It’s finally here... Angelchrome, Navigator and more...

It's Saturday night and I'm having a night in to myself. I have the flat to myself. My Mac nearly blew up earlier as I went out to enjoy the sun for a little while and I realised I'd be a little fucked if it did. But it didn't, rejoice! Time to back some shit up.

I've been painfully busy lately. Keeping a day-job and working freelance takes its toll on one's free time. I've just finished a video for Vidal Sassoon's fashion show tomorrow - I'm not even a video editor, but kudos can be a powerful ally. More importantly, after 11 months of intense recording sessions (spreading a massive 92 tracks of audio in Pro Tools), mixing, re-mixing, tragedy, personal trauma with a little bit of mastering, I finally finished Navigator's EP - "Transcendental Union" with Alan Webb (who pretty much performs everything except the vocals). The 18-minute epic (yeah, I know 18 minutes doesn't sound that epic, but trust me, it is) can be heard at www.myspace.com/navigatorproject - go have a listen to my awesome production skillz.

So with a day off, I also managed to update the Angelchrome MySpace - as promised with a new song. This is new Angelchrome. Forget the old. The line-up now consists of myself and Judith Haustein (http://www.myspace.com/judithhaustein). If you haven't heard her music, then be sure to check her out. She is incredible!

I decided earlier this year that I wanted to use her voice and musical talents for Angelchrome. It feels like the right direction. Recording is hard, though. We're both so busy, but we're working on songs. We have about four on the go at the moment and I'll be updating the page as and when they're ready*.

The first song you'll hear is Falling Asleep (Anesthetic Awareness) - originally started as an experiment where I used her own song 'Falling Asleep' on a new song I was writing back in May this year. You could argue it a remix, and to an extent it is, but I feel it's turned into a song in its own right and early listeners have already said it's the best thing I've done. Some have even said it's the best music they've heard in a long time. Yeah, it's easy for friends to be biased, but any musician (or composer/producer in my case) knows what the current musical climate is. It's not easy to write music that feels relevant. I feel on a roll and this is just the beginning.

So. Enjoy the music, post your thoughts / comments and I'm going to enjoy the rest of my day off with more beer.

Gabriel

* - ready = 'final demos', i.e. probably not final mixes and subject to having new instruments added for effect, like the triangle.

New beginnings...

It's taken a while - all history of Angelchrome is being erased and I am paving the way for the future - this is what means most to me now.

'I' has become 'we' and this is what we look like... as for what we sound like, you will hear in a just a couple of weeks.

Gabriel

The value of music

This is my first post in… absolutely forever… Basically there has been nothing to write about. I finished my Masters, I did really well too. I then needed to take some time out for myself. Still working, but with no direction in my life. A lot of time was spent catching up with friends, being able to say ‘yeah, I’ll come to your party’, spending time with the family – stuff that most people take for granted and I wasn’t really able to for five years of my life.

I wanted to take some time to find a job. The realist in me took a look at my financial situation and thought “oh shit, I need more money”. I applied for many jobs, mainly in sound design, some in dialogue recording. I heard back from none of them (except for a games company, but I had enough contacts there to actually get told I didn’t get the job). I always knew that having an MA wouldn’t really get me work – without the whoring experience required, you can’t get jack shit. Combine that with recession on the way, I concluded I should just sit tight.

So I went back to my record label idea. To be my own boss and have an excuse to release my own music and projects on my own terms – and do it for a living. I got as far as pitching the idea to a panel of people who were going to give me money for the next nine months to get it off the ground – but my ideas got carried away. I was planning to release all content for free and make money out of licensing and merchandise sales. Just before my pitch, I bumped into an old lecturer, Katia. I told her about the idea and she shredded it apart in minutes, demonstrating that it was a bit far fetched and that I would never get the time to ever work on my own music if I took that path. So you can imagine how I lost confidence minutes later in the pitch and found myself speaking to blank faces… I don’t think I made the pitch.

To be fair to Katia, she advised me “you need to think about what you really want, but you need to be realistic and you need to do whatever is necessary” – effectively working as a free agent, rather than getting directly involved in the cokehead music industry. My argument for wanting to do a label in the first place was to avoid the bombardment of friend requests on MySpace – people filter this shit out. No one cares when everyone can produce their own music. A label has marketing links and can make a buzz. If you make a buzz, people will come to YOU. But it needs to be goooood.

I’ve considered putting an end to Angelchrome for a very long time now. It’s not me anymore. One thing that I’ve never been comfortable with is singing very ‘deep’ (i.e. teenage angst) songs, when I’m generally quite a chirpy person on the outside. I’m not always the happiest person on the inside, but when I turned 24, it became so clear that everyone really does feel like this. It’s nothing new. People have made money out of creating and selling empathy in the form of music. It’s an embarrassing thought to get up on that stage and sing these mediocre songs. Can I honestly make a contribution to society singing about stuff people have said for thousands of years through art? I don’t think so.

So where does this leave me right now? Well fortunately I have at least been making some kind of effort to keep myself involved. I have been writing a short animation with a 3D animator from Sicily (Francesca Stella), which we’re starting proper in the next week or so (when she finally scrapes the money together to buy a Mac Pro) and I have brand new music plans in collaboration with jazz-fusion bosa-nova singer Judith Haustein. I think she thinks this is going to be something small, but she’s so wrong. I’m starting it tonight…

Ok – the world didn’t open its arms out to me like I lead myself to believe, but I’m doing something about it, finally. I’ll make it happen for myself one way or another. And as for Angelchome, well… I’m going to have a think about it. I’ll leave the MySpace up for a little while and see what happens.

In Rainbows

After the excitement of the new Radiohead release, In Rainbows, many fans and industry folk have been anxiously watching how well it will do with their new ‘honesty box’ scheme that allows listeners to name their price. You’d have to be living under a rock to not know this of course, but it has sparked a lot of discussion about how this will affect the music industry.

Interestingly, I’ve been told that 1/3 of listeners of ‘In Rainbows’ have downloaded the album illegally – despite being able to download it legally for as little as 1p. Is that because of laziness? Some of my friends downloaded it illegally on the basis they couldn’t be bothered to reach for their credit card, no matter how little it could cost them. Others argued that they wanted to hear it first to decide how much they think it’s worth paying for. Fair enough, in the latter case, it might have been worth Radiohead offering the album to stream at www.inrainbows.com before users can decide… but in their position, I don’t think they’re really bothered. They’re probably just interested to see what would happen when they can defy the entire music industry.

And all the while, many other artists are now dropping out of major record labels and going it ‘alone’. It’s easy to think “oh well, these bands have already made their money, so it’s easy for them to cut the middleman out”, but I’ve now come to the conclusion that many of us ‘unsigned’ acts are doing what these major artists might have done if they had the same opportunities we did 15 or so years ago. The only problem is the over-bombardment or artists out there. Many are shit, or if they are good, they don’t have the same marketing team they might have with a bigger label to promote them in such a way that people will come and listen to them. Money now depends on live performance and merchandising among other things.

I haven’t made any efforts to sell Passion/Aggression other than the online streaming. But these recent developments are making me want to sit tight just a little longer to see how this drastic change in the industry will play out. I have no obligations to do anything, so I may as well use this time wisely. That being said, I might just put the album out anyway on some digital distributor and be more ‘creative’ for any future efforts. I really oughta do something soon before I lose motivation. I’m actually quite inspired right now, but unable to do anything about it.

Oh, ‘In Rainbows’ rocks, by the way.

It's been a while

It's been a while since my last posts. I've been trying to get my head around the last 12 months of writing and recording this album. Played it so many times to myself. Played it so many times to my friends... the reaction is good. I am very proud of what I have created, but just when I think I can't listen to it any more, I need to hear it again - perhaps in disbelief, or trying to assure myself that it is a good album.

A significant line on 'Get It Right' details how I feel, among many other things: "No opinions, just a current point of view" - and this stands true. Sometimes I love Passion/Aggression, sometimes I wonder what the hell I was thinking. It's hard not to be overly critical. I love the songs, I love the recordings, but I don't think it was mixed very well and the mastered version is too quiet and weak, especially when listening on my iPod. I don't think that's the fault of the mastering engineer, but I didn't get a change to mix it in a proper environment. So right now I just feel indifferent. I need a little more time away from it to decide if I really want to release this.

Nevertheless, you can hear the album fully at http://passion.angelchrome.com.

Ironically, I have had a lot of ideas for new songs. I really want to write something that's very pop/electro. Perhaps in the vein of 'It Felt Like Forever' - it was a lot of fun to write and record and perhaps that is the 'sound' that I want to aim for. But I cannot write a damn thing. The moment I load a Cubase session, I instantly feel so tired and can't be bothered to write. It takes so much time and I'm just not ready to begin music again.

These past few weeks has been a change of lifestyle. For once, I am no longer a student, I am in a lot of financial debt (of course) and I'm just aching to try and lead a normal life, even if it is for a short time. I went to Romania last week to spend time with one of my best friends in Bucharest. She took me to Brasov, Transylvania and helped my mental transition of being in a battle on all fronts, to being able to enjoy more simple things in life. Alcohol helped, naturally. All this 'me' time has allowed me to read books again, watch films again, focus on my job and the confidence to just enjoy myself without any guilt.

I'm scared that I might get caught up in this and never bother to begin my record label, never write another song with serious intentions - but then I look at it the other way and think that if I don't make an attempt at having a real life NOW, then what's the point of working for a life in the future?

In short, I'm just not used to time off. But I enjoy listening to other music again and these changes I have created for myself, if I am serious about it, will lead me to a natural progression of writing more music. Now I'm going to watch another film.

Passion/Aggression Tracklisting

After one year of writing, six weeks of recording and what feels like forever in chaos, the new album Passion/Aggression is finally complete and the results are outstanding.

The tracklisting is as follows:

1) Lovers And Politicians
2) It Felt Like Forever
3) Get It Right
4) Inane Is My Name
5) Short Term Memory
6) Dead On Red
7) Pull Your Fingers Out
8) Compassion
9) Almost There
10) Too Late

Words cannot describe what I currently feel. Still so much more to do. This is only the beginning.

"Finished"

I got an email from my mastering engineer, Lawrence Gill at 4:30am this morning. It says:

“All done mate.

It's an absolutely cracking album man! Great tunes & your vocals are spot-on.

Will post tomorrow.”

So naturally I couldn’t believe it when I read the email. Could my album actually be finished? I don’t remember finishing anything. I remember finding myself into a hazardous mental prison of noise, trying to make sense of all of the songs, wondering what the hell I just got myself into. I remember setting myself a Friday deadline to be post the songs to Fat As Funk Mastering in Somerset. And I remember, at some point, thinking that it was as good as it was going to get and that it would just have to get posted, no matter what. But never 'finished'.

Indeed that’s the only way I could have looked at it. After all, the longer I have to do it; the more time I’ll spend fucking around and I’d still only think that nothing is finished. Worse still, I could potentially ruin something when it might have been right. I was never going to be happy with everything, but “it is as it is”.

At the worst, the only issues I anticipate are that the mastering might pumping from compression or giving off too many frequencies I don’t want, but hopefully my reference material will prevent this from being an issue… I will know tomorrow either way.

I have been stressing out about the album artwork and what I’m going to do for that. With just over a week left on the project, I still haven’t completed the artwork. So I was thinking the easy route to solve this would be to get a hot girl naked on a white background and take pictures of her sucking off a berretta. Problem Solved. I contacted rock model, Lauren Reading (http://www.myspace.com/laurenreading) to do this with me and generally she was quite willing. Until I asked her to do it naked, of course (well I don’t know for sure). As a backup, I asked another model who was also happy to do whatever I wanted… This became obsolete once the photography studios kindly informed me they wanted to do a price mark-up by 50% as I’m only able to book over the weekend.

So I’m already knee-deep in overdraft and credit card debt, but when you need something done so badly, you’re prepared to pay for anything. But in this case, there was still the possibility it might fall through. Then I would have paid £200 for a studio I can’t do anything in. No chance.

Time to re-consider my options. I have had a think and decided to go for something that can be done at home. I won’t say just yet… I need to make sure it’s done properly.

Masters come in tomorrow. Really nervous.