Recording is finished for ‘The British Public’ album which is also being mixed by bugs at half-ton in June/July.
Dan Flays album is nearly finished as well with just a few vocals to do..
The studio has a stonking new drum kit which has already found its way on to a few recordings and sounds huge!
Activity
Plenty of exciting projects have been through the studio in the last few months with Model Horror in with Matty moon recording 3 tracks for their new single. Daniel Flay is putting the finishing touches to his album which features Micky for the broken family band on drums. Arkan horror and beautiful sleazy have just finished recording with us and Wild hope, model village, and esqueleto are all finishing off some really great sounding projects over the next few weeks. Thanks to all the acts who have used us recently!
Winter Kings single launch
The winter kings are releasing their 1st single proper ‘black caravan’ which was recorded and mixed at half-ton studios last year. Their having a launch party at the Soul Tree in Cambridge on Saturday the 4th of April. They have a video out as well which can be seen here: www.myspace.com/thewinterkings
New Gear!
The success of the studio recently has enabled us invest in some new equipment, the 1st of which is a four channel API 3124 pre-amp. These beauties cost £50-60 a day to hire on there own which makes the studio even greater value for you dough than it already was! Plenty more juicy outboard and mics on the way soon to keep our engineers happy and make your recordings shine!
We’re donating a prize to the competition this year and if you fancy entering but still need a demo recorded, get in touch as we still have a few dates available before the closing date!
The heats are taking place at the Soul Tree (Tuesdays 14, 21, 28 April and 5 May) and the final is at the Corn Exchange (Friday 15 May)
Details can be found at
Happy New Year!
The studio closed for a few weeks over xmas, i managed to get in a holiday to Morocco which was great, Matt is off visiting family in Australia for a few more weeks and Rob is running around doing seven different things at once as usual! Was good to reflect on what was a very busy last few months of 2008. Bands in and hopefully leaving happy included: Lonely the Brave, The Incredible Flight of Birdman, Toy Radio, Palatino Hills, Screwd, Mono Effect Ed, Beverley Kills and Ripping Yarns.
Evening Sessions
We started doing evening recording sessions in December and they went really well. For bands looking for a quick, fairly live recording they are a great option at £100 for a 6pm-12pm session.
January
Is a lot more relaxed with gives me a chance to put some time in on some of my longer term projects I’m doing with Fuzzy Lights, Daniel Flay and Rob Gregory, looking forward to this and hopefully i might even get round to doing some of my own stuff!
We’re currently enjoying the use of our new control room, which we completed work on in October. The room has been built and treated to provide the most accurate mixing space we could achieve, and the whole studio is a much better place to work, with space for bands to chill out in during the recording process without getting in each other’s way! Have a peek at the new photos or better still come down and have a look!
Special Xmas offer on studio time for December!
For the month of December only we’re offering 3 full days studio time for the price of two! We ran this offer earlier in the year and it proved very popular so get in there quick! See the rates page for full details
Hello Matt!
We’ve also been joined by another engineer/producer in the form of Matty Moon. Matt has recently produced recordings for Toy Radio and Lonely the Brave at the studio and seems to be coping well with our sense of humor…it’s great to have him on board.
‘Lonely the Brave’ were the 1st band through the new room at the end october, everyone is very pleased! More pics on the way soon!
the eight track tape machine (brennel mini eight) has landed and is doing its 1st recording session next week, beautifully restored to all its glory its going to be interesting!
Its not replacing any of the digital stuff we have, but we now have the option of intoducing that lovely tape sound either for whole projects or just wacking the drums through etc
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were doing some work on improving the layout of the studio in a few weeks and im really looking forward to getting covered in plasterboard and paint again! its going to be great when its done though and will mean we can be a lot more flexible with how we work in the future including a bigger control room and a band relaxation area! Im looking for labourers, anyone fancy getting there hands dirty?
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many bands are putting there tracks on commercial download sites at the moment and i get asked quite often about getting tracks mastered and converted etc for this method of distrubution. I get the impression that there is a bit of mystique (sp?) surrounding this which i think many download sites use to make more money! There are ways of making MP3s etc sound a bit better but the principles are the same as they always were: good tracks, well played, well recorded and mastered should still sound good when converted to a downloadble format. We’re always happy to give advice (if we can!) on projects for free! so give us a mail or a call
quick news update:
The winter kings album is finished, mastered (about time too!) and sounds ace
Lots of good projects done and in the making including: sing a long a stranger, joe fox (younghearts), elecrtic armadillo, sensible fun
Due in the next few weeks are: truly beautiful disaster, toy radio and the sand dollars
Im hoping to have a weekend off and blag a ticket for latitude…fingers crossed!
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Half-ton will soon have a good quality analogue tape machine to play with as we’ve got our hands on a fully refurbished brenell 8 track 1 inch tape machine cant wait to try putting some drums etc through it..
My ears are recovering afer a few weeks of rock action and my stomach from a boozy weekend in france!
trailing cable and federal black 40 both left the studio happy last week after we finished mixing their respective projects. Both bands were a pleasure to work with and you should check them out if you get a chance…clips from these sessions should be on the myspace and wesite player in the next day or two..
http://www.myspace.com/federalblack40rock
http://www.myspace.com/trailingcable
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Robots with Hearts were in last week which is an exciting new colaberation between Animals on Wheels (Andy Coleman) + iCON the Mic King (Michael King)
http://www.myspace.com/robohearts
Very excited to hear what the mixes from these sessions turn out like!
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rehearsal news
Sorry to all the bands who have got in touch regarding reherasal slots when we haven’t been able to accomodate you. Im trying to make a greater effort to keep the rehearsal calender up to date and am making plans to build another room!