Alfonso De Grandis is a sound designer, dubbing mixer, composer, recording engineer and producer based in London, with over twenty years of experience across film, television, and music. Working from his studio in Hackney Wick — part of the Grammy Award–winning Urchin Studios complex — he crafts sonic compositions that blur the boundaries between sound design, sound art and music.
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Beyond his commissioned work, Alfonso’s creative research explores the poetic and emotional potential of listening. In 2022, he founded Antics & Collectables. The collaborative project reimagines memory, time, and self discovery through sound — combining digital and analogue electronics, found sounds, and field recordings often manipulated beyond recognition.
At the core of Alfonso’s philosophy lies listening as an art form — an intentional, lifelong practice and emotional exploration. As he often says, he considers himself a listener and a sound collector before anything else
THE ART OF MIXING
Having worked extensively in post-production sound as well as music mixing, I approach every mix as a dialogue between clarity, emotion, and space. My experience across both disciplines allows me to bridge cinematic sound design with the fluidity of musical expression. The same attention I give to the placement of a whisper or the texture of a foley detail, I give to the movement of a synth or the resonance of a snare. I see the mix as a moment of convergence — where sound design, composition, and storytelling meet. Each project becomes an opportunity to build a space that feels alive and emotionally coherent, where every sound has intent and every silence has weight.
HYBRID APPROACH
Digital technology offers precision, flexibility, and endless possibilities of manipulation. Analogue tools, on the other hand, introduce warmth, unpredictability, and imperfection — qualities that often breathe life into a piece. In my process, the two coexist as complementary forces. I may capture a texture through analogue circuitry, then reshape it digitally to reveal new forms and meanings. Sometimes, I allow digital sounds to decay through analogue paths, embracing the subtle distortions that emerge. This dialogue between technologies mirrors the balance I seek in all my work: the meeting of the organic and the synthetic, the controlled and the accidental. It’s within this tension that I often find the most human moments in sound.
THE SOUND ARCHIVE
Much of my creative world is built from an ever-growing library of unique sounds collected over years of travel and exploration. These sounds form the raw material of my sonic palette.