Asleep At The Switch

25/05/2008 by ville.

Intro 

There was broken window in the flat me and my girl used to live in. She kept complaining about the cold wind blowing in. Said I should fix it. I said: “Something’s being done. Summer’s on its way.”

It certainly is and The Animal Farm HQ is boiling hot when the temperature in this great city rises above melting point. Things and times have moved on since I was forced to rely on the forces of nature. We bought a couple of air con units for the studio. Nice.

Progress

In an endless orgy of consumption we also purchased some new mics (a second Neumann U87 and a couple of Charter Oaks) some SSL strips and a new microwave. The SSL strips are amazing. What with our vintage Neves and everything else we’ve got, we’ve really noticed a big improvement on the sound we achieve. Progress baby!!!

Speaking of which, I’m reading a book called Black Mass - Apocalyptic Religion and The Death Of Utopia by John Gray, Professor of European Thought at the London School of Economics. How European Thought differs from other kinds of thought escapes me, as do so many other finer details in life. I must say that the book as a read is considerably heavier than Meat Loaf. But as far as I can tell, it’s about how our faith in our ability to improve the world is misplaced. Progress, or what we think of as progress, often makes things far worse.

Okay, making records isn’t quite up there in importance with the great themes of human endeavour, but it matters to me and I can say with confidence that investing in new equipment is a good idea. That kind of progress I can deal with.

The sparks that flew

Everybody who’s anybody has been seen this week at the Carling Academy in Islington where cult band Sparks www.allsparks.com have been playing a series of gigs. The plot is that they play one album out of their extensive back catalogue on every night of the run. What a cool idea! There are die hard fans who have bought tickets to every gig. We were there on the night they did an album called Big Beat. That’s the cover on the left.

I asked around to find out from those I was with at the gig if there was an artist whose every album they would go see. Not many could name one. The Beatles got a few mentions, so did Zep, but we decided that the act should be able to do the gig at least in theory. Which counts the Fab Four out. I would go see the first 6 Van Halen records if the real line up was there. See, after the first 6 the band ceased to be Van Halen. This is an important point. One that I know is troubling young minds across the globe ;-) I’d go see Nirvana. But, of course, the rules of the game count them out as well.

The reason, incidentally, why I went to the Sparks gig, is because Rosalita www.myspacec.om/rosalitaband were the support band. And as such, they got a supportive reaction from Sparks fans. A Sparks audience is certainly an eclectic, weird one. Way weirder than the people who went to see Rush some summers ago. Two weird, strange bands. Still making records and selling out venues decades after they first started. That is something to applaud.

My moment of zen was when Safta Jaffery, who co-manages Rosalita with us, was looking after the merch stall. You have to remember that Safta, as the manager, label and publisher behind the phenomenal success of Muse, is not exactly an unknown figure in the music industry. It was funny to see people do double take after double take when they walked past the stall. Is it… no it can’t be… what the…??

We all know that the music business is a fickle beast…

Lamacq plays Ejectorseat

It is with pleasure that we announce that Steve Lamacq has picked up on our proteges Ejectorseat www.myspace.com/ejectorseatband on his R1 show. The single has been played on XFM, too, and on countless local stations across the island. The band are on tour:

They are playing a lot of these dates with Rosalita. So it’s not to be missed.

You can preorder both bands’ EPs.

For Ejectorseat go to

http://hmv.com/hmvweb/displayProductDeta ils.do?ctx=280;-1;-1;-1sku=795585

For Rosalita go to

http://hmv.com/hmvweb/displayProductDetails.do?ctx=280;-1;-1;-1&sku=795650

Rosalita’s tour dates are as follows

Busy busy!

We want to congratulate Jack McManus www.myspace.com/jackmcmanus on his very nearly Top 20 album on Polydor. We wrote with Jack and one of the fruits of our labour, a song called Milky Way, opens his debut album. Jack is a super talented musician and we hope that this is the beginning of a long and successful career for him.

While we’re in the mood for congratulating people, let’s hear it for The Brent Flood, who picked up an Indy Award the other week. We’ve been working with this amazing band and will continue to do so for hopefully a long time. Check them out at www.myspace.com/thebrentflood

Famous people

Our studio is in a business complex where a lot of music is made. Music Bank, a big rehearsal studio, is next door and often has visiting dignitaries. Boyzone have been in town rehearsing for their upcoming tour. It was nice to bump into their bassplayer, Steve, an Irish lad who used to play for Tara Blaise, with whom we have worked. In fact, we produced and wrote tracks for her next album on which, wait for this, we share production duties with the legendary Mutt Lange. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutt_Lange His CV reads like the who’s who of rock’n'roll. No more no less. Pretty cool, huh?

In our cafe, where we get to hang out with all these celebs, works a hot girl called Lizzie who sings in a girlband called Stonefoxx www.myspace.com/stonefoxx . She wasn’t asleep at the switch the other day when X-Factor winner  Shayne Ward walked in. Lizzie handed over her band’s demo. Two weeks later they’re on tour with Shayne playing arenas up and down the country. The London gig is at the O2.

The other way to do it

This is how I got my first record deal, with RCA Finland. I was in a band, still at school. We thought we were ace. We made a demo. Then we found out where the offices of RCA were. Walked straight in. I can’t see that happening in this day and age, but that was Finland a fair few years ago. We left the tracks with some guy who identified himself as the A&R man. Then we left the building. Before they threw us out.

Of course, we hadn’t bothered to label our demo. No phone number, no contact details, not even our names. Weeks went by and we heard nothing.

By sheer coincidence, the bassplayer’s dad, who’d been a working musician at some point in his youth, ran into the MD of the label, who had also been a musician earlier in life. Helsinki is a small city. People know each other and so did they. They get to chatting and bassplayer’s dad says to label MD that his son’s band left a demo with the A&R guy, anything come of it? MD gets all excited and says they’ve been trying to figure out how to get in contact with the band, but had no contact details, no nothing.

Then we made a single that made the Top 20.

All these seasons later they still haven’t thrown me out of the business. The moral of the story? Hell if I know…

Posted in News At Zen | 1 Comment »