Break The Tie by Almost Unique

So off the back of the cover of Bastille – The Anchor

me and Liv Baker-Mendoza started working on some of her original material.

One of the first songs we worked on together was this track, Break The Tie. Originally it had a completely different vibe, almost like a country song, but that wasn’t quite what we were looking for, so we left it for a few days.

Then one day I for some reason had an idea to put a sort of early 2000s beat behind it, something like “I’m Like A Bird” by Nelly Furtado. So I laid down the drum pattern and bassline, and them came up with the hook while playing around with some Sylenth1 presets.

I should mention here that I’m planning to do a video doing a full breakdown of the mix, explaining the plugins and sounds I used etc, so stay tuned for that.

The next day I sent what I had to Liv, and she loved it. She rerecorded her demo acoustic guitar, as this new version of the song had a totally different groove to what we’d been previously working with. Originally the song was called “News” and was about how people process the news they see on TV and social media, and how this news can be very deceiving sometimes. Liv ended up completely rewriting the lyrics and changing the meaning of the song.

Over the next few weeks we added more and more layers, the lyrics and instrumentation gradually settling in to the song it is now. Liv did the final vocals at Pirate Studios, and after a few more mixing and mastering decisions the track was done.

Check out the track below, and stay tune for possiblly some more stuff from Almost Unique…

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“Ode To Distraction Tactics Film Club”

Had loads of fun working on this.

For those not in the know, Distraction Tactics is a thing that Dan Smith (singer from Bastille) started doing on Instagram. He picks a film, and the fans watch it during the next week, then Dan does a livestream where he talks about it, the fans comment and contribute to the discussion and there’s often a guest on with Dan (virtually) to talk about the film etc.

Here’s a song to say thank you to Dan for creating Distraction Tactics.

This was Liv Baker-Mendoza idea, and I helped produce it, did some programming and also mixed and mastered.

Click Here To Listen/Watch

Bastille – The Anchor – Quarantine Edition

So, given that quarantine is a thing, some of us in the Bastille Stormers group on facebook decided to collaborate on a cover of a Bastille song, specifically The Anchor. Liv Baker-Mendoza (Guitars and bass) had the initial idea, and I offered to mix the project. As well as mixing, I also ended up doing some programming on the project, as well as mastering it. I play the Rhodes you hear throughout the whole song, which is first heard along with the lead vocal in the intro, and I also played the synth melody in the choruses, the strings at the end, a sub bass that plays throughout the whole song, and some additional brass parts in the bridge which are very heavily treated with effects.

Shoutouts to the other awesome musicians that were involved on this project:

Beth Goodchild: Drums

Joshua Ulysses: Vocals and backing vocals

Leah Knight: Vocals

Liv Elwood: Backing Vocals

Liv Baker-Mendoza: Guitars, bass and co-producer

Sam Hinch: Trumpet

And of course, written by Dan Smith, and originally performed by Bastille.

Click Here To Listen/watch

Leeds College Of Music Tracks

This is a playlist of tracks recorded at Leeds College Of Music, featuring myself and many other extremely talented musicians.

Most of these tracks are from the Write, Record and Perform course, held at LCoM during easter and summer holidays in 2017, 2018 and 2019. I loved this course. It genuinely felt like we were working on material for an album. We had the amazing Lee Smith of Greenmount Studios as our producer, and I thank him for inspiring me to start doing this whole music production thing. Thank you Lee!

Can’t recommend this highly enough.

Credits:

It Must Be Love:

Drums

Click here to listen

Away With The Wind:

Drums

Click here to listen

Something Real:

Electric Piano (For the curious I believe it was a Nord Electro, with a Rhodes type sound. It’s quite hard to hear over all the guitars, but it’s there.)

Click here to listen

Our Truth:

Electric Piano (Same as in Something Real, only you can actually hear it on this one! You can hear it best in the intro, where it plays on its own for a while before the vocals come in.)

Click here to listen

Choose It:

Drums

Click here to listen

Don’t Drink:

Piano

Click here to listen

Blinded:

Piano

Click here to listen