++ ukchill.com ++ » Studio

Climate Control – giveaway

Mike — Sat, 01 Jan 2011 22:57:16 +0000

Not so many tracks today – in fact I can only find two from this era!

This particular phase coincided with me getting a regular DJ set doing chillout. I had the slightly naive opinion that I could mix live performance with DJ’ing (armed with a couple of synths and samplers as well as a laptop full of MP3s) mixing with an early version of Tracktor DJ.

In practice, the gigs were a complete nightmare – manually tempo syncing hundreds of tracks (this was before Ableton Live made it a non-issue) and matching keys to be able to swap pieces in and out of the flow meant I spend all week preparing for the set.

The fact is, the average punter couldn’t tell the difference between something played live and some crap played straight off a “Best of Chill Out” CD. The last gig I just put Wish You Were Here on and sat drinking at the bar, still got paid though because the barman was a huge Pink Floyd fan.

The Climate Bass

Troubadours and Fairytales

Embrionic music – giveaway

Mike — Fri, 31 Dec 2010 08:18:42 +0000

When I finally moved out of bedsitter-land and stopped sleeping on other peoples couches, I got a small flat in Poole where I began to rebuild my life after so nearly destroying myself.

Following the example of a number of people I had met in my wilderness years, my flat became a kind of open-house and a great community of friends used to call by at all hours of the day and night. We would smoke, drink, make tea and jam for hours with whatever instruments were at hand.

It was about this time that I started building my own recording set-up and just experimenting. Dave, Vlad and Jez were regular visitors – these tracks are about all I have left of that time.

I should probably point out that most of these tracks were originally untitled as they were just jams we did. The titles were just provided so that I didn’t have to work out what “untitled 087.wav” was…

Chemical

Manitou – giveaway

Mike — Thu, 30 Dec 2010 09:00:49 +0000

Here is the second Manitou album – the follow up to the well received “Looking for the Lost”. The album was never finished, much of this was played live in the studio as a “studio rough” and it’s a fairly basic desk mix. Having said that, I still think it sounds pretty good! It was recorded by Steve Smith at his Room With a View studio.

I asked Harry if he minded me putting this lot up for free download and he said,

“Personally I am of the opinion that it should be available for free download as widely as possible. Don’t know how everybody else feels about it but it might just spark interest and who knows what.”

so please feel free to share!

Manitou

Sorry I haven’t a clue

4AM – giveaway

Mike — Wed, 29 Dec 2010 04:00:00 +0000

The 4AM set is chilled Acid Jazz, heavy on the breaks and grooves but light on the changes! It was spawned from a Jazz set my friend Dave Carson was performing, which I helped him out with a couple of times.

Taking recordings of live jams, then cutting them into loops and heavily processing the resulting samples produces some fantastic textures and grooves which are so different from the original songs – the new structures became tracks in their own right and we did a few gigs, with live sample performances (courtesy of Ableton Live and a Launchpad controller) mixed in with real guitars, synth, sax and flute.

Working on this stuff gave me a break from my more “prog rock” leanings, and allowed me to focus more on the production and sonic texture than I generally have been able to. It certainly has given me a new way of working, which I intend to use when I start writing again!

There’s a place I know

Cognition

Blue Agave

Propaganda – giveaway

Mike — Tue, 28 Dec 2010 12:33:37 +0000

Having two kids under two and work commitments has meant that 2010 was a bit of a difficult year for me to produce much new music and I didn’t really have enough time or energy to properly promote my work. Because of this the sum total of my iTunes/music publishing experiment has generated about zero cash and is unlikely to generate any revenue in the near future, so I’ve decided to give away my music for free.

(update: I’ve just checked and I actually I made the grand sum of $19.89 selling music on the internet last year!)

I never made much money from my own music anyway – the gear in my studio has mostly been paid for by:

a) Spending my real income,

b) gigging, or

c) from recording/mastering other musicians.

My plan was to provide myself with the gear to allow me to work on my own stuff without needing to concede to commercial concerns, or worry about the cost of professional studio time – to this extent I have succeeded, and will continue to write and record music for my own enjoyment. If other people happen to like what I do, that will be great but I’ve come to the conclusion that it is more important to write for myself than to try and please others with my work.

Over the next few days, I’ll compile the various different sets of tracks I have available digitally and post them here for free download.

The first release is the only album I personally released commercially – Propaganda (still available on iTunes and from Amazon). It’s a rock/progressive album which I wrote over a period of about two years.

Hope you enjoy listening to the music as much as I enjoyed creating it!

Peace!

Lost at Sea – Album Release

Mike — Tue, 29 Dec 2009 11:07:24 +0000

Obligatory band photo incorporating slightly awkward posing

Lost at Sea, one of the bands I work with (sitting in on bass from time to time) have finally released their album, which has only taken about 5 years to complete!

This is a bit of a shameless plug, as I produced the album in my studio and played on a couple of numbers.

It’s titled “Songs from Greatcoat days” and is available at any of their gigs. Check ‘em out!