BIO
The Full Story
Eike Freese (Born August 1979) is a passionate and award winning music german music producer, songwriter, mixing and mastering engineer. Growing up amongst the vibrant and diverse music scene in Hamburg Germany, Eike has been part of many international Charts success stories in the last 20 years.
Freese works at Chameleon Studios Hamburg, a renowned recording facility that has been housing artists from Kraftwerk to Tina Turner, Udo Lindenberg amm. from the 70s to present. In the last 15 years Freese has participated on 400 releases, among them artists just as Deep Purple, Ian Gillan, Simple Minds, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Apocalyptica, Gamma Ray/Kai Hansen, Helloween, Alice Cooper, Heaven Shall Burn, Eisbrecher amm.
Eike started working as a recording engineer at the age of 16, stressing out bands in his neighborhood by asking to let him record their demos for free with his Yamaha MT4 4 Track.
What would at first looked like some teenage dream would soon become serious business when german punk legends
"Razzia" have asked Eike (being only 19 years of age) to mix and produce their comeback album "Relativ Sicher am Strand".
From this point on more and more artists from Hamburg put their songs in the hands of Freese to record, mix and master their songs.During this period, Freese visited the highly acclaimed SAE Audio Engineering School in Hamburg and Munich, to take classes.
In 2004 Eike Freese got his Bachelor degree in music production with honours, being the first student
at that time to achieve an 98 % grade in the final studio production exam: and being the first to ever achieve this
grade at the SAE Germany at that time
Eike Freeses first professional recording studio, named
Eikey Studio, was built in 2006 and was located in the basement of an old but renewed Chocolate Factory in the south of Hamburg.
It was this first professional studio were Freese`s journey in the real music
world has begun -
It took only one year to gain a publishers interest at Sony/ATV to give Freese a publishing contract and make him expand his expertise in writing songs not
only for himself, but for others.
3 years later Freese got into a collaboration with world famous Kai Hansen,
former singer and guitar player of Helloween and to this date frontman of
Gamma Ray.
It appeared the „Hammer Studio“ Hansen was working in had an empty
control room for rent - an opportunity that made Freese the new studio
During this period from 2009, A lot of successful records have been
recorded and mixed here, being it Gamma Ray, Deep Purple amm.
Unfortunately Hammer Studios have been hit by a huge fire in November
2013, while Freese was still working with a singer recording vocals.
Lucky enough, both managed to save them selves last minute and could
get out of the burning building just in time.
Unfortunately, Hammer Studios and 5 rehearsal rooms have gone done t
hat day by the fire.
As a side note, Freese was mixing a Deep Purple live record just days before -
As known in the world famous hit „Smoke on the water“, Deep Purple once also struggled from fires destroying not only a live ballroom,
but also a recording studio…
It was Christoph Härtwig - a friend and recording engineer working at
Chameleon Studios at that time - who heard about the tragedy and offered
Freese to come and finish his pending projects in his control room at Chameleon Studios.Eike is a part of the Chameleon Studios production team since then,
and has worked on over 70 releases during the last 4 years time.
Clients, that have been coming to Chameleon since then to either records,
Mix or Master their records with Eike Freese have been:
Deep Purple, Ian Gillan and The Javelins, Gamma Ray, Lynyrd Skynyrd,
Don Airey, Heart, Saga, Simple Minds,Kai Hansen, Stewart Copeland, Alice Cooper,
Apocalyptica, Heaven Shall Burn, Achim Reichel, Kärbholz, Eisbrecher amm.