Head Mastering Engineer and owner of Engine Room Audio in New York City. Starting his music career as a guitar player in numerous garage bands, Mark was the owner of the first Tascam Portastudio 4 Track Cassette Recorder in Colorado. He has spent the ensuing thirty years staring at knobs and meters. Recent projects include Mastering for They Might Be Giants, Mr Probz, The Killers, 50cent, Trey Songz, Dr. Dre, Fergie, and OK GO.
Mark and Engine Room Audio have been the recipient of multiple Grammy awards, and have been lucky enough to have been involved with a pile of Gold and Platinum award winning records. In early 2012 Christensen mastered the first single off Trey Songz’ album Chapter V, titled “Heart Attack,” which was produced by Benny Blanco and Rico Love. Around that time he mastered a track for Pauly D on G-Note Records as well, and he worked with the Italian rap group Club Dogo in June 2012. Signed to Universal Music Group, the group’s members DJ Don Joe and engineer Andrea “db” Debernardi flew to New York to mix and master an album with Christensen. Their resulting single “Cattivi Esempi” reached #2 on the Italian music charts. Christensen’s other mastering projects in 2012 included the alt-rock band Weep’s album Alate and the Trey Songz album Chapter V, which reached #1 on the Billboard 200 chart. Also that September, 50 Cent was in the studio with Christensen to master his single “New Day,” which features Dr. Dre and Alicia Keys. The song was mixed by Eminem before mastering.
In 2013 Mark starting working with the artist “Mr Probz”, initially on his album “The Treatment” and the single “Waves” and new material including the single “Nothing Really Matters”. On 27 April 2014, Waves debuted at number one on the UK Singles Chart after selling 127,000 copies in its first week. As of October 2014, it was the fourth-biggest selling single of 2014 in the UK, with sales of 758,000. The song also peaked at number one in Australia (currently 3x platinum), Austria (currently gold), Germany (currently 5x platinum), Italy (currently 3x platinum), Sweden (currently 5x platinum) and Switzerland (currently 1x platinum). In the United States, the remix reached number one on the Billboard Dance/Mix Show Airplay chart for the issue dated 16 August 2014 and is currently 1x Platinum.
Engine Room Audio in 2014 continued to work on projects by both 50 Cent and Trey Songz, with Christensen mastering albums such as 50 Cent’s Animal Ambition. Other recent mastering projects include Collide by Boyz II Men and Game Changer by Johnny Gill. Christensen’s associated projects had been nominated for five Grammy Awards as of 2015, winning two of them. At that point Christensen had also worked on over 24 Billboard chart top ten hits, and around 25 of the releases had gone platinum or gold. Christensen is an official “mentor” at Recording Connection, a New York-based school for music recording. He also periodically chairs and moderates audio engineering panels at music industry events. SELECTED DISCOGRAPHY: Mr.Probz, OK GO, The Killers, 98 Degrees, Boyz II Men, Tony Braxton, 50 Cent, The Rooks, Blue Woods, Ryan Leslie, Talib Kweli.