music, noises and other stuff
audio
Aylos – single released
Jul 18th
Well, Guffy gave us the go ahead, so it is with great pride that we present the first of what we intend to be many “CD singles” sold through Amie Street. The album art is the work of my frighteningly talented brother Christopher.
The term “CD single” is of course redundant in this day and age – it’s a digital download of 3 different mixes of Aylos’s track “I’m Beautiful,” all completely DRM free. If you want to burn it to CD, be my guest.
I posted a version of this track a few weeks ago, so for variation find below a much harder, much clubbier, much more radio friendly version.
Dig it:
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If you like it, play it again 
If you feel like owning it, pop over to Amie Street, where it is available free for a limited period.
Mr Ray: Run
Jul 12th
So, yesterday I nailed a mix for a produced-up version of Mr Ray’s track, Run. The original is here.
This has been a tricky project because of what Ray does. Part of what makes him so unique is his style of delivery – not just the mind bending weirdness of seeing him pull off the simultaneous beatbox + singing + playing guitar thing, but the intimacy with which he does it.
So any production I do on it needs to respect that, and I have to approach it carefully in case in my zest to elevate it with cool synth noises I lose the very thing that made it appealing to begin with. Also, I don’t want to add too much that can’t be reproduced in a live setting, which is where Ray truly shines.
So I’ve done my best to keep it as organic as possible while going nuts on it. I think I’m happy with how it came out.
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edit: find Mr Ray on the Intarwebz here. Buy his stuff here.
Armalion: Worm Battle
May 19th
This is a piece from the upcoming film Armalion. With Nico Mendrek’s permission it featured in an insert on Afro Cafe on SABC2 last week (I’ll try and upload that video soon), so I’m sure he doesn’t mind if I post it here.
In this scene, our heroes are set upon by a giant dragon summoned from the abyss. Obviously they have to fight it. It eats most of the nameless support cast before being vanquished by a spellcasting witch who turns it on the evil villain. All in all, a fun scene.
I like it because I got to make use of big choirs singing faux-latin (lyrics concocted by my friend Jacques van Heerden) when the beast appears. This is, of course, all done in software, using a library called Voices of the Apocalypse, and its associated VOTA utility that lets you type in syllable by syllable the words you’d like the choir to sing.
East West have since replaced and updated this with a product called Symphonic Choirs which, while being marvellously versatile, does not, in my opinion, sound anything like as good despite drawing on a 35GB library of 24-bit samples.
Also I got to do some nifty sound design during the spellcasting bit, which is made up of choir dischord clusters, reversed recordings of people talking, and the sound a plastic pipe makes when you drown it in reverb. I love my job.
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Remix: Aylos – I’m Beautiful
May 9th
This is a mix that Terry and I did, under the our 3Headz moniker. The vocals and lyrics are by a singer from Durban called Aylos – I think she’s going places. This mix will appear on the new album from DJ Guffy (for the umlungu, this is inexplicably pronounced “Goofy”, just like the Disney character).
Aylos has a solo album coming out soon which will feature the original version of this song.
Enjoy the mix:
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Remix: Zos
May 4th
This is a club remix I did for up-and-coming Johannesburg artist Zos, whose album is into the final stretch of being mixed here in Studio 1 at SSI. The album version is more hip hop, a bit slower and has more words. And more pianos.
Obviously it’s unashamedly a party track. The original features some guest vocals by MXO that seem to have got lost somewhere, I guess I’ll check under the couch cushions and see if I can find them.
The rest of the album is nothing like this one, and there are some smoking hot beats on it, which I hope to post as we get closer to completion.
This is my full length DJ remix, hence the long build.
Update: Goggi took a copy of this remix down to YFM, and DJ Chilli M is now rocking it on the drive time show.
Listen:
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Mr Ray
Apr 16th
This week I had the great pleasure of recording an old friend, Ray Connell. His act is mind blowing: he plays acoustic guitar, he sings, and he beatboxes. All at the same time.
Ray laid down six tracks as casually as you or I make a cup of coffee, which you can listen to here.
This guy is seriously talented. His demo was recorded live, but I pulled him back in to lay down separates. In the coming weeks I’m going to be working on some produced-up versions of some of his songs, but it presents a real dilemma.
You see, Ray is smoking hot live – that’s where he lives. So I find myself reluctant to add anything that can’t be reproduced in a live situation. But on the other hand, Ray’s songs have integrity outside of his method of delivery.
Watch this space.
Overture
Feb 29th
While I can’t currently post my commercial work, here’s a personal project. This piece of music began life as a statement of ideas for Intrepid. Strangely, none of the themes it contains made it into the final soundtrack, though perhaps some elements did.
It is also something of a stress test for my new composing rig: I now have a dedicated server to compliment my main composing machine. This piece uses 5 instances of Kontakt across 2 machines. It works better than I hoped, but I still want at least another two servers. Dammit, Hans Zimmer uses 9.
Ah well.
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This piece is now in my showreel, but speaking of things classical, my work on Armalion is drawing to a close, my self-imposed deadline being this weekend. As soon as it’s delivered I’ll be posting chunks of it here.
Theme: Orphans of War
Nov 8th
I completed the score for the scifi fanfilm Orphans of War this week. With Rob’s permission, I’m posting the end credits theme here, cos I’m pleased with how it turned out. I love writing epic space music.
This theme pops its head up in various places throughout the film, mostly when large spaceships are moving majestically across the screen. This is its most triumphant form, and rightly so – our heroes have just prevailed against impossible odds and the threat of fiery death.
Wait, does that count as a spoiler? But heroes are supposed to prevail, it’s not like it’s a surprise. Ok, fine, should they prevail, this will be their theme tune. If they fail it will be the theme from Dying Young.
Edit: Orphans is out now, and you can download it from the Hidden Frontier pages here. Mom, it’s too big for your dialup, I’ll post you a copy.
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Remix: In My Head
Oct 28th
This is my second remix for Canterbury-based indie pop band Artist.
I actually really like the original track, and it became apparent to me early on that this was never going to work as a thumpitty dance track.
But I still wanted to make it faster. This involved a fair amount of sample chopping, particularly to make the guitar parts work at the new tempo. However, even though they’re mostly playing different things, nearly 90% of the guitars in the remix are the original parts – just a bit scrambled.
In the end, I took the song from Indie Pop to Emo Pop. I beg forgiveness.
Clip of the original track here:
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Shiney new remix here:
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Remix: Fetish
Oct 26th
Fetish were sizzling hot South African band in the late 90′s. I met them at the time through my friendship with Brian Sepel and Malcolm Aberdein of Riverside Sound Studios. I was skinnier then and I had a lot more hair.
The band’s sound is unashamedly dark – at the time we called it moody rock. Now it’s the sort of thing my brother and I have fights over wether it’s emo. (ducks to avoid brick and bottles)
So anyway, I was trawling through my drives yesterday and I happened across a folder I have not seen in ages, full of really dodgy 8-bit samples, soundfonts (remember those?) and general crap that had been on the phenomenally massive 2GB hard drive I had back in 1997.
Feeling all nostalgic, I started playing things, and discovered I had the complete vox for Fetish’s “Never Enough”. It was an ancient remix project of mine which somehow never got finished. Which is a pity. So I dusted it off, threw away everything except the vocal and one guitar sample, and reworked it last night.
10 years late, but here it is. This is the chopped down “radio edit”; any DJ’s out there who want the DJ friendly version, get in touch.
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