September 2018
Hello audio world,
and to the new subscribers, I hope everyone is doing alright. If you are a new to this, often we talk about some of the stuff thats been going on here. Some times we talk about equipment and also previous recordings that have surfaced. We’ve had a gulf of tiny sessions over the past month scattered between full length records. A bunch of mixing.
One project that has been great was housing Mc Mooks for a few days. Mooks is an indigenous rapper that rose to fame in the underground many years ago. The past few years had thrown a spanner in the works in terms of his musical career and he had indefinitely thrown the towel in. This recording session was of extreme importance as it dictated whether he was going to continue his hiatus or step into being creative again, thank god it was the latter.
Mooks’ flow draws from elements of early G-Funk, with the dense prose and philosophy of early 90’s east coast records such as Illmatic and The 18th Letter. Not only technically remarkable, but politically charged. Lyrical content deals with the consequences of the justice gap in Australia and being a direct result of the prison system. This among the other plethora of struggles first peoples must endure in white Australia.
Musically it has been awesome, rather than ripping beats off the internet (as most do), we were able to employ an ensemble of musicians to compose and physically play pieces of music. The end result is a mix of synthetic instruments such as (real) 808’s, minimoogs, synthesizers and analogues such as acoustic drums, piano and brass. It was a first for us to track hip hop to tape rather than computer, but Mooks was such a pro it was no issue.
Hopefully these songs are released by next newsletter, and in that case we can show everyone. For now here he is a long time ago freestyling on a train.
Coming up we will have Hope Drone tracking their 3rd full length, also an EP for Battery Humans.
Shitgrinder have been in tracking for a split 7″ with Perth band Hexx. We tracked a good chunk of this live to tape and then dumped into computer for vocals. At this point it was easier to mix from pro tools as the record had specific sequencing to take into account. Ultimately this record was done in a day with some other time spent balancing on day 2. Being the 3rd or 4th time they have tracked at Underground, its always a pleasure to witness the growth of a band. Not just in terms of their general skill playing, but their rapprochement with the recording process. They only get better at what they do.
Mark Perry recently tracked a single for Redcliffe punk band The Gastons. Having a weekend with one song meant he was able to spend time multi tracking and really layering up the guitars. We shall notify when this gets released!
NEW RELEASES
DANDELION
Dandelion are a bunch of kids midway thru high school that decided to pool their money and make a record. It was a fun day where they were given reign over a bunch of the external effects here, which they went ham on.
You can hear the result here.
