Kyle DaSilva Is the Engineer You've Been Hearing Without Knowing It

Engineers are the most important people you never see. If a vocal sits right, if the chorus hits and the verse breathes, somebody made a hundred decisions you'll never notice. On a lot of what this crew releases, that somebody is Kyle DaSilva.

He's Spacedread's main engineer, and he goes by Red Hand Silva (that's also the name of his playable character in the Spacedread universe, which is the kind of credit engineers rarely get). He records hip-hop, pop, R&B and rock artists in Toronto, out of Lynx Music.

Where he learned the room

Before Lynx, Kyle worked at BOTA Studios in Mississauga, the studio founded by Belly and The Weeknd. His own bio describes what he brought out of that building: technical precision and industry experience, pointed at one thing, understanding what the artist is trying to make.

Known for his fast, efficient workflow and his ability to create a comfortable, collaborative environment where artists can perform at their best.

That sentence is worth reading twice, because it describes the real job. A great take is mostly a feeling, and feelings leave the room fast. The engineer's job is to make sure that when the feeling arrives, the chain is already clean and the record button is already pressed.

The credits

The biggest one: Kyle engineered SOLO TÚ, the bilingual single from Papi AQ and Spacedread that reached #1 on Apple Music Canada's Latin Songs chart, above Bad Bunny and Gloria Estefan. The team on that record was small and entirely local: Zach "Exhale" Harder produced it, Kyle engineered it, and Amanda Andress made the album art.

He also mastered Dizzle BK's Kryptonite, the 2022 single whose video was shot by Spacedread Films. Mastering is the last pair of ears on a record: the stage where a song is made to sound right on every speaker it will ever meet, from a club system to a phone at 2am.

What a session with him looks like

His page lays out three kinds of session, and they're a good map of how independent records actually get made now:

1. Vocal recording. Get the take while the feeling is still there: quick setup, a clean chain, no waiting around between runs.
2. From the ground up. Bring an idea, a beat or a voice memo, and build the record in the room one layer at a time.
3. Release-ready. Work toward the artist's version of the song and hand back a record that can go out.

One way in

Every booking goes through one door: his Instagram DMs, @mixedbysilva. Tell him what you're making. That's the whole process, and it's how a lot of the records on this site started.