SNOWING ON LONDON ROAD

Snow?  At Easter??  What is the world coming to...

Still looking on the bright side, I've got loads of choc and am having a nice, relaxing Easter time.  Wrote another track yesterday, with the working title tranquil eyes.  I love it - and can't wait to get cracking (soz - Easter pun). 

 

Enjoy!

 

Ciao for now, Sarah x

HAPPY EASTER

SARAH'S SWEET DREAMS

Well, I have finally recovered from the game of cock or ball that Matt subjected me to last weekend, in between recording our new tracks.  So I thought I'd make a quick blog-stop.

 

The new tunes are really exciting - I'm very intrigued to hear how they sit together as they all feel very individual at the moment.  We're nearly there for album number 2!!  Bonza!

 

Just read Matt's notes about his aspirations for NK and wanted to give my take on it too.

 

NK facilitates singing, writing and performing for me - my very own holy trinity!  The stuff that I can't live without!!  Even though I didn't start out a die-hard electro fan, electro music actually provides a perfect backdrop for my vocal style and lyrics.  So while ever Matt's up for it, I'll just keep doing what I do with NK and keep on loving it.

 

Three albums would be the minimum I'd want us to produce - and that I feel would leave a sufficient footprint on the music world.  I would LOVE for this to be my sole occupation! 

 

I would also love to:

 

• Perform our songs in the major dance clubs in Ibiza
• Do a northern kind unplugged tour of our songs, with just me and an acoustic guitar accompaniment ;-)  (this works - I've already tried it with Tara Simms, the greatest guitarist on planet earth!!)
• Sing guest vocals with The Editors, Hot Chip, The Happy Mondays and all my other favourite bands
• Hear the Arctic Monkeys cover Dirty Youth
• Write tracks for other amazing artists
• Have Vivienne Westwood design my stage outfits

So that's my starter for ten.

 

I'm looking forward to I am X next week - not really heard a lot of their stuff, so should be good.  I'll check in again soon.

 

Laters taters x

 

 

 

 

 

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I AM X

Going to see them in Sheffield next Thursday with Sarah. I AM X if you don't know is the brain child of Chris Corner from The Sneaker Pimps. His first album "Kiss and Swallow" was the catalyst for starting Northern Kind and was responsible for even naming NK albeit from a mis-heard song lyric.

"Simple Girl" from "Kiss & Swallow" is one of my favorite songs with a really lovely arpeggiated intro line, I played it to death on a trip to Florence a few years back and now it imprints such a vivid image of that time whenever I hear it.

If you get a chance buy Kiss and Swallow and The Alternative, both very good albums.

Matt

DEPECHE or ERASURE Mmmm?

OK we are talking about the things that dreams are made of in this post.

Someone asked me the other day what was my ambitions for Northern Kind. A fair question I suppose but one that I hadn't ever really thought about. With the industry supposedly on it's arse commercial success is something we aren't looking for or expect. We do it because we love it, without Northern Kind my music wouldn't see the light of day. If NK pays for itself and allows me to indulge in buying equipment and software then I am happy. It also keeps me out of trouble!

My day job also consumes a lot of time and engery but they both feed each other. (I'm sure there is an earlier post about this)

However, the profile of NK is definiately growing and I find myself answering emails from peope in Europe, Japan, Australia and the US. I read a really interesing article the other day on niches within music and only the need to have 1000 loyal fans.

I guess that makes us micro celebraties :-)

Seriously though I want us to complete our second album which should see us releasing two albums within a year, which is pretty good going I think. The 3rd difficult album might be a while coming but there is definiately scope for another.

OK back to dreamland. I'd love NK to become a critics favorite and raise the profile of me as a producer and myself and Sarah as song writters. Writing for others is something we have been appraoched to do, at the minute however NK takes priority though. But my absolute dream job would be to produce a Depeche or an Erasure album. Personally I would prefere the DM job and ideally their final studio album. I genuinnly think I could do a great job with Martin & Daves songs and give all of their fans something to really cherish. I think what Tim Simmenon did with Ultra was fairly good considering the state of the band and after loosing Alan Wilder. Whilst the songs on Exciter and PTA were good I'm fairly critical of the production and think it could have been much better.

I would love to produce some other bands, the remix I have done I enjoyed but it's still quite a solitary way of working, producing a band I think would be much more enjoyable.

And back to reality.

We recorded a couple of great tracks at the weekend and will be recording a couple more over Easter. So that pretty much wraps up the songs for the 2nd album, with perhaps one more idea as yet unwritten. All that is needed now is to finanlise the arrangements and mixes. Quite a daunting task but I guess that's what I do best. We have really tried to do some new things with this album and hopefully that will become evident. I still thinks it's pop but perhaps with a darker edge, and definitely alot less Vince Clarke like.

UPDATE

Goodbye and POP were recorded this weekend, really pleased with them.

Also finished the final tweaks on Dirty Youth and Into The Blue ready
for the Xerotic EP.

Big update tomorrow.

Matt

MORE GEAR PLEASE

Just when I was started to become content with my set-up of hardware and software people started emailing about bits of gear. The first that got my attention was for some mental auto tune software. Melodyne has been around for a while but to be honest we have never really had to use any autotune software. Sarah always prefers to get the vocals right during the recording. What's new about this is a new feature name Celemony. This allows you to edit a complex polyphonic waveform by it's constituent parts. For example a recorded guitar chord can be edited in such a way that you can edit the individual notes within the chord, changig their pitch, length and even timing. Truly amazing stuff. Definitely on my wish list.

I'm also wanting to make my studio more aesthetically pleasing. I use a couple of 19" LCDs on my G5, these are great. However, the new version of logic now works in within one main window, whilst this is great it does mean the aspect ratio of the main window makes it more suitable for a widescreen. My square LCDs just won't do. We had one of the latest Apple displays delivered today at work, I now need one. It will make me a better person!

Recording at the weekend, can't wait. Also Easter the week after so hopefully lots of progress will be made.

Matt