Directing a Magnificent Mothers Day Mess

What do you mean, “Never work with kids or animals”? I’ve worked with both and it’s awesome.
Another shoot with a brilliant crew making my little storyboard come alive. The boys were excellent, with DOP/director and their brilliant mum only having to bust out parenting skills a couple of times.

A small shoot like this took a little more planning than usual to work around the time limits of working with children: stopping and starting. IMHO this is a much better way to work in general giving regular breaks, keeping focus and giving time to back up data in-between takes saving time at the end of day.

Food and stories can be complex to shoot, but it was always such a pleasure to create these with a great team. Special thanks to a truly excellent crew (Producer Nadiya, DOP Jonah & Dan, Stylist Emma, Home-Ec Emma, AM Michaela).

These Things

This is what I’m up to in 2021. I wrote this in 2012 and it’s taken a decade of cult-deprogramming and life-admin to get back to enjoying writing and mixing music. This album is gonna be an ambient, folky, new-metal, percussive banger and I’m really looking forward to collaborating with some local Bristolians on this 13-track journey.

And interestingly this is the first version recorded in 2012, y’know… after the apocalypses.
Hehe it’s so hyper… I blame the very bright mixing desk I had at the time.

Lets go robot dance fun yes?! LIGHTSTREAM!

Rebecca (of iamlovelace.com fame) and I are kicking each others' asses to make fun, silly electronica.
So I ended up writing this little ditty which took around 20 hours days from start to a final mix i’m 80% happy with.

I love packing my toons full of sound design, pans, cuts, humour and homages (generally to 70’s Jean Michelle Jarre and Tomita). If you’re actively listening, those touches will hopefully tickle you the colour of your choice and make ya’ll smile a little as I did while composing this cheesy and fun number. If you get it, you’re awesome… and probably in your late 30’s. Soon you may be enjoying, olives, gardening and Radio4.

In ‘Lightstream’, I really wanted to compose a fun, hooky and cheesy song with real vocals serving as background vocal to speech synthesis (*of the 80’s) rather than the other way around. It’s a story about sci-fi and robot equality, and a constant goal of mine is to get some emotion out of those frackin’ toasters.

I will not confirm nor deny rumours that the Robot is singing, “Touch me, on my frequency…”. You’d have to ask her.

The main hilarious riff should have been done on a rare, handmade British synth called the ‘Deep Bass Nine’, but as that was in the garage and I was in the zone, I opted for the unfortunately clean-sounding Moog Sub37 but after a while of de-twiddling, it did a pretty fun job of a basic dorky-sounding saw riff! This was a feisty one, but it soon learned respect.

*Yes, I am old enough to have had a Commodore 64.

Apocalypse Music

Unfortunately this film was not commissioned, but this soundtrack was a wonderful opportunity to create something a little apocalyptic with big aggressive and quiet melodic moments on Dulcimer and Duduk.

Writing meaningful and simple melodies on a theme is always been a worthwhile challenge and one that any composer should dive into. Can’t hide behind production forever.

Old songs and how far they've come

This was 2006. I can still remember the grey LogicPro GUI on the old 4:3 CRT monitor, the Rose-Painted Ibanez Jem (the guitar used on this track), and the ESI400 and Roland2080 boxes blinking away in the corner. It was late evening, and fan of good ambient flatmate Kaz was mellowing out with a post-work vodka behind me in the big wooden-walled living room. Totally vibey. Joy was still to track her vocals in a candle-lit studio.

I was rummaging through the pile of old CD ROMS (google it) and found a whole load of songs and films I composed for around 1997-2005. Amongst them was a bunch of songs composed with a certain soundset and vibe, and although I was very creative and detailed in the sound design the tones still tie the songs into this era. I rather like it, and I’ll still purposely use 90’s sounds now to make a sonic statement.

I’ll never bung chorus on an acoustic gat though. Ew to the Max.

The gating on that main ‘pad’ was done very manually back then to save processing power on a MacG3. I still have habits from only being able to run 8 tracks of digital audio in 1994 or from cutting 4-track tape for effect; I’d bounce an entire track then lay back and cut the entire track into 16ths (alt+cmd+cut for Logic users), deleting every second 16th. It’s carpal tunnel work. Fade and add delays; bounce again.

Along with the beautiful song and vocal that Joy Ramirez wrote in 2004, this track and it’s refrain became the second track on my album ‘Bliss’ in 2013. I still love this refrain, and will probably bring it back along with those old synth boxes and some new bits.