 1980 and rechristened Battery Studios, Tsangarides was hired by the new owners as part of a team of "in-house producers" which included Robert John "Mutt" Lange, Martin Birch, Tony Platt and Nigel Green.

At the beginning of the 2000s, Chris Tsangarides had his own music company called Rainmaker Music, which included a recording studio with the same name in South London.

Chris Tsangarides later opened another studio called The Dump in Kenley, Surrey, which operated until January 2006.

In 2006, Chris Tsangarides opened a new recording facility, Ecology Room Studios in Kent, England, where he went on producing new and established acts on lower budgets than in corporate studios.

Between 2010 and 2013, Chris Tsangarides collaborated with the Band Complete team at SAE Athens.

Chris Tsangarides acted as the recording-sessions mentor, supervisor, recording engineer, and producer.

In February 2012, Chris Tsangarides announced details of a new record label Dark Lord Records formed with the Strawbs frontman Dave Cousins.

Chris Tsangarides played guitar, performed live, wrote songs and produced his last ever album with the metal band More.

Chris Tsangarides died of pneumonia and heart failure on 6 January 2018, aged 61.

Chris Tsangarides is known for a guitar recording technique called "the vortex", which he first used when recording the guitar of John Goodsall for the Brand X album Moroccan Roll in 1977.

Chris Tsangarides later refined the technique, which gives to the recordings a random panning effect similar to a reverb, but obtained through a particular placement of microphones.