Its funny how much music can get you going. I started this project with one notion in my mind - that I wanted to sing/write about people living in the city. On top of this, I wanted to convey the notion of deep seated human insecurity, and how we shy away from it. I mean put it this way, we’re all here in a materialistic world where its ‘cool’ to own the latest gadgets as that makes us feel happy, but ultimately its something that will be cast away in an empty cupboard years later. In essence its like poor mans gold - the idea that owning a large quantity of chains, bracelets, medallions and other gold paraphernalia in the style of Mr T will somehow make you feel rich and important. But it doesn’t. You are only you, and its your mind that really matters.

So this track is essentially about living in the city, and all of the insecurities behind it where people constantly dream of a happier life, but never quite reach it. Instead we’re hiding behind fake smiles and saying its all okay, generally following the crowd like ’sheep to the slaughter’. Deep, probably a case of drinking to much whiskey. The general influence of this track is as follows: Air, Massive Attack, Ladyhawke, Bat For Lashes, Beck, Radiohead.

This track uses a bit of everything from pianos to vibraphones, and typical band instruments, all played by me. Synthesizer wise I’m pretty happy with how this has turned out - I think its reached the happy medium of an 80’s sound, but with contemporary ideas.

At the very beginning I have a Sequential Circuits Prophet-5 playing away (going through a guitar amp to cut through the mix), this is followed up by piano and bass.

The vocal is actually my own voice pitched up to sound ‘female’. The idea being that at some point I’ll be able to find a professional female singer who will want to replace it - I’m not a singer, and I don’t want to try, but this method at least gives me a way of conveying what’s in my imagination.

The fun bit starts at 1:01 where I have a Korg MS-20 blasting away with filter overdrive, alongside the Octave CAT that takes over the bass to do a funkier bass-line with glide. At 1:24 the music goes slightly up tempo and this is where I use the Ensoniq ESQ-1 doing the upward 1/8 (or 1/4) ARP and choir sound at the ‘ghostly apparition’ - I also overlaid the ARP sound with (believe it or not), a Clavinet D6 which smoothed it out with some slight detuning and timing changes.

Some of you might be interested to know that I recently acquired a Publison DHM 89 B2, a rare digital delay that’s great for quirky stuff, and I use it on both the vocals and some of the instruments to give a dirtier sound. During the middle of the track (1:49) I then have the vibraphone and Octave CAT working away alongside my own voice humming for that haunted feel. The filters on the Octave CAT open up as the beat kicks in.

The final chorus (2:48) then utilises a dirty bass patch on the ESQ-1 with a combination of square and detuned saw waveforms to give a steel-drum effect which works really well.

Hope you all enjoy it, and welcome any feedback good or bad.

On Phoenix

So here’s my own take on Phoenix’s 1901. I wanted to see if it was possible to create something a bit more bouncy mixing 60’s drums, with 70’s funk, 80’s synth, and 90’s guitar. My general influences are drawn from Beck, Feist, Ladyhawke, Chemical Brothers, Portishead, Passion Pit, and Air.

So there’s pianos, glocks, drums, and an 8-bit funk guitar. Building up to the chorus section with the ARP 2600 blipping away, and some retro computer sounds. I added on their Yamaha CS-80 (siren) sound with the Octave CAT… which has a similar edginess to it that adds a little extra sparkle (modulating the pulse-width and mixing in the waveforms manually).

The voice is a big chunk of the track… but one thing I wanted to do was add in a Queen effect where the vocals go through a Roland vocoder with slight distortion to harmonise the main vocal track. This only happens briefly twice, but really makes a difference. The process isn’t pretty - I have Thomas’s voice converted to midi which controls an ESQ-1, which is then fed in to the vocoder, and the results are sent back in to the computer. I also wanted to add a bit of Dimension-D chorus on the whole vocal track, but never got around to it.

If I had time I would have made a few more changes. Enjoy and feel free to share this around… I’ve sent this off to Phoenix’s label so hopefully something will come of it (permission more than anything), but there are so many remixes out there that I’m releasing this to try and reach out to a larger audience and showcase my own production skills, which considering I’m a one-man show in a self-built studio I reckon is a good thing! You’ll be hearing more from me in the near future.

Enjoy!

Download the Track

Lovers Hangover (Featuring Diana Ross, Breakbot, Data)

Breakbot… you’ve gotta love his style. The sound brings me right back to the trackers days on the Amiga machines. The way you could cut up sounds in such a rigid fashion really gave a certain sound that was pretty cool. Now with modern sequencer technology its far easier to get filthy with samples.

I heard Breakbots remix of a Data track, and thought it would be cool to mix in a Diana Ross track to it - Love Hangover had a great piano sample at the beginning which has been used loads of times by other artists, including an old favourite of mine Pepe Deluxe with their track Beat Experience. That track got me started on this.

If I have time I might be able to take this back in to the studio and process the vocals a bit… as they’re pretty dry at the moment. Maybe placing them through some tape echo.

Download the Track

At Night (featuring Lily Allen, Lady Gaga, Justin Timberlake, Dizzee Rascal, Black Eyed Peas, Kid Cudi, Daft Punk, Rihanna)

This is an experiment I’ve long wanted to put together… I love the idea of having at least 10 famous bands or pop stars working together. This wouldnt really be possible in real life, but sampling does give us the closest way of seeing how different styles work together.

For this track, I basically took each UK/US pop hit from the charts over late 2008/2009 and merged some other sounds I had at hand… I think it sounds okay, although I may need to do some re-levelling of the vocals. The instrumental is from Lily Allen’s “The Fear”.

Apologies for the average quality video. Unfortunately I have not had the time to source the original HD clips and as such I have stuck with pre-streamed material.

This track was created to pay homage to the 60’s band Tomorrow. Weirdly the band never made much commercial success, but they were critically acclaimed within the scene. These guys were recording at exactly the same time when The Beatles were recording in Abbey Road Studios.

The original track (Ten Thousand Words in a Cardboard Box) was released under both Aquarian Age & Tomorrow, but band member Twink went on to adapt his own version in 1970. It seems appropriate to mix them all together and do my own personal take on it. This is more of an engineering test than anything else, with a mixture of obscure samples, and additional production from the studio. Totally re-layered the drums, tambs etc. added some more organs. I also recorded some improvised MS-20 sounds with the white noise and lfo towards the end. As usual, loads of other sampled sounds in there which all add to the picture.

Drumming was a bit of a hassle, as I had two low quality drum mixes to sync… that’s why I had to add my own layer to blend it all together. Still some hi hat issues though, but the ‘vibe’ is there.

I properly mastered this through the Avalon mastering EQ & compressor. - still some timing issues I’ve gotta correct, but I’m happy with the levels and how it all sits.

RME’s M-32 AD is a 32-channel high-end AD converter, easy to operate yet having a comprehensive feature set. The unit combines excellent analog circuit design with the latest converter chips and RME’s superior SteadyClock, resulting in a state-of-the-art AD conversion - 32 times!

The unit’s unique set of features includes analog limiters, three hardware reference levels up to +24 dBu, MADI and ADAT I/O up to 192 kHz, 6.3 mm TRS and D-sub inputs, remote control via MIDI, and operation across a wide range of mains voltages, all packed into a 2U enclosure. An extraordinary limiter, conceived and optimised for professional studio, stage, and broadcast applications, offers essential operational safety with its capability to limit an input’s overload of up to 17 dB without audible distortion (max. input level + 30 dBu).

The M-32 provides multichannel conversion in reference quality - at an unbeatable price/performance ratio!

Features

The M-32 AD offers an outstanding AD conversion to MADI and ADAT formats in a compact 19″ unit with only 2U height. The balanced analog inputs based on RME’s reference design from the ADI-8 QS guarantee excellent S/N and THD specs across a wide analog level range. Three different hardware levels are available. Using up-to-date converter technology, the device not only works up to 192 kHz, but also reaches a real-world signal-to-noise ratio of 116 dBA - on all channels.

SteadyClock(TM) guarantees perfect sound quality through efficient jitter suppression, making the device completely independent from the quality of external clock signals. Intelligent Clock Control not only displays every clock status by means of flashing LEDs, but will also retain the last valid input sample rate in case of failure of the external source. Other renowned RME technologies like SyncCheck allow quick detection of clock problems.

All M-series converters are fully remote controllable and configurable via MIDI. Each unit’s complete status can be monitored, including all the front panel’s displays. Individual IDs can be set for each unit, for separated control of multiple units via a single MIDI channel. Control software for Mac and PC is supplied and allows easy remote control, also with MIDI transfer via MADI (MIDI Extender).

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All settings are retained when the unit is powered off.

Official album track number 4 has been complete, and I’ve decided to change direction a little – up to this point my material has been focusing on fairly upbeat styles that would quite happily cater for indie bars. Whilst this may be fine for that particular market, from an albums perspective you would want to change the tempo slightly to relax the listener at various points (much like how an artist in a concert would follow a fast-paced song with a relaxing one). I’ve always enjoyed the idea of writing an album as though it was an unfolding story, where each song is part of a collective that makes up a whole feature.

Lady Love is a mash-up based on a song by Richard Swift (Lady Luck), a track I originally heard whilst browsing through various Blogs. His style is the old-school sound of soul, which from a production level is great. My take on the track was to mix sweet with sour – so whilst the lyrics are what you would expect, I wanted to interject a sense of joy in to the track… however during the mid-section and final chorus you will find that sour starts to creep in, so by the end the song fades out under the distorted echoes of tape… as though the tape has ran out, and all is too late. The Solina String Ensemble (retro organ), and Ensoniq ESQ1 (80’s digital synth) play a part in the production, alongside lots of outboard gear.

Challenges faced in this release will be clearing and setting up royalties with the respective parties – The song also contains 8 other samples from various bands, including Radiohead’s song Videotape. Clearing 1 sample may just work, but clearing up to 9 bands ranging from 1966 to 2008 is a logistical nightmare. So for now this is a production release. As with all of my tracks, if there are any disputes with associated publishing companies, then please contact Obscuresounds and I will take this track off immediately. Until that time though, enjoy!

The good news is that I’ve finally managed to complete the track for those that have been waiting for the 3rd release from the sampling project. The bad news is that it’s still in need of mastering. Generally the reaction to this latest release is that it is a lot more commercial, which is exactly the aim for the project as a whole. The style is pretty much psychedelic thanks in part to the vocal & fuzz guitar sample provided by William Penn from 1966.

The challenge I faced was the original style of William Penns song. I had to change a large part of the track in order to bring it in line to todays style, and I believe I managed to get a good working balance as more samples were placed in. As with my previous tracks though I had to be careful not to go overboard, otherwise there’s a risk of ‘flooding’ the listener.

Ultimately I wanted to achieve an almost carnival atmosphere with the beat, but also keep things subtle. Additions to the mix include Steve And Stevie (offbeat sound in chorus), and Peter Schilling (percussive synth sounds). I’ve added in a few extra bits from my studio including the SQ Pro-1 for the rolling bass line, and the Solina String Ensemble for the strings - I’ve always loved the way in which Air produced Moon Safari, and their sound is very much due in part to their strings from the Solina. In addition I also started processing Gameboy sounds in to a few tracks - very quirky, and influenced by work carried out by ZX Spectrum Orchestra, and 8 Bit Operators.

The Chemical Brothers feature quite prominently in this release, with 2 samples from their 1999 album Surrender. I’m a big fan of their work, and would jump at the opportunity to remix a couple of their tracks. For those burning to ask the question - yes, all of these samples will need clearing, and I aim to get permission from respective labels in the near future, once the project moves in to commercial stages. For now though I consider this a work in progress.

The sample at the end was actually from a friends mobile phone that could translate text in to speech. The story is that it was sent in a moment of drunkenness after a night out.

Fans of the Nord Electro, will be pleased to learn the new Nord Electro 3 is now in production offering these new features over the previous version:

1. Load any sample from the Nord Sample library
Users can add virtually any sound they want to the Nord Electro 3. Sounds can be loaded from the Mellotron Library or any other instrument or sound from the extensive Nord Sample Library, the same as the Nord Wave uses. Users are even able to create their own Sample Instruments using the Nord Wave Manager and then use these in the Nord Electro 3.

2. Exquisite new pianos
The Electro 3 will use the same sample format as the acknowledged Nord Stage, to take full advantage of the Nord Piano Library’s multitude of velocity layers, pedal-down samples and extremely high quality samples with unprecedented expressiveness. Any current or future piano that is available for the Stage family will also automatically be available to the Nord Electro 3.

3. Increased memory capacity - 8 times the size of the original Electro
The Nord Electro 3 has a memory for pianos and samples of 256 MB and can it can store 128 programs.

4. Second generation organ emulation
The organ section is directly descending from the award winning Nord C1 Combo Organ with its fabulous vintage sounds from the B3, Farfisa and Vox-type models. Each and every individual sound creating component and even the artifacts of the original instruments have been faithfully reproduced in the Electro 3.

5. Brand new effect section
The Nord Electro 3 is equipped with a great selection of high quality effects including a lush sounding reverb with five different algorithms. There is also a selection of tremolo, panning, wah-wah, phaser, flanger and chorus effects.

6. New amps, compressor and EQ
User can sculpt their final sound by choosing from a selection of three amplifier simulations that can add any amount of grit and distortion from gentle to manic levels. A three-band EQ with sweepable mid-range and a compressor can be added to the final stage of the audio path.

7. Enhanced Rotary speaker emulator
The rotary speaker emulator also originates from the Nord C1 Combo Organ, with its acclaimed sound quality. This rotary speaker emulator incorporates the acoustic variations that occur when a physical speaker spreads the sound in a room, providing the full experience of when the air is moved around.

The Electro 3’s rotary also features a brand new function in the addition of the Rotary Stop Mode. This allows users to switch between fast and stopped rotation and back again by using either the controls on the panel or with a foot pedal connected to the Rotor Pedal input. This is a crucial functionality that mimics the behavior of early one-speed original rotary speaker units.

8. CD/MP3 player line in - routed to headphones out.

9. Lighter and slimmer

Production starts November 2008 - specifications subject to change and all that.