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...
