John Loder (sound engineer)


John F. Loder was an English sound engineer, record producer and founder of Southern Studios, as well as a former member of EXIT and co-founder of the Southern Records distribution company with his wife Sue. He was also the studio engineer of choice for Crass and Crass Records, and was often considered to be the band's "ninth member".
Loder was born near Plymouth and educated at boarding school before studying electrical engineering at London's City University. During his post-graduate work there, he became involved in early experiments in digital encoding of audio for the military. By 1970 he had joined EXIT, alongside Penny Rimbaud, utilising a one-track tape-recorder. This led to Loder eventually founding a record studio in his garage after the disbanding of EXIT in 1974. Loder was recording advertising jingles in 1977 when his path crossed once again with Rimbaud, who had by then co-founded Crass, and invited Loder to become the band's engineer and financial manager, roles Loder happily accepted.
When Crass founded their own record label, Loder worked as an engineer on most of the label's releases, and when Loder saw potential in a number of bands turned away by Crass Records, Loder set up Southern Records.
Loder engineered and produced for many bands other than Crass, among them the Jesus and Mary Chain, Big Black, PJ Harvey, Babes in Toyland, Fugazi, Ministry and Shellac. In the mid-1980s, Loder established a television production facility at Southern. Its notable output included the music show Snub TV, which after first being syndicated nationwide in the USA, went on to further success on BBC2 and in other countries.
Loder was responsible for encouraging and establishing independent alternative ezines, donating the use of Southern's servers and bandwidth, taking part in pioneering online media streaming and simulcasting.
Loder died of a brain tumour on 12 August 2005, aged 59.