Tuesday, April 24, 2007

Amsterdam

If in Amsterdam, there seems to be one main record shop that has much regage, Boudisque near Amsterdam Central station.

"Get Records" on Utrechsestraat has some as well. They also have some copies of my 7" "Sevens Dub Four" for sale as well. Thanks to Joost for taking some and being a good guy overall!

Tuesday, April 10, 2007

Becoming a Cliche

Just occurred to me today, "Becoming a Cliche" appeals to me so much because it sounds like Tackhead back when they were worth listening to. Not that its covering the same ground, (well a little bit), but that it challenges me to listen. This is what Tackhead should have been rather than a crap copy of Living Color. Bernard Fowler never did it for me.

Sunday, April 01, 2007

Finding a singer

I'm starting to plan my next release, I know which ridim track I want to use. Its 100BPM but sounds slower, minor key, one drop. The dub version uses some samples of Marcus Garvey. Sweet and dandy so far, but see Tokyo is not exactly an easy place to find good roots singers, so I'm kind of asking for advice here. So far my ideas are:
  1. Wait and find someone locally. There are a few singers here in Tokyo, I could book studio time (no vocal booth in my studio) or give them a mixdown and have them use their own studio. Problem: finding the right singer half way around the world from where most are.
  2. Use the web to find and contact a "name" singer, send a mixdown and have them arrange to record vocals somewhere and send em back to me for final mix & overdubs. Problem: many! First theres the trust issue, its always hard setting up something with someone you dont know (not to mention the money aspects over distance). Next is the fact that if I'm not present at the recording session, its not going to be easy to say what I like or dont like on a vocal take or ask for things like harmony or backing vocals after the fact. The other thing is making sure the vocals are sent back to me in some kind of format I can work with. Not everyone is going to understand if I say "44.1Khz, unprocessed, WAV or AIFF only".
  3. Try and work something out with another studio who has contacts with vocalists over the web/email. This takes care of the technical issues in #2 above, but still leaves me with the trust and presence issues tho hopefully if I can work with someone who knows their sound, I can trust them to come up with a good recording and get it to me right. Problem: working out the .biz side of the whole thing. Not unsolvable, perhaps only a minor issue.
So if anyone out there has dealt with this before, please leave your thoughts in the comments.