Here we are!

 

A great and productive session ended with three of our artists dropping by and we couldn't miss the photo op!



L-R: Aimée Mutambo, Chris Taylor, Tommy Eye, Sanjay Rajo, Ebonie G

 

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New Tommy Eye Single!!

Well excited to be posting this! Great work everyone...

Chris

 

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Brian Eno on BBC and other news

Was very interested to watch this today from the beeb on Brian Eno, who is one of my favourite producers. He's explaining about his new app, Scape, which is both his new album and an app you can use to generate your own music. Here's a screen...

In other news, excited to announce Hannah Holley has released her new EP, and Tommy Eye has a duo show coming up on Friday 12th in London. Here be the details. I was at his gig rehearsal last night and it was sounding hot.

Chris

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What's going on?

Well it's time for a little update.

First up, did anyone miss that we did this...

Everyone still on board?!

OK, and more recently, since mid-August we've been working hard on new singles for Byron Gold and Enrico Delves, as well as recording new tunes for Aimée and Ebonie G. Tommy's album has been moving forward as well - we've been finishing up mixes as well as recording some of the remaining collabs, which are well exciting.

Phew! Essentially everyone we work with has been through the doors in the last month and this has certainly been one of the most busy and productive times yet for us.

Here's me looking stressed and frantically busy.

And Looking ahead, we've got worship projects coming up with Alun Leppitt and NauJavan in Oct/Nov and more new writing to get done as well.

Sweet times!

Chris

 

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I need a Dr / All of the lights

Hey all,

This actually went up a while back but thought I'd post it here too in case you missed it. We started out producing this ages ago but one thing and another it kinda kept not getting finished. So glad Ebonie stepped in and nailed the vocals for it. Clint's done a grand job on the vid too.

Prize for anyone who can spot the third track we worked into the instrumental!!

Enjoy!

Chris

 

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Rush available to buy now!

Yes folks!

Very excited to announce that Tommy' first single "Rush" is now available to buy from iTunes! Please go there, download it and help Tom get into the charts this Sunday!!

Here's the man himself...




In other news, we've been doing some writing with Ebonie G. Holla! Here's a little vid we put together on that...




Good times!

Chris

What's going on?

Time for a mini update folks. Plenty to write home about from Hi-Sonorous HQ. First up, some of you may remember a few weeks back we linked you to this video. Well the man behind it all, our good friend and fellow producer Mr Gregory Felton organised a hip-hop orchestra show featuring Tommy Eye yesterday in Southampton. Which basically was amazing. [I wanna say it rocked, but that would be imprecise stylistically. Sadly there's no urban equivalent I can think of right now. At least not positive equivalents... Hm, significant?]

Tommy Eye made his best effort at getting the west quay shopping zombies to remember that life exists beyond retail, and a good few hundred were reminded and all the more healthier for it. Big up to G Funk for an amazing job...too cool.

Back in the studio, we've been writing a good deal of worship stuff for a future hip-hop project (Yes, I did just use the words worship and hip-hop in the same sentence) which is turning out to be a huge challenge, but one we are totally pumped about. We're also writing for this guy, and this guy, and this guy. (ok that last one is...let's say, aspirational.)

Sanj has been on particularly fine form on the beats and I've been jangling the guitar strings in between hourly sittings of this...

Sorry, that had to go on the page, I love it so much.

I'm generally finding the ebb and flow to be a little unorthodox. Staying creative is a discipline in itself. One it takes to time to learn. I'm realising more and more that you don't always just instinctively do great things. More often than not, you work for them. I sat in my snug (my house is too small for a lounge) on Friday for an hour and a half and produced two lines of lyrics.

So working is sitting and thinking. And it's an incredibly intense process sometimes. Always, always, always, lyrics come last after chords and melody. I wish it were the other way round, but the others are a piece of cake to me and words are nearly always a slog to the finish. I can sit in complete silence for a while, perhaps 10-15 minutes and just churn rhymes and ideas, ways of sayings things over and over, and get increasingly more impatient with myself. Sometimes the wall comes down before I pull myself out, and then the confidence is too low to carry on. But if not, eventually I just start to strum the chords and sing all vowels on the tune I have. And it's in this kind of spontaneous speaking tongues moment where I might randomly pull out a word or a phrase or occasionally even a whole line and it just fits and feels good, and right. Sometimes it's very closely related to the ideas that I've just been chewing on, and sometimes it's totally different. But what does seem consistent is the feeling that it's a process I have little control over, which is both exhilarating when I hit on things I think are good, but frustratingwhen I can't just get something out. It certainly increases my envy of artists like Tommy, when they freestyle all these complex rhymes and meaning and humour just totally off-the-cuff...

Anyway I said this would be mini. And now it's not.

Chris

Ps. Also shout out to the tireless independent music promoter Nick Tann who played us on his podcast show "Is this Thing On?" this week.

 

Tommy Eye OFFICIAL vid launched today

Yes people, the wait is finally over. Here it is in full, the first single from the new Tommy Eye album...

 

Chris

 

Happy new year everyone!

Happy new year and all that to you, avid Hi-Sonorous reader(s). Hope you had a good one. So, what does the new year look like for you? Same old, same old, or major changes in store? Or is it the middle one...inevitable change, but the who, what and when - total mysteries?

 

2012 is shaping up to be a make or break year for Sanj and I. We've got a bunch of really amazing things happening in the next few months - the release of Tommy Eye's single and later on, the album, plus some really cool collabs with Byron, Ebonie, Aimée and others tbc! It all adds up to some really cool music that really could go places.... or it could not.

 

And that's the pinch. After four years casting our net wide and making things work by having loads of different fingers in loads of different pies, now we're kinda simplifying things - whittling it all down to a handful of projects that we really believe in and want to see go places.It's a different attitude for us, to be sure. Perhaps in many ways, it's a much more classic approach - write loads, work hard, and just keep doing what you do, until you get a break.

 

It's certainly scary ground for control freaks like us to leave so much to chance (or fate, God, luck, whatever term you're most comfortable with).But the nice thing is that I think we both feel much freer as a result. Freer to write what we want, and freer to make choices for artistic reasons rather than financial ones. And there's a weird confidence you get from letting go of the reigns a little bit.

 

So, who knows what this will all look like in another year's time? Not the same, that's for certain. But beyond that, we'll just have to wait and see!

 

Chris

Latest from the studio

Tommy Eye Update...

Well folks, Sanj and I are a week into our latest (and hopefully final) stage of producing Tommy Eye's forthcoming album 'The Fall of Icarus'. Here's a taste of what we've been up to and some thoughts on the nature of pop production that have been taking shape recently...

This past week saw us experimenting with a relay style approach, with me doing the day shift, and Sanj taking over for the evening. In that way we ended up covering a lot of ground, and still with the benefit of two pairs of ears - just not simultaneously.

It's a strangely effective way to work - not something I'd want to do all the time - but it means that when one of you tries something out, the other comes to it totally fresh later on, and is afforded a much fresher perspective on whatever it is that's been tried. Most of the time, it's repeated listenings that dull your appreciation of whether something really works or not, so this way, we're hoping that it takes less time to find the perfect arrangement and mix for each of the album's tunes.

And whilst we're on that topic of tunes, let me reveal a little of what you can expect on the album...There's a huge scope to this project. The main thrust of the album is Tommy's already 'classic' sound of heavy, straight-up hip-hop beats laced with a rock/alternative mid-range - guitars, piano, strings, and overladen with a perfect blend of rap and sung vocal. Overall, we're working hard to convey with seriousness a strong and, at times, sad message, but whilst keeping the music engaging, energised and fun.

It's a tricky balancing act, especially for what is effectively Tommy's debut release. If, overall, you press the seriousness too hard then the album becomes bleak and moody. If too light a touch, you run the risk of losing the message of the album and everything feels trivial and trite.

In many ways, this has been our ongoing lesson as producers foraging into the pop world - how do you present music of substance to a world that appears to demand superficiality? And when music is such a powerful force for influence (as I've previously blogged about here) are people willing to embrace music that sends a message that is contrary to their expectations or beliefs, or in the end, do people simply consume the art they agree with? In the alternative and niche scenes I think the latter is more likely to happen, but in the pop world, which represents an amalgamation of all the most popular music around, I think actually you do have a platform and an audience that will at least give you a chance.

For us, the question is how far can you go before you've blown your opportunity to communicate - when you've come on too thick, and in so doing turned people off?

With Tommy, the thing I admire most about him as an artist is is honesty and that he's the genuine article - in 'Wings' he tells the story of two kids who face neglect and abuse at home, who face an impossibly tough life ahead of them - whose wings have been tied - because of circumstances and situations often beyond their control. But the song is more than just musing on these issues - it's pure observation - because in his day job Tom works with these types of kids. He sees these lives for real, not just on TV.

This I think is the key to the question we've been asking ourselves - if you want to tell a good story that people will listen to, you have to be in the story. Not my words, in fact, but someone else's.

And it helps if your tune has a sick beat, which 'Wings' most certainly does thanks to some classic Sanj drums, a never-to-be-discovered-again slide guitar sound and a mother-load of compression.

But right at the heart of the song is an idea that's bigger than these elements, and that's hopefully what people will hear and respond to.

Chris

Bring on the beats

Hey folks,

I'm excited this week to finally be getting back to work on Tommy Eye's new record - 'The Fall of Icarus'. It's been a long time in the making, and there's still a fair ol' way to go on it all. But things are looking up. We have the whole of this month to really dig our teeth in and pull our best work out of the bag. The ideas we have at the moment are strong, and we've been getting some confirmation of that from some pretty hot names in the hip-hop world who Tom is currently trying to woo for a feature slot. I can say no more... but they're big! But there's a long way to go and there'll probably be a fair few wrong turns before we come out the other side.

Those of you who can make it to Tom's show in London on Nov 11th, may very well get to hear some of what's about to happen...

Here's what I'm currently feeling the most -

Peace. C

New Tommy Eye website - check it out!!

Tommy Eye, our favourite emcee, has just launched a brand new website and to celebrate he's running a competition to win some fantastic RISE merchandise and special Tommy Eye goodies. Check out his blog for the full details...

www.tommyeye.co.uk

Nice one!

Chris

What a night in London!

We all had a fantastic time at The Workshop for Tommy Eye's first 2011 show in London last Friday. Four amazing acts, one very sweaty crowd in probably London's coolest hip-hop venue! An unforgettable night. Big up to Alex D for some amazing shots.

Making 'The Fall of Icarus' - Ray Bans

All eyes on Tommy

Today, we're back in the studio with Tommy Eye, writing tracks, laying down vocals and generally having a laugh! It's not all been happy stuff though and some of these new tunes are deeper than your average - the story telling is at a peak!!

Busy Times!

April is pretty stacked with things going on! First up, our horribly depressing (yet amazing) album 'Frozen Dust' is progressing nicely. We welcomed some beautiful singers to Purple Squares over the past couple of weeks to sing on several of the tunes. Nishma, Capucine and Andy did marvellous jobs and thoroughly ramped up the general greatness of the record. I love that making music brings people together, and these sessions again reminded me of this - we had lots of laughs, as the appalling and thankfully as-yet unseen video footage testifies!

Looking ahead, I'm very excited about Brokenfor coming to record with us. Also, at long last we're getting back to work on Tommy Eye's new album, which I cannot say enough good things about. I'm positively bursting with good things to say about it. 'Unfinished' is the only negative word I can honestly associate with it at this point.

Other recent shinnanigans include mastering a mixtape for The Growth, writing and producing with Ebonie G, and secret talks with important people about future projects I can't possibly say anything about at this point.

Chris