Best Folk Album of 2013 Tui Awarded to Great North

Last year a good deal of my time was spent recording Great North's second album 'Halves' I'm so proud to be able to announce that Halves was recently awarded the Tui for Best Folk Album of 2013! Its been amazing working with Great North the past few years on their EP 'Soldiers' and first album 'Newfoundland' but I was especially proud of Halves and Hayden writes some very intelligent, heart wrenching, beautiful songs so its amazing to see some recognition for something that we worked so hard on.

Congratulations to Hayden, Rachel, Strahan, Dale, Olly, and new drummer Ryan! Special mentions to Matthew Hutching who played Pedal Steel and Stephanie Cole who played Banjo on Lead Me To The Light.

If you haven't heard it yet have a listen below.

Chelsea.

Some time ago I helped mix and master a one week EP that Chelsea from Teacups recorded with Jono, Alex and Reuben from Artisan Guns. If you haven't heard her solo stuff before its very different from Teacups, lots more electronic and atmospheric but still very pretty.

We just started working towards her album and I am very excited. Very. Today we worked on a song called "Under" recording a whole heap of vocals and some piano and guitar and bass.

My converted Valve Radio guitar amp was made use of in to the Vox Cab.

I had exactly the same bizarre old guitar that James has just under my bed collecting dust. Now he has 2.

Great North Tracking - Finishing Touches.

Today we had planned to just track some tom overdubs on one of Great Norths tracks and that was all. Last night we got almost all the piano done, so left it in my room to finish the last song. While we were at it we got the others to come round to record some group vocals on a couple of songs and then some harmonica and guitar parts. A very productive day and I think we're done with tracking.

I am so glad to have real piano on the songs now instead of the guide keyboard I've been listening to for weeks. The songs have started to feel alot more organic than they were before and everything is gelling together better.

I guess its time to start mixing them now.

Kingston Album

Woo. More Kingston Vocals today, this morning we did some gang vocals, my Kiwi set to wide Cardiod works really well for this. Then Shohan dominated her parts on "Miss You" before Dan Scott and I spent the rest of the day working on "I'm Gonna Be With The King" which we finished.

Now I am working on comping up the doubles and harmonies and doubles of harmonies and everything else we did today!

Everyone's voice seemed to be on form today, some really great singing, especially Shohan and Dan. The song is sounding HUGE, Brandons doing a great job on it.

Kingston Album Tracking

Kingston are so close to finishing their Album. They've been over in Canada and New York tracking Drums, Bass and Guitars. They came back to New Zealand a couple of months ago and their producer Brandon Friesen has been over for the past 3 or so weeks finishing off Vocals and adding more guitars and synths etc out at a batch they've been hiring at Piha.

Brandons headed of to Australia and New York before returning to Canada and I've been left to track 3 songs worth of vocals, plus some doubling of vocals and harmonies and some more guitars.

Today we finished the Vocals on "Miss You" and Scott put down a fair bit of guitar pieces here and there.

What I've heard of the album sounds HUGE. Can't wait for Brandon to give it his final touches so I can see how its all going to sit in the mix.

Great North Album - Guitar

Strahan came round and we finished the guitar parts for the Great North Album (I think we finished... maybe there will be more, who knows.) in the picture above he is modelling one of many solutions to many problems.

Often when you start to record there'll be squeaks, buzzes and rattles that you won't usually hear. In this case what appears to be an ordinary yellow cloth is in fact a special string mute; muting all of the strings behind the slide to prevent them making noises. Very high tech. The string mute is a custom peice of equipment that I designed and made myself out of a yellow cloth. Haha.

Anyway recording went well, we made some very loud sounds (and some not so loud sounds) ate some cheese toasties and then Steph came round and we watched one of my favourite films of all time that they recently found second hand in a video hire store on VHS.

Mannequin. Incredible.

Great North Album - Guitar tracking.

More Great North guitar today. More geeking out with pedals and amps and guitars and cello bows...

Album is getting to a point where I think its close to being all tracked and ready for mixing. Just piano left to track on some songs, exciting.

Teacups Album Review

Teacups album got a nice review in the NZ Herald a few weeks back, I just realised I should probably link to it here.

Teacups-Forest Fiction NZ Herald Album Review

"Forest Fiction is rustic, but it is by no means rough." Good, I think thats what I was going for.

Great North BV's, Glockenspiel, Piano, Guitar...

Dale from Great North popped round today to record his backing vocals on the songs we have for the album so far. He finished quickly and we decided to try my somewhat noisy piano (the sustain pedal is dodgy) and managed something passable on one of the songs, although we might try another piano instead later. After the piano was too noisy we put down some Glockenspiel and then Dale got me to record a song he'd written about his son Thomas, which was really nice. It also gave me a chance to get the Neuman KM184s out for a spin, recently when I've been tracking acoustic its needed something dirty and rootsy and not so perfect etc so I've been leaning towards large diaphragm condensers and even sm57s etc. So it was quite nice to hear my Martin 000-15 really shine. Fortunately I'd just put new strings on too!

Great Northing.

Recently I have had the pleasure of beginning work on Great Norths album, we currently have 6 songs with Drums Bass and acoustic guitar tracked (along with some guide keys and a few other things here and there) we should be doing some more drums bass etc in the next couple of weeks.

This past week Hayden and Strahan came for a visit each to put down some vocals and electric guitar respectively. We tracked vocals live with one of the songs called "I Feel Alive" and I think its turned out really great Strahan and I sat down today and worked through his guitar part on it and its really coming together, I cant wait to get a real acoustic piano in there instead of the keyboard that's currently on.


I really enjoy messing around with a bunch of guitars and amps trying to find "that tone" but Strahan has recently made some adjustments to his rig. Hes gone from skateboard pedalboard(s) to a pedal train with some nice new toys and from whatever amp we could borrow to a beautiful new Fender Bassman, which sounds great. No messing about just plug in and play.

I'd be upset if it didn't sound so good.

Teacups Album Release

Wow. Teacups released their album "Forest Fiction" on thursday and it was great.

They booked out hopetoun alpha for the event and made it beautiful with Fairy Lights, a Tent and Forest! I was doing sound for the evening and amplifying very quiet things in a large space like that without feedback is always a struggle with the large amount of reverb etc caused by the room but I managed ok. Fortunately the room packed out with people and killed a bit of the room.

It was so great. One of the highlights of my year.

Also CD's look (and sound dare I say it) great and are in stores around the country, I highly recommend them!

Here are some photos of the Hopetoun, I didn't get any durin the show because I was working sorry about the quality, my camera doesn't like the dark much.

Xiong Mao

Bear Cat released their album "Xiong Mao" the other week and I played bass at their album release show. Its available in most good music stores NZ wide now or come along to one of their shows and pick one up. I'm quite looking forward to playing with them in Wellington and Christchurch later this month.

Below are some photos from the Album release party at Cassette #9

Photo by Bryn Quin Skins

Photo by Winchey Zheng

Photo by Winchey Zheng

Bear Cat Album

Bearcat are releasing the Album I have been working on (on and off) for the past 2 years on Septemeber the 4th in Auckland at Cassette #9.

This is a pretty monumental moment in my life. This was a huge project for me and I am glad its done, I cant wait for you to hear it.

I will be joining them on stage playing bass for the release party (I played bass on most of the album too)

I'm very excited.