New Music In A New City

Last night I posted two new tracks on SoundCloud. Yes, I know my SoundCloud account is a bit like the joke about London buses; you wait in vain for a long time then, suddenly, two come at once.

My plan for 2012 was to focus on creating new work and exploring fresh ideas. Mostly due to health reasons, it has been a slow start to the year. Although neither of these tunes are my best, it just feels good to be putting new sounds out there. I’m glad that these pieces are different to my previous work and it was a lot of fun producing them. Please take a listen and let me know what you think.

Career Set To Stun

This is a big departure for me. Part of what I’ve been trying to do this year is discover what the music “inside me” is. Turns out the twisting, percolating bass sounds of Dubstep have gotten under my skin.

This isn’t a pure Dubstep track, after all, very little of what I do is pure. But, I’ve tried in my own way to draw from the style. I’m also using a lot of new (to me) plugins & effects, like the LinPlug relectro, Native Instruments Razor and Skanner and UAD Ampex ATR102 Tape Emulation.

The Society Theme (Short Mix)

Tomorrow I’ll write a little more about The Society For Film, a new podcast that I’m working on with Hong Kong based film critic James Marsh.

I wanted to create a piece of music that was both cinematic and genre-defying. I started out with the quirky, off kilter spy guitar idea, but I knew I wanted to add some Choral voices, Sci-Fi effects and over-the-top drums. This was the first time I’ve EQ’d every track in a mix with the UAD Neve 31102 plugins and the final stereo mix was shaped with the Fab Filter Pro-Q equaliser and Pro-L limiter.

What Next?

I’ve learnt the hard way not to telegraph my next musical projects. My big mistake, in trying to create a solo project a few years back was getting ahead of myself – I simply didn’t have the production chops to do it all alone.

My studio space is only just acquiring some semblance of order. Two weeks ago I had a big final organisational push. The result is that two quick, fun little tracks emerged within a few days. These are my first finished musical projects in a new city.