New Music: The Skints

It's been a while since the skints released any new studio recordings! They've given us a few acoustic sessions which always sound amazing (Kiss from a Rose and Passin' Me By have been on repeat none stop recently) but it's been a long time since there's been a proper song released.

Their new song is called 'Out My Mind' and quite frankly, it's brilliant. It has big summery vibes - i'm certainly gonna be blasting this one out loud while i sit in the sun with a beer this summer! It's mainly sung by the guitarist Josh, and it's a similar sound to the song 'Lay You Down' from their album Part and Parcel. The video's great too - I had a massive smile on my face at the end when Marci, Jamie and John show up clapping and singing the 'ba-da Ba Ba' hook! It's a real feel good song and I know any fans of The Skints will love it, and I doubt even people who haven't heard The Skints will be able to stop singing and skanking to this one. You can buy it on iTunes on the 27th May, but you can pre-order it now! I have done, it's only 99p for an amazing feel-good song that you wont stop playing this summer! They'll be sure to be playing it on their UK tour too, so get tickets to that, they're always outstanding live! I give you, The Skints - Out My Mind!



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LCM Year One is Over!

The past month or so has been hectic! So much coursework to do - I've not had time to update here but it wasn't just laziness! My bad.

So my first year at Uni is over. Mental. I feel like i've only been here a few months. Time's gone too quick, its crazy to think im a third of the way through Uni already. It's dawned on me that I've wasted a lot of time this year, and I could have used the time a lot better and got a lot more done. I mean, i've still done quite a bit of music, but not nearly as much as i could have. I live in a city with an amazing music scene but i've still not started any bands or got any gigs or anything, which is what i really wanted to do! I now have close to 4 months with not a lot to do, so im going to make sure i get a decent bit of music made. A quick recap of what I've recorded or helped with recording this year..


Revenge


This was the first bit of coursework I did! I took an old piece that i'd done months ago, and took all the MIDI files and put them into logic, and did a lot of work on it. I extended it, added new parts, used better samples, mixed it all better. It sounds a hell of a lot better than the original.


Lots and Lots of Bedroom Recordings


Lots of bored nights in with my flatmate resulted in these. 5 songs recorded for Tom, 1 recorded with Tom and his mate for his LCM Audition (which he passed), and then 3 songs with me on guitar and Tom singing. Probably a lot more of these to come.


Crimestoppers Dub


I recorded this for the Crimestoppers assignment at LCM - this is the first of 2 pieces. This is one of my favourite pieces i've produced this year - It sounds great and I'm really wanting to make some reggae/dub kinda music soon. Its one of the projects that im hoping to start over the next 4 months.


Mugging


This was the second piece i produced for the Crimestoppers assignment. This came from an idea I had when listening to a song The Prodigy did with Rage Against The Machine guitarist Tom Morello. I had this little guitar riff in Logic on a distorted guitar with a wah pedal, and some drums, and that developed into this.

Safari


This is a more recent one that I haven't shared on this blog yet! I had to create a 4 minute piece of music and write a 2000 word essay about it (and transcribe it!) This is what I made. I wanted to do music for a certain purpose so I had more i could write about in the essay. My dad suggested doing music for a David Attenborough programme which gave me the idea to use African instruments, however this is what came. It isnt actually for a nature programme, it just kinda.. tells a kind of story. There's a theme representing a herd of gazelle at the beginning which is repeated in a minor key later to show that something has happened to the herd, theres another theme to represent a predator.. it's all explained much better in the essay!


Babies


One of my studio assignments was to record a cover of a song as a group, and it had to fit into a certain category. Then we all had to do an individual remix. It had to:
Only use the original vocal track.
Use Found Sound Drums (the version i've posted doesnt use these).
Use a synth that we have made from scratch.
Write and Record 2 original instrumental parts.

I did another reggae style remix which I think turned out pretty well! It was pretty hard to do cos the acapella tempo fluctuates from 150 bpm to 160bpm. It sounds pretty good though, I think. I never recorded 2 instrumental parts, which I could lose marks on. But there is different instrumental lines on this so they could count, i'm not sure. For the Found Sound Drums, which I didn't use on this version as it sounds better with the proper kit, I used quite a few weird things around my room. The Hi-Hat was just me ripping up a takeaway menu, then I added a bit of noise, and a lot of reverb. The Snare was me hitting the bottom of a metal bucket, layered up with me hitting a bottle of salt. I added lots of reverb and delay onto to bucket sound so as to create the typical dub sound. The kick was me slamming a cardboard box over my knee, layered up with me punching myself in the stomach. I EQ'd these and raised the low ends so it was thumpier. One thing I didn't do which i didnt think of till after, was pitch shifting the sounds so they were lower. Still, it sounded ok.



So, that's pretty much all the music i've made in my first year at Uni. Expect some more coming over the next few months as I have a lot of free time! I've just bought a melodica, so I'm hoping to use that for a couple of acoustic recordings. I'm also gonna go acoustic guitar hunting this week, so I can record some much better songs. I'm also finally gonna get my electric guitar fixed and get it restrung so I can record some reggae vibes with that! Hoping to do some kind of Skints covers!

Thanks for reading - I'll be posting more regular again from now!

New Music: 3 New Covers..

Me and Tom had a couple of beers tonight and rather than do the usual sit on FIFA/COD all night routine, we set up the mic and recorded a few songs together!

Where is my Mind? - Pixies


This song randomly popped into my head in a dream last night, so this was the first song i suggested. It translates quite well to an acoustic performance I reckon. I do a couple of the backing vox, but its mainly just me playing guitar and Tom singing.


Marigold - Nirvana


This is one of my favourite Nirvana tracks - has that typical Nirvana sound. It was the only Nirvana track written and sung by Dave Grohl. I really like this one, my favourite one of the night.

Can't Stop - Red Hot Chilli Peppers


Ok, this one didn't go great. My fingers were killing from playing the acoustic all night and we were both knackered, so rather than do another take we just went with this one. there's a couple of mistakes and at the end we just completely messed up, but yeah. We wanted to do a Chilli's track, and we thought this one would sound pretty good if we came up with an acoustic version.



I'm glad I've finally got a bit of recording done - might do this a bit more regularly, I enjoyed doing it a lot!

The Strokes release new song 'All The Time'

The Strokes are back! A new album, 'Comedown Machine', will be released in March, and they've released this new song as a teaser. I'm aware that this is actually the second song The Strokes have released recently, but quite frankly, i didn't think much of it so I didn't share it on here. However, i've barely stopped listening to this. It's awesome.


It sounds just like classic The Strokes. If I was told it was taken from 'Is This It?' I'd believe it. Some may say that sounding the same as an album released over 10 years ago is a bad thing.. but they have released very different music recently, so I'm happy to hear a return to the old sound. I'm sure the album  won't all be the same - the other song they released, 'One Way Trigger', sounds nothing like them! It sounds more like A-ha or something. I'll post it here for people who haven't heard it.



The more I listen to it, the more Strokes-y it sounds. But i really dislike that synth sound! it isn't.. rocky enough. However there was a few good songs on their last album, 'Angles', that strayed away from their traditional sound, 'Machu Pichu' being one of them. It's actually one of my favourites.

I know I haven't been blogging a lot recently but that should change soon, as my assignments are all handed in on monday. I have got a post coming up in the next couple of days with lots of new music to share though! Keep a look out :)

New Music: Alumni Records 'Freshers EP'

It's been nearly 2 weeks since my last post - i've not found a lot of time, sorry!

So yeah. Some folks at my college have started their own label, known as Alumni Records. It's all run by people from the College, and will promote artists also at the College. They've just released their first EP, called 'Freshers EP'. It consists of 5 tracks of varying genre, that they've all produced themselves.

Track 01 - Zeitgeist - 'Sacrificial T-shirt'

This is an 8 minute Jazz piece by a college band called Zeitgeist. I'm not a big fan of this kind of Jazz, but it's still a pretty good piece. I really like the bass solo that starts around the 5 minute mark.

https://soundcloud.com/zeitgeist-band
https://www.facebook.com/ZeitgeistUK

Track 02 - Patrick Craig - 'Listen to Me'

I saw Patrick Craig play about a month ago at this Bavarian pub in Leeds, at their 'Bierkellers Got Talent' competition they had, and he was really good. He definitely reminds me of Frank Turner, kinda folky stuff with that massive voice.

https://www.facebook.com/pcraiguk

Track 03 - Tom Harris - 'Ekomat'

Ekomat is a pretty atmospheric electronic piece, which is different to everything else on the EP so far. I'm not really sure what genre to call it - it's kind of Drum n Bass, Garage-y - but it's really relaxed, even with the uptempo drums. I really like this one, I wanna hear more from him.

https://soundcloud.com/tomharris - I really recommend listening to his song 'Tears' - I love that one too.

Track 04 - Emma Dockaray - 'One Woman Show'

This is another great acoustic song from the EP. She's got a great voice and I love the chord progression. She reminds me of another artist I've already heard before but I can't for the life of me remember. Either way, I still really like this.

https://soundcloud.com/emma-dockeray
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Emma-Dockeray/158703740881360

Track 05 - Dengar - 'New Beginnings'


Another electronic track from the EP, this one is much more up-beat. There's constant driving drums, completely different the Ekomat from earlier in the EP. Definitely more dance-able, this one.


So yeah, that's the Alumni Records Freshers EP. You can find Alumni on Facebook and Soundcloud. I'm looking forward to their next release, as there's some real talented people at LCM, and I can't wait to hear more of their stuff.

https://soundcloud.com/alumnirecords
https://www.facebook.com/alumnirecordsuk

New Music: Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds

Another new song from the forthcoming album 'Push the Sky Away'. Love how this one builds up! The guitar sounds great too.

LCM Crimestoppers Coursework

The past couple of weeks I have been working on as assignment for Uni. I've been given 2 crimestoppers videos, each about 30 seconds long, and have had to produce 2 seperate pieces of music to go with them. They had to be produced in Logic, and had to have at least 8 voices. I've done 2 very different tracks - one started out as a project from ages ago that was supposed to be some kind of Rage Against The Machine meets Dubstep track. Because I only had 30 seconds it didnt really have time to develop into this, but I'll post what I came up with.



The other piece is the one I prefer. I think it sounds a lot better. It started off as a rip off of the 'You wouldn't steal a handbag' film that plays before DVDs. Its ended up completely different, a reggae/dub style track.



I'll post the feedback I get when I get it - I have to hand it in tomorrow! Which means I'll probably get feedback in about a month from now. Any feedback on these tracks would be appreciated :)

New Music: Khafru

I was listening to my dad's radio show the other night, and he played a song by an artist called KHAFRU. I've never heard of him before - I don't think he's a big name or anything. But his music is really good! I've just been listening to his stuff through my new Sennheiser's that I got for christmas - his stuff sounds great. Influenced by Dubstep, IDM and many other electronic genres, he has an amazing sound. I was impressed when I first heard him, and that was from an iPhone speaker - hearing him through decent speakers has made me like him even more. I currently have his track 'Far Far Away' playing full blast in the new headphones, and i'm just surrounded in this amazing atmospheric music. I'm definitely a fan and I think that any other fans of electronic music will also like it. I'll attach his Dubstep set, and a few other tracks.

New Music: 20/12/12

Father Funk - Get Up
Father Funk is a producer who makes Ghetto Funk, something i'd not heard of until recently, but I love it. Lots of funky sampled basslines, it's real good music. I Saw him DJ at a party recently too, he played some bangers.  It wouldn't let me embed his most recent song, so have this instead. 



Quentins Basement
Quentins Basement are a mates band, now this music isn't brand new but I thought I'd share their EP because its pretty good! I saw em live a month or 2 back at Carpe Diem in leeds and they were ace. Think they're recording some new tunes aswell so there'll be more to listen to soon!

Quentins Basement - Folds EP


Thats it for this week. A great band +  a great DJ/Producer there though. Definitely listen to a few of their tracks if you can, and share them if you like em.

PS: Happy End of the World, maybe.

New Music: 14/12/12

Thursday Night Dub Club - Dub Chemistry:
Some new Dub from a friend of mine, very chilled out stuff. 





Statik - Attack of the Demon Potato Monsters
Statik's new 'Monsterhop' tune. 





Sloppy Joe - Sophisticated Funky Shit
Reworking of the classic Funky Shit by The Prodigy.





3 songs by Musicians I know! This could become a regular thing. I'll pick a few songs by local artists if I like them and share them on here. Share this page or the Soundcloud links if you like any of them!