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 – http://t.co/M1MqYMcf

— 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

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.

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.
• Spaced Pair – AKG C12
• 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.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O3XfTSxLXw4

Have a listen to a little showcase of the several songs we recorded that day. See if you can recognise the contemporary ones:

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