Adam Crowe

King Lizard – A Nightmare Livin’ The Dream

I admit, this post is WELL overdue! I started recording this album back in August 2011! But it’s been a long project and I had loads going on so I do apologise for the delay

I have worked on various little project with King Lizard since I accidentally ran in to Niro Knox (guitar) at the Big Red pub in London somewhere in November/December of 2007! I recorded and mixed two live shows for the band with the Underworld 2009 Live  N’ RED Raw show released on DVD. But I was a lot more interested in getting the band into the studio for a proper album recording.

I was commissioned to engineer the band’s new album – A Nightmare Livin’ The Dream – which was going to be produced by Pedro Ferreira (The Darkness, Tank, Shikari, Therapy). Working with Pedro was an experience in itself. He is a very skilled rock/metal producer and I learned a lot from him.

The actual recording of the album started before Pedro came on board. We recorded two songs on the 11-12th of August 2011 at Snap Studios as a test and pitch to the band’s record label. We recorded If It’s a Sin and Down. I mixed the initial versions, but these were not the ones that ended up on the album as they had to be remixed to be consistent with the rest of the mixes.

I’d like to shout out to Shure UK who were very kindly had lent us a goody kit of lovely drum microphones to play with. They were absolutely brilliant and I was very sad to part with them at the end of the session! If any engineers – studio or live – are reading this, I urge you to give the Shure microphones (beyond the usual SM57, SM58 and SM7B) a shot. I feel that they are unjustly ignored in the UK.

Fortunately, the label liked what they heard and the album recording was scheduled for early February with Pedro producing the album and myself engineering.

We spend 3rd till 9th of February recording the drums, bass, rhythm guitars, some solo guitars and overdubs, and some vocals for the remaining 10 songs on the album. Additional recordings of solo guitars, vocals and even horns were done at Pedro’s studio in the following weeks.

All drums were tracked to sync’ed 24-track tape and bounced back to Pro Tools. All tracks were recorded live with the whole band playing live! This makes a huge difference to the feel of a recording and isn’t always the preferred modern way of recording. We were lucky to use a studio that can accommodate this space-wise and more importantly the band were professional enough as musicians and were well rehearsed to be able to play all the songs live top to bottom. Respect!

As you will see from the photos below, February 2012 was an especially cold month, but the studio was kept very warm by the music, gear and excitement. For me, this album was a fantastic thing to be a part of and I am very proud of the result. Working with the band, Pedro and being at the brilliant Snap Studios with Ben Mclusky assisting was just a joy. I think the band’s rockumentary explains it better that I can though:

The album was released in November 2012 and has received dozens of smashing reviews from around the world by rock and metal magazines and punters who got to hear the band for the first time following this release. The band is booked for major tours around Europe in 2013. I highly recommend catching them live as they put on a hell of a show!

The album was mixed by Pedro Ferreira, mastered by Ade Emsley at Table of Tone, and released by Bad Reputation Records.

Recorded at Snap Studios and assisted by the brilliant Ben Mclusky.

You can buy the album on iTunes or the band’s website at http://www.kinglizard.co.uk/collections/shop

Also, please follow King Lizard on their Facebook page and Twitter feed.

Denise – Camden Town Album Cover

Over the past year or so, I’ve been involved in an amazing production called Camden Town by Denise. The 14-track album is a explosion of styles ranging from jazz to soul to instrumental to rap. Featuring 44 musicians from four continents, I have been very fortunate to record many elements from this album, play guitar on two tracks and mix 7 tracks!

Camden Town was composed by Denise who not only wrote the music and lyrics, but also wrote and orchestrated all the string parts which were recorded in New Orleans with a proper New-Orleans-style rhythm section. The album is full of gorgeous melodies and jazzy, yet poppy, chord progressions. Denise has a great ability of taking complex chord progressions from the world of jazz and making them very accessible and natural to even an untrained ear.

I had the great fortune of being able to play electric guitar on two tracks – Amy and Crazy Magnolia – which I recorded in my studio, and also engineered/recorded various elements like drums, piano, bass, French horn, percussion and BVs in Snap Studios and Alice’s Loft Music (see below). More importantly for me, was the chance to mix 7 tracks which I am very proud of. The album was skilfully mastered by the great Ray Staff of Air Studios and is now available on CD and Vinyl (my first vinyl release!).

“…Adam Crowe for his incredible patience, support, and advice throughout this entire project…”

Credits

This album has been in the works for a long time and I know how hard Denise worked on it, and I believe the result reflects that. I’m very proud and honoured to take part in it. I encourage everybody to have a listen to the album below and moreover, buy a copy!

Buy Album

• Click here to buy the album on iTunes
• Click here to buy the album on CD Baby
• Buy the album from Denise’s website!

Earlier this year I have been commissioned to mix an album for an interesting electronic/folk fusion duo called Arhai. The album ‘Eastern Roads’ a very tasteful mix between traditional folk instruments with electronics grooves and beats. The folk part is heavily inspired by traditional Irish, English and especially Balkan music.

Although I am less used to electronic music, I found that the beautiful combination and the gorgeous playing was just too nice to resist. I am very proud of this work as it was not only a challenge for me to work with a new style but also because I got to meet two very talented musicians. I’ve never before met someone so immersed in a specific type of music so much as Jovana Backovic and Adrian Lever are. They manoeuvre with ease between between a standard 4/4 rhythm through 7/8 to a finger-breaking 11/8 that I am still trying to learn how to count!

Have a listen to the album preview below (I especially recommend the excellent guitar work on track 10 – Ismail)

CLICK HERE TO BUY THE ALBUM!

I highly recommend catching Arhai live because seeing their music come to life on stage is something special. Have a look on the band’s Facebook page and website for tour dates, and of course don’t forget to buy the album!!!

Arhai website

 Arhai on Facebook

With major labels dropping like flies, records not selling, studios closing and musicians starving, one has to ask himself every once in a while (more often than not actually) ‘why do I do this?!’

Well, there is no good empirical answer to this. It’s an urge, a feeling, a calling from within… It’s often difficult to justify, vague to understand, and very hard to quantify. But every so often I do a session or write a song or play a part and do a mix and get some feedback that will really strike a chord with me.

This past Saturday, I spent the day engineering and recording drums for Murray Creagh, a London-based singer/songwriter/producer. It was a long session with various different drum sounds, all tracked to 24-track tape. Joe Ryan was absolutely brilliant on the drums. I had never before seen someone playing with such consistency for 12 hours!

I got the following email today from Murray:

Hey Adam, just wanted to say thank you again for your engineering genius on Saturday and organising the session! I’ve had a listen through the takes and it sounds fucking great to me, it’s exactly the sound I wanted to get…. though having said that when listening back I’m still like “whoa, those mics + that Neve desk + that outboard + that kit + whatever else is going on” really is the full catastrophe!  But of course it’s knowing how to put all that together – so thanks dude, you really nailed it!

Your place in heaven is assured!

- M

Back in Match this year, I was in the studio again with the brilliant Gecko band to record a few songs for their then upcoming EP. Only one song from that day called Feeling My Way made it to the EP, it joined another song we recorded nearly two years earlier called Camden.

Together Gecko launched the Camden/Feeling My Way EP with a fantastic summer tour of the UK, performing at small and medium size venues but also at scoring a place at an award winning festival of boutique music called Bestival at the Isle of Wight. Moreover, Gecko were chosen to perform twice at the London 2012 Olympic games at the Emerging Icons stage! A great honour indeed!

As always, I feel very lucky and proud to work with these guys. They are a lot of fun to hang out with. Their live shows are full of energy, and I can’t recommend them enough!

The hard-copy EP has been sold at the live gigs but is now available at the band’s BandCamp page for FREE! Well, not exactly… I mean it is… But you are encouraged to pay something for the download to support the band. So please pay whatever you can!

The Camden single has also received a fantastic video (directed by Chris Hugall
) which I would like to ask you to share on your various walls, pages, feeds and blogs! At the Bestival festival, Gecko met the super talented Ed Sheeran who liked the Gecko guys so much that he was kind enough to tweet about the new video!!!

New video from @geckoofficial – YouTube.com/watch?v=1pec3t…

— Ed Sheeran (@edsheeran) August 14, 2012

As always, I try to take a few shots of the recording session. This day was extra busy so I didn’t get a chance to take many photos, but I did get a whole bunch of shots of Gabriel Anthony-Casey chillin’ in the control room

Camden/Feeling My Way EP was recorded at Snap Studios by Adam Crowe and mixed by Adam Crowe. Mastered by John Webber at Blue Pro Mastering.

Check out Gecko on:

• Facebook - http://www.facebook.com/geckoband 
• YouTube - http://www.youtube.com/user/geckoofficial
• Twitter - http://twitter.com/geckoofficial
• BandCamp - http://geckoband.bandcamp.com

Back in February I had the opportunity to record a quick live session of Jake Morley and his amazing band playing three songs live at Snap Studios. No tricks, no wizardry, just great songs and brilliant musicians!

The main priority was to record a video of the band playing the single Feet Don’t Fail Me Now (see below) from Jake Morley’s debut album Many Fish To Fry which presented a challenge for me as I couldn’t position the musicians where I needed because what’s best for the camera isn’t necessarily best for the microphone. Moreover, we only had a few hours to do it all as Jake Morley and the beyond talented bassist John Parker had to rush off to a live gig on the other side of London.

Sadly, due to the time constraint, I had absolutely no time to take any photos.

As I mentioned earlier, the whole band was tracked live in Snap’s Studio 1 live room. I was treated to a large bank of Tube Tech mic pres, EQs and compressors thank to Jake’s brother Oliver Morley from Bigger Boat Distribution who are the representatives of Tube Tech and Latch Lake stands in the UK. These worked extremely well with the band and Jake’s voice. The tube warmth lent itself very easily to the sound of the songs.

The three songs were released as a 250-copy limited edition EP titles Ghostess – Live Studio Sessions and sold on tour earlier in the year. All CDs were numbered, and admirably, CD number 1 was auctioned off to raise money for the Nordoff Robins charity who specialise in music therapy! More information about that here.

It was an absolute pleasure working with Jake and the band and I really hope we can work together again. I urge you all to catch Jake Morley live as it is a simple do-not-miss kind of show. And obviously – buy the brilliantly original Many Fish To Fry album on iTunes, HMV (CD/DVD), Play (CD/DVD) or Amazon (CD/DVD). Here’s a little sample:

You can find more details about this little project on Jake Morley’s website blog here: Ghostess Live Studio Sessions

Back in October last year, I have had the pleasure of recording a couple of tracking for funky band called the BB Allstars for their new Groove Oil 3 release.

The band comprised of Toby Baker, Ernie McKone, Mike Mcevoy and Jan Kincaid as the core band, and with guest appearances from Dave O’Higgins on saxophone and flute, Ed Jones on saxophone, Cammelli Hinds on vocals, Damin Brown on trumpet, Miles Bould on percussion, Mark Vandergucht on guitar and Nigel Hitchcock on saxophone.

One of the songs I recorded made it to the album – an opening track called By All Means. It’s a cover of Alphonse Mouzon excellent 1981 release. The BB Allstars give their own soulful and jazzy interpretation to the track.

Sadly I didn’t have time to take many snaps apart from a few simple ones of Jan on the drums and a shot from the control room of the band.

The album is full of simply brilliant, funky, jazzy, feel-good music and I highly recommend it!

BB Allstars – Groove Oil 3 is available on iTunes

Produced, Recorded and Mixed by the BB Allstars at Boogie Back and Hartland Sound, except “By All Means” which was recorded by Adam Crowe at Snap Studios.

Mastered by John Webber at Blue Pro Mastering, London.

I’ve had the pleasure of recording a string quartet recently called Niche London Quartet. Two violins, one viola and a cello. A lovely repertoire of both classical and contemporary pieces, all part of this group’s preparation for the summer season of weddings, birthdays, Bar Mitzvahs, corporate events and fancy dinners.

Apart from the lovely music, Niche were a treat to work with! They were also very accommodating to the little microphone experiment I carried out (see below) which was very kind of them.

It was interesting to see how the live room at Snap Studios would respond to a quartet and what microphones in the studios’ mighty arsenal would be suitable for this task. As an experiment I attacked with everything I could! The recording comprised of:

• Decca Tree – two Coles 4038 on the sides
  with an RCA DX44 in the centre.
• Coincident/Blumlein – Royer SF-12
• Other – Schoeps Stereo Sphere Microphone KFM 6
• Cello spot – Neumann U47
• Viola spot – Neumann KM64

A bit extravagant, I know… But why the hell not?! I’m trying to get the best result here! But I’ll let you be the judge. All the microphones went through the Studio 1′s Neve 53-Series console with Neve 33114/5 mic pres.

Obviously, everything sounded different. The Decca Tree ribbons sounded lush but slightly too roomy/distant for my taste; the AKG C12 spaced pair sounded ‘bigger than life’ and very detailed; the Royer SF-12 had a very natural representation of the room and so did the Schoeps Sphere mic – for more critical and classical recordings, I would have definitely chosen these as the main microphones. The Neumann U47 had an extraordinarily beautiful bottom end as one would expect, and provided a brilliant bass ‘anchor’ for the stereo image of the group. And the Neumann KM64 on the viola was used gently to bring out the softer-sounding pizzicatos.

In the end I just couldn’t resist and ended up using a mix of all of the above with the help of Little Labs IBP phase alignment tool to keep all the signals in phase as much as possible. The mixes were brilliantly mastered by John Webber at Blue Pro.

Update: The guys have editing a video of I Need a Hero by Bonnie Tyler preformed live.

Please check out Niche London Quartet and bare them in mind if you or one of your friends is having an event this summer!

For the past year or so, whenever schedule permitted, I’ve been working with an very talented bunch of guys who go by the name of Gecko. Four young guys with more positive energy that I could ever dream of having have been turning out one song after another to what is fast becoming a gorgeous gem of an album, but in the meantime – a little preview.

Gecko’s Pigeon EP is a set of four songs that I’ve been privileged to co-produce, record and mix over the past year. I can honestly say that this is the kind of songs you should listen to to cure any moody feeling. An instant feel-good atmosphere!

The Pigeon EP and fantastic T-Shirts are available on the band’s official store. Every CD is hand made from recyclable paper and screen printed, and numbered! The best part - it is only £3!!!

Here’s the official video for Best Friend:

Follow Gecko on Facebook and Twitter!

>>> Click here to buy the Pigeon EP <<<

Vocals, Guitars and Vibes: Will Sanderson-Thwaite
Piano, Keys, and BV: Gabriel Casey
Bass, Uke and BV: Simon Cole
Drums, Percussion and BV: Ben McKone

Produced by Adam Crowe and Gecko
Engineered, recorded and mixed by Adam Crowe
Assisted by Ron Or-El
Recorded at Snap Studios, London
Mastered by John Webber at Blue Pro Mastering

I’m sure you’ve seen me praise these guys before but I just have to do it one more time because this bunch is just the best! Earlier this year I was in the studio with Gecko recording a few songs for their debut album and this is the second single which the band have decided to give out for FREE as a download on 19th of September!

I’ve been lucky to have been chosen to record and mix this single. Full credits below.

This is a really cool video shot in hi-def. Make sure you watch it in 720p and don’t forget to click the Like button!!!

• Follow Gecko on Facebook and Twitter

http://www.facebook.com/geckoband
http://twitter.com/geckoofficial

• Video

Directed by Jack Sanderson-Thwaite and Arthur Williams

Director of photography Luke While (http://www.vimeo.com/lukerawhile)

Assistant cameramen Simon Smith and Ben Westwood

Make up by Atalanta Bluff

Edited by Luke While

• Cast

Will Sanderson-Thwaite
Gabriel Casey
Simon Cole
Ben Mckone
and
Amy Love

and Ramani Shehara Rajaratnam as ‘Nala’

‘Safest bet’ was recorded at Snap Studios, North London during April & May 2011
Produced by Adam Crowe and Gecko
Engineered by Adam Crowe
Mixed by Adam Crowe
Mastered by John Webber @ Blue Pro Mastering, London

All music (c) Will Sanderson-Thwaite, Ben Mckone, Simon Cole and Gabriel Casey 2011

For press contact hello@blurbpr.com

Lyrics

Who needs reasoning, just dance through the scenery
Turn your back on logic face-plant into greenery
Never met a dance move I haven’t kept in touch with
Met up with, occasionally in public in London
So you’re a tortoise it’s your first day at school
Understandably you wanna make friends
But you’ve gotta come out of your shell
Else you might be mistaken for an ornament

I realise that I’m not your safest bet
If you make a list, then I’ll see what I can get
You can take your pick
‘Til there’s noone left around
I prefer the rhythm we’ve found
We’ve found

I realise that I’m probably not your safest bet
Like a tigers not the safest pet
It’s arrival caused panic
An unsuitable animal for housing
Unfit for its surroundings
Accounting for this altogether unsuccessful outing
Especially when he started growling
But I’d proudly
Outrun a cheetah for your undivided attention
Can’t promise that I’d beat her but I’d lack no intention
So lets dance beneath the sunset
Drive away the upset
I’m not your safest ticket but the scenic routes astounding

I realise that I’m not your safest bet
If you make a list, then I’ll see what I can get
You can take your pick
‘Til there’s noone left around
I prefer the rhythm we’ve found
We’ve found