Tag Archives: mixing

”It’s not acting, it’s real”

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Fat Bob from ‘Paul Calf’s Video Diaries’ said ‘’Chuck Norris was in NAM, so it’s not acting, it’s real.’’ With that in mind we’d urge you to have a listen to TROOPS OF MAFEKING’s cracking biscuit ‘Chugg Norris,’ these madheads recorded 4 biscuits at the studio in a 4 day session that will be remembered for a warped pig and an annoying woodpecker sound, which took 6 blokes an hour to find, and then gas! Troops have the aggression of Nirvana with the added bonus of Strokesy melodic hooks and Modest Mouse quirks. Top drawer we’re sure you’ll agree? Before the session commenced, frontman Samuel was keen for this EP have the same effect for Troops as ‘Wake Me Up Before You Go Go’ did for WHAM, he left happy, but thankfully didn’t proceed to masturbate in a public toilet. Or did he?

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Sporting a new bassist by the name of ‘Bramsey,’ THE ENGLISH set about their 5th session at UTC meaning business as ever, they’ve always had a great Arsenal of biscuits despite frontman Will being a Chelsea supporter, but these latest releases seem tighter and more concise, yet they still have room for great melodies and massive anthemic choruses.  These boys are well on the way to fulfilling their huge potential.  Check out ‘The One,’ and ‘South,’ they definitely don’t disappoint. Ace stuff.

‘Black Mamba’ by NEON ROUGE proved a local favourite, and topped the Radical’s Rising hype chart for 2013. A hard act to follow proved easy for the now 6-piece, who’ve added permanent female vocalist Charl to their ranks. Sebastian Larsson, Nicklas Bendtner, and Boris Johnson lookalike Jonny Sausage once more provided seething bluesy guitar licks, while new bassist, and former O.K. Corral member ‘Bootsie’ McGill is now adding the missing link with his bouncy and almost chaotic fish tickling.  ‘Jackfish’ and ‘Ain’t No Cab Gonna Take Me Home,’ certainly fit the bill in terms of quality. These buffoons will be back soon for more Acid Blues recording. Watch this space.

Last but not least, CAMP STAG are getting quite a reputation around these parts, their latest offering ‘Walking With Broken Bones’ adds another mint effort to their ever growing collection of luxury biscuits. They met McCauley Culkin recently, we we’re amazed to hear Chris Wilson resisted the urge to spray some of his infamous BRUT into the face of the Home Alone star. AHHHHHH!

In other news, our thrifty online mastering service is picking up pace and we had BBC’s ‘The One Show’ in to record a voiceover! All good!

Naked

32 Red : No More Bets

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Sound Casino’s first visit to the UTC dungeon proved very fruitful indeed, it was immediately apparent that these boys don’t hedge their bets as we delved balls deep into working on their beastly tune ‘Dirty Dusty Stereogram.’  It’s a mixed bag this biscuit is, it’s like one of those Fox’s selection packs you get at Christmas, only dirtier. It weaves between dancey grooves, Joy Division-esque deep drones and soaring rock choruses! Give the pig a free spin and make your own minds up, our balls are firmly in the thumbs up court!

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‘I don’t give a f**k about your band, cuz The Beatles did it first!’ Love or loathe the latest release from The Rat Race, one thing’s for sure, you’ll be wandering about with this catchy chorus stuck in your bonse for weeks, I was, and still am! Other biscuits recorded in this session include Fast And Slow, imagine The Coral on acid, and Verve-esque One More Day which features Emily Law of Nuclear Safari on vocals.

The Current’s - These Towns received a superb response when released at the back end of last year, so it was about time these boys got back in to the studio and got another track down, they did. The young three-piece have ideas beyond their years and seem to be improving as musicians all the time. Drummer Benedict ‘Keith Moon’ Hough described the latest track Just Keep Dancing as ‘safe.’ When these pigs have a bit more experience under their belts they’ll be a force to be reckoned with! Watch this space!

The news of 3’s A Riot’s imminent split came as a huge surprise, particularly as their very exciting new E.P. ‘Van Gogh’s Ear For Music’ is just about on it’s way to be pressed to vinyl. 4 ace biscuits which contain some brilliant moments will leave behind a legacy which many heads will look back on with great fondness. Inside every bag of shite there is a sparkle of gold, you can’t keep raw talent down for long, it’s only a matter of time before these loons are back, maybe in an even more exciting guise! Listen to GROWLER here, their last ever release!

It was a pleasure last month to be interviewed on 6 Towns Radio’s Radical’s Rising show, and it’s nice to see some of our Custard Creams  in at the deep end of the very popular hype chart.  Sound Casino, Moscow, The Current and The Motives all feature! Top bombing! Naked.

Sydney – Poznan – Longton – MOSCOW!

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ALL THE YOUNG’s follow up to their debut album ‘Welcome Home’ promises to be something to look out for if the 11 tracks demo’d at our place are anything to go by. Which of course, they are.  The raw power of ‘Homecoming’ and the early REM-esque ‘Radio Now’ (working titles) proved very refreshing indeed . All The Young sound the same, but different. These rogues have obviously gone balls deep writing in the last few months and it was a pleasure to be part of recording some cracking new matieral, some of which will surely feature on the second album!? The highlight of the 3-day session: Basoonist Jack Dooley’s Stella Artois and Joe Strummer inspired ‘my bloody valentines’, backing vocals to You & I. Literally.

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‘Lizard Lords, don’t hide your scales we see’ shouts MOSCOW frontman and general lunatic Nic Andrews from our vox booth. It’s different. It’s loud. It’s mint. Those of you who have witnessed a MOSCOW gig will know what i’m referring to. Following on from their first release ‘DOWN,’ Lizard Lords takes it up another notch. Capturing the energy felt during live performances on a 6 inch jaffa can prove tricky, but with MOSCOW you just can’t hide it. Raucous! Naked

Listen to Lizard Lords here:

MOSCOW – LIZARD LORDS

February 2012 – The Feb Four

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After successfully tracking biscuits with John Delf at the well-known ‘Edge’ studio in Cheshire, The Control’s ‘Crimes of Love, Dance and Music’ had a lovely smooth tone but was in need of a bit of a polish, added zing and a tad of de-ambientizing  (American spelling of a word that doesn’t exist alert!)  so we got cracking. Vocals were tracked again along with some percussion, and the one-minute-forty-odd assault on the senses turned into what vocalist JBH described as ‘more of a chainsaw than a pink sock.’  We obviously took that as a massive compliment, and are eagerly awaiting a listen of the finished ginger-nut which is currently being mastered by Tim Debney, who has a CV that’s longer than a conga, including the likes of Keith Allen’s daughter. The boys also bravely consumed one of our ASDA pot noodles which don’t resemble the real thing whatsoever, and revealed how they swipe expensive donuts through the self check-out at TESCO as cheap apples! Unlucky TESCO!

January – New Year’s Convolution

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Highlight of the month: Without doubt ‘The Laker Test’ and their live demo. Within 3 minutes of setting up bassist Pat Bastard’s rig, the sound was what Antoine would have described as ‘shitting levels.’ We knew we were in for a heavy evening, and these boys did not dissappoint.  Biscuits such as ‘Slozenger’ and ‘Freemantle Doctor’ contain  more low frequency than we’ve had hot dinners. Helped massively by PSP’s (in)famous ‘Vintage Warmer,’ which the previously mentioned Nick Papadopolus of post shoegaze pigs ‘Fetch The Witches’ massively approved of. What a shame folk listen to tunes/beats/songs/biscuits, whatever the phrase is nowadays, (better consult ‘Sickness Squad’,) through their  ******* laptop speakers!

We shall refrain from posting these live ‘jaffas’ by ‘The Laker Test’  as they are due in to do a ‘proper’ track-by-track demo shortly. Watch this space…….

For those of you who are into doing your own mixes, save some money and buy AudioEase’s Altiverb. Use one of the outrageous impulse responses, such as Frank Zappa’s ‘echo chamber,’  or one of the 17 Cathedrals from places like Moldova as a send FX, on the tracks that need a touch of verb, then bypass Altiverb. Your mix will sound like a Poodle without a bone. Now, ‘unbypass,’ your mix will sound like a Doberman Pinscher with a massive mohican. It’s the best plug we’ve ever invested in, bar none.

As Camp as Christmas — December at the UTC Music Studio.

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In spring, Inspired Film and Video shot the video for our Stoke City Wembley song for free, from which all proceeds went to The Donna Louise Trust.  We owed them one. A free-of-charge voiceover for a video they’d shot for Aspire Housing was just the job. Our SE2200A microphone performed excellently, and the crystal clear sound was described as “like cheese off a non-stick shovel” by Mike MacDonald of Inspired.

This leads us to the highlight of the month. CAMP STAG finally decided to come in to the studio and get their cracking tracks recorded. It’s a pleasure when a drummer can record to a metronome, it means the remix/alternate mix possiblilites are endless, and guess what we did? Yeah, we did a cracking mix of their sinister sounding ‘SIRENS’!

November Spawned a Monster…

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November… Where to start?! The ‘Dons’ of Sickness Squad would get more airplay if they didn’t use expletives, on average, 37 times in each of their songs. But they do, so they don’t. We can’t help but think the CMX-loving rappers would be a hit urban folk if they would only let us bleep out the foul language on their ‘beats’, as they like to call them. But they won’t.

It was Paul Calf who said “Inside every bag of sh*te, there is a sparkle of gold.” Well, that’s certainly true for Sickness Squad, who get a free Pot Noodle everyime they come to the UTC Music Studio due to their once a week booking!

October 2011 at the UTC Music Studio

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The highlight of the month of October was the Post-Shoegaze Pigs of Fetch The Witches coming to UTC towers to record a two track demo, which did not disappoint.

These lads were supposed to be in on numerous occasions prior to them finally turning up, due to a mystery ‘illness’ to guitarist Nick Papadopolus. We were worried initially that this ‘illness’ was life-threatening until a tweet from Cuban cigar smoking bassist Simon Mondo revealed that the problem was his low ‘E’ being out of tune, and his guitar tuner had broken. The boys soon realised that we probably possessed a guitar tuner at the UTC Music Studio, so they decided to honour their latest booking.

The 2 tunes they recorded, ‘On The Mend’ and ‘The Glow’ have been decribed as ‘exceptional’ and ‘melancholic’ by Shoegaze magazine.