Officers and Gary Numan discuss ‘Petals’ collaboration on video
A video interview with the York-based band Officers and Gary Numan has been uploaded online. The talk is produced by Soundsphere magazine, an online project of city-located media production agency The Creative Condition.
Leeds based electro-rock band Officers first heard of the national suicide prevention charity CALM (Campaign Against Living Miserably) through Xfm DJ Eddy Temple Morris who has thankfully worked with them for a long time supporting the cause. #numanxofficers
officers.uk.com
numan.co.uk
soundspheremag.com
thecreativecondition.co.uk
Interview: Dave Gahan – An Inside Look at His Very Personal Studio
Sonic Scoop has a new interview out featuring Dave Gahan of Depeche Mode – taking a closer look at his studio in NYC:
New York City and rock stars were made for each other.
Depeche Mode’s Dave Gahan has many good reasons to settle in NYC.
Wherever in the world these musical success stories – and we’re talking the multi-multi-multi-multi platinum variety here – come from, NYC still has the power to go from tour stop to adopted hometown for waves of them.
Rock stars move to NYC not to stand out, but to get swallowed up among the teeming millions. But they also continue to create — and with the well-deserved financial windfall that often comes with recording global smash hits, they can take personalized approaches to their creative spaces.
Today’s case in point: Dave Gahan, whose unmistakable voice has been central to the sound of Depeche Mode since that landmark band bowed in 1980. A group with an unmatched ability to produce timeless electronic dance music, Depeche Mode’s shockingly original songs are permeated with intellectual depth, elegance, and artistic devotion.
Little wonder this is one of the most successful bands of all time. They can claim over 100 million in record sales, and their members have collectively faced 30 million audience members in concert – thanks to a parade of huge hit singles including “Enjoy the Silence”, “Just Can’t Get Enough,” and “People are People”.
The band’s 13th album is on the way now, due for release coincident with a tour in 2013. And expectations will be high. Dave Gahan, Martin Gore, and Andy Fletcher earned a GRAMMY nomination for their last album, 2009’s Sounds of the Universe. While his Depeche Mode bandmates transfix with their musicianship on that engrossing record, Gahan’s voice comes through with increased agility – wiser while still somehow sounding younger and more athletic.
Even more recently, Gahan got a turn as lead vocalist for the famed production duo of Rich Machin and Ian Glover AKA Soulsavers. Their just-released collaboration, The Light the Dead See hears Gahan’s vocals grow even more cinematic in scope, in emotionally massive songs like “Gone Too Far” and “Bitterman”. The thought that Gahan could come completely uncaged on the next Depeche Mode album is tantalizing.
Personal Studio, Personal Choice
Gahan has acquired a beautiful vehicle for getting there via his innovative private studio here in New York City. Built into a residential apartment separate from his own home, Studio Blanco has been constructed with a clear mission: capture one of modern music’s most iconic voices.
Kurt Uenala engineers all at Blanco Studio. (all studio photos in article by David Weiss)
The pilot flying this plane is Kurt Uenala. A Swiss-born engineer/producer with sharp engineering skills, deep production experience, programming and songwriting abilities, and an amiable personality, Uenala is a versatile presence at Studio Blanco, helping Gahan to get where he wants to go – as quickly and easily as possible.
Even though Gahan can – and does – make ample use of NYC’s world-class suite of commercial recording studios, Uenala points out that a personal facility is essential for an artist on this level to write, demo new tracks, and also record final vocals – as was done here for many of the Soulsavers and upcoming Depeche Mode songs.
“Money is not necessarily a big issue with successful bands, but still at $2500 a day in a commercial studio, you can’t be as experimental as you can be at home,” he says. “You can work at a personal studio any day and any time, and that can be a big part of the creative process. The mindset becomes, ‘We arranged and finished a song a certain way, but can redo it from scratch if we feel like exploring further.’
“The end result is better than a big room with all of the drama gear. We can book a studio like that for a month, but when that time is up, Beyonce is coming in – so you have to go. At that point money doesn’t help: It’s booked. Not having a deadline is wonderful, and so is knowing the room in and out.”
An Unusual Recording Home
“The room”, in this case, is a personal studio operating on a high very level. The obvious centerpiece of the sun-kissed residential space is a space-age white hut which occupies a large portion of the main living room, without engulfing it – plenty of space remains in the room and the rest of the apartment to provide headroom for writing and relaxing.
The acoustically isolated structure is made by the Barcelona-based company Studio Bricks. A “self-assembly cabin system” that can be constructed by one person in a short amount of time with minimal tools, Studio Bricks are acoustic solutions made specifically with artists, engineers and producers in mind.
According to Uenala, Studio Blanco’s big white box represents the first Studio Bricks deployment in the US. “They’re modules that are really Legos – they snap into each other, but they’re made of sandwich wood and rubber,” he notes. “It’s been here since September, and it really works sonically and in terms of providing acoustic isolation. It reigns in the sound not just of the vocals being recorded, but also of productions and mixes – we have to be able to turn it up.
Lustmord – interview on experimental and extreme creative processes in electronic music
http://bit.ly/KFRNqv
In this episode of Dubspot’s Wireless interview series, Brian Williams a.k.a. Lustmord sits down with composer, producer and educator Raz Mesinai f.k.a. Badawi for a brief interview that touches on experimental and extreme creative processes in electronic music, sound design and composition techniques, live performances, visual composition, and more.
Brian Williams (better known as Lustmord) is an accomplished British electronic musician, composer, sound designer, and visual artist. He started his recording career in the early 1980s when he joined the legendary industrial and noise band SPK. Williams is regarded as one of the key innovators of the industrial genre and a pioneer of the subgenre commonly known as ‘dark ambient’. A large body of his work remains defiantly experimental. As Lustmord, Williams has remixed and collaborated with bands such as Tool, Coil, The Melvins, and Isis. He’s also worked in sound design for film and television, lending his technical expertise to movies like The Crow, Underworld, Tank Girl, Spawn, and even a Nike Sports basketball commercial.
The Mini Moog Synthesizer with Herb Deutsch
Herb Deutsch, the co-inventor of the first Moog synthesizer discusses the history and functions of the Mini Moog as well as its impact on the music of the time. Deutsch also plays one of his original jazz fusion pieces.
Directed by Michael Sterling
Dave Gahan: The Light The Dead See – Soulsavers Interview
In the video interview above, Dave Gahan suggests that his time collaborating with Rich Martin in Soulsavers might not be over. Responding to Martin saying “I’m sad to stop. We’re getting to know each other creatively,” the Depeche Mode vocalist says “I think it’s the start of something, with all this stuff. Hopefully we’re going to get to continue the process. I don’t think it has to stop. I’m getting busy now with my band, but I still work on things. I really lived this record, which was a really nice experience.”
iVardensphere’s Interesting View On Music Gear
Background information:
Join me while I go over some of the instruments iVardensphere uses in the studio. Of course just having Scott talk to the camera would be boring and we certainly don’t want that so we asked some friends to help complete the vision.
Featured instruments in this video are:
Sherman 2 Filterbank
Schippmann Ebbe und Flut Filter
XOXIO
APC-40
Moog Little Phatty
Elektron Machinedrum
Elektron Octatrack
Serge Modular
Djembe Hand Drum
Many thanks to the folks that helped me out with this:
Ryan Stock and Amber Lynn
Gott Havok & Kyle
Rhonda & Lawrence
Curt & Geoff
Powerman
Kefkism Design
Jean-Benoît Dunckel (AIR) meets the Arturia MiniBrute
“We had the great pleasure to meet Jean-Benoit Dunckel, one half on the talented french electronic duo AIR and early fan of MiniBrute, for a live improvisation and a video interview !”
Gary Numan speaks on his influences like Ultravox
In the first of a series of five films featuring headliners playing at BLOC, Gary Numan sits down to chat Ultravox.
Bloc sat down with a selection of headliners from the 2012 festival to talk about who – or what – has influenced them in becoming the artist they are today.
First in the five part series is synth pop pioneer Gary Numan.
He joins Orbital, Snoop Dogg, Richie Hawtin and Steve Reich on a festival programme like no other..
We’ll see you on the 6 July 2012.
Deadmau5 – How to succeed in the music business
Deadmau5 shared some advice at his tumblr sitefor musicians wanting to make a career in the music business. He offers three recommendations, whether you’re a musician with 10 fans or 10 million:
- You need to make a world. So you have a rollercoaster in your backyard. And it’ll be the hot thing in the neighborhood for about a week. But once everyone’s had a go… they’ll lose interest, go home n play Sega instead. What you need then, is a fuckin’ theme park… and you AND your music are the theme. People come into your theme park…..check out all this shit… buncha rides, no 2 the same, some merch here and there, special events, dolphins through hoops and all that whack shit. You want people to come to your theme park and feel like they’re a part of this world of yours.
- Don’t overkill 900 on the promotional shit. – I don’t read spammed to death fucking promo shit, so, the type of people i’d like to have in my theme park don’t either. Nor do i come blaring on the theme parks PA system every fucking 20 seconds hyping the same fucking ride over and over again. Also a bad look to take flyers to other peoples theme parks and start plastering posters all over the place.
- Avoid being invisible. Get out there and immerse yourself in the world you created, youll have fun, it’s your place for fuck’s sake. If you’re not having fun in the world you created, then you fucked something up and did it wrong. Go jump on a few rides with your fans.
From The Vaults : Depeche Mode: A Conversation with Mr. Gambaccini from 1993
Radio DJ Paul Gambaccini interviews the members of Depeche Mode at home and in the studio in this exclusive documentary footage from 1993 for From The Vaults on The Warner Sound.
From The Vaults is the weekly unveiling of the documentaries, interviews, and performances unearthed from the Warner library.
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