April 2022 "twelve days late"

it gets later every month… but that was April, a whole third of the year gone already.

first up - scum of the earth came out on 29th April - probably the culmination of everything i’ve ever done up until this point… from composing and recording all the music at home, demoing in logic with guitar rig and not changing or redoing any of them, literally the guitars (and bass) you hear on the album are the ones i played, for the most part, the first time i came up with them and never again.  all the way to recording shotty’s verses and rap production in general. to mixing drums, sample replacement, working with clicks and cues - plus all the mad loops and samples and weird reverse guitar shit, this album was always, in my head going to be a cross of everything, so incorporating ‘keys’ had to be done tastefully and cleverly… as i said to my students last week, or this week?  when you want to inject some cool shit into your productions, especially now, so many bands and artists just default to synths.. it’s like ok, you’ve got a synth sound, now what?  the chords? some camp flowery god awful dx7 style melody? fucking horrendous if you ask me… just screams of being void of ideas and awareness, so anyway, lots of recycled audio and mad glitchy, lofi style augmentative production also went into it… but the props has to go to Shotty himself, a masterclass in song writing and lyricism… yeah, we know, he’s a battle rapper whatever and he’s bound to be words words words but raindrop drummer, army of flies, just might be dust, manda lynne, 100,000v, just every tune on there - not only great lyrics and writing but melodies and patterns the elton john’s, swedish pop producers and guy chambers (is that his name?) would be proud of - so yeah, search SCUM OF THE EARTH, it’s the one with my mate Billie’s amazing art/photography on the front. it’s the total package. plus Tommy Lee, said it’s killer and has some bowie sounding shit on there. high praise.

another album, this recreation album, i can’t believe it… all of a sudden it’s like ‘oh yeah we’ve done all that’ or ‘yeah only 2 bits left and it’s all done’ - my mindset at the beginning was to just kick my hardest and most ruthless work ethic into life and let’s WORK, but it’s not even been needed - everything’s had careful thought, nothings been rushed but plenty of stuff has been nice and straight forward… it’s gonna be class when it’s finished 

Jace Campbell has also kicked a new project into life with myself too - i mixed his first few singles that were produced at the spot by Ben & Rory and now he’s doing three more. He’s got a very strong clear communication style, he puts his thoughts and ideas across boldly and tells it like it is, i knew this going into it, so took extra time and care to make sure when i sent him the first preview of what i was thinking he would be into it. thankfully he was. he’s also got his best pal, Max aka Rodders - and when i see them both, i can’t lie, i get jealous.  Being 18, writing tunes, with your best mates and going 42s etc… i miss it, because that used to be me. however none of my best mates would back me up and be my right hand man when it came to rhythm guitar and angelic harmonies.  Jace is a lucky guy, long may their friendship and musical bond continue and here’s to some new amazing sounding singles featuring the harmonies of Max aka Rodders

running out of time but more successful studio spells with Baby Daisy, Ellen aka e l l e n, Ken Like Fit, Srab Mancunian and Tino Caine amongst others this month as well

special mention to those artists and basically anyone who’s looking at their finances and thinking what the fuck. A few artists i’m working with have decided to ‘pause’ things, and that’s cool - it’s always been the deal from the beginning, to keep it flexible and as free from pressure as possible… the cost of living has gone up, by quite a bit and i can’t see it coming back down anytime soon - not that i’m some big economist… it’s just extra respect goes out to those who, despite the bullshit, still sacrifice what they can in order to keep investing time, money, blood, sweat and tears into their music

66% of 2022 left to go…

March 2022 "25% dealt with already"

What a bumpy quick month March was though… i’m pretty sure that on wednesday 2nd we were in the studio working on Antony Sziemerik’s forthcoming single ‘Ventolin’ — now this project gets me excited and not because of the cool music being produced but because it potentially offers a glimpse into the future for me personally.  So there’s Antony, and there’s Robin, and there’s Martin Antony’s brother - Antony’s the singer/lyricist/front man, Robin is the ‘producer’ and Martin plays short, tasteful motifs of guitar.  So what’s my role?  I’m just basically enhancing Robin’s productions with slightly improved mixes, critical feedback on arrangement/instrumentation etc, obviously recording Antony’s vocals and stuff… but, it’s hard to really call me a producer here? Because Robin is the one who’s actually making all the cool music but then again, so do bands when they come to me and i still produce them?  this just highlights that roles and terminology might be a bit loose and the hierarchy isn’t exactly pyramidal but, the main thing, and the ONLY thing and without getting political here, the most important thing in, not just music but the everything - is that we all work well as a team. teamwork, which is individuals coming together to form a sum that is greater than it’s parts.  Antony’s just had some really cool plays on 6music and the hype machine seems like it’s kicking into life, which is why when ‘Ventolin’ comes out - i’m pretty confident it’s going to be a big big big tune, especially if it matches up with some nice warm early summer climates too.

Ellen Lynch has been back in throughout the month aswell… these songs we’re working on are taking more shape and again, when there’s some nice weather sticking it’s head out, these tunes will flourish  - need to take another special mention for Ellen’s voice and singing ability — i’ve heard loads of people over the years gas certain singers up ‘she’s a star bro’ or ‘she’s destined for greatness bro’ and for the most part it’s just a lot of talk.  Ellen when she sings is just pure natural ability and her musical awareness of notes and intervals is probably unmatched in terms of other singers ive worked with. I feel guilty for doing a few takes and saying ‘yeah that’s it’ but truth be told, i only do a few takes just to see what happens, 99/100 we could easily use her first take and it’d be flawless. makes the job easy.

For one of my lessons teaching at Spirit Studios this month I had a ‘guest lecture’ - my first choice was Martin, who owns VIBE and has been the best mentor/sounding board/tech help/morale boosting ‘boss’ any audio professional could wish for, so i was made up when he said he’d do it.  It didn’t disappoint.  I was conscious of making sure there were some good, tangible nuggets of wisdom that would be new to the students, so i set the discussion off about what is probably the most valuable skill when working as a producer/engineer in the studio… musical talent? engineering skills? tech knowledge? or people skills.  Safe to say, after lots of stories, anecdotes and hypothetical situations the consensus seemed to be, it’s people skills which matter the most.  Plus Martin offered a really good tip from his old days working in studios with producers… when they were submitting finished mixes to the label, the producer said to get your vocal level exactly where you want it - then, turn it down by a few dB and send that off. The label almost always replies saying they like it but the vocals are too quiet, so then, you whip out your original mix with your vocals exactly where you wanted them and send them that. pure gold.

J.A.S. aka Jasmine Breese, purveyor of the finest sad girl vibes music this side of Blackpool, I’d produced a beat she’s requested, which was quite specific and it was only the past weekend she was posting stories on her instagram of it getting played in a club in Amsterdam - that’s good turnaround.  The v.catchy chorus would’ve 100% been being hummed by the people who were in that club that night the morning after over their breakfasts and whatever else.

Spent another weekend and another couple of days with The Recreation - chipping away diligently at this album, working hard, lots of concentrating and listening, plus some exceptional playing.  When you’ve spent ages listening to guitar tones, handling a 4 mic + 1 D.I., two amp set up with stereo out hardware reverb units and control room pedal configurations going… it’s easy to forget about the actual playing.  But there’s been no shortage of high class, focused musicianship going down since we began recording this LP.  lots of application and skills.

Special shoutout to my friend Lionel, who brought his band, Vinyl Williams to Manchester on their UK leg of their big european tour - i’ve been a huge fan of his music since he started about 10 years or so ago, and as far as west coast-psychedelic-cosmic-stoner-opal-infused-space-pop goes, there’s literally nobody better in the universe.  Vinyl Williams probably is the most accurate representation of ‘my kinda shit’ all distilled into one sound than any other band are, so to see it all upclose and personal was pretty special. Was good to actually see him in person and briefly catch up too.

Another solo artist Ben Krink came into the studio aswell, we’re working on three singles and we pretty much spent the whole session chasing after specific guitar tones and tracking a few bits of vocals… These songs are going to take extra special care when it comes to tones and sonics and Ben has got an amazing ear and awareness of what he wants and how he hears his music. Looking forward to seeing how these ones turn out.

Aerial Salad were back in, another band working on another album - however this time, rather than let Mike and Jamie go wild in the loud control room, tracking guitars and bass at the same time, in a live and loose manner without headphones, just jamming to the drum track pretty loud through the PA, i called an exec decision and rigged up the bass amp and guitar amp in the live room, but took all the pedals and guitars and shit into the control room — then i was just like, right we need a nice clean tone for this bit, ok let’s double that, ok now let’s turn this pedal on and put some heavy guitars in this bit, lets do some feedback here, lets play that other bit again but with this mad reverb on.  Plus there were lots of the usual reverse guitar shit going down with mad drum loops, space echo feedback and nuke-style limiting of random ambient mics. some extremely cool music is being produced here.

So picking up where I left off saw some more mixing sessions with Baby Daisy - which was kinda cool, because through my earlier years working on loads of rap and hip hop and bits of dancehall and reggae, i’ve got loads of experience of dropping samples and sound effects and just blatantly mixing them dead loud and stuff, and those skills kinda came back into use here, as we decided rather than fill up Daisy’s raunchy sax-led-pop with more lyrics and melodies, i suggested a bit of spoken word at the start and end? it would work well with the whole tik-tok trend of people badly miming along to clips from the shawshank redemption or whatever - and then Daisy had the idea of a door knocking sound effect and trying to place the listener, backstage, at a burlesque show, while all the performers get told they’re on stage in a matter of minutes. It’s very theatric and dramatic, but It turned out sounding dead cool.

One of the final sessions of the month was Toby - of the initial three singles we worked on, we only had vocals to ‘redo’ for the 3rd and final single - however, feelings of doubt crept in, lyrics got changed, melodies altered, bits got redone - but did we make it any better? or did we just make it different?  a classic case of an artist, musing on the products of their expression for maybe a touch too long and letting their own ruthless, inner self critic dismantle the inner workings of a song and try to reassemble it.  I thought it was fucking dangerous how it was originally and i also found it hard to tell whether the new bits that had been changed were good, better, worse or just victim of a classic case of ‘demoitis’ - had i heard the original too many times and that was stuck in my head? and if so, was that bias preventing me from judging these new bits fairly? it was hard to tell, as it always is, so we decided to pause things as they were concerning this third track, formulate a whole new plan, and to dive straight into some new songs.  solid solution.

so that was March, 25% of 2022 dealt with. can't believe i'm gonna be typing up loads again in another 3 weeks.

February 2022 "broken record"

I know February is actually a short month, but this month has been the shortest ever.  I met Antony Sziemerik when he came to record a verse on a song by JAS and we ended up having a phone call about new music and plans and ideas and stuff and ended up deciding to get 3 tracks done.  We already did ‘Sriracha’ which came out in the last few weeks, which I mixed and they self-produced, they being Antony & Robin.  They basically create song ideas in all different styles without much limitation and just express their ideas, then they brought their audio files to me and we loaded them up in the studio, worked on stuff a little bit, did some vocals and developed the tune - the more artists who can work in this way, where they just create and (to use an OLD term) DEMO a song… but demos nowadays, come in the form of garage band projects, aiff files, m4a WhatsApp clips and all sorts — and in most cases, because we’re all using £1000 iPhones and £2000 MacBooks (well the fortunate ones amongst us are) the capture and recording of this initial demo idea, is usually a nice bright, loud, strong audio recording and also, it sometimes comes with extra weird room ambience or even bird noises and all sorts of weird mad stuff.  these are the kind of modern creative audio project things I love working on… because when you add for example studio drums underneath, or studio vocals over the top - it legitimises everything that happens in-between whether it was done with an expensive mic and 70s pre-amp, or whether it was the built in iPhone microphone into garage band or even voice notes. But anyway, we’re working on three brand new tracks and they sound mint, it’s a good workflow and team we seem to have got going, so far so good.

Also had foot asylum come along and use the studio for a photoshoot one day too, after I’d settled them in and left them to it, I just spent the few hours I had to myself shredding through loads of articles and PDFs and guides on spotify and playlists and see what useful knowledge I can absorb.

Monday 7th I had Joell Jordi and his new band in — Joel is, as before, a former solo artist who came to me with just raw demos, that I built up into a full band sound, then we did some proper acoustic guitar and vocals in the studio.  it was a million times easier than for him to just approach people with his tracks and say these are my songs, this is my sound, this is my setup… can you help? and it’s obviously worked, because they’re now a fully-fledged four-piece band.  Was a successful day in the studio, tracked the majority of one song and are due back in soon to finish it off.

In-between a few more lessons teaching at my fine old school Spirit Studios fka SSR, Ellen Lynch came along - and without sounding like a broken record, is yet another extremely talented singer/songwriter who came to me with acoustic guitar demos, whereas this time we’re turning them more into dance/club style pop tunes instead… sometimes though when I’m asking for demos or whatever, I do ask, if it’s possible, if they can record their quick guide to a click or whatever, it’s just ten times easier for me to just load it into logic and start composing around it, but sometimes I do get people saying like ‘the fuck am I recording myself for this is what I’ve come to you for’ so I am conscious, this fantasy world of everyone being a recording whizz and it’s all some easy file swapping music making utopia isn’t true — and even though I asked Ellen and she said she could do it, I ended up just using her original demo anyway due to wanting to just things moving a bit quicker — so this involves, basically, establishing a rough, average BPM, chopping every 2 to 4 bars of the demo, then basically time stretching each chop so it fits nicely on the grid, this can be one of those time consuming tedious tasks but sometimes it can be quite straight forward… but it’s an important process because as with Tom McCarthy, who is ANOTHER artist who came to me with just acoustic demos, he made it clear he wasn’t interested in anything other than playing guitar, writing lyrics and singing when it came to like, creative collab kinda working, so when he just sent me his rough demo he recorded into fresh air on his phone, and then I, having cut it up and slotted it onto the grid, send it back with loads of lush piano and strings and drums and guitars and bass and acoustic - he was pretty happy with the results, but more shocked at how he sent it, to how it came back.  of course this demo by this point is gonna be a grainy, algorhythm munched, time stretched glitchy piece of audio that’ll be replaced by proper acoustic and proper singing, but as in the case with Tom, the lively reflective acoustics of his room, and the loud slightly driven sound of his voice in certain parts (he might not have an iPhone, I’ll find out) did spark off some ideas in my head of maybe a more driven dirty vocal sound over the lush compositions and arrangements might be a cool unique kinda sound.  but back to Ellen, we had a good few hours in the studio working on lyrics, phrasing, recording the proper vocals, bits of harmonies and BVs too, but she’s so good. her voice is amazing, and she is actually skilled at recording too, not just singing (big difference)

2nd weekend in Feb, guess what I’m up to? I’m recording a band.  This time it’s a bit different - it’s my auntie Lindsey’s good friend Al, and his band.  Apparently he’d played the demo to my mum a few weeks earlier (I think they’re all going on some posh holiday together) and my mum being the ruthless, scathing critic that she is just said ‘sounds like wonderwall’ - which tbf it did a bit, but when you hold the B and e string down at the 3rd fret on any open chord, then yeah.  But it sounded really good, some nice double tracked trumpet and a few bits of high harmonies - good work all round.

the following Monday, I had my first lesson with Graham - who’s a friend of Ventrelles and is getting into production and guitar and has a good portable home set up, so he asked me whether I teach logic or production and could I help.  so, every Monday for the next few weeks I’ll be doing a bespoke course I’ve put together specifically for Graham and the things he wants to learn about and do, so that should be good. But we’ve done a few lessons by this point now and they’re really good, in-between talking all things 90s shoegaze and 80s electro-post-punk, it’s good to passing on specific, tailored skills and tips to someone who I know is going to applying it to guitars and bass and drums and reverbs, delays, effects and all that good stuff

In and around all these goings on, I managed to do mix sessions with Baby Daisy, Ken Like Fit and Knoxy of Ventrelles again - tunes need working on, vocals need re-recording and instruments need half a dB’s worth of fine tuning.

On Friday 18th, I managed to go and see Maryland live at Shure 5 in Oldham, which is a really cool new live music venue and rehearsal hub - the guy who owns it, who I’ve not got chance to talk to yet, looks like he’s got something dead cool going on there, and Maryland — as with Joell earlier, came to me with acoustic song ideas and that’s it - then less than 12 months later they’re getting on stage, with a bassist, drummer and keys/melodica player behind them belting a set of their own tunes out to a baying affectionate crowd - it’s good to see it ideas flourish and take off the way they have with Maryland and also I’m glad my prediction that they wouldn’t struggle to get a band together came true.

The weekend after that, or the day after that?  It was a band called Affinity Project from Chester, along to just do the one track — top musicians, top fellows and an enjoyable straight forward day of recording guitars, drums bass and singing.  Sometimes you take these days for granted, but I’m reflecting now on a session with a brand new band, who I’d never worked with before, leaving the studio happy, feeling accomplished and a bit mentally exhausted (in a good way) as a reminder that, well, it could be a lot worse.

aerial salad came back in after this, for a Monday and a Tuesday - rousing through more drums and bits of other stuff for the new album… there’s lots going on, it’s loud, it’s frantic… if you want to know more about the mad bastards who are Aerial Salad, look for Salad TV on YouTube, their ‘podcast’ thing I produce for them.  I’m sure there’ll be more on this as the months progress

Rounding off the month was an extended weekend with The Recreation - they were playing the 2nd instalment of their monthly residency at 33 Oldham Street and had Ace & The Oddities supporting them, who I’d been talking to when I was playing guitar with Shotty Horroh, when we played in Birmingham at the end of August last year — just one of those mad small world moments I think, because I had no idea they were supporting a band I was recording and even more surprised when Ace showed up at the studio on the Thursday afternoon before the gig, to record some backing vocals with Owen & Tom.  The gig was a big success I thought, Mercy Kelly, who I produced three tunes with earlier on last year were on first, then Ace & The Oddities then The Recreation — all three bands were top drawer, good solid performances, the songs came across well and the audience were attentive and heaping praise and support after every tune.  That was Thursday, Saturday and Sunday were spent in the studio with The Recreation guys as well as Ace & Jack, picking up where we left off last month by making more dents in the album ticklist.

Yesterday, the last day of the month, Jasmine aka J.A.S. came to put down vocals on two new tunes… one of them was a beat I made for her, like a 2-step wavy pop kinda thing and another sad girl vibes YouTube beat she had an idea for.

and that was that… if you’ve read this far, thanks again.  March, the last month of the financial year is up next.  What deals will be done? was business will be brokered? what songs will be recorded, and which WhatsApp group conversations will be pinged at 2am in the morning with a spotify link to a miles davis jazz tune that features a familiar suspended melodic run sans two note tail at the end...

January 2022 "the final slog"

The start of 2022… so many things I can start doing, or writing down, keeping track of, not just with production but with life altogether.  but, as we know, jan might be the beginning of a calendar year, but it’s the beginning of Q4 in the tax year, to use boring business talk.  so while it’s a new beginning in a lot of ways, it’s also like the final push for the remaining 8 or so weeks at the same time.  and as far as final big pushes go, it’s off to a good start.

I’ve had three bands booked in over three weekends for a while, so I always knew this month was going to be busy - it was then just a case of what I’m doing through the week and how much of it.

So to get stuck in, on the 8th and 9th of jan (I would've happily worked jan 1st and 2nd btw… my daft joke throughout December was “I know I’m definitely not working on the 25th”) i had Woman You Stole come in to do two songs.  I’ve recorded this band a few times over the years and was looking forward to it from as soon as we booked it in.  With covid and all sorts of other stuff we struggled to get the dates locked in, from back in October we were working to solve the puzzle of when we can make it happen, but we finally agreed on the first legit weekend in Jan.  WYS are one of them bands were the sum is most definitely greater than the parts… Steve on drums has that tenacious driving motor, Jack’s bass guitar work keeps right on the edge of solid rhythm section and liberal melody making and then Hayley’s guitar and vocals - she’s so fucking good.  Sometimes you sit in this seat, infront of the speakers and you get a flash of the finished product, even before it’s anywhere close to being finished and this happens all the time with this band.  Steve brought his own kit, Hayley and Jack brought their guitars and pedals… we tracked drums and bass guitar and i think the electric guitars on day 1, and then day 2 was more guitars and then vocals plus we loaded up all the extra bits of synths and samples that Steve had prepped in advance with his own logic sessions he brought in.  I remember saying to Hayley “do you want to do guitars in the control room where you can hear stuff properly or do you want to go into the live room, stick some headphones on with my marshall amp dead loud?” it’s a bit of a daft question really… when you hear the cool bits of feedback when these tunes are finished you’ll know which option Hayley picked.  A final mix session for the end of the month’s been booked to just go over the songs again and tidy bits up - beats back and forthing on messenger too much.

Through the following week, i did my usual tuesday night tutoring at my old school Spirit Studios - i love doing these lessons so much, i really didn’t know whether teaching like this was going to be for me, but so glad i tried it out.  think that week was week 18 of 48, i’m sharing the delivery of the course with Dave Pemberton who’s only got the spice girls, prodigy and loads of other mammoth names on his CV, and he’s a top guy as well.

When i’m not at the studio and i’m not tutoring, i’m still loading logic sessions up at home and doing work.  my trusty external 2tb hard drive combined with carbon copy cloner software, means i just run backups throughout and at the end of my time in the studio that day, and then when i get home, run the inverse backup task and can just continue working where i left off at the studio, and then vice versa again from home to the studio.  save for the big mixing desk, i’ve got pretty much the same kinda set up at home as i do at the studio so that’s a big luxury, and with the amount of stuff i’m going to be recording this month, i’m gonna need to make sure i keep on top of the mixing - so lots of downtime at home, was spent working on the woman you stole tracks, editing, fixing, correcting, pitch flexing etc etc

Other stuff throughout the week was meeting up with Dave aka Ken Like Fit, to refine and micro-mix his forth coming spoken word electro slang unique mad dance music stuff.  Friday that week was with members of the local supergroup known as Angel Hill, putting drums, bass, acoustic and guitars down for a new track to add to the ever expanding catalogue - following that, my ol’ pal Tom and the other 50% of the musical duo known as Double Good Company, Curt, came in on a rare friday night session to record some more vocals

that was the first sign of a busy month, working on a friday night… 

so the following weekend was Ventrelles - two new songs, by a band who i genuinely consider one of my favourite bands not only at the minute but probably ever.  I don’t usually tend to big specific bands up, and from my experience over the last 7-8 years of producing bands, sometimes the ones you really love are always the most difficult.  it’s not exactly a slogan i go around plastering everywhere but there’s definitely some truth to ‘the less you give a shit about it, the better it is’ - so i kind of threw that out of the window a bit and we got stuck into these two new numbers.  I’d recorded three songs with them in the past, that were not only cool as fuck and sounded mint, but went down really well too, they’ve just finished touring with cabbage and needed these two new songs to keep the momentum going, plus they’ve only gone and lined up a support slot with the lead guitarist from my favourite band of all time, Andy Bell of Ride (and Oasis lol) so the pressure wasn’t exactly ON, but it was like right let’s fucking make two absolute classic tunes here.  Phil, the chief of the band, was setting up his guide guitar and vocal in the control room, he ran through the song just him and his electric guitar before we’d set everything else up ready to record, and i was like fucking yes, this sounds amazing, it’s going to be really good this tune.  Fast forward to day 2 after we’d put down 2 songs worth of drums, guide bass and acoustic for both songs and we’d done Connors majestic as always chiming strat lead guitar, i was fully ready to hear the satisfying last piece of the puzzle when Phil was about to record the aforementioned guitar chords - but instead he was like ‘no i don’t even play those chords’ i was like wtf are you on about it sounded mint, and he just said let have a run through.  he played this high guitar riff thing and a few other tasteful bits of guitar playing, i don’t think he played one single chord, and it was just yeah… fair play, it sounds unreal.

through the following week i caught up with Chris Bryant, another artist who when we first started speaking was just him and his acoustic, and now we’re just putting the finishing touches to his third full band single - high calibre of song wriiting and lyricism but i must praise his singing… a lot of singers get in the booth, some full of ego, some very shy, some talented, some with unique deliveries, but Chris nails it every time.

the day after that was a couple of hours with Craig Lee of Craig Lee & The Humblebees, sorting his backing tracks out… we recorded the full band towards the end of 2021, three tunes, without a click, just nice and free and loose - so my job was to do some exporting, make some stems, run some logic algorithms and generate a click track to run alongside the click-less audio, so when they play live, they can include all the extra production stuff that we did in the studio.  The beat mapping function in logic is so powerful, it’s one i’ve used for years but when you ply it like this, in this situation, it’s just magic.

same deal as last week on the working AT home (not WFH) front - keeping on top of the mixing, this time Ventrelles stuff, staying ahead and not letting the work pile get too tall.

the day after THAT, which was the Friday, was spent with the hit comedy duo, sorry, hardcore alternative punk rock duo of Aerial Salad aka Mike & Jamie.  It was basically a piece of mind job, does the chorus really sound like riding a chicken? only one way to find out and that’s get in the studio and investigate. i still think it doesn’t sound like riding a chicken and i won’t have this ‘once you’ve heard it you can’t unhear it’ nonsense. plus i tested the new bitchcaster out and the new cameras and ATEM mini thing for when we resume series 3 of the podcast.

so weekend #3 was with The Recreation… wow, this band of young gentlemen are fucking unbelievably good.  Jeff Buckley fans, get following them now - i was expecting a bit of loud guitars and raucous youthful energy, and i did get that, but it was more reserved, grown up, mature and thought through… they’re a band ahead of their years - we blitzed through a full albums worth of drums and even started on bass and guitars - proof that time spent in the rehearsal room really does pay off when you get into the studio.  But it’s good to see a band firing on all cylinders, all on the same page and all with the same hunger and drive.

the week following this, had Ventrelles back in to box off one of the two singles we did earlier in the month, then David of Ken Like Fit was back for another evening of micro-mixing.

As i’m writing this now, on 31st Jan 2022 at 9:51pm… i’ve had a weekend off, i say a weekend off, saturday evening waiting to get picked up, i loaded up Premiere Pro was editing Aerial Salad’s new video that they filmed earlier on in the month, and then i was back in the studio saturday evening with Jonny Brown fixing up his third forthcoming single under his new Jonny Brown Ltd moniker alongside Ror Materials himself and Ben Robinson, who for those of you who 1. have read this far and 2. are new to me and my goings on, is who i’ve been in bands with since i was 16 and who i’ve pressed record on him playing drums more than any other musician in the world. What better way to spend your saturday night on a weekend off, sat back in the studio with your mates having a couple of beers (Ben drove, not me) and working on music.  More proof i need a holiday really badly.

Today being the final day of the month, i spent under an hour with Baby Daisy, the fabulous burlesque dancer, who was just fixing up a final few words on what’s going to be her first single and then back where it all started, with Woman You Stole for a couple of hours, going through the two singles and editing, experimenting, fine tuning and general mixing, both songs are now ready for final critical analysis… pending that, they’re done.

so that’s been my january, honestly if you’ve read this far, first of all thanks, and second of all i hope it’s not been too boring… i’m going to try and offer as much insight into the every day goings on a freelance, independent, self employed record producer - the ups, downs, good, bad, ugly and everything else in-between, by doing one of these at the end of each month.  tbh even if no one reads it, it’ll be good if i can keep it up and read them back at the end of the year.  I think there’s a good chance this one might be the longest out of the lot though… as i said earlier today in reference to Woman You Stole’s mix notes - my favourite quote of all time, from the 17th century mathematician and philosopher, blaise pascal; “I have only made this letter longer because I have not had the time to make it shorter.”