featuring Laura B
now available on iTunes, Amazon and everywhere: gary marlowe´s new “best of” album, with a fine selection of his most interesting works for movies.
mastered at Abbey Road Studios.
http://www.amazon.de/Ultra-Violet-Marlowe-Gary/dp/B009TKBLNM/
https://itunes.apple.com/album/ultra-i-violet-best-film-scores/id574417608
Today I was looking around the studio, mentally logging every piece of equipment, its value to me and the use I make of it, when I realised that while I’m very familiar with it (as if I was born with it) most of it actually comes from Japan.
Brand names like Akai, Korg, Casio, Yamaha, Atari, Roland are common in my studio. Other names like DBX, Tannoy, Drawmer and Ursa Major conjure up the USA or UK as country of origin and manufacture while my microphones and their stands are made in Germany.
I liked the thought that all these machines have been designed, built and assembled by fellow japanese people and I kind of imagined them in white shirts with rulers and papers, discussing the design of the TR808 or the memory allocation on the S1000 etc.. so this morning I thought of my studio as ‘Little Japan’.
This gave the whole place a new dimension and I felt a lot less lonely as a result!
Robin Guthrie = Elvis the King in the Laura B Hall Of Fame. Best known for his unbelievably beautiful signature guitar sound in Cocteau Twins, one of my favorite bands of all time and one great influence over my music too!
Robin talks about sound production: ‘The pulsating stuff was my green Paul Reed Smith guitar (’cause I did most of Heaven Or Las Vegas with it and my ’59 Jazzmaster) played through a Gallien Kruger pre-amp straight into the board. This was then treated with a Lexicon 480L (pitch shifted +10 cents and -10 cents to make it stereo) and delayed with a Yamaha D1500 in sync with the bpm of the track. Next the fun bit: I inserted a Drawmer DS201 dual noise gate over the stereo guitar and triggered it externally from click track playing 16th notes. Then I re-recorded the track back from tape through a Cry Baby wah-wah which I moved manually (ie. with my hands).’
In another interview Robin also talks about processing their drum machine through a guitar amp…
Reading this, I recall many studio sessions spent doing exactly that: plumbing (connecting) stuff together either in the 1- way it’s supposed to be or 2- way it’s not supposed to be or 3- a combination of the two, in order to create a unique brilliant and exciting new sound for the record!!! You have to know the rules in order to break them and we didn’t have much time either as the clock was ticking (studio time was expensive).
Where does that leave us today? What happened to that pioneering spirit? Computers have made recording music the-way-it’s-supposed-to-be-done so easy that there is no experimenting anymore. And I have been struggling with this for a while.
These last few months, I have bought some unusual pieces of kit: some guitar processors like a big Digitech pedalboard, some other odd outboard processors and a Kawai Q-80 which is a MIDI analog sequencer, with a 2 line display and start, stop and record buttons. I have started to make music using just these (non-computer) electronics.
I will post some music here soon to get your feedback. Meanwhile thanks for listening 
Megaupload is trying its best to get out of court, meantime megaupload.com displays this notice:
This means the world to me! My copyright is my property and my lifeline and I should be the only person in the world who decides what to do with it 
Next stop: Rapidshare !
say Inhale.org.music, a cool music blog/website/info station with recommended gig listings and a cool links page well worth checking out.
Here is their review of Animat ‘Imagining Ghosts-The Remixes’ featuring ‘New Roads’ remixed by Laura B out on monday:
Imagining Ghosts – The Remixes is a remix collection based on last year’s album on the Big Chill label by Sheffield-based downtempo electronica producers and musicians Animat.
The twelve original album tracks are reworked by some of the international producers Animat have most admired over the last couple of years.
The album is a truly worldwide affair with contributions from Shiba Freedom Sunset (Japan) and Chang (Malaysia) sitting alongside San Francisco’s DF Tram & Future BC and Vancouver’s SoftClip. Germany’s Deep Dive Corp and Five Seasons and Anglo-French The Fantastic Laura B bring a European flavour to the mix with London’s Bam Sound and Minke bringing us back closer to home along with Manchester’s -Fly and Sheffield’s Cone.
Stylistically too the album covers many bases, from the classic downtempo grooves of Deep Dive Corp and Laura B, through the dub-drenched psychedelia of DF Tram & Future BC to the ambient chillstep of the Cut Label’s young guns Great Skies and -Fly, somehow also finding room for Five Season’s stunning ambient pop take on last year’s single Zeroes and Ones and Soft Clip’s spaghetti house rework of System Song.
The range of the remixes reflects the different dimensions of Animat’s original tunes while holding onto the core of their increasingly distinctive sound.
Steeped in the tradition of Sheffield’s world-leading electronic music scene, Mark Daly and Michael Harding – aka The Only Michael – have been working together since 2004 and have released two albums and six EPs of their own material as well as devising and performing new soundtracks to often forgotten films and remixing tracks for artists including Winter North Atlantic, Pitch Black and The Beaufort Scale.
Animat will be appearing live at cinemas and festivals through summer and autumn 2012 with their new live soundtrack to John Carpenter’s sci-fi stoner classic Dark Star.
J’ai lu les brochures, vu des interviews sur youtube, a mon avis il n’y a pas photo: le seul candidat qui vaille la peine de sortir voter dimanche est Philippe Poutou. Avec son honneteté, son bon sens, son courage naturel et son humanité il a deja les qualités d’un grand homme politique (voir Ghandi, Nelson Mandela etc.) Ce sont ces grand hommes qui font chaque fois avancer l’humanité!
Je serais super heureuse et fiere de l’avoir comme president!
‘New Roads – the fantastic Laura B’s Hoolahoop on the Beach remix’
is released on 30 April on the Animat album ‘Imagining Ghosts – The Remixes’ on the lovely Big Chill Recordings label (London). This release includes Ten remixes of Animat’s previous LP ‘Imagining Ghosts’ by Deep Dive Corporation, Minke, DF Tram, Softclip and more.
‘New Roads – the fantastic Laura B’s Hoolahoop on the Beach remix’
sort le 30 Avril sur le label du Big Chill (Big Chill Recordings), dans l’album ‘Imagining Ghosts-The Remixes’ du groupe Animat. L’album presente dix remixes par dix artistes de musique electronique et ambiente tels que Deep Dive Corporation, Minke, DF Tram, Softclip etc.
News from Nasa Mars Science Laboratory:
My name is currently being prepared for etching on a microchip that the Curiosity rover will carry on its “back” (its “deck”) all the way to Mars.
About the size of a small SUV, NASA’s Curiosity rover is well equipped for a tour of Gale Crater on Mars. This impressive rover has six-wheel drive and the ability to turn in place a full 360 degrees, as well as the agility to climb steep hills. During a nearly two-year prime mission after landing on Mars, the rover will investigate whether Gale Crater ever offered conditions favorable for microbial life, including the chemical ingredients for life.
NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, Calif., manages the Mars Science Laboratory Project for the NASA Science Mission Directorate, Washington.
More information about Curiosity is online at: http://www.nasa.gov/msl or http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl.
Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
While sorting out my photos I found this: Laura B is to be carried to Mars on a microchip onboard Nasa’s Mars Science Laboratory rover. I’m looking forward to see this friendly looking rover crawl over Mars’ surface live on TV sometime.
En triant mes photos je suis tombée sur celle-ci: Laura B ira sur Mars dans une micropuce a bord du Robot du Labo Scientifique de Mars de la Nasa. J’ai hate de voir cet engin sympa se ballader sur la planete rouge en direct a la télé.
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