Supporting Lemar, Dropboxing drums and new toys

News from last week...

Another jam-packed week of recording sailed by, with work on Alun Leppitt's EP well underway now. The first working mixes came home on Thursday and they were sounding sweet! Our good friend Andy Rowley's spending his evenings in Nashville, TN recording the drums from our pre-production templates. He dropboxes the files to us at bedtime and we download them around 4 hours later over breakfast, get to the studio and get to work with them.

It's a marvellously cool and efficient way to work, and I think more creative. Andy, by virtue of being 5,000 miles away, isn't getting the traditional micro-managed producer treatment with his parts, and we get to focus on the bits we actually play rather than doing days of tracking other people first. Rockin'.



Also, we just got back from the Old Firestation in Bournemouth where Byron supported the first night of Lemar's new tour! Sanj and I backed him up, playing some acoustic arrangements of two brand new and two older tunes, and the crowd seemed to be lovin it! Byron's also with Lemar for two more dates this coming week, so that's a really good opportunity for him.

Rachel Kerr was also at the show supporting and it was great meeting her backstage and hearing her incredible voice live. She's just won a MOBO this year so definitely one to watch out for in 2013.

Looking ahead to this week, we've got more work coming up on Alun's EP and we welcome back Enrico who's down today to finish up his single which should be dropping in the new year.

Busy times!

Also, Santa came early this year and dropped off one of these...

It's the Blue Sky from Strymon and I have to say I'm loving it big time! It's complex enough to be able to achieve lots of very usable verb settings, but it's also got some epic creative effects. I've been using it on shimmer mode for one of Alun's tunes which results in beautiful octave-shifted layers above the original tone that create a wonderful, hazy jetstream of sound. Also, been running it in stereo through my Fender vintage and a Laney solid state and I almost think it's cooler having different amps for each side as it just enhances the stereo-ness. Would definitely recommend it!

Chris

 

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