Uprising: Tom Rouse’s Mission to Forever One-up Himself

Jungle Studios’ sound engineer Tom Rouse is no stranger to building things - radios, guitar amps, and plenty more random, “often useless”, electronic bits. His dad, who also doubled as his partner in crime on these little projects, spurred him on to keep creating, whatever the creation might end up being. Tom’s love of music has been a defining part of him ever since, and he knew his career would end up affected by his passion.

“My mum had an old classical guitar, which I started to learn with,” he shares. At the age of seven he had his first guitar lesson at school and at 11 got an electric guitar for himself - the rest is history. “I completely fell in love with music,” he says. “It was at about this point that I also discovered how much I enjoyed tinkering with computers and bits of audio tech.” Something that in hindsight should’ve been clear ever since he built his first radio. 

While Tom didn’t go to university, he studied music technology at college for two years where he got to use the school’s studios to work on his own music and actually start to make sense of sound design and post production. Apart from the odd job here and there when he was younger - like working in a warehouse or packaging up Christmas trees - Tom’s first actual job was as a freelance runner for a post-production house in Soho.

At only 17 he came across Jungle Studios and joined for a week of work experience, followed by a year-long internship at a music studio in Soho as an assistant engineer. “I started to get super nerdy about audio gear and took a massive interest in how all the equipment works,” he explains. “At this point, all I wanted to do was work as an engineer in music, but as the year went on, I felt myself gravitating more and more towards post.” So, after the year was up, Jungle invited Tom to be a runner, to which he responded with a categorical ‘yes’.

“Jungle is where I really started to develop my skills, both technically and while interacting with clients. Everyone was so happy to help me when I first started, despite me being an excitable little 18-year-old with a million questions.” 

Besides his time running for Jungle, Tom’s experience as an assistant engineer was also very fruitful for his career. “There was a particular engineer there that taught me a lot of what I know now. One thing he said that really resonated with me was that it doesn’t matter what position you’re in, or how much experience you have.

There is always more to know and learn, so if you look back on the work you’ve done in the past, no matter how long ago it was, and you’re still happy with it, it must be time to improve.”

Further along in his career, Tom’s first professional project was a sound mix for a short documentary about the Southall riots. “It wasn’t long after I had started working for Jungle as a runner and it was a super low budget job that no one else had time to do, so I took it,” he explains. “I hadn’t fully got my head around the software we were using at Jungle at the time, so I had to make do and did the entire mix on my laptop using my very old version of Pro Tools.”

Looking back, Tom admits there were plenty of things he would do differently today, but when he first came out of it he remembers being happy with what he had achieved for his first paid project - and so was the client.

But more importantly, one of the projects that Tom says really “got [him] hooked to the industry” and also made him realise the power of audio post production, was watching the ADR sessions for the first ‘Venom’ film. While only a runner on the project at the time, he took every opportunity to get in that studio and watch what was going on, “even if it was just to bring tea and coffees.”

It was in the studio that he also saw the power in putting one’s mark on something with sound. “I want to be able to create something that I’m genuinely proud of but that can also elevate the hard work that everyone else has put into the project as well,” Tom explains. 

Like at the beginning of his career, Tom still sees himself as a massive nerd on anything tech-related, and loves researching new improvements that can propel his work forward, as well as old equipment that can achieve particular concepts. Recently he has been trying to “get [his] head around” binaural recordings and 360 formats like Dolby Atmos. “I’m really excited to see them develop,” Tom says. One thing on the new tech horizon though, Tom admits to be half inspired, half terrified by - AI.

“We now have some amazing tools thanks to AI and because of this, it’s something that I would really like to understand on a deeper level, however the future of it is what I find terrifying,” He explains.

“When does it stop evolving? Will it ever stop?”