New Laneway Album coming along.

Well, the cool cats in this shot are (left to right) Matt Redlich, Louise O’Reilly and Paul Hannan. Louise an Paul are the band Laneway and this is late last Saturday night at Matt’s studio in Brisbane, Australia. Matt is holding a reel of 2 inch tape because we were recording everything for the new Laneway album in the old school analog fashion. The tracks are sounding awesome and for those of you who are already Laneway fans I can tell you that you won’t be disappointed with the new offering. Their songwriting is as sharp and insightful and evocative as ever, Paul’s guitar licks are superb and Louise’s vocal tones are even better than they were a couple of years ago on their debut album “If you don’t need it, let it go”. We still have a few sessions to go before finishing the recordings but everyone involved has a good feeling already which is a great sign. And Matt’s new studio space, affectionately named Grandma’s place, is just so super cool. The inside of the humble exterior is all 70’s playboy wood panelling and soft lighting. A very inspirational space for music and dare I say it, late sexy evenings.

Lessons in Breakbeat

A few months ago Elliot, owner of boutique music library label Pedigree Cuts, approached me to do a whole album for their catalog. Well, you have never seen such excitement on my behalf. Putting it down on records is the ultimate and at Pedigree the only aim is quality.  Not sales or facebook likes or any of that stuff so to be asked to contribute a whole album is not only an honour but a shiut load of fun.  After recording some drums with super cool gear at Pedigree HQ (see post below) it was back over to East London to the fingers malone ensemble HQ for the recording of every fucking cool piece of gear in the arsenal. The result is 18 tracks of bouncing goodness and strutting cool. Have a listen below and you can download the whole album for free too !!!!!!!

who da fuck is vinnie laduce !!!

here is the latest video by the elusive vinnie laduce. its a clip for the song ‘the bottle’ by ash grunwald. apparently it was shot on location in the south of france and the afterparty was off the hook. the whole crew went to the french riviera for a week of revelry. probably best not to show the kids what barbie is capable of when left to her own devices.

Zanzibar. Boom.

here is a track just released by j star simba with a beat by the fingers malone ensemble. he is living in east london now but still visits tanzania. he raps in swahili too. pretty cool tune i think. a good one to listen to on a beach with a cocktail in hand. maybe on zanzibar.

Break Beats Begins

This is a look at the studio setup for the first recording session for the next fme album. This session is at Pedigree Cuts studios and HQ in west London. It’s a very exciting project with a distinctly old school flavour. Break beat in this sense means ‘a break in the song and only the beat continues’. The genre break beat gets it’s name from the act of sampling these breaks and using them to create new songs. We used the term gorilla drums to describe the thrown together drum set that included some cymbals I found in a rubbish bin and somewhat unorthodox recording techniques we used this day. One of the old microphones used in the session was a relic from early film recordings in hollywood and the sound it gave us was just brilliant. The shelves to the left of the kit are stacked with analog drum machines and you can bet these will be featuring in the album.

free the remixes….NOW

OUT NOW….a free 14 track album of remixes by the fingers malone ensemble of other peoples tunes. WOOOOHHHHOOOOOOO. What the fuck is a remix anyway? Well this is what fm has to say about it:

“Oh remixes are very tricky. A remix should still be a good song in its own right. If its only good bits are the hooks from the original tune then its a waste of time, init. The trick to doing a good remix is to not have tricks and don’t have any preconcieved ideas of the finished product until you have actual spent some time with the raw tracks. You gotta find something to latch onto that can’t really be heard or doesn’t feature much in the original. There is no point doing a remix if you just go and add a four to the floor dance beat in the hope that it will become a dance floor favourite. I know this gets done all the time and its fun but there is not much artistic merit in it. With each of these tunes I’ve tried to make them into something a bit different from what they were while not losing what it is that they started out as. Is that an elitist, arty enough explanation? Would you listen to what I just said? God damn let’s go for a beer.”

All the tracks have a clip on you tube too. Some really cool shots of East London etc. So blast it on your stereo and youtube it at your next party and make sure you check out the original artists and tunes because that is half the fun of a remix.
Much respect to all the original composers, players, engineers and producers. Thanks for trusting me with your creations and letting me twist your work into sometimes unrecognisable sounds.

Grandma’s Drum Machine

Here is a little taste of the live show. This is a live recording, no overdubs or trickery. It’s a short video but if you want more you will just have to come to a show because through a proper sound system in a club it really does sound superb.

I still haven’t given back grandma’s drum machine but I am taking very good care of it. She is cool with it. But I will probably have to lend her a synth next time she’s in the studio.