Robin Black is the kind of behind-the-glass operator who made loud bands sound dangerous without turning them to mush. In the early 1970s he helped capture Jethro Tull’s tight, woody dynamics—the era when arrangements actually breathed and you could hear air move around the flute. Mid-1970s he was in the trenches with Black Sabbath, engineering "Sabotage" (1975) and mixing/engineering "Technical Ecstasy" (1976), keeping the riffs sharp while the room tried to fall apart. By 1983 he’s back on the Sabbath ledger as engineer and co-producer on "Born Again"—a reminder that he could wrangle chaos, tape, and egos with the same steady hands. Seeing his name on credits still makes me trust the faders.