so after a year of work there is now a band called Emperor Yes. it consists of Adam Betts, Hugo Sheppard and me. we play live music.
logo by Low Bros
this couldn’t have happened with out alot of help from some super people and the tracks have Jeremy Warmsley from Summer Camp and all the members of the Three Trapped Tigers all over them. the flute is played by the wonderful Jacqui Ellul (who played the flute on Noah and the Whale’s 5 Years Time), Dan Schreiber the creator of Museum of Curiosity and Grundy La Zimbra from The Woe Betides sing on most of the tunes.
its been a long road to get here, dropping house of strange band took a while to get used to, and writing a bunch of new songs after song long was a challenge. but i have tick alot of the original boxes that i was aiming for. no computers, songs with choruses, songs that were easier to digest structurally, lots of vocoders, and to bring back the guitar.
all the songs were recorded here at the House of Strange Studios by me, and mixed by me and the maxximum Max Klein. ill do a post to geek out on the recording process in the new year for those who are interested.
the logo was done by the Low Bros who are two brothers from Berlin. their work is always amazing, go check them out.
listen to Emperor Yes here if the soundcloud player below isnt showing up
we just had LUCAS, a wonderfully wonderful lad from Belfast down to the studio to color up another wall. his paint is all over the east end of london, and he has an exhibition on at Tony’s with Malarky, Mr Penfold, and Billy open until the 18th of Dec.
LUCAS @ House of Strange Studios
heres a quick time lapse of the painting, music by house of strange
So recently, the Bloody Beetroots had filmed a new music video here in London at Pinewood studios for their song ‘Church of Noise’. I (Max Klein) was cast as an extra for the video, see how many times you can spot me throughout the video! Whoever can find all my shots wins!
Was a fun day, lots of cool people around and was actually great to see Dennis Lyxzén after over 10 years! (Dennis is the lead singer from an old hardcore group named Refused and was collaborating with the Beetroots for this track). Last time I saw Dennis was in Hong Kong when I opened for his old band back in 1999.
i just got back from 10 days away doing live sound for Three Trapped Tigers in Europe. the tour started with a super successful show at the Garage in London and made its way in varying degrees of success all the way to Copenhagen, Denmark
earlier today the most lovely of the loveliest Arcane Roots came to the studio to film and record some acoustic tracks to accompany a new single. they brought in a bunch of people including Emily Denton who had covered a song of theirs the week before (she sang beautifully), Casse, a legendary enthusiastic lad (lading it up on the piano), Paul a friend of theirs who played some acoustic guitar with killer bvs, and their super super engineer and producer Chris Coulter.
Arcane Roots
they are all a super hard working and easy going lot, i salute them all and cant recommend their music enough.
random fact, all the members of Arcane Roots are left handed *cue X-Files theme tune and maybe an autopsy or two
I’ve finally joined the HoS blog. Very happy to be here and I shall be joining in on writing cool stuff up here over time.
I’ll probably be posting lots of gnarly gear info posts for all you gear freaks out there! Always happy to answer questions and help people out, so get in touch – don’t be lazy!
The photo above is a classic oldie from Hong Kong sometime in the 90s when we were all kids skateboarding. I believe Ash took the photo and that person in the background is Dexter Carrington from the tv show Dexpedition. What’s crazy is that Hong Kong is the kindof place where you will probably only know someone for a year or so of their life before moving on, yet somehow we’re all still pretty good friends – go team!
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Ah. So I’ve recently just got a track released on wreckhead records, it is called ‘Destroy the Dancefloor’. It’s a pretty hard driving electro tune and for sale on itunes!
Arch Stanton are looking to record two new tunes, some filmed performances, master a sound track, and generally get back into action. they were the first band i properly recorded in 2006 while still at university, two of their members made House of Strange possible, and they are back from their beds to raise money for a bunch of new projects. you can help them out here.
have a listen to their first 2 albums
Arch Stanton ii
Arch Stanton i
recorded at House of Strange Studios by Ash Gardner and mastered by Max Klien
The loveliest people The 405 have done a feature on the House of Strange. they came down to film/interview during a recording session with Tawny Owl a month or two ago and it was my first filmed interview, i hope i dont look like a dork.
i think they capture the atmosphere of the place wonderfully. thanks alot to George Nindi, Louis Nindi, and Laura Rankin who shot and edited the piece. look out for a new project they have filmed and edited by @schreiberland
the super talented Stevyn Colgan is next up to bat. he has worked on some far out shit like Dark Crystal, Labyrinth, and a bunch of QI stuff. i wonder what he is going to draw and where : D
alot of things tend to pile up on me. plans and ideas, that would simplify some aspect of my day, all stuck in a waiting room before action turns them to reality. the action behind the new acoustic treatment was Tony English from Slow Glass who planned the whole thing, told me how much timber to order, how much fabric to order, how much rock-wool to order, where to get nails and screws and wheels, and then pretty much made everything.
das studio
there have been some canvas frames lying since we moved in which we removed the tops of so they fit under the metal iron beams running through the studio, enhanced the frames with wood, filled them with rock wool, upholstered them and added a set of wheels.
the difference to the sound in both the live rooms and the control room is immense. on drum kits the bottom end of the snare and the kick and toms seem to be exciting the room more than the cymbals and the hi hat, hurray! and as all the panels are easily removable with tony’s super wise system, the original “massive bathroom” sound has not been lost.
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thanks to @maxxximum, @hugo @schreiberland @pefterson for helping out
Last Friday Billy and Malarky came down and painted a wall in the House of Strange Studios. i have been perving on their street art since i got back from Japan in March and its a huge super honor to have them put some color on the studio.
Keep it Tasty
As soon as i got back from Japan i could help but noticed a bunch of new, ultra colorful street art pieces around East London. i couldnt read the name Billy but Malarky was readable and i followed his work on the internet, until with amazing luck and timing they were putting on a joint exhibition at a gallery just up the road from mine. i was away with TTT on the opening day but Jacqui popped down and scooped me up the best birthday present ever.
the rest was a twitter based victory! thank you guys!
unfortunately i couldnt stay around until the piece was finished, but here are a few photos of their work in progress. they work fast as.
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Billy and Malarky at House of Strange Studio
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i cant wait to get some more artists to come down and paint : D
recorded some massive drums today with Three Trapped Tiger’s Adam Betts for a competition on the Mastodon website. they provided all the stems and we just had to geek out and record the drums. easy piss.
Adam Betts
Betts was using his TAMA rack, floor and kick and two different Noonan snare drums, (the half copper half brass shell, and the aluminum shell). Matt Ingram (Laura Marling and Urchin Studios fame) provided the sexy crashes, new Remo skins, and mad amounts of geek knowledge #supertowel
Bett's Axe
for the recording we used an sm7 through the APIs on the first snare using a gated Rverb (3.5 seconds), and decapitator E setting. the kick was recorded using a combination of the speaker cone mic (TLAudio pres), and a SM57 (APIs) pointed at the beater. there was an AKG 414 on the hi hat, with 140HZ low cut. the two toms were closed mic’ed with SM58s into the TLAudio pres, also used a gated plate reverb for these. we ended up using only the SE Gemini for the room, placed about 2 meters away at head height. the drums were all bussed together and compressed using an 1176 plugin at 8:1.
Matt Ingram is recording at Abbey Road studio 2 tomorrow. follow him on twitter to get a live update.
here we go again, im picking up this monthly post from summer last year when it died. the new employee of the month for July 2011 is the Electro Harmonix HOG.
Electro Harmonix HOG
i cant say enough good things about this pedal, the tracking is great, there are VCAs for the upper and lower octaves, a filter with resonance, and 4 octaves up! its amazing with out even mentioning the lovely Freeze/Gliss mode that lets you freeze your audio, play a new chord, and have the HOG glide between the two pitches. amazing. it also takes an expression pedal to control the pitch, frequency of the filter, volume, and a bunch of other stuff. there is a break out box available which saves 8 user presets that might be useful in a live context but in the studio i dont miss it.
over the past few days i have been following tom rogerson (keyboardist from London based 3 Trapped Tigers) around london on a bicycle filming at the street pianos that are in town for the Festival of London.
st pauls
we hit 11 different pianos over the two days and recorded a mix of improv, and covers. the videos will be available soon, somewhere.
last year we filmed this video on the piano in canary wharf.
the 405 have a new radio show and i wrote the theme tune. i was thinking of doing something that sounded similar to Life Aquatic’s casio like synths and bleepy beat but with more of a Twin Peaks glory melody. what came out sounds more like Teletubbies or BBC’s In the Night Garden.
