The Bug Club - Green Dream in F#

It’s a dog conducting other animals playing instruments in space, I think. Don’t you even dare comment on the whole no air/sound in space thing you bore.

Mastered this incredible album by The Bug Club. An absolute pleasure! Out now on Bingo Records, with beautiful album artwork on the right by the talented Mr Ben.

Listen on Tidal (yep), Spotify or Apple Music (or stream below) or even support them directly on Bandcamp. It’s all over 6Music and all the trendy places, so that’s nice.

I love these guys, they’re real life friends and they’re currently on tour to support their album and you can catch all the tour dates here. You just missed them at Scala though. You should have been there, maaan.

With love,

Ed ❤️🎚🎛

Loathe - Dimorphous Display

Ahoy - ‘new’ music is here - well new to this page anyway. I worked with the mighty Loathe on Dimorphous Display, released back in January (2022) on Sharptone Records. I wasn’t able to post about it at the time due to life reasons, but here it is. I recorded/produced/mixed and co-mastered this track, with lots of input from the band too, of course.

I love getting the opportunity to work on heavier music and these guys are some of the most talented musicians I’ve had the pleasure of working with; super keen to experiment and try new things, yet also really clear on the sounds and textures they want.

Check it out on Apple Music and Spotify, or click on the official YouTube steam below…

Oh, and enjoy some photos from the session, the cool black and white photos were taken by the multi-talented Feisal El-Khazragi (bass guitar in Loathe) - hence why he’s not in any of them!. He has his own photography Instagram here. The colour ones are just my iPhone snaps of the session.

There’s loads more I could share about this track, and more praise I could heap on the band, but I’ll let you listen for yourself.

Enjoy,

Ed ❤️🎚🎛

P.S. If any Loathe fans ever find this page, rest assured that despite what keyboard warriors and bedroom producers say on the internet, there were no drum samples used on this track, no amp emulators, no 808s…

Bandicoot - FUZZY

Handsome fellows

Handsome fellows

They keep coming - another awesome track that I had the pleasure of mastering, once again produced/mixed by Tom Rees. Fuzzy is a banger that’s going through the KEXP/6Music/Radio Wales/Amazing Radio/Radio X love machine and, if you click the video below, you’ll see is well deserved.

Out now on Libertino Recs, check out the song/video below, and stream in the usual places like Apple Music & Spotify - or click on this link right here to take you to a page that’ll give you all the streaming platform options that anyone could ever desire.

I can’t speak on anything else just yet, but suffice to say that they’re not short of great tracks, so keep your eyes and ears close to the ground, or whatever people say to build anticipation.

With love,

Ed ❤️🎚🎛

The Bug Club - Checkmate / Launching Moondream One

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Heads up! Another great track I’ve mastered recently, by the wonderul The Bug Club! The track’s called Checkmate - but it’s part of a 4-track EP called Launching Mondream One, which will be released on June 30th on 7” vinyl courtesy of Bingo Records Oh, digital too and all that.

Until then, enjoy Checkmate, produced and mixed by the amazing Tom Arthur Rees of BuzzardBuzzardBuzzard. Amazing guitar tone, brilliant song and performance, already getting a good dose of BBC 6Music love. Can’t wait to see them live!

Check out the awesome artwork (by Ben Hall of Mr Ben & The Bens) on the right there feat. crazy alien doing crazy alien stuff.

But most importnatly, click on the free Bandcamp stream below, or you can listen in all the usual places like Apple Music and Spotify, but it would be really great if you bought it on Bandcamp.

With love,

Ed ❤️🎚🎛

Sam Barnes - Wired World

Sam recording bass for Azooga UFO/O Silly Me sessions, summer 2019. Before the bad thing happened. Photo by Elijah Thomas

Sam recording bass for Azooga UFO/O Silly Me sessions, summer 2019. Before the bad thing happened. Photo by Elijah Thomas

Ahoy! I’ve been mastering a bunch of great songs recently, so I thought I’d post about them here. First up - my buddy Sam Barnes of Boy Azooga fame has released this beautiful first single single via Rose Parade Recording Co, which I had the honour of working on.

Sam is so talented - writing, performing, producing and mixing this beautiful song himself. More people need to be shouting about his talents, which I’m sure they will in time. Until then, this song speaks for itself.

The song also features the talents of David Newington on drums, Kirsten Miller (cello) and Joe Northwood (flute & clarinet), with cover artwork by Holly Jones.

Give it a listen below via the Bandcamp or YouTube streams, or click here and see a list of steaming platforms, such as Apple Music, Spotify, Tidal, Amazon Music, Deezer (whatever the hell that is), etc.Or, ideally you can BUY it here, via Bandcamp!

With Love,

Ed ❤️🎚🎛

Mansell - Goodbye Blue Monday

Finally some new music to share with you! I mixed and mastered this track - Goodbye Blue Monday - off Mansell’s forthcoming EP, which is out in April. These guys are so talented - beautiful songwriting, amazing voices, instrumentation and production - even the engineering is fantastic. When I get to work on their songs I feel like I get the opportunity to make a great piece of music even better, rather than trying to fix a bunch of issues. I can’t wait to share the whole EP!

You can check it out on Spotify or Apple Music, choose your fighter below. Rest assured that your stream will pay for them to buy 0.0000000001% of a cup of coffee or 0.00000004% of a guitar string which… is good I guess?

With love,

Ed ❤️🎚🎛

BuzzardBuzzardBuzzard - John Lennon Is My Jesus Christ

Happy to announce that my beautiful buds BuzzardBuzzardBuzzard have released their new single ‘John Lennon Is My Jesus Christ’ in the form of an epic movie. I was lucky enough to master the song, as well as the ‘remixes’ in the video (spoiler alert etc).

The single celebrates their signing to Communion Records, which is where they’ll be releasing their forthcoming album… which I also mastered. Tom (the frontman) even recorded, engineered and mixed it all himself.

So proud of them, they deserve it - amazing songs, amazing musicians, amazing live show. Mediocre as people but that’s the price you have to pay.

You can listen to the song in all the usual places, Apple Music or Spotify, and check the video below.

With love,

Ed ❤️🎚🎛

Mansell - Floyd

So happy to share another track that I mixed and mastered, by the amazing Mansell from Atlanta. I’m so happy with how it turned out - these guys are super talented and I’m loving everything I’m being sent!

You can hear their new track Floyd on Spotify or Apple Music or Soundcloud below. Oh, and the beautiful artwork is by the supremely talented Loo Gray.

More coming soon, can’t wait to share!!

With love,

Ed 🎚🎛❤️

Mansell - Good Form

Oh hello there - this is a post to tell you that I’ve been working with an Atlanta based trio called Mansell - I mixed and mastered their latest single ‘Good Form’. It’s beautiful and it’s really fun to work with a band that seems have a really similar combination of influences as myself - hip hop, indie/alt, soul, etc. Really feels like a good match working with these guys - great musicianship, songwriting and style.

We’ve worked together on a few tracks and I can’t wait to share more of their music with you, it’s quite wonderful. Really excited to see where these guys take their music, so much potential.

Check out good form on Spotify, or check the YouTube link below.

With love,

Ed 🎚🎛❤️


The Science of Art: Finding the ‘Perfect’ Compressor Settings – Every Time

Yes, I do realise that it's been a while since I posted, but I've been very busy recording an album. Isn't that nice?

Anyway, when it comes to compression, the truth is that even some experienced engineers and producers can feel frustrated when trying to set a compressor – especially the attack and release times. A technique popularised by Michael Paul Stavrou in his book Mixing with your Mind (a very expensive but highly recommended book!) helps to overcome this.

The method is simple: using extreme threshold and ratio settings makes it easier to hear the effect of changing the attack and release times. The key step is to first apply the following settings to your compressor:

    •    Attack to minimum
    •    Release to minimum
    •    Ratio to maximum
    •    Threshold giving at least 15dB of gain reduction – preferably more

Loop up a piece of audio, such as a snare sample or drum loop you’re familiar with, and start to adjust the attack time until you can hear the transients poking through, and really understand and get a feel for the way that the attack works on the particular compressor you're using. Try to ignore the distortion and extreme compression and just focus on the attack transients; pay attention to when there's too much 'clamping down' on the transient.

Random picture of a compressor I took at KONK Studios

Random picture of a compressor I took at KONK Studios

I was going to included a screen capture video of myself, following the process with the built-in Logic X compressor, to show you how quickly it can be done - then I thought, you know what? Nah - you do it. You know? Okay, PERHAPS I recorded it several times, only to realise it wasn’t capturing the screen audio and would be useless to everyone, but let’s pretend that this is a lesson in tough love and DIY ethic.

Anyway, once you have the attack set to your taste, you can move onto the release. Listen for when it’s too fast and there’s too much distortion, or when extreme pumping occurs. Once the release is set move onto the ratio, and finally back the threshold down to give a more reasonable amount of gain reduction, and then set the make-up gain. How does it sound?

This is a great trick to try when you’re using a new compressor for the first time, and want to get to grips with it learning how it sounds and behaves. Be sure to adjust the settings in the following order:

Attack -> Release -> Ratio -> Threshold

According to Stavrou, you shouldn’t ever really need to go back and change the initial settings you chose, unless you decide to go for a completely different aesthetic. It’s a great technique, so give it a try! Bear in mind that different compressors sound… different! Some of them will behave in quirky, non-linear ways that you may or may not like…

You could do all that, of course -  or you could just get me to mix it for you, which will, of course, sound quite wonderful. 😎

Next up, we’ll talk about serial compression - chaining these lovely things together in a row for further awesomeness and sonic beautification.

With love,

Ed 🎚🎛❤️

New Boy Azooga - Do The Standing Still

Happy to reveal the latest Boy Azooga track that I recorded/produced/mixed and mastered (ooh la laa) - it’s a cover of The Table’s, comic book dead body dance floor classic ‘Do The Standing Still’.

The video (by Toby Cameron) features Kliph Scurlock, a polar bear and some confused members of the public. Have a good day. Long live The Table.

Catch the Azoogas on their UK and US tour on these dates - I’ll be at the Scala gig tomorrow (Weds 17th Oct).

With love and Azooga,

Ed 🎚🎛❤️


Behind The Scenes - Mastering Boy Azooga's '1, 2 Kung Fu' @ Electric Mastering

Where have you been? Busy I imagine. Me too, me too. I just checked my calendar and saw the date and remembered - to the day, it’s the one year anniversary of the official completion of the debut Boy Azooga album. By ‘official’ completion, I mean the final step of the music part of the process - the mastering - by Guy Davie at Electric Mastering, exactly one year ago today. How times flies!

I remembered that I had some short behind the scenes videos of the process, so what better time to post them? Twas a great day, can’t wait to get in back there again….

And just one year one and the band have a tour of the U.S. lined up for this November! You can find their live dates at boyazooga.co.uk/

Exciting stuff…

With love and Azooga,

Ed 🎚🎛❤️

New Dope Music: Buzzard aka Tom Rees

DOPE new artist alert - BUZZARD aka Tom Rees aka The Man. Listen to/watch the track below. Then go listen to some more: out through Bubblewrap Collective, available on vinyl split with Boy Azooga from Outpost and Spillers Records in Cardiff (see my previous post on this record), also available online here.

I mastered the Buzzard tracks and recorded / mixed / produced / mastered the Boy Azooga tracks. Listen to Songs from this Year on Spotify or iTunes. But just basically click the video below.

Some final words from the man himself: YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH.

Cool, cool.

Ed 🎚🎛❤️

Listen, Like, Love: Sera - Little Girl

I spent a lot of 2014/2015 working on an album for Sera. She's a folk/country/americana artist, and came to me with a bunch of songs written on piano or guitar, plus vocals/lyrics, and we worked together to make an album. She's a really brilliant songwriter. 

The album's called 'Little Girl' and was released on Folkstock Records - it's had play on BBC Radio London, BBC Wales & Cymru, Absolute Radio, and I'm sure a bunch more that I'm not aware of.

It was a LOT of work - as well as recording/mixing/mastering the album, I played guitar, synth/keys, bass, drums, percussion and even did some backing vocals (!), so it was quite a labour of love. We wrote the final track 'Through The Night' together, and I'm really proud of the whole album. 

It also features songwriting collaborations with Sion Russell Jones and Gordon Mills Jr (The Bluetones, Ed Sheeran, Lissie, Newton Faulkner and Lillian Todd-Jones), as well as violin by Jenn Williams and cello by Sion Lewis.

Sera/Folkstock also released an EP called 'Rocks' which features a subset of the rockier songs from the album.

Thankfully, both the album and the EP have had some great reviews - I generally am not a huge fan of posting quotes as it makes me feel a bit queezy, so I'll leave you to check out the Huffington Post or Americana UK if you really feel like it. Still, here's one last one from From the Margins, just to flatter one's ego a little (hey, if I don't no one will etc?): 

Her last EP, Straeon, saw a first musical collaboration with the producer of this album, Eddie Al-Shakarchi, who contributed by playing on Mond am Eiliad and Agor dy Galon. If anything has changed to make this new album something a whole stratospheric level above what, however excellent, she has recorded before, it must be this new working relationship. Al-Shakarchi is also a multi-instrumentalist - and his contribution of often spare but dynamic percussion is particularly important here in breathing life into the music.

Isn't that nice? You can stream Rocks below, and if you like it, please check out the whole album on BandCamp or iTunes / Apple Music. Thank you and have a lovely day.